The following quote that Hill made about the Great Northern railroad stays with me. From the quote and other information it seems he got a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out his part in the building and construction of the Great Northern. In fact that is perhaps an understatement I would say that building the Great Northern defined the rest of Hill's life.

Most men who have really lived have had, in some share, their great adventure. This railway is mine.
James J. Hill

My grandparents where all homesteaders and that was their great adventure.  From family history I am able to see their satisfaction and enjoyment in their successes and overcoming adversity.

It seems that for me that satisfaction in Model Railroading can be increased by expanding and defining more roles that can be played regarding the operation of the railroad model. I want to add to the choices that can be made so the satisfaction of making good choices is there.

In an effort to learn more about role playing and to improve my figure painting I attended GenghisCon XXXII (a wargaming convention).  I am happy to report I learned a lot.  I attended a figure painting one on one and was pleased but a bit surprised to learn that I was not using the best materials and methods on my figures so there is a good chance I will see rapid improvement in the quality of my figure painting. 

I also attended several RPG (role playing games) that were paper and pencil (no figures were used).  I think War Gamers have a more refined view of defining roles and scaling actions to time compared to model rails.  The RPG games gave me a lot to think about.   Normally the actions of the role players result in activities changing the game a lot from what the game master had envisioned and often for the better.  So one lesson learned was the need for a role playing environment that allows for a wide range of actions by the players which is not what I expect to see in a traditional model railroading operating session (wide range of choices and running trains efficiently are in conflict so I will have to think about that a bit).  Scaling actions to time is the primary activity in designing a war game so you would expect that they would be good at it and it seems to me model railroaders can learn from war gamers in this area.  Beyond scaling actions to time the other design "feature" of war gaming is to dealing with probability which I see as another handy tool to use as input for role playing.  I an not planning to run trains by rolling dice but it seems that probability does need to be applied to the result of role playing actions.

First and foremost I want to build the adventure into my model railroad starting from the construction to completion.  It is often said that a model railroad is never complete because you can always add more detail.  However my goal is get to the stage where things are substantially complete for all areas so I have a nice role playing environment.  I am sure I will enjoy adding details but my goal is the endless satisfaction and enjoyment from refining the role playing aspect.

Soon I will have the figures painted that are needed to play the railroad survey adventure. You could look at it as “operating sessions” before track is laid. By doing things this way I will have photos of characters who will play a part in my railroad simulation just like the early pioneer photos you see of the characters that built the first railroads.