Honoring Heroes and Building Communities through Gaming

Episode Transcript
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Josh Porthouse (00:05):
Welcome to Transacting Value, where we talk
about practical applicationsfor personal values when dealing
with each other and even withinourselves.
Where we foster a podcastlistening experience that lets
you hear the power of a valuesystem for managing burnout,
establishing boundaries andfinding belonging.
My name is Josh Porthouse, I'myour host and we are your people

(00:26):
.
This is why values still holdvalue.
This is Transacting Value.

Paraic Mulgrew (00:34):
But my experience of playing this game
is it's not the elves and themagic and the dragons that's
really interesting.
It's the choices that you make.

Today on Transacting Value.
What is our role within arole-playing game?
What is our character withinthe character arc of a board
game?
How do we know which roles,which boundaries, which values,
which assets, whichopportunities to exploit
tactically, strategically orethically when we're playing
games?
And, more importantly, whatdoes that degree of inquiry and

(01:07):
critical thought have to do withour own human progress in
reality and our own characterdevelopment?
This conversation we're talkingwith Paraic Mulgrew from San
Antonio, and he's the co-ownerof Night W Nightwatch Games.
We're going to talk all aboutit his journey, his character
development, his time in theArmy and what that looks like
for his gaming store and hisnational reach across his

(01:30):
podcast and his YouTube channel.
Guys, without further ado, I'mPorter, I'm your host.
This is Transacting Value.
Paraic, how you doing?
I'm doing great.
How are you, Josh?
Good, good.
I appreciate you taking sometime out of your schedule, man,
as a business owner, especiallyaround dinner time at the time
of this recording, I can onlyassume you've got so much free

(01:51):
time, so I appreciate youspending some of it with us.

It's going to be a good time.

I can tell yeah, I'm excited for it as well.
Now, before we get too far intothis, there's a couple things I
think that are important tounpack in any, you know, new
relationship.
So, at the time of thisrecording, for anybody who's new
to the show, this is an audioonly podcast, and so Paraic for
anybody who has no idea who youare or anything about Night W

(02:15):
Nightwatch Games, let's juststart at the beginning here.
Take a couple minutes.
Man, who are you?
Where are you from?
What sort of things have shapedyour perspective on life?

Yeah, my name is Paraic Mulgrew, living out of
San Antonio.
My wife, Brenda, and I started astore it's a tabletop gaming
cafe, it's called Night WNightwatch Games, and that was
what we did after I got out ofthe army.
I served in the army for about10 years, and when we got out
there was the big question ofwhat to do with our life at that

(02:47):
point, and it was my wife'sidea actually to open up the
game store that she and Iconstantly talked about over
coffee while we were travelingthe world, and we always walked
out a little disappointedbecause there was a lot of
potential that didn't seem to beachieved, and so our vision of

(03:12):
what a good game store meant waspretty vivid, and so we opened
up the game store.
I think it's now close to 10years now and, uh, we're doing
really well, congratulations andwe actually opened up a sister
game store, which is not reallya game store.
It's called a medieval boutique, it's called The Sanctuary and

(03:34):
it's physically right next doorand that caters to the medieval
renaissance fairgoer.
So we have weapons and armorand and corsets and dresses and
the whole thing that you wouldwear to a Renaissance fair.

So you you've created it sounds like you've
created an atmosphere wherepeople can adopt these, you know
, mental, emotional, spiritualtype roles and become somebody
else, physically staying thesame or physically changing.

Yeah, the initial vision was people come
to Night W Nightwatch Games toplay role-playing games like
Dungeons and D ragons, and myvision was that they would
actually dress up while sittingaround the table to help some of
the immersiveness of the game,and my part was to give them a

(04:23):
setting in which put them inthat mode.
So Night W Nightwatch Games isvery immersive.
It looks like the interior of amedieval keep or a tavern and
all the rooms are themed and youhave chandeliers and wooden
floors and suits of armor and itjust looks like a medieval

(04:43):
hangout and the idea was thatpeople might dress up while
playing these games.
That's not quite how it haspanned out, but that was the
initial vision.
Has it detracted at all?
No, it's.
We find that the demographicthat are into immersive role
playing have their own outlet,known as a live-action

(05:04):
role-playing event, known asLARPing, and they tend to do
that outdoors because part ofthe LARPing experience is
swinging a weapon and bashing oneach other and having some type
of combat simulated, whereasobviously we cannot do that
indoors.
So my setting is more of atavern setting, where you're

(05:26):
sitting around a long banquettable eating a turkey leg,
drinking out of a goblet andplaying a role-playing game.
That's cool.

Is that an expression?
Or you actually have turkeylegs on the menu and goblets of
mead, or what?

Not the turkey leg, literally?
But we do have paninis andbaked potatoes and all sorts of
hors d'oeuvres, charcuterieboards.
So it's one step shy of theturkey leg experience Nice.

What got you into this to begin with?
Are you naturally or normally,you know, a D&D guy?
Or did you play a lot of boardgames game nights in the army?
Like what was the impetus?

It was actually something that I grew up with.
My dad was military as well.
I had an older brother and wegrew up around the age when
Dungeons and Dragons was firstintroduced as a concept and I
was taught how to play from mybrother, and we survived the

(06:26):
satanic panic of the reaction tothis immersive role-playing
fantasy setting and we had toreally justify why it is that we
enjoy it, why do we do it, andso a lot of understanding was
developed about what thisactivity does, or what it can do

(06:47):
, and to be able to justify itin the face of that kind of
religious conflict that wasgenerated about what's the value
of pretending to be somethingthat you're not and to use your
imagination and participate inactivities that are, you know,
somewhat questionable Castingspells and and shooing down

(07:11):
people with your weapons and inconquering kingdoms.
Some of that's got some realworld applications and so,
understandably, people were werepretty nervous about this new
activity.
Understandably, people werepretty nervous about this new
activity, but that was 50 yearsago, I think.
Well, it's at least 40 years agothat Dungeons Dragons came out.

(07:32):
So we're well past that kind ofmisunderstanding and we're now
at that point where people areplaying this game across the
board.
The demographic thatparticipates in role-playing
games is not what you wouldthink from 30 years ago.
It's modern people,well-educated people,

(07:53):
white-collar type people, andthey tend to be older, over 30
years old, and they have a lotof life experience that they
bring to the table and they sortof want to recapture that
imagination that we had as kids.

Why?
What's the appeal Like?
Do you think that eitherrecapturing the extent of that
imagination helps alleviate justthe daily grind that everybody
gets used to in their adultroutines, or do you see it more
of an ability to contribute moreof a mature aspect to this
character development andcharacter arc and gameplay?

What's the draw?
The backbone of my kind ofcontroversial view is that most
people play role-playing gamesas a very simple, superficial,
stress-relieving social bondingmoment with other people, and
they have fun silly times aroundthe tabletop and they're
laughing and they're having agood time and there's certainly

(08:49):
nothing wrong with that.
And yet at Night W NightwatchGames we sell lots of different
types of games, not just therole playing games.
We have board games, dice games, card games, war games,
skirmish games, all sorts ofthings that you could do with
your time and all sorts ofthings that you could do with
your time and all sorts ofthings that you could use to
bond with other people.
And we find that people, whenthey use role-playing games,

(09:13):
they tend to just scratch thesurface of what they could be
doing with that role-playinggame.
And it's my view thatrole-playing games offer a
profound potential of not justbonding with your fellow gamers
and having a good time at thetable, but it's a great matrix

(09:35):
in which to exercise identity,exercise choices that you make,
suffer the consequences of thosechoices that you make, suffer
the consequences of thosechoices and in one sort of
package deal, you get to adopt avalue system that may be yours

(09:56):
or maybe not.
But you get to put yourself ina fantastic situation and see
what happens when you adopt thatvalue system.
And it's a safe space becauseit's all imagination.
Nobody's actually reallygetting any kind of consequence
that would be harmful but itlets you work through some
dynamics of why is it good to begood or what is the consequence

(10:20):
of not being good?
And then you get to super coatall that with this kind of
fantastic setting of elves anddwarves and dragons and magic
and all that other stuff.
But my experience of playingthis game is it's not the elves
and the magic and the dragons.
That's really interesting.
It's the choices that you makeand it's not just the tactical

(10:43):
choices.
There's a lot of board gamesthat let you make tactical
choices.
It's the moral choices, it'snot.
Can I kill the dragon?
The question is, should I killthe dragon?
And unfortunately, I reallythink that a lot of people play
role-playing games and theydon't tap into the real

(11:03):
potential of what that gamecould do For anybody new to the
show.

The majority of my career at this point over the
last 14 years has been with theMarine Corps infantry active up
until recently.
And one of the things that wedo actually, I think, very well
in the Marine Corps isdehumanize people, and it serves
a point as a warfightingfunction.

(11:31):
When you're talking abouttraining some degree of
cognitive dissonance, becausewhat you want to alleviate is
hesitation in a kinetic war zone, now ideally what you want to
steer that towards is some sortof productive decision making,
but at the very least minimizethe hesitation.
And that counterpoint is metwith what we call either

(11:53):
tactical decision games orethical decision games.
Now, both of those thingscoined through those terms at
least, are relatively recent inthe last 20 to 30 years, at
least are relatively recent inthe last 20 to 30 years.
But in concept the last 250 theMarine Corps has been around.
It's been a training tool and Imean you could look back to
Roman centurions and samurai,you can look at Zulu warriors,

(12:17):
you can look at Spartans and anyother warrior culture similar
to the Marine Corps and to, Ithink, a little bit more biased
but a lesser degree, the USDepartment of Defense as a whole
.
You take in those aspects oftraining where it's not all
physical.
Some of it has to be mental andspiritual and emotional to
understand the context in whichyou're being physical.
So, for example, the ethicaldecision games that you just

(12:40):
described do you slay the dragon?
Did you ever in?
Uh, did you ever see Merlin?
That series that was on Netflix?
Yeah, I thought it was greatand I I thought the character
development, uh, of Merlin andArthur and the relationship just
as a show.
If you haven't seen it, anybodyelse listening to this I highly
recommend it.
It was very good.
But this similar point can Itrust the dragon?

(13:02):
Do I release the dragon?
Do I kill the dragon?
And in this particular, can Itrust the dragon?
Do I release the dragon?
Do I kill the dragon?
And in this particular instance, is releasing the dragon going
to give me a tactical advantageor not?
In a kinetic environment?
And it became the second andthird order decision making
process and I don't think thatdepth of inquiry and criticality
exists in many places insociety today.

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Is releasing the dragon going to give me a
tactical advantage or not in akinetic environment, and it
became the second and thirdorder decision-making process,
and I don't think that depth ofinquiry and criticality exists
in many places in society today.

Agreed, agreed.
Even when they have the abilityto get into that kind of
critical practice, they tend toeschew it because practicing
values is taxing, it requireswork.
I think you know the good roadis usually the harder road and
when people want to play games,choosing that hard road is

(15:06):
probably not on their firstchoice.
I do have an interesting storythat parallels what you just
said.
I was 11 Bravo in the army fora while and there was a very
amazing parallel between my Iraqexperience when I was leading a
patrol through a town versusthe adventuring party going

(15:28):
through a town.
And if I could quickly sum up,that scene was I was going
through the town, a local hoppedout of a window, a couple of
blocks down and took a pot shotat our group and hit one of my
squad mates.
Luckily it was right on thechest plate so it wasn't lethal

(15:48):
or anything.
But I was the leader of thesquad at the moment, so I had to
go into rapid decision-makingof what is my priority, what do
I do?
And I remember there was almostan alter ego of me watching
this scene as if I was anadventuring party and I got my

(16:09):
stick of death in my hand andI've got my magical armor on and
I've got my communicationsystem that lets me talk to
people miles away.
And I remember thinking it'snot about chasing down the guy
that just shot at us, it'smaking sure that my team is okay
.
And then there was a whole listof priorities below that of

(16:30):
like, what would what wouldcommand want me to do?
What am I trained to do?
What is my capabilities ofdoing?
And then, overarching all ofthat, was this voice that saying
what should I be doing?
What is the moral thing for meto do right now?
And then the story goes onwhere I take the squad up to the
building where this shootercame out of and we bust in and

(16:54):
there's a family there.
It's a full family males,females, young, old.
And, sure enough, in the corneris a rifle.
And you know, you know, if wewere playing Dungeons and
Dragons, many, many playerswould say, oh, we just kill them
all, we just slaughter them.
And I remember thinking that'snot even a remote option.
I can't do that.

(17:15):
Physically I could do that, youknow, we had grenades and guns
and we could have done that, butthere was no reality where that
would have ended up being good,you know it would have turned
the town against us.
Where that would have ended upbeing good?
You know it would have turnedthe town against us.
I would have to answer to mycommand back when I got to base.
I would have to answer tomyself.

(17:46):
There was a lot of consequencesthat come into just ripping
apart the enemy in that kind ofscenario.
And yet when players playDungeons and Dragons they don't
think twice about going into thelair of the orcs and
slaughtering all the orcs.
They don't think twice about it.
And I remember thinking there'sa strange disconnect there.
And it's not that.
Can you kill the orcs?
It's.
Should you kill the orcs?
And if you do, what are theconsequences?
No-transcript, by participatingin a value system that may be

(18:31):
yours or it may not be yours,but you can really sort of get
to a deeper empathy of what itis to be good or what it is to
be bad.

Yeah, those life .
Well, let's say real life,practical application parallels
obviously aren't common, right,there's, let's say,
statistically, 1% of the USpopulation that may experience
that, and even a smallerpercentage I guess that actually
will, you know, go to combat ordeploy or whatever.
But that's just the military.
You look at law enforcement,this thin blue line movement

(19:05):
over the last couple of years,maybe a decade or something, I'm
not sure how long it's beenaround, but this relative
movement against law enforcementand what that's like for them
on a daily basis might very wellbe similar to your patrol, just
in a domestic environment asopposed to foreign, not in a
house, and so you know.
You look at EMTs, obviouslyevery day, life-saving decisions

(19:29):
.
You know, should I do this,should I not?
I'm not going to know if thisworks until I see that it
doesn't or that it does.
How is this going to affectthis person?
Are they allergic?
We don't know, because they'reunconscious.
Any other number of decisionsin a split second, this rapid
decision making you talked about, where, in my experience, we
attribute it to this 1950sfighter pilot, Colonel John Boyd
, and it became coined, I guess,as his concept, and we call it

(19:56):
an OODA loop, and it's observe,orient, decide and act.
But it's this four part processthat allows you to make
decisions, ideally, more rapidly.
But I'll tell you, Paraic it'sonly going to happen if you're
exposed to the chance to developthat rapidity.
Yeah, no-transcript.

(20:22):
So in your experience, asyou're working with all of these
people that come into your shopor just yours firsthand even,
how did you develop that degreeof insight and rapidity and
growth and awareness?

What did you do?
The game master, or even as aplayer, is to really try to use
your imagination and not onlymentally project yourself into
the scene, but able toarticulate and act in such a way
that it heightens the immersionof the other players, and that

(20:58):
whole activity is based inreally strong empathy.
You have to empathize with thepeople that are at the table,
but you also have to projectthis empathy into this fantastic
setting and these fantasticpeople that don't really exist,
but they are supposed to be anamalgamation of humanity in

(21:20):
different facets, and so youhave to really empathize with
where they're coming from, whatdo they want, what do they fear
and what is the obstacle totheir desire.
And you have to interact withthem on that level to heighten
the immersion of the game.
And to do that I had to tapinto my real world experiences

(21:42):
I'm over 50 now, so there's ahandful of them and I found that
the game that I saw many peopleplaying and sometimes the game
around my own table was it justwasn't based in a real human
understanding.
It was just craziness.
It was like people surfing onthe back of dragons and throwing

(22:03):
lightning bolts and blowing upcastles and not even blinking.
It was just crazy mayhem forthe sake of mayhem, and I
remember thinking that's noteven close to anything real, and
if you're going to take realityout of the game, I can't
empathize with any of this.
There's no connection to me andmy humanity and this game.

(22:25):
No connection to me and myhumanity and this game.
It's just crazy chaos, andthat's not really what I was
looking for in a game.
I was looking for something thathad a little more meaning, so
that at the end of the game Ifelt like I did something, and I
think that might be thedifference is, some people come
to a role playing game andthey're just looking for a
disassociated escapism, and themore crazy it is the better,

(22:48):
whereas I was coming to thetable with.
I want to explore humanity asit's portrayed in these
different types of facets of afantasy world, so that I can
come to understand myself better, but also come to understand
other people better, and so Ithink my approach is just a lot
different than most people's,but in pursuing my approach I

(23:10):
found there's a huge potentialto this.
It is really, really a strong,strong thing.
I mean it gets close to almosttherapeutic kind of counseling
in some regards, but it's verymuch the same thing that you
said that if you repeatedlypractice making decisions, you
get better at it.
So if you're in a game and youpractice making good decisions

(23:33):
and being a good person in theface of all sorts of adversity,
you're going to be better atbeing a good person in real life
.

Yeah, and the point you just made essentially
about well disassociatedescapism.
I don't think that applies to alot of digitized video games
necessarily.
There's a lot of quest gamesyou can play.
There's a lot of other you know, similarly structured, puzzle
type oriented things that canhelp you think right.
And obviously there's schoolsand curricula and things.

(24:03):
But there is, there has been adifference.
When I was in, well, when I wasin elementary school, you know,
we had let me let me couch thispoint by saying I don't pay
attention to these games now, soI don't know if they exist, but
when I was in elementary schoolwe had a lot of these
edutainment games and this iswhen computers were first coming

(24:25):
out.
We had a computer lab and wethought it was the coolest thing
and we had a Sister Virginia.
I was at Catholic school.
Sister Virginia was ourcomputer teacher, and so
obviously, she was fluent andproficient in computers.
Right, so and so.
What we ended up doing, though,was playing games like the
original Oregon Trail yeah,Where in the World is Carmen

(24:46):
Sandiego?
And I think eventually, thatmaybe morphed somehow some way
into ABC Mouse and some otherplatforms that, over time, Sony
and Microsoft adopted in some oftheir gameplay as well, but now
, now, I think there's a greaterpreponderance of digitized
games where it is disassociative, not restorative and not

(25:11):
insightful and not as critical,and I think that's where we're
going to run into some issues,because there's this distinct
difference.
Uh, what's, what's on it?
Well, college campuses are allover the news now, so let's just
say higher education in theUnited States as a setting for
this, where, I think, relativedegrees of investors and

(25:31):
lobbyists control what getstaught in the curriculum, and
then, eventually, somebody elsewith similar clout and
credibility validates that andsays no, it's accredited, we can
teach that, and people are likeoh well, it's accredited, I'm
going to have my kids learn thatand it's a good school, it's
private, there's investors,there's whatever, and, as we're
seeing, that's going to cause animpact and an influence in

(25:53):
what's taught and how it'staught and how the campus
eventually develops over time.
Saying that the general flow inmy experience, at least when I
got my bachelor's going throughschool, was there's your gen ed
stuff math, science, socialsciences and then you can

(26:14):
specialize in stuff which may bealso oriented to social
sciences, or you decide tospecialize in humanities.
But it's an either or it's notan and.
And I think when it comes torole playing games, let's say
tabletop board games in yourcase, even into a certain degree
digitized games as well, youcan totally experience and even
specialize in experiencinghumanities while still

(26:34):
showcasing social sciences.
And I don't see that andoverlap really anywhere else, at
least not as publicly, you know, in your face and up front, and
it's a, it's a huge disservice.
I think that you have not yetfranchised because because your
model I agree 100% has so muchpotential to do more, as a

(27:01):
template maybe, or as an actualfranchise, I don't know but the
exposure that you're buildingfor the community and I don't
know but the exposure thatyou're building for the
community and I don't want togeneralize it and say humanity,
but you know the people that arein the community is huge.

Alrighty, folks sit tight and we'll be right back

Alrighty, folks, if you're looking for more
perspective and more podcasts,you can check out Transacting
Value on Wreaths Across AmericaRadio, listen in on iHeartRadio
Odyssey and TuneIn.
The exposure that you'rebuilding for the community and I
don't want to generalize it andsay humanity, but the people
that are in the community ishuge, and I'm curious, though,

(27:41):
that's what you've done foreverybody else, and so let me
dive into you for a second.
Okay, getting into this mindset, getting into this drive and
building this insight and andwhat caused you to gain some of
this interest in the first place, not in gaming, but in people
and cultures and social sciencesand humanities.
So this is a segment of theshow called developing character

(28:03):
developing character and foranybody new or Paraic included
concluded, this is a segment ofthe show called developing
character.
Developing character for andanybody new or concluded, this
is two questions you feel freeto answer as in-depth or as
vulnerable as you want.
It's up to you.
But I'm going to dive a littlebit into your value systems
because, in my opinion, any goodgame revolves around the
characters more than thegameplay, and so the depth of
character, I think, is whatresonates more with anybody in a

(28:26):
podcast conversation listeningto it as well.
So that's what we're going totalk about here.
Okay, my first question whatwere some of the values that you
were exposed to growing up orthat you remember, maybe even
adopting through your family atan early
age?

That's an easy one.
I am a chip off the old block.
I am very much like my father,with a good mix of the softness
and poeticness and empathy of mymother, doing the right thing

(29:07):
solely because it's the rightthing, not because it's the easy
thing or it's what peopleexpect of you.
It's really just being a goodperson because that's what you
think you should be doing andit's a conviction.
I was raised Catholic as well,so I certainly have my fair
share of Catholic guilt dumpedon me, but it's the idea that
we're here on the world for apurpose, and it's a profound

(29:31):
purpose, and it's not justearning money and doing the
daily grind and getting throughlife.
It's making yourself the bestversion of you that you can be.
That you can be, and I wastaught early on, mainly from my

(29:52):
father, that the hard road isusually the good road, and when
you have a choice in life aboutwhat to do, the one that's the
most difficult is probably thething that makes you a better
person.
It comes down to that thattropey idea that a sword has to
be forged by being heated andbanged on and really roughed up
to make it strong.

(30:13):
I think that sort of holds truewith humans and that to
exercise the soul of humanityyou really have to test it with
fire and difficult decisions andyou have to suffer the
consequences of those decisions.
And I was taught early on thatthat's really a sole purpose of

(30:33):
who we are.
And to help me practice that,you know I made all my mistakes
as a young teenager and a youngadult and even as an older adult
, still making silly humanmistakes.
But I find that gaming andinteracting with other people is
a system, a matrix of support,so that, one, you can learn

(30:55):
vicariously through otherpeople's mistakes, but two, when
you do make that mistake, youhave a support structure that's
going to walk you through theconsequences of that mistake and
then encourage you not to makethat mistake in the future.
And so I found being a goodperson was heavily tied into a
social interactive connectionwith your fellow humans that are

(31:19):
walking a similar path.
And you know, in churches andreligions we call that
congregation.
And you know, in churches andreligions we call that
congregation.
And while I certainly don't runa church, Night W nightwatch
Games ans is definitelycongregation.
It's that kind of like-mindedperson, sometimes
disenfranchised, sometimesalienated from the mainstream,

(31:40):
but they're all struggling withthe very same questions that
most of us are, and that is whoam I, where did I come from and
where am I going and why doesany of this really matter?
And we find that, throughgaming, sports is probably very
similar.
I know the military is verysimilar but it gives you a
framework to work out some ofthose answers of what is really

(32:03):
meaningful.
Yeah, I owe a lot of that to myfather, as I was being
disciplined as a young kid.
That was the takeaway of do theright thing even if it's the
hard thing, and that was thefirst cue.
If it's the hard thing, it'sprobably the right thing.
It's so easy to be a bad guy.
It's so easy.

(32:23):
It's so easy to be a bad guy.
It's so easy.

Yeah.
Now to that point, though, Ithink there's a sort of
threshold, a fine line to.
Just because it's hard doesn'tmean it's the way you need to go
.
There may be simpler options,but I think oftentimes we
confuse hard and difficult withcomplex, as opposed to easy and

(32:48):
simple well, it comes back tosomething.

What you said earlier is if you practice being
good, it gets easier being goodbecause it becomes you, it
becomes your habit, becomes yourpattern of thought and it
becomes your value system.
And if you are in touch withyour value system, you're right,
it does get easier.
But I mean we're talkingdecades of growth there.

Well, sure, I mean, you know if, if enterprise
has anything to say about it,nobody's mature enough until
they're 26 to rent a vehicle,you know.
So there's, there's definitely,and, like you said, the
majority of your congregation isis over 30.
And so you know there's,there's definitely, and, like
you said, the majority of yourcongregation is is over 30.
Yeah, and so you know there's.
There's got to be a reason forthat.
It can't just be allcoincidental because you've got

(33:31):
just nostalgic games.
You know, there's, uh, I think,a definite attribution there.
But, to your point, because itgets easier, it doesn't make it
the wrong decision every time,and I think that's also an
important point of clarity,exactly for the reason you
stated, though.
But now my second question,then, identifying this let's
call it honor code and your ownsort of personal knighthood and

(33:54):
outlook on life.
My second question is then now,after the last 50 years of life
, what are some of your valuesnow, if anything's changed?
What are some of your valuesnow, if anything's changed?

The army did a really good job of
compartmentalizing a lot ofvalues that resonate with me.
But I'm of the mindset thatwhen you take a value like an
abstract philosophical conceptthat we're going to call a value
, and you put it in its perfectform, it's the exact same thing

(34:26):
as any other value in itsperfect form, right, if you take
perfect love as a value and youphilosophically expound it to
its perfection, it's an infiniteperfect love.
That is the exact same conceptas perfect justice or perfect
beauty or perfect any reallygood value in its perfection is

(34:52):
all the same entity.
It's the exact same conceptthat you're pursuing.
It's just that in our civichuman limitedness, you know,
we've separated them out intomanageable portions so that we
could digest them and pursuethem.
But my idea is that if you'repursuing perfect value, no

(35:13):
matter what you call the value,it's all sort of the same thing.
And religions put a word tothat, right, they all try to
make sense of these very heady,abstract concepts, and that's
sort of the tradition that Igrew up in was that you're
pursuing a perfection, aninfinite perfection, and you can
call it whatever you want.
But going through the army, letme conceptualize that and put it

(35:39):
into words, to easier tomanipulate better, and that
would be loyalty, duty, honor,respect, integrity and courage.
Those were the big seven and ofcourse, those have a lot of
application to the military and,like you said, a combat zone.
You're expected to behave in acertain way because certain

(36:00):
things are on the line, but Ifind that they transcend just a
military life and that they'rereally applicable to
entrepreneurship or making acommunity, raising a family.
All that kind of stuff isapplicable and I think it comes
down to the idea that perfecthonor is the exact same thing as

(36:22):
perfect integrity and perfectcourage and perfect loyalty.
All that stuff is almost thesame thing.
As you get closer and closer tothe perfection of it.
I find that when you live avirtuous Paraic the best life
that you are trying to live,that you get a lot of animosity,
a lot of people cannot keep upand they villainize you because

(36:48):
you're trying to be the personwith integrity and they just I
don't know if they're projectingtheir own guilt or whatever,
but living that type oflifestyle can really set you
apart from the masses and putyou in a lonely corner where you
look around, you're like, wow,I don't have a lot of peers that

(37:09):
seem to value the things that Ivalue, and so, again, I think
the lonely road can be kind ofthe good road and the good road
can be lonely.
But I think podcasts like yoursare vital to open the eyes of a
lot of people and say there issomething more meaningful than
surfing on the back of a dragonshooting lightning bolts.

You have to be that's, that's debatable, for it
that'd be pretty sweet too.
But but yeah, you know, and andnot for nothing, being able to
this lonely road that you justtalked about, being able to, I
guess, even conceptualize, thattakes a certain degree of growth
and maturity, and I don't meanto say on a pedestal this is

(37:53):
what you know in our case inthis conversation that we've
attained or that it's onlypeople over a certain age
demographic can attain, or anyof these things.
But it is difficult toconceptualize without some
experiential learning andthought and growth.
And so this lonely road thatyou brought up I didn't think
about this until you just saidit but I think directly

(38:15):
parallels it's lonely at the topright, the alpha is a wolf of
one, all these types ofexpressions.
But I don't think it has to befrom the same sort of, you know,
business oriented applicationthat I got in my bachelor's
program of either stepping onthe backs of little people to

(38:36):
get there and build your successas a small business or
entrepreneur or whatever.
You know what have you largecorporation?
Or working with a bunch ofpeople through profit share and
actually building a communityand working your way up where
you're still the only onestrategizing, because it's yours
and you own it and whatever.
I think more specific to thispoint, spiritually and I don't

(38:56):
mean religious.
I think there is a differencehere, but in connotation for
clarity, I don't mean religious.
I think spiritually there hasto be a certain amount of growth
.
That takes place and becauseeverybody grows at different
speeds and paces, based onbackgrounds, perceptions, biases
, exposures, impacts, influences, whatever, and interpretations
of those things, everybody'sgoing to feel lonely at some

(39:19):
point because eventually yououtgrow your tribe, you outgrow
the group that you're with tribe.
Yeah, I'll grow the group thatyou're with now.
Maybe they catch up, maybe theydon't.
Uh, maybe they've moved adifferent direction than you and
it's not about catching up, youjust diverge.
Could be any number of thingssimilar to what you'd see in
some of your games, I'm sure.
But there has to be an aspect ofloneliness in humanity and I'll

(39:41):
tell you this in what are wegoing to call it 1995, let's say
pre-Y2K, everybody's sittingthere and everybody's lonely
together, at every single busstop, every single train station
, because there was no phone,there was no distraction, there
was no nothing.
We were all individuallywaiting in our own heads,

(40:01):
individually, lonely, notcommunicating because we didn't
know how or any other number ofthings?
Is she going to call?
Is she going to show up?
Is this going to arrive on time?
Whatever, building our ownanxieties Right, but in that
moment we're alone.
Yeah, agreed, we don't havethat now.
I don't think as often becausewe have cell phones.
We have ways to distract anddeviate from that loneliness,

(40:22):
but in those moments that'swhere the growth happens.
Yeah.

All right, folks sit tight, We'll be right back
VietnamWar50th.

This message is from the US Department of
Veterans Affairs.
The US-Vietnam WarCommemoration honors the service
, valor and sacrifice of thosewho served during the Vietnam
War.
It also thanks the 7 millionliving Vietnam veterans and the
families of all 10 million whoserved from 1955 to 1975.

(40:55):
More than 3 million of the 7million veterans have been
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Help reach Vietnam veterans inyour families and neighborhoods,
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They deserve to know thatthey've earned the nation's

(41:16):
deepest gratitude and humblethanks.
Visit VietnamWar50thcom formore information.

We don't have that now.
I don't think as often becausewe have cell phones.
We have ways to distract anddeviate from that loneliness.
But in those moments that'swhere the growth happens.

I think that's one of the reasons why Night W
Nightwatch Games is assuccessful as it is is because
we give that setting for thosepeople to congregate, to make
those connections that onetechnology can distract us from.
But it gives us a setting wherethere's a shared interest as

(42:01):
your baseboard and then youstart connecting on deeper
levels once you have that sharedinterest.
And we find that a lot ofprofound things happen in Night
W Nightwatch games that totallytranscend the games themselves
or even buying games.
We're obviously a retail storethat's really how we pay the

(42:21):
rent but the things that happenat Night W Nightwatch games show
that people they're on theirindividual paths, paths and
people are at different ratesand different positions and all
that kind of stuff.
But there's an intrinsic desireto help other people walk their
path as well, knowing that ithelps you walk your path.

(42:44):
And some of the things that havehappened at night watch games
that transcend the retail arethings like birthday parties
that's an easy one Bacheloretteparties.
Bachelor parties we had a guycome in and celebrate his
divorce.
We've had six differentcustomers get on their knee and
propose to their spouse in thestore.

(43:06):
That's a significant event andthey wanted to do it in that
setting where they feltempowered.
We did three weddings in thestore and to bring that whole
life cycle full circle, we'vealso done two memorials where
two of our customers have diedOne was a suicide and the other

(43:28):
one was a COVID casualty but thefamily said we want to
celebrate their life at theplace.
They were happiest and that wasNight W Nightwatch Games.
BrendaAnd so Night W Nightwatch Games
is not your typical setting of aretail outlet.
It's not even a typical gamingcafe.
There's a deep seated supportstructure to the community at a

(43:53):
place like Night W NightwatchGames, and I think it's there
because they got the messagefrom Brenda and I when we made
the space.
We're saying we're making aspace for you and we understand
your identity and we're going tomake a space where you feel
legitimate and you feel Michaelempowered Cera and you feel
encouraged and you feelconnected.
And then, as those people camein, they started doing the same

(44:16):
thing with each other and thenthis magic of connection
happened that totallytranscended anything that we
expected.
It's pretty amazing, and sothere's a lot of lessons that
one, brenda and I, can pass onas older people in the community
, but there's tons of lessonsthat we're learning from the

(44:36):
rest of them as well.
So in that regard, it's notlonely at all.
I am saturated with otherpeople walking their paths, so
that's kind of cool.

Well, it's, it's , at least in my opinion, the
point of this entire humancondition is to learn how to
grow through life separately,together.
Yeah, and, and I think it, itchanges everything.
You know my opinion, I guess,towards live action role play is
solely predicated.

(45:07):
It was, it was a comedy movie.
The two guys tried to adoptthese kids and then one of them
was in a larping I can'tremember michael cera or
somebody was in it.
Yeah, yeah, um, well, anyway,whatever that movie was right,
that, along with the uh, what dothey call it?

society of creative anachronism creative
anachronism.

Yep, I've got a buddy who I don't know what the
word is, partakes, yeah, but youknow, yeah, participates, I
guess, yeah, and he's, he'screated all of these
relationships, networking withpeople through this organization
from all over the country herein the us that are whatever
running a particular guild, orthey're a prince in this
particular region, or whateverit is, when, in reality, they're

(45:50):
a doctor in this particularregion, or whatever it is when,
in reality, they're a doctor athome yeah, have you ever played
a military simulation airsoftgame?

have you ever done that in general?
Yeah, just like, have you?
Have you ever suited up in yourrig?

uh, but you're shooting airsoft bbs at each
other yeah, they're, or ordigital versions yeah, we've had
all sorts of digitalsimulations too.

They would say that's the exact same thing as a
live action role playing.
You're just role playing as asoldier and you're put into a
situation where there's no realdeadly consequences to the
decisions, but you get to enactthose decisions and see what
happens.
You get to enact thosedecisions and see what happens.
We do a lot of that over hereas well.

(46:32):
We suit up in full battle,rattle and run around and shoot
each other with our mock M4s andyou know, shoot, move and
communicate, and it's reallyjust role playing all over again
.
It's just a safe place to do it.

Absolutely, that's exactly what I was
thinking about.
I was in the theater departmentwhen I was in college.
Absolutely, that's exactly whatI was thinking about.
I was in the theater departmentwhen I was in college and, as
much as my heart said, I cantotally nail this solo and
musical theater.
I became a set designer becauseI was wrong, but working in the
theater department is the exactsame thing.
The difference is now there's aset, now there's a controlled

(47:10):
environment, whereas what morecolloquially recently has become
LARPing, there's not You'rejust out places, but it's a
larger, more immersive set whichis still assuming these roles,
building these character arcs,more specifically, designing
these characters as people tobuild resonance with an audience
, and I think there's a veryhigh parallel there.
And then you move into.
You know movies, actors andactresses do the exact same

(47:32):
thing.
It's just digitized on a video.
Yeah sure, it's all characterportrayal and I think that's
something that gets overlooked.
Is the nuance, detail and depthof the word character, where
it's an individual in a plotline.
Yeah, sure, maybe as a nounthat connotation, but I choose
to believe that connotation isactually the depth and resonance

(47:54):
of the individual.
That character is more theattribution within a story, a
play, a game or whatever.
Have you?

yeah, that character is a summation of
their value system.
Exactly that's really what thecharacter is all about.

Is what that's what is their values and that's
what we want to explore and readabout and see and yeah, because
, don't get me wrong, Iappreciate, for example, what
Marvel's been doing broadeningout the individual ethnicities
and backgrounds and aspects ofthe people portraying these
roles and then, you know, byproxy, bringing in those
characters from different comicbooks or Stan Lee or whatever,

(48:30):
into their movies.
Because there is a higherreliance Now this is my working
theory there's a higher reliancenow worldwide on superficial
resonance and so what I see andhow I view the world
materialistically or from aconsumer perspective, is how I

(48:51):
see like-minded groups,organizations, people, as
opposed to how I see people actand talk and they're bearing
their demeanor, their character,is how I find like-minded
groups, even though we all lookdifferent, act different, have
different orientations, whatever.
And I think there's amisconception there when how
that divide or merger isexplained and expressed.
I think there's a misconceptionthere when how that divide or

(49:11):
merger is explained andexpressed.
I think there's amiscommunication there where I'm
not saying we have to accepteverybody because to one reason
or another you can't,logistically, maybe not possible
In a particular society.
You know you've got to haveboundaries, otherwise the
congregation dissipates.

(49:31):
You know the sense, identitydisappears.
You've got to have boundariesand you know borders and not to
get political, but like that,there has to be some sort of
rule and structure to anyorganization or gameplay or
whatever.
But in that I think thedifference is the superficiality
of that bond can change and canmove and can migrate, and for

(49:55):
the same reason that Lord of theRings didn't just stay in the
Shire and then they broughteverybody else with them as they
went, you know where.
What they had in common was thequest in that case, and a few
other traits, but they certainlydidn't have all the same
attributes.
Gandalf, I'm pretty sure, islike seven feet tall, so good
luck, you know.
And nobody else was 800 yearsold.

(50:15):
So there's that and what comesup in my newsfeed or on the TV
where, let's say, cops are doingthis thing in this particular
city.
Or I saw one the other day.
This tourist went down to SouthAmerica oh no, the Caribbean

(50:38):
was on a cruise and he had someCBD oil or four rounds of
ammunition, four shells thatwere in his pistol casings I
think it was nine mil that werein his bag.
That's what it was.
He was in the Caribbean and hewas on his way back and he got
caught.
Now he's facing 12 years, wow.
And he said I didn't know theywere there.
What do you want me to do Like,on one hand, debating how that

(50:59):
you know?
Okay, sure News covered was hisstory and the grieving wife and
the family that won't see thedad and the stuff that gets
ratings.
But in my opinion it'ssuperficial.
And what isn't, or at leastwhat wasn't covered in that
particular story was, if youdon't want this to happen, on

(51:23):
one hand, go to the Departmentof State website and you can see
all of the travel regulationsfor every country that we have
some sort of alliance or somesort of friendly relationship
with, but you can and can'tbring embassy contacts, all
these other things, before yougo on your trip and then make
your own decisions.
On a superficial side, but thena deeper sort of character

(51:43):
portrayal.
What wasn't covered in thatnews story, for example, was
what are you doing with emptyshell casings when you're going
scuba diving?
Why would you go to anotherplace and bring in foreign
objects into their village whenthat kingdom, for example, is is
going to confiscate it?
you know what I mean likethere's a certain level of

(52:04):
respect for where you're goingthat you got to adhere to, and
if you don't, because of yourown ego or something else, well,
and you know once Paraic startlosing humility.
Paraic I think there's problems,virtues and vices.
Right, we talked aboutCatholicism earlier.
Yeah, I think there's.
There's some truth to that aswell.

(52:25):
For the sake of time, though, Ireally only have two more
questions for you.
So, all of this being said, allyour experiences in gameplay or
in life, in your store and yourmarriage however you want to
attribute this what impact hasall of this actually had on your
sense of self and self-worth?

A very profound impact and share a common
understanding that I'vedeveloped with other people, not
only to teach them what I'velearned but to learn from them
as well, and it just gives me acontext of how does PORIC become
the best PORIC possible.
And so if you're not pursuingthat kind of idea, you can

(53:08):
really get lost in themechanizations of society and
your nine to five job and payingtaxes and dealing with bosses
and family and all that kind ofstuff and those are distractors
really to, I think, the realpurpose.
And so pursuing values andpursuing a value laden life

(53:30):
really gives me purpose on themost profound level.
And so I never get out of bedscratching my head going what am
I doing?
Why am I doing this?
I have those answers Paraic andwhile those answers might
change as I become older andmaybe hopefully more wiser, I
still have a working context ofwhat am I doing, and so I don't

(53:52):
really get lost in some of thesuperficial pieces of the media
or keeping up with the Jonesesor those kinds of things.
Running a business, you couldeasily get lost in profit
margins and trying to make asmuch money as you can, but I
found that I'm able to keep thatvery clear and remember that

(54:14):
I'm here for that community.
I'm dedicating my time andenergy to make other people
happy, and that gives me a lotof purpose, and my marriage and
family life seems to be fallingalong as well.

Yeah, you, you know it's interesting the closer
we get to ourselves, the easierit is to get closer to other
people.
Yeah and uh, it's a odd sort ofphenomenon, I think, how it
works.
But uh, you know, bork, I againappreciate this opportunity to
talk and just dive into yourperspective a little bit.

(54:51):
Your business, obviously, butwhat it's done for you as a
person and what it can do forother people, not just in the
gameplay but to instigate theirown senses of self.
So I really appreciate yourperspective, man, thanks for
coming on, thank you.

Thank you very much.
It was nice sharing that.

Yeah, it was.
It was good and I guess, thatbeing said, my final question,
then, is if people want to getin touch with you, find out more
about Night W Nightwatch Games,your podcast, anything, how do
people do it?

Where do they go , and that will give you a good
idea of who we are and why we'redoing what we're doing, and it
also gives you a lot of contactslinks between you and me and
Brenda.
We have an Instagram.
You can find us at Night WNightwatch Game on Instagram,

(55:41):
and I think game is San singularAntonio on Instagram.
We ran out of letters, I think.
And then we also have ourYouTube channel, which The the
night watch games podcast.
Uh, and then there's a youtubechannel of night watch games on
youtube.
So there's a lot of ways thatyou could sort of reach out to
us and connect with us.
Uh, we would love to see youcome by the store.

(56:01):
You know we're we're definitelya people kind of place where
face-to-face interaction has alot of value for us.
Paraic So if you ever findyourself in san antonio, we are
located on the north side, 16350Blanco Road, suite 116.
And then our sister store, theSanctuary, is 117.

(56:21):
So we're right Paraic door toeach other and if you come in,
ask for Brenda and I andintroduce yourself, we'd love to
meet you.
Absolutely, and for anybodywho's new to Transacting Value,
depending on the player you'restreaming this conversation on,
if you click see more, or if youclick TransactingValuePodcast@
there's a dropdown descriptionof show notes for this
conversation and in there you'llbe able to find links for Oric

(56:43):
and Night W Nightwatch Games onsocial and YouTube and for the
podcast and for his website aswell.
So if that's easier for you todirect you, you can find those
links there also.
Again, porek, I appreciate yourtime, man, I appreciate the
conversation, your insight andyour ability to communicate it
effectively, which obviously foran audio podcast, is huge.
So thanks again, very welcome.

(57:04):
This was great.
I love the opportunity and sothank you for your time to
everybody listening.
I want to thank you guys fortuning in New listeners.
Thank you for joining us andour sdytmedia.
com.
I want to thank continuingtransactingvaluepodcast.
com journey, as we're growingthrough life separately,
together, and we're able toshowcase that and highlight

(57:25):
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(58:02):
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(58:44):
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