Project Management for Game Masters

A recent comment by Nick LS Whelan in our local GM hangout about the value of soft skills for GMs as well as a recent blog post on The Play Reports about how game design needs to incorporate more instructional design got me thinking about the relationship of professional skills to our games, and in particular, how much project management has in common with game mastering.

I've been managing projects professionally for fifteen years, and when I returned to tabletop RPGs a few years ago, I immediately saw the overlap between being a project manager and being a game master, and so I started thinking about how these skills could benefit other GMs without formal project management training... PM for GMs.

This is a practical guide... I'll skip the Gantt charts and lessons on earned value management and critical path method. Instead, we're going to talk about:

• Managing and leading people
• Organizing and planning
• Finding and recruiting players
• Scheduling
• Dealing with change
• Documentation
• Communication and coordination
• Onboarding a new "team member"
• Facilitation

Managing Projects is Managing People

No project gets done without people, and effective project management means being able to effectively manage people. Like it or not, being a GM is also about managing people: recruiting players, communicating with players outside the game, spotlight management at the table, helping to create consensus at the table, dealing with problematic behavior - these are all issues of people management. Recognizing and embracing this fact can help you to identify and mitigate problems with your gaming group either before they occur or quickly adapting if they do occur.

Reams of books have been written about effectively managing people, but I'll try to keep it to a few recommended best practices:

• Really listen rather than just waiting for your turn to speak. 
• Be open, honest, and transparent about what is expected of players.
• For your own sanity, set clear expectations about participation and last-minute cancelations. Unless you're running a large open table, having a core dedicated group of players who generally show up for every session and a couple of floaters is a much better way to save your sanity than having everyone show up when they can.
• Invite participation by encouraging the players to take on roles to support the running of the game and the coordination of the group.
• Create a safe space by ensuring all players are aligned with your principles of play and feel empowered to contribute and to disagree.
• Lead by example.

Organization and Planning

The GM is most often the architect of the game, creating the campaign and the adventures. Campaign planning can be really fun--either selecting a published adventure or campaign setting or building your own. But GMs that jump straight into a campaign without defining the scope of the game can quickly run into problems.

• What game are we playing?
• How long will we play? An hour or an afternoon?
• Is this intended to be a one-shot? A short adventure of 2-3 sessions? An ongoing campaign?
• What frequency will we play? Weekly? Monthly?
• Where will we play? If online, what tools will we use? If in person, where will we play?
• Who are the players? Do we all know each other or will the GM or others be recruiting new players?

There are questions of theme and subject matter to consider as well.

• What style of game do you want to run? A deadly dungeon crawler? A high fantasy adventure about extraplanar pirates? A game of subtle intrapersonal character development?
• What tone do you want to cultivate? Most players want to have fun and laugh together, but sometimes if you're trying to cultivate a particular tone or mood, it can be helpful to define that up front.
• Are there topics or subjects you anticipate having in the game that some players might be uncomfortable with? Are there topics or subjects players might bring to the game that you or other players might appreciate? If you're playing with a regular group, you may have a high degree of comfort and trust with one another, but especially with new players, these are important questions to discuss during session zero.

You don't have to spell out answers for every one of these questions (though it doesn't hurt). And you don't have to answer them by yourself - ideally, you should consult your players to get their input. In a perfect world, the GM wouldn't even be responsible for answering all of them. But most of the time, these are questions that fall on the GM's shoulders.

Finding and Recruiting Players

Establishing a group for regular play and recruiting new players is worthy of its own blog post, but keep in mind a few best practices:

• Start with some one-shots as you recruit players to find out if you and the players you're recruiting gel with each other's style. 
• Recognize that not every game or playstyle is for everyone - you might try a one-shot with some folks and really like them but not enjoying playing RPGs together. That's fine!
• If trying out players you don't know, weed out bad actors, racists, and other shitheels by stating in your recruitment message what behavior is absolutely not acceptable at the table.

SlyFlourish.com has a great article on finding players that is well worth a read.

Scheduling

Who doesn't love a good project schedule? Fortunately, you don't need to maintain a detailed project schedule for your game (though maintaining a calendar in-game can be helpful!). But scheduling is one of the thorniest issues that virtually everyone struggles with: we all lead busy lives, and tabletop gaming is a hobby. Ongoing campaigns are especially challenging as they ask for regular commitment from players. Here are the top pieces of advice for successful scheduling that have worked for me. 

• Choose a date and time that works best for as many players as possible, and stick with it. I recommend giving yourself as GM precedence in decision-making, since if there's no GM, there's no game.
• Let players know that if you have a minimum number of players (like 3), you will run the game, and stick to that rule. Outside of special times like holiday breaks, avoid rescheduling lest your regular cadence get broken and unable to be repaired.
• Don't try to reschedule the game around players' availability. This is the fastest way to torpedo a regular game. By keeping the day and time consistent, you keep your game on track and players know what to expect.

Also, more good advice from Sly Flourish on this one. 

Dealing with Change

There's a saying in project management which is that no project plan survives contact with reality, and likewise in gaming, no plan by the GM survives contact with the players. In general, try to avoid forcing players down a path; instead, learn to adapt and improvise. Being surprised by the players' decisions is one of the most exciting things about being a GM. Embrace the chaos!

Change happens outside the adventure, too. Players may depart your table or be unable to play as often as life gets in the way or other interests arise. Recognize that this is a part of running a game, let those players know they are welcome back in the future, and then recruit a new players. Don't try to save an open seat for them unless you know for certain they're returning shortly.

You or your players may want to change games. That's great! Try to build consensus on what's being played. Most players will try out a new game for the short term at least, and that's a great way to gauge and build interest for a larger campaign.

Basically, change is inevitable. Be flexible and adaptive and it will be a lot easier to deal with.

Communication and Coordination

In Project Management, one of the PM's primary roles is communication: communication of project risks and progress with stakeholders and communication of tasks, expectations, progress, and goals with team members.

When you have a regular gaming group, your players are your stakeholders and your team, and you need to be the throughline of communication. Make sure you have a mode of communication that everyone is accessing, whether Discord or some other tool, and that players use it.

Send status updates like schedule changes, cancelations, and other important info to players in a timely fashion, at least 24 hours in advance when possible.

Encourage players to communicate with one another - you don't need to carry the entire load. Sometimes you just need to be informed. If your players are bringing snacks, let them work that out, you don't need to manage it, you just want to know who it is. If someone needs a ride, let your players sort it out, just ask them to let you know if someone's not going to make it.

Documentation

Project Managers are often the main owners and the responsible party for key project information: the scope of the project, the schedule, the resource plan, the decisions that were made and why, the stakeholder register, the risk register... the list goes on and on!

As a GM, you will own a lot of documentation as well: session plans, lists of NPCs, a campaign calendar, and more. Fortunately, you don't have to own everything as the GM. Players should generally be expected to manage their own characters and character sheets (though it can be helpful as the GM to have a record of key character info for planning purposes). Players can also be tasked with roles like tracking campaign events or keeping a register of treasure collected.

There are a lot of benefits from keeping good records (Gygax's adage about meaningful campaigns and strict timekeeping comes to mind.) If you're running a sandbox, documentation is essential to tracking time, factions, NPCs, and events. Whereas if you're running a more narrative game, maybe it's enough to just have a record of what happened each session. 

Having good documentation will also help with the next topic...

Onboarding New Team Members

One of the most challenging tasks asked of a Project Manager is onboarding a new member onto the team in the middle of a complex, busy project. There's so much previous project information you need to impart to that person, and project don't typically slow down for a changing of the guard.

Fortunately, in tabletop RPGs, it's usually not necessary for a new player to absorb months or years of previous sessions and worldbuilding to jump in and have fun. But what is important is taking the time to onboard the new player to your particular group's play culture and expectations.

Are you a hack and slash group that plays a beer and pretzels dungeon crawler? Do you like deep character development and introspective scenes? This is the kind of stuff you want a new player at the table to know so that they can quickly adapt. Also, take the time to set the same kind of expectations with the new player that you did with all your other players regarding scheduling, communication, cancellations, etc.

At the table, take the time to introduce the new player. If possible, run a one-off session with the player first or have them run a pre-gen or NPC if running an ongoing campaign. This serves two purposes: one, it lets the player jump right into the action rather than taking the time to build a character from scratch, and two, it allows the group and the player to test each other out without feeling like a long-term commitment is required.

Making sure you include this new player in the session as an active participant is extra important in helping a new player to feel welcome. Prior to the session, be sure to encourage your players to include the new player in discussions and debates about decision-making. All of this leads into my final topic.

Facilitation

Project Managers run a lot of meetings, taking on the role of the facilitator by setting the agenda, kicking off the meeting, and then facilitating a discussion between meeting participants to make decisions or gather information as needed to progress the project.

Running a RPG session is kind of the same thing! As the GM, you have an agenda (your session notes) and you are going to facilitate, which is leading the players in a guided discussion to achieve the outcome of a fun play session!

Start with your prep. Sly Flourish's 8 Steps of Lazy Game Mastering presents a really useful rubric, but the important lesson is to have a process to prepare the material you need to run your game. For some GMs that might be a lot, for some it might be a little. Have the notes on hand you think you will need, the rules you will need to have handy, and the tools you will need to improvise on the fly.

One of the most challenging and critical parts of running a fun game is making sure that everyone has regular opportunities to participate. This is often called spotlight management. Have you ever been a player at a table where another player hogged 90% of the GMs attention? I have, and it sucked, and I didn't go back. As the GM, you want to make sure that each player gets involved.

In a given scene, one player may have more to do than another, but you still should present opportunities to each player to participate. One of the things I like about Shadowdark is that the always-on initiative order forces this to happen. The GM is expected to go around the table and ask each player what they want to do on their turn.

Clarifying intent before narrating outcomes or calling for roles is another great way to help manage the spotlight and ensure all players have equal opportunities to participate and engage. A Knight at the Opera has an excellent post on how this procedure can help to manage spotlighting and create more even facilitation at the table. Highly recommend giving it a read!

Being a good game master is more than being a creative genius. I would argue that it has as much or more to do with planning, managing people, communicating, and facilitating as it does with improvisation or wild creativity. So put on your project management hat the next time you sit down at the table and you are likely to find the outcomes you're looking for.