Leadership and Gaming

Being a leader is more than having a fancy title and making big bucks. Or having the GM label and the attention of everyone at the table. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes, not to mention styles. Having a good set of leadership skills can help you, whether you are running a game or leading a team into a conflict in afghanistan. For our context, let's talk about adventure building. When you start modeling the next story arc/adventure you're going to write, what do you do first? Do you build a framework of events and structure your NPCs in it? Do you think about what you want to have happen and do? Or, is the players and their needs foremost? Do you build things to their strengths and weakness, player and characters alike? Perhaps more telling, what do you do when planning falls behind schedule or events take shape in a manner you did not expect? What's your initial reaction? Do you immediately rework everything, dump it and start over/give up or take a break deal with it, knowing that life throws curve balls and gets in the way sometimes?

How you answer the above says a lot about you and your style of leading. Some GMs are task oriented; its all about the game, the rules, and playing. Others are people-oriented; the players' feelings are paramount and if the apple cart is upset, so are they.

All that intro aside, this article http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_73.htm can give you some insights into what kind of leadership style you employ. Or, surprise you by showing it might be different than you expected. Personally I'm very people and story-oriented. The game is important, as are the rules but the story and people are the most important.

Coggle and gaming

I like coggle.

Its a GM's friend, especially if you are going to play with time or mess with prophecy.  A couple of points if you are unfamiliar with mind maps.

1.  They are non-linear.  It's a connection mesh of how different events will connect in your game.  That means you need to keep it updated game by game, but it will save you enormous amount of effort if you play with your timeline.

2.  You can rollback and make changes in your timeline easily but backtracking through your connected mesh.

3.  You can add plot lines and arcs to your games and show bits and pieces of the "future" through this method really easily.  Give the player a snapshot of the mindmpa so they can see the future through a distorted lens.  I usually provide a glimpse if they have limited powers.  Give them a pencil, paper and a minute or two to make notes all they want.  Someone with good prophecy power I would print out or send them an image of the mind map for the prophecy.

Back alive

Coming back alive.  Now that I've recovered a bit from being ill, planning on getting back into the game.  Both in life and in, well, gaming.