Ewalt says he believes the time he spent playing D&D also helped him with tasks in the real world. "All the time I spent playing with friends taught me how to collaborate with colleagues at work," he writes. (No one "wins" D&D 鈥� players have to work together to solve challenges.) "And as the games grew more complex, so did the lessons: There have been times in my career when I've been overwhelmed by the size of a project, but then I remember the Shadowrun campaign where Everett Meyer and I spent months perfecting a plan to invade and conquer Seattle [in a D&D game]. No magazine story will ever require that much work."
