We were four scenarios into a Thunder Road: Vendetta session at Dana’s when the argument started, whether a car with an armor strength of 2 gets to reroll a damage die it already failed, or whether that’s the kind of thing you only get once per attack. Three of us had three different memories of the rulebook, which is a real problem when the rulebook is currently under a pile of expansion modules nobody’s put away yet.

Here’s the thing about my actual job. I do demand planning at an outdoor-gear co-op, which mostly means predicting how many tents and how much rope we’re going to need before the weather makes a liar out of my forecast. What that job actually trains you to do, more than any specific skill, is get comfortable saying “let’s go look at the source data” instead of arguing from memory. So I did the thing I do at work when two people are certain of two different numbers. I pulled up the PDF rulebook on my phone, ctrl-F’d “reroll,” and read the actual sentence out loud.

Dana was right, for what it’s worth. Once per attack, not once per die.

What struck me afterward, driving home, was how much that impulse just doesn’t turn off. At work if two people disagree about a shipment count we don’t argue it out over dinner, somebody opens the inventory system and we look. I’ve started doing that with everything, board game rules, whether a book we’re discussing actually said the thing someone’s paraphrasing, whether a restaurant really closes at nine or if that’s from three years ago. Man, I used to think that was just being annoying. Maybe it still is. But it’s also just correct, most of the time, and I’ve stopped apologizing for reaching for the source document mid-argument.

The part that actually bothers me a little is what it says about how I relax. Game night is supposed to be the opposite of a workday, the whole point is not thinking about safety stock levels for eight hours. And yet there I was pulling out the same “check the primary source” instinct I use forecasting hiking boot demand, just pointed at a plastic car with a helicopter attachment instead. I don’t think that’s a bad thing exactly. I think it just means the line between “at work” me and “at game night” me is thinner than I used to assume, and probably thinner than most people’s is, or maybe everyone’s is like this and nobody talks about it.

Priya, from the demand-planning team, asked me last week why I email her Kickstarter delivery updates with the same formatting I use for actual shipment tracking. I didn’t have a good answer beyond “because it’s the format that works.” She said that was either the most on-brand thing I’ve ever said or a real sign I should take a vacation. Possibly both. The car with armor strength 2 got its reroll denied either way, and Dana’s been insufferable about being right ever since.