RPJune aka . . .

If you had any doubts about WR and I's level of geekdom I'm pretty sure that the this post will sufficiently shatter them.

As you have no doubt guessed this is DW writing this week from waterlogged Peoria Illinois.  The last weeks were filled with packing, cleaning, more packing, and -with the help of a benevolent Father- eventually bidding adieu to Minneapolis as I start my epic 8 months of gallivanting about.

My that is one empty apartment.

For now, I'm taking care of last minute organization, tending to my parents dogs, and trying to relax before heading off to Utah on Saturday.

This is the craziest dog you will ever meet.

This, however, is not going to be the focus of this weeks ramblings.  As many of you already know, WR and I are fond of trying to meander our way toward self improvement through monthly challenges.  Somehow the frequently torturous process seems more palatable when broken down into month-sized focused chunks.  Past challenges include Caffine free (Decafcember), Work out every day (Joguary), and Vegetarian only (Vegvember) among others.  And even the ones that don't work out (see myself and the afore mentioned Vegvember) you generally walk away incorporating a bit, and being much more aware.

Which brings us to this month.  A while back I heard a TED talk about a guy who made a fresh start for himself by making his life into an video game.  Since both of us are avid RPG (role playing game) players this idea was instantly appealing. Now in his case, I'm pretty sure he sold everything, made a bucket list and assigned experience points for the different items, then set out globe trotting.  A romantic concept, but a bit more drastic than what we would be interested in, so the idea got shelved.
 
That is, until about a week ago. As her current monthly challenge was wrapping up WR brought the idea back up, and we started brainstorming ways of making it work. RPJune is the result of our efforts.

Firstly we had to decide what tasks we wanted to work on, which would gain us points, and what categories they might fall under.  In a nod to traditional RPG's we chose four main attributes under which activities fall: Vitality, Spirit, Strength, and Intellect.  Here is a list of some of my activities and what they are worth.

Note the handy dandy code WR added for ease of recording.

Next it was time for be to break out the ol'e Excel skills to make a spreadsheet that could work for tracking and interpreting the data.  Ultimately to keep us honest and accountable, we decided we would use a Google spreadsheet, and while we fill out the log ourselves, only the other person can actually assign points.

the shading represents past days.

While that is all well and good, it doesn't actually help it feel like an RPG so I made a second sheet for each of us which parses the data.  Levels are gained by the total amount of experience (the current level cap is 10) with each level being 25% more experience than the last.

The spreadsheet also tracks the percentage gained in each of the attribute areas.  This is important, because if we spend too much time developing one part of our lives we get reduced experience in that area the following day, while underused areas receive an experience boost.

Lastly, the experience in each attribute is reduced down to attribute points, and this distribution is used to calculate a class of character from 8 WoW inspired classes.

Curious what that looks like? Here ya go:

Yeah we are giant nerds, for the excel magic as much as the gaming :).

Because of the amount of work to get it up and running, we think this will be the first challenge to extend beyond a month.  In the coming weeks it will expand, as we are going to make up quests for one another involving various mixes of the attributes. My personal goal is to be at level 10 by the end of July.  A number of folks have expressed interest in partaking of the fun, just send me or WR an e-mail and I'm sure we can figure something out.

Back to grinding I go! WR will be back next week, and will probably be a level 4 mage, so feed the fish . . . or she's likely to do something nasty to you.

DW