Cross-Class Training II: The Teaching DM

Happy thanksgiving to all my American readers!  Deep friend Turbaconducken anyone?

I tend to have a one track mind, so while I’m done teaching my MS-Outlook/Time Management class, it’s still very much on my mind.

Just so you know, things went so well that the College’s director offered me to teach another course right after he got the participant’s evaluation of my mad teaching skillz.  I now get to teach 5 courses!  Yay!

Earlier this week, I posted about 3 categories of skills that GMs, teachers and managers had in common.  Today I want to discuss specific skills and tricks I use while I DM that came in handy during my 2 day course.  It’s surprising how abilities you mastered in other disciplines help you out when you’re faced with the unexpected.

Establishing Credibility and Trust

My DMing experience has shown me that the average gamer sitting at your table for the first time will give you about an hour to win them over.  During that hour, you can do whatever you want with little fear of revolt/comments/sabotage.  However, that period of time is the optimal one to establish credibility and trust with the players.

Teaching adults (and probably teenagers) is the same thing.  Your first impression is crucial and will set the tone for the rest of the course/session.  In my course, I established who I was and what my qualifications were (but not too much).  I stressed out that I was a working guy like them and that the material I was going to teach them was actually usable and practical, because I had no tolerance for Ivory Tower theories.

By the end of the 1st hour, I had 6 out of 8 students in my pocket. My nervousness was fading and I started focusing on winning the last 2 to my side.

Expectation Management

When I start a new campaign, I write a pitch for it and I present that pitch to my players.  At that point, I ask them to add elements or suggest things to add to the campaign so that their expectations are met.  Gone is the time where I would trust my skills and my DMing telepathy to divine what they wanted to play.  At the point we are in our lives, I want to make sure that all my players get what they seek in our campaigns.  So I manage expectations by checking before and during a campaign that players periodically get what they seek.

During that 1st hour of the course, I put up the course’s outline, listing all the subject that we would tackle.  I told them that I would emphasis some items more (I put them in bold) and others I would cover lightly of skip altogether. I asked the class if there were subjects they wanted to see.  I told them that each of them had, knowingly or not, a ‘I must learn this’ and that if they didn’t tell me about it, they took the risk of not getting what they are looking for.  As expected, they chimed up and told me specific things they wanted (sharing calendars in Outlook, backup of emails, creating new calendars, etc).

I carefully noted down each request and integrated them in my course outline as soon as I got a few minutes.  It worked great as all participants told me they got what they expected.

Reading the group

During a RPG session, I try to monitor the level of excitement, fun and frustration of players.  Over the years, I’ve developed tricks to read other people.  Body language tells a lot about a players’ state of mind.  By doing regular reviews of how the energy level is, I try to make small course correction.  I don’t always manage this because, like all RPG geeks, I tend to become engrossed in the activity and rules of the game at the expense of the human factor.  However, when I start hearing exclamations of frustrations because a player can’t roll over 4-5, 6 rounds in a row, I start paying attention and I try to find ways to help him out.

In my course yesterday, at the end of the 2nd hours (the break) I had one student who was sitting back on his chair, arms crossed. I knew he wasn’t buying what I was saying about productivity and the importance of organization.  I later learned that he had driven 3 hours to come to the class and he wanted Outlook material, which I hadn’t gotten into yet at that point (apart Outlook basics).

During the break I asked him about it and he told me what I just related.  I told him that I would get into the nitty gritty Outlook stuff soon.  I also told him that if I did just that, the course would be a hell of a lot drier.  Finally I asked him to remind me of the stuff he needed during the class and that I would cover it.

One hour later, at lunch, he said “Hey that productivity stuff is interesting!”

Say Yes

A common heard declaration in Roleplaying games is ‘Say Yes” which is a mantra-like declaration to prevent  GMs from reacting defensively to player input by saying “no you can’t” or “no that won’t work”.  A very good description of this concept appears in Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyards:

Every moment of play, roll dice or say yes. If nothing’s at stake, say yes to the players, whatever they’re doing. Just plain go along with them. If they ask for information, give it to them. If they have their characters go somewhere, they’re there. If they want it, it’s theirs. Sooner or later— sooner, because your town’s pregnant with crisis— they’ll have their characters do something that someone else won’t like. Bang! Something’s at stake. Launch the conflict and roll the dice. Roll dice or say yes. Roll dice or say yes. Roll dice or say yes.”

In the last year, I’ve pushed myself past my ingrained resistances and I’ve tried really hard to become a “Say Yes” DM.  I think I have achieved that.  In fact I’m sure of it because it bled in my courses!

During the course, while I was describing an aspect of Outlook, some of the attendees would chime in and ask something that I didn’t plan (or didn’t think) to teach.  Every time, I stopped and fought my reflexes to keep with my plan.  I would then pause the course for 10-20 seconds, reorganize my thoughts, and start explaining what was asked.  This ended making the course more organic and better targeted to the needs of the class.  After I was done with the required subject, I just picked my outline up, looked where I was and returned to the Plan.

So you see… I owe a lot to DMing and it’s really fun to see how all the hours I invested at the gaming table are actually helping me re-orient my career! I love teaching and I may have finally answered one of my true callings.

Okay, I’m done with teaching for now.  Tomorrow I get to conclude my Primal/Within Campaign.  A game report will be forthcoming!

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Cross-Class Training: GMs, Teachers & Managers

As many of you know, I’ve spent most of the last week preparing a 2 day MS-Outlook 2007/Time Management course that I’ll be teaching  Tuesday and Wednesday of this week for a local College.

While I was prepping for it, building an outline for each topics I decided to cover, I realized just how similar my course prep was to prepping a D&D game.  In fact, the methods I use are so similar it’s almost eerie.  While discussing this with my friend Dave yesterday,  he argued that prepping for and teaching this course would likely make me a better GM.  I responded that having been a GM for so long enabled me to better prepare the course and would most likely prove invaluable for teaching it.

This discussion made me realize that my skills as a GM are in fact so ingrained that I now harness them in other spheres of my life!  In fact, it reminds me of a chapter from Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers (an excellent book that debunks many myths behind gifted and/or successful people).  Gladwell argues that to be considered an expert in a given field, a person needs to work/practice his craft for about 10 000 hours.  All top sports, music and Silicon Valley legends have had years and years of practice to buildup a skill set that made them who they are now.

The key here though is that these 10 000 hours must be spent doing increasingly complex/challenging tasks to increase skills.

I’m sure that applies to GMing.  It’s one of the reasons why I always try to tackle new techniques and move away from my comfort zone.

Let’s see.  If I average out my GMing to about one 5 hour game a week for my first 20 years (50 weeks per year) and if I prepared/read for about 5 hours per game I get exactly 10 000 hours.  In practice, I likely gamed/prepped less than that,  but in the last 6 years, especially with the blog, I clocked in a hell of a LOT of RPG-related time.  Most of them specifically to become better at the craft.  I’m sure I busted the 10K point some time ago.

I guess that explains why my GM skill bleeds out so easily in the other professional aspects of my life.

Inversely, I would argue that top performing teachers and managers, those that have spent 10 000 hours trying to get better, would make excellent GMs within a short time frame.

After having been a GM, a teacher (High School, College) and a manager (QA, Project),  it’s obvious to me that common skills exists to help one be successful at all three.

Organization

The ability to plan what you will do in the near future is paramount to all three “professions”.  Finding a way to order all the info about a given adventure/topic/project into a simple clear outline made of manageable  associated chunks is a fundamental skill to achieve success.

I was lucky to have had teachers who showed me to write short, concise outlines that contain core idea around which I can build upon.  I’ve kept that technique since then. For example, were I to create an adventure outline :

Lair of the Skull King

• Scene 1: Heroes Wanted!
  • Local Duke’s son kidnapped
    • Ranger finds son’s ring in swamp
    • PCs hired to recover son
    • Old hermit spews gibberish about crowning of the Skull King
  • Kenku Assassins Strike at Midnight!
    • They wear Skull rings!
• Scene 2: Lost in the Swamp
  • Malicious Cowardly Dragon tries to swindle PC
    • Skill challenge/Combat?
    • Terrorizes nearby Gully Dwarf village
  • Gully Dwarf village
    • Looking for sacrifice for Dragon and  Swamp Queen
    • Try to convince PCs to be sacrifice
    • Know where castle and Dragon’s lair is
      • Villains can’t fathom that they could be a threat
• Scene 3: Keep of the Swamp Queen
  • Guards Guards!
  • Swamp Obstacle Course (Skill Challenge/Trap run)
  • Wedding Crashers
    • Duke’s son to marry Swamp Queen and be crowned Skull King!
      • Maybe he wants to be!
    • Final confrontation!

There we are!  Then I would revise/expand each line into a scene.  I’d then add stats and treasure and I would end with an adventure for my Friday game.

I do the same thing when I plan a course (each line is a topic/sub-topic/exercise).  In Management, I plan projects in similar ways, lining interdependent tasks that map a project from beginning to end into a Gantt chart (which is a fancy outline anyway).

Communication Skills

Being successful at all three occupations is all about understanding the powers of communication.  Understanding and mastering three core skills: Public speaking, Listening and Empathy are crucial for GMs, teachers and Managers.

Aside: The D&D 3.5 Dungeon Master Guide II has an absolutely amazing essay on communication skills.  Seriously, if you don’t own it, get it or take your friend’s copy.  You don’t play D&D?  I don’t care! Get it!  I don’t think any other GMing guide address this as well as Robin Laws does in this one.

Successful GM/teachers/managers can speak in an energetic tone,  avoiding mono-tonal droning.   They know the difference between what’s important and non-essential when speaking and focus on the former.   They know how to listen, paying close attention to what people tell them and even catching what is said between people near them.  Using what others say/ask to shape what they present is always very appreciated.

Finally they learn to read non-verbal signs in people, are able to imagine what other feel like and can act on  it.  This is often what differentiate a person we dislike from one we like because the empathic person makes us truly believe that he/she cares about what we say or think.

Think about the best GMs/teachers/Bosses you’ve had, and they probably were star communicators.

Assertiveness

This is the cornerstone  skill that builds respect in all 3 arenas.  Assertiveness is that  social ability that helps you deal with jerks, angry clients, selfish players, pushy bosses, stressed colleagues, etc.  Whenever a  social conflict pops up, the assertive person will not let emotions sway his/her judgment and will always say the truth about what matters.

• “I know you are angry about that dice roll but you are disrupting the game, we can take a 5 minute break so we all calm down”
• “That’s a fascinating story, but we need to get back in the game, you can tell us more after!”
• “We’ve discussed many times how your table behavior made others uncomfortable, you haven’t changed it so you leave me no choice but to drop you from the game so our campaign doesn’t crash, I’m sorry”
• “Please stop talking, you are preventing other students from following the course”
• “Mr Vice President, I please turn your Cell phone off. We all agreed to do it for this crucial meeting”

People often try to be too nice to each other and let others transgress the established social order.  Assertive people step in whenever the line is crossed and politely but firmly use their authority to resolve the situation.

In fact as I re-read that last sentence, I believe that the the true authority of the GM/Teacher/Manager is the one yielded only to  restore any situations back within the established social norms of the gaming group/class/work group.

There you go, my review of the common skills of successful GMs/teachers and managers and how I think being good at one helps you in the other 2.

Are there any other careers where GMing/Playing skills bleed into and vice-versa? For instance, I wonder if someone like Wil Wheaton would say that his acting/writing career have made him a better GM?  What skill sets would bleed?

Have a nice week and wish me luck for my training. [Read the rest of this article]

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