About this talk
This talk explores how role-playing game (RPG) skills can enhance stakeholder engagement and meeting facilitation. The speaker draws parallels between being a Dungeon Master and facilitating effective project meetings, emphasizing the importance of a service-oriented mindset. They discuss strategies for understanding participants, setting clear objectives, and establishing a collaborative environment. Techniques such as one-on-one check-ins, setting working agreements, and using various tools for engagement are highlighted. The speaker also advises on the importance of flexibility during discussions and adapting to the group's dynamics to ensure everyone feels involved and motivated.
Full transcript
All right, I'm going to go ahead and get started. Uh welcome. This is uh listening like a Dungeon Master and we're going to be talking about uh uh using your RPG skills to level up um stakeholder engagement game, meeting facilitation game, and vice-versa. Maybe you'll be able to take something from work home to your fun time. Um so uh a little bit about me. Uh I have
uh been uh making websites for over 20 years and in Drupal for you know, not the whole 25, obviously, but uh my first DrupalCon was uh San Francisco 2010. I work in uh higher ed mainly. Um So uh worn a lot of digital communications uh hats over the years from web developer to comms manager and uh many things in between. Uh and uh I love games. I'm
a avid board gamer. Um that's, you know, one of my top hobbies. Uh and for about uh six or seven years now, I've been running a regular D&D game. Uh I also do music, uh but aesthetically, it's very different than this. Um so, I'm not going to say more about that at this time. just out of curiosity, um how many of you here are like in a
I'll just going to rapid-fire some sort of role types and raise your hand if you fit in. So, like project manager responsibilities? Yeah. Product responsibilities? Okay. Uh developers? Uh-huh. And then like just um like communication side of things? All right. Anybody didn't raise your hand? Design. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for forgetting you, design. Thank you. You can tell that I like came up with that without really
thinking it through. All right. So, uh every story has a beginning. Um and really what we're talking about whether you know, sort of a stakeholder lead, a you know, committee uh chair, etc. or a Dungeon Master, we're talking about a role of facilitation. Okay. So, I I How many of you uh play D&D or are fairly familiar? Other game, RPG, tabletop RPGs. Who hasn't played at all?
All right. Well, hopefully you'll be like, you know, a little more interested after this. We'll see. Or, you know, if it's too much like your day job, then maybe maybe you won't. Or you can maybe channel some of the more troublesome stakeholders at your work. and make your uh GM's life uh spicy. So, Dungeon Master is the person that facilitates the game, uh also called the Game
Master in many games, uh sometimes has other names, and it's very much a role of stakeholder management. Um at work or at the table, uh these are we're talking about service roles, okay? So, I want this to I want you to think of this as distinct from leadership. Just because you're like, kind of like seem like you're in this role at the head of the table, it
doesn't mean that you're the leader. Um and uh I think it's important to put yourself in a service mindset for this kind of work. Um and what that really means is that like even if you're kind of in the driver's seat, you're guiding a collaborative effort. Um and so you're trying to help everyone achieve some goal. Either get something done at work or have fun exploring a
fantasy world. and uh you know, just sort of one example of recent uh uh recent project where I was the uh lead of the customer led a customer advisory board. Uh I had previously been involved in this project as its leader in some form. Uh and I had to really change my mindset going into that to make sure that in this new role uh I was helping
the customers get what they needed, not just laying out what I thought the product needed. so once you sort of understand your role, you can think about how you're going to uh structure your campaign. And that means, you know, does it you have a planned plot arc or is this going to be something more open-ended? Uh what's the tone and the tenor of everything? Uh and who
are the participants and who are the outside characters or influences? And so you know, having a good concept, whether it's something that's handed to you or something where you're trying to come up with the solution to to working with this group. Yeah, having a good concept for like, you know, who's in, who's out, you know, how's it going to feel, um really just helps you sort of
set the tone. Wait, was that it? Okay. All right, so let's move on to sort of in what we'll call uh empowering your heroes. Uh so first of all, first step you want to do is is know your party. Uh and that means that uh you know, probably many of you have seen you know, comedic and parody alignment charts before, but really like you should have a
good sense of the people that you are shepherding through whatever process. Uh, and like how do they do, you know, how do they react? Are they, you know, evil? Do they bring the chaos? Are they going to ask a lot of questions? Are they going to be quiet? You got to draw it out of them. Um, knowing knowing knowing the people that you're uh, going to be
involved with is key. Um, also if you don't agree with this alignment chart, please do not at me. I had my wife pick this one out. She's watched way more of The Office than I have. Um, so you know your individuals and you also need to like know how your party's going to function. So in RPG games, you often have these archetypical roles. the tank that gets
up close and absorbs all the hits. The damage dealers that wield, you know, wield the biggest weapons and and spells and take down the bad guys. And then, you know, you have your your healer that keeps everybody alive or your you know, your support roles that are opening doors and tripping people and probably also just causing trouble. Um, but um, that really carries over to collaborative efforts
as well. Um, it's really important just like you should know like you're not necessarily a leader in this role, you're a facilitator. You're doing a service. Um, not everybody nobody needs to do everything. And so when you have people contributing in a group, uh it's really helpful to for them to have some idea of what is their role, what is their purpose in this group. Um that
can also be really helpful as a tool, uh even if it's very casual at first, if you're having, you know, running into things where people are sort of overstepping a lot in the meeting or dragging things down, um having reminding people of like playing a role within the group and not just being "Hi, I'm person that comes and contributes in every single way, regardless of whether it's
helping us move along." Um could be a really good uh like mental check. it's also important for you to know uh what their goals are. Um so, you may have a goal that you're trying to lead them all to, but they have a goal that is part of like, you know, whether it's distributed within your organization, you know, where it's just your team trying to like, you
know, knock out a project. All those individuals have individual goals as well. Uh and that's where one-on-one check-ins comes in. I I think it's really, really key and very easily overlooked, um to sort of be spinning up a project, spinning up a like a group that's going to give feedback, you know, or provide the requirements, and not have someone like in the the elite role sit down
with everybody one-on-one. And the reason you want to do this is like I came from the university that I worked at for a long time, there's a lot of people that always wanted everyone in the room. They would be like, "Oh, no, we don't need to do that. Let's just get everyone together and we'll find out what everyone wants." But the thing is that when you sit
everyone down finally, there's going to be voices that dominate, whether it's, you know, the the bosses and directors or the people that are more opinionated. you can't you can only do so much about that in the moment. But the one-on-one early on is a chance for you as the person responsible for moving everyone along to actually find out what the individual's goals are. What are the things
that, you know, what are their worries about the project? You know, what are their um you know, concerns about their character in the campaign. Um but really just find out like what are they holding on to that they may not say in that big group meeting. There's limited time in those meetings and there's always dominant voices as much as you try to spread your facilitation around. then
there's uh scheduling. So, scheduling is the bane of all D&D groups. Uh and it is also the the bane of any recurring meeting series um and less than recurring meeting series. Um how many of how many Uh let's just say like uh How many of you would say the majority of your recurring meetings are on your calendar don't need to be recurring, but they're just there because
if you stop having it recurring, it'll be impossible to schedule? Yeah, that's about like 2/3, 3/4. That seems pretty typical. I'm not here to you know, comment on meeting structure. That could be a whole 'nother thing and, you know, people have written whole books on it, but um what's what you have to think about is like, do we need a you know, do we need a recurring
schedule? How hard is it to schedule these people? How will we get them together? Um when are the holes in their schedule? Can we be ad hoc? Do we have to be regular? How often? Uh and then you move on to um you know, like your kickoff uh or you know, it's become a uh a common uh thing in uh tabletop RPGs to do what's called a
session zero. And there's a lot of analogs here. Um So, um um first thing you want to really do is when you get the group together as a whole for the first time is just set expectations. Like, you know, what's in store? What's your goal? Is there an end point? Are you together forever? Um you know, that kind of thing. and then it's on to working agreements,
conduct, safety. So, in uh tabletop RPGs, there's a number there's a number of safety tools out there. Um things like uh the X card or having a certain like sort of stop phrase in your game. Uh ways to move past things people don't want to deal with or to stop the game and reset. Um and you you need similar things to be productive in a group at
working agreements is probably one of the most common. You know, your workplace is already probably governed by some rules of conduct and um uh and other policies, but working agreements uh is a process where you sit kind of go around and talk about like, how are we going to work together? How does work get done in this group? What do people need? What is the like respect
we give each other in order to make this group functional. Um and then related to that uh would be uh accountability. So, you know, what are people responsible for? Um and then how is that responsibility held up? then you're going to, you know, introduce your characters. So, who are you? Where did you come from? Why you're here? How did you land in this room? Uh and that
goes for, you know, your characters as well. It's usually like the first time uh you know, the characters in your game are going to meet each other. Um this is a place too where you can work in, you know, you talk to people one-on-one ahead of time, but you can also work in individuals expressing the goals and desires of either themselves or their unit, um depending on
exactly like kind of what what your structure and what you're going for is. Uh and then from there you can really like now you've kind of set the stage to kick off. So, you know, in in the workplace there's often these are often big long meetings and you jump right into some of the earliest parts of the process, perhaps. but uh you know, in the game you
may or this may be its own meeting. Like often for an RPG, you're going to do this, let everybody kind of take it in, and then like then you'll have your session one. so now you've kind of set the stage, you know, for like how things will work, who's there. You got to think about like how do you prepare every time? so I like to uh I
like to uh to call it Goldilocks homework. Um so, let's just put this way, like now in this role. Um people are relying on you to either help them get to a point of getting things done or to have fun on a weekly or less than weekly basis. you want to be somewhere between a wing and a prayer and then scripted down to the second. Uh you
can definitely over prepare for meetings as a facilitator and you can for your RPG game. Which one is easier to overdo? It might be the latter. But it's close and it's really the same same process. You want to do not too much and not too little. Um so, I think what you want to do is find a framework that works. So, for RPGs, um once we sort
of like moved on from doing like pre-written adventures, I started using uh what's uh known as the uh the the lazy DM's method. And uh I'll have a link to more resources later. Um but that is basically just a framework that helps you have sort of thought through all the main things that you might need for the next session uh without going too deep on anything where
you're going to plan a bunch of stuff that never happens both in your game and your uh work groups, you're going to get immediately derailed. I think the other thing that's really uh important and the balance is different in every single group and uh in scenario is balancing as you're planning, like, balancing exposition and discussion. So, like, meaning how much are you telling them, how much are
you lore dumping, how much are you like giving all these updates about other things that sort of maybe influence your project elsewhere in the business versus like getting people talking and planning and plotting and making decisions in that kind of Um, you do need to remain flexible because you're always almost always going to have some mix of that and like I said, you're going to get derailed
almost immediately. Uh, and you also want to be able to sort of pivot and follow like where the engagement is at any given time. Because these groups work best when everybody is like everybody's dialed in, everybody's contributing, everybody's participating. yeah, so you want to be able to follow that and not just be like stuck to your uh when you can get more out of uh their excitement.
Um, and then you want to think about like what actual materials do you need? you know, for approaching combat in tabletop role-playing games, there's two big techniques, you know, there's theater of the mind which is basically just sort of describing it and kind of keeping it in everyone's head uh loosely and then playing that out and then there's to the point where you've got, you know, your
miniatures and the big map and maybe crazy terrain, you know, you can go all out. So you know, in my games for instance, like we use a mix of well, we're online, so it's digital, but we use a mix of maps when it really wants to be detailed and just sort of descriptive uh scenarios as well. Um, and that really applies to like figuring out like what
you need to have in front of people in your meeting. You know, do you need handouts? Do you need multiple formats? Do you want to do tactile things? Do you need a giant thing of post-its? Or can you just use Miro? Like what's going to be the right mix um in order to get people involved and participating? Then you want to, you know, plan that and prepare
it. and then there's, you know, the uh process of like running the actual sessions. Um there's a lot to hang on to once you sort of start that train moving. Big one is note-taking. Um it's really, really hard to take notes uh if you are the person that's running things. Um thankfully now, there's a lot of uh machine-based and AI note-takers. Probably almost everybody has access to
those. So, that's one option. Um but it's not a bad idea to actually have that be someone else's responsibility in the group or a rotating responsibility um especially in terms of like big picture stuff or just like things that need to be written down accurately Recaps, these are super helpful. Um do you do um you know, after the meeting, at the start of the next one, something
you send out. Either way, uh recaps will give you continuity uh session to session, meeting to And um also something that can be uh delegated uh if you need to or just have people participate in since that's going to reinforce the memory and the continuity even better. Um breaks. Um Anything I put on Okay, my notes say anything longer than two to three hours needs a break.
Needs a break. Anything longer than two hours needs a break. If two-plus hour meetings and not giving people a bathroom break, you're you are Cruel. >> What? Cruel. Thank you. Thank you. I was looking for a a word I could say. So, within that, you know, within that time um and I and I say that also because a lot of times if you're facilitating, you might be
doing longer meeting styles. You know, you might be doing a retrospective. You might be you know, what not. Yeah. And then obviously, you know, your D&D games you're often playing, you know, three, four. Some people play much longer. Um What's the longest game someone thinks anyone's played in this room in one session? I'm looking at Dana. Mine was eight. Mine was six or seven. Wait, what did
we get? 12? That That was it. That was Hopefully they gave you bathroom breaks. And snacks. >> I've done a 36-hour, but it was at a con and it wasn't like consistent the whole time. It had It had some It had stops in it. Yeah. >> had like you know, they were still playing the whole time, but there was one big giant scene and people could come
and go. Okay. That's interesting. I don't know. You might have to tell me more about that later. All right. So, within that time frame, whatever your time frame, whether it's, you know, 25 minutes or it's 12 hours or 36, uh you want to think about the pacing, too. Like what eats up the time? Uh how do you keep things moving? How do you When do you have
to just time box things and move on to the next section. and then lastly, you have to bring all these together so that there's a consistent feeling of progress. Uh whether it's, you know, any other scenario, work or play, if it doesn't feel like the time has led to something, then people will get burnt out, they'll stop showing up, they'll stop participating. Um or they'll show up
and they'll go online shopping. All right. So, now we're going to dive into like oh, now we're at, you know, we're in the thick of it. So, oh the one my one biggest rule is shut up and listen. Because if you're talking the whole time, if you are laying everything out, uh then you will never get the info you brought, you know, you'll never get what those
people came into the room for. Stopping talking as a facilitator is the only way to get everyone else talking. Um cuz, you know, unless things have really gone off the rails, they will kind of always defer to you. Also, these individuals, like they can express their own needs best themselves. Um and I think that uh that's really important to like let things come out of all the
contributors. Um and you will also be constantly picking up clues for future directions. You know, that like 5-second tangent that someone went on, you know, about the login screen that has nothing to do with the page you're trying to design today, that might be relevant later, you know? Or um you know, like when your players uh say, "That person's definitely not the doppelganger." That might be relevant
later. once you get them talking, then you can get into reacting, uh rather than just laying things out. Um, so you do want to spend some of your mental energy like anticipating the things that might come up. throwing things back out there, making things up, throwing uh uh uh like sort of slightly like rotated suggestions to people to keep things moving. but it's also important to uh
not So you and you want to like yes and on the improv level, but you also need to remember to not have all the answers. It's okay. it's okay to like push some things off for later make something up or make a decision without the information you need, or do something that's otherwise just like not thought out. Um, so in your sort of toolkit, you'll want to
have some of that language and techniques for for uh for doing that kind of thing. You know, so in a game, maybe people suddenly you know, they want to they want to buy like, you know, a hat of bewilderment. And you're like not ready to deal with that. So you might just be like, "Oh, there's um you know, there's no magic item store in this town, but
you know, rumor has it there's one in the next town over. And then now great, you've sort of let that up. You know when to deal with it. You can you can plan it out. You know, if people start asking or or making assumptions about uh you know, what the analytics data is saying without having actually looked at it, similarly, that's something you can task out and
bring back later. Um but, overall, you want to like employ the rule of cool and like roll with what is working for your group as much as you can. Go with their flow. And then, as you react, you're going to want to be doing the bigger picture direction because ultimately, you're probably the one responsible for actually making sure we kind of arrive somewhere. uh who here has
ever been on a rubber stamp committee? Do you know what that is? Who Okay, so, who here has been in a where you're ostensibly there to generate buy-in for someone else? Um and nothing anyone says in this committee meeting changes what's happening at all in the project. Raise your hand. Okay, we got about 3/8. Okay. Okay. Um the rest of you, I I wish I could be
there. Um yeah, I I uh I very vividly uh remember my first experience with one of these, which was uh for a newsletter project. It was a giant group from all over the university and literally every comment that was ever made was then met with, "Well, we We did that." And after a while, it was just like, "Well, why are we here?" So, that's a form of
railroading in the workplace. Uh and um guess what? Everybody kind of hates railroading. in games, we're often thinking of that as sort of like the game being on rails and not being able to deviate off. But, the terminology in our like you know, language, uh also just comes from the way the railroads would like literally barrel over like legal and physical obstacles to go wherever they wanted.
Um and it happens a lot. Um you don't want you don't want to be you don't want to be that person and I don't want you to be the person doing Cuz it's not actually reaching our goal of bringing that feedback and those you know, that vision together. um within that, you know, as you're going along and trying to direct things towards your goal, check in again
on those objectives. You know, you had those one-on-ones. You know, you talked about your goals early on. Make sure that you're checking in on what's happening and whether people feel like you're moving towards that or whether it's changed. Like sometimes these groups, they take on personalities of their own and they go in whole new directions and you know, while that can't always be accommodated, sometimes that's actually
really useful. you do want to set expectations though in terms of like what you have to continue to do and where they have to continue to go. Um especially the more strict, you know, the confines are. and also because people hate surprises. I learned a long time ago in the that there's a certain cadence of warning people about changes coming that you want to hit. Um and
that one of the worst things you can often do is just throw a big thing right in someone's face and be like, "This is happening. Deal with it." Not the best way to make, uh, you know, to have a back-and-forth at Um, I unfortunately, uh, do not always carry this to my D&D game where, uh, about a year ago I said I had, uh, an ambush that
set off a firestorm of everyone contacting me privately after the game to want to talk about what's going on in our game and where are we going. Uh, I ultimately had to say "This was an ambush. It was a surprise. You were not supposed to know what was happening." Um, which was hard to understand, but it In the end, you know, it was fine. Like, uh, we
sort of reconnected with where they were going, and it was a great opportunity to talk about what was going on in the game. but, uh, I will forever, you know, cherish the moment where, uh, I bit myself as a GM by doing an ambush and then everyone sort of being like, "I don't understand, uh, why this happened." It's like, "Well, you were surprised, so that's the su-
Anyway. People don't like surprises. here's one more sort of related tidbit that, uh, I I don't think I've really deployed it professionally, uh, but I picked this up out of a, uh, a Matt Colville, uh, video recently. And, uh, and I really like this idea. It's kind of a reverse psychology thing. Uh, and I probably done it unknowingly, but basically, the idea is challenge them on the
good idea. So, if you're like, let's say you're in a brainstorming session, you're in an RPG game, some various ideas are floating around. A lot of time is often spent like trying to sift through like, "Okay, people have different ideas about the next action. What are we doing next, right?" so as you as a facilitator, uh under this tip is to start to kind of focus in
not fully negatively, but like challenging a little bit the idea that you think is a little bit better. That you think is going to be more productive. Um because what will happen in theory is they will start to be like they'll start uh think through it more. They'll be like, "Okay, well then we can do that and we'll you know we'll be it'll be a good idea
because of this." You know, or like you know, if you're like, "Well, we don't want to change that button." We don't want to change anything. Then they'll be like, "Well, really it would be like better for the user." So they'll it's like kind of reinforcing like their natural process of uh thinking through their rationale um with a good chance that they then like land on that uh
in a more even more concerted way. you know, that's kind of like your toolkit for you know, moving things along in the ideal world. But what happens when things go wrong? And they will go wrong. I think first up is uh is just party discord, group discord. you know, any group you're going to have people get on each other's nerves or be at cross purposes. You know,
or just have different goals that just aren't always compatible. and I think like you know, make kind of besides like trying to level the facilitation and like make sure everyone has a voice, um one of the best things you can do is also go back to your working agreements, your code of conduct, maybe have some one-on-ones again to see if people are like struggling to get Um
and then um and that kind of thing. Scheduling we already mentioned, uh but it will rear its head again. just stay pr- you know, stay realistic about timelines. Um try to get the right people participating and and hold time when you need to. Losing the plot, that's where you want to go back to, you know, your charter, your objective, your goals, your next steps, and just sort
of like get everyone realigned. Um and then hopefully get back also on that predictable cycle because a lot of times losing the plot is happening also because people don't feel the progress and they start to look in different Um side quests uh and scope creep. Um they're not bad on its own. it feels wrong to say that with scope creep up there, but it actually is not.
It's not wrong on its own. It's not bad Uh but you want to be wary of it taking away from your main goal. Uh also it's best any decisions to pursue side quests, additional scope, adding things to your project, adding responsibilities to your committee is done very explicitly that it's a decision that people made and not something that just happens. Now we'll move on to wrapping the
tail. Um so, I'm going to address wrapping at some different scales. We'll work down topic at hand to the more meta end of the presentation. finish either whether your group is sort of cyclical, endless, a one-shot, you know, you're getting together for 6 months, you got to just get to the end of this project, um can't do anything without a definition of done, right? And that means
that like, you know, let's say that it's um you know, on this slide we have a a picture of a halfling rogue stealing a dragon's hoard, running away with what seems to be way too big of a bag and chest of gold to escape while someone else gets emulated. you know, like are you done when you pick up the treasure? Are you done when you're back at
the end? Were you done when you, you know, killed the dragon or maybe you didn't? You know, does that still have to get done? Um if your group doesn't agree on what done is for whatever you're working or whatever your game is, like there's going to be some dissatisfaction there. Um and or you never get there because you're always adding something to the definition of done. So,
don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Everyone knows that phrase. Like, find a definition of done close the door and put the rest in phase two. then you need to reward people. Like, you know, in the game that's often gold and magic items. Um in the workplace, I don't recommend handing out gold and magic items, um but what you do need to make sure
happens is people get recognition, thanks, praise, maybe there's a bonus structure where you work, or a crazy thing where they just shoot gift cards at people out of a gift card gun. those are all good ways to to do that. Uh but make sure you're also pushing that, especially the recognition and the praise out. you know, you want to um not just embody the collaboration in your
groups, but you probably want to inculcate that and like let everyone else know that hey, this was valuable and these people contributed. Um you also need to look back. So, that means uh retrospectives, really common uh in uh in games even to do uh what they'll call stars and wishes, which is exactly the same as a plus delta, if you've ever done one of those, uh which
is really is there anything that I liked that I want more of? Is there anything I would change? That's like the sort of simplest version of a retrospective. There's a lot of other formats. Uh you can also do surveys and questionnaires, depending on how big your group is or the format or how many questions you want to add, but it's incredibly important to uh to look back.
if you never have those sort of retrospective discussions, you never address the little the little issues that make, you know, work hell or make the game a little less fun that you could easily take care of next time. Uh plus it's a good excuse to just get together again. All right. So, just in recapping, here's my big points. Do listen. Make space for expression. Don't railroad a
collaborative group. Do mesh together everyone's needs and motives. Do nudge everyone towards the goal. And don't panic when things go sideways. um unfortunately but fortunately unfortunately unless you're a vampire, there's no reason to fear stakeholders. I've got some references on here. I think we make these available somehow. Um but basically the top four uh is just a few of my favorite uh just resources for like how
to run uh a D&D game or another tabletop game. Um some related professional uh reading around teamwork, meeting design, uh retrospectives, and governance. then want to give a special thanks to Nick O'Rocks'n' Cass and Yagor uh our fearless uh mostly fearless D&D party for my game. Um and that's all I have. Um That's my contact info. QR code is session feedback. Uh I am uh independent contractor
and I have business cards. But I'd love to take any questions. We have about 7 minutes. Andre. So I just realized to get good at this do need practice. And one way to practice is just do it in the real world for real projects. Now I see that there's actually another place in the world to practice, the video Where else can you practice before you have to
perform at work? That's a really good question. So Andre's question was to get good at this you have to practice. And then pointing out parallel the game being a way to practice for work, but how else do can you practice to get good at work at doing this? You have a comment. I'm going to make a quick attempt to do a small answer and then we'll see
what you have to say. But I would say that this occurs this kind of work occurs at many many different And start small. So I think there's often opportunities in small groups for someone to take on that kind of facilitation role. And doesn't have to yes, you probably should be a little versed in it before someone throws you like you know an organization wide committee with a
bunch of big wigs on it. But I think there's a lot of small opportunities to to practice this. How does this specific volunteer opportunities are always a great place to start applying these things. Volunteer organizations whether that's your triple rated organization or another organization. Because the stakes are lower. It's not your career. It's something you care about but it's not necessarily your Okay, so if in case
you didn't hear that the comment was basically volunteer organizations also create a lot of opportunities to to work in groups like this and facilitate and participate and collaborate. If you're okay with despair, join your HOA. Yeah, my uh My uh my wife used to be a property manager and I couldn't uh She didn't move on from the despair. Uh yes. I think it'd be really interesting for
people who aren't familiar to say a little bit more about safety tools. Like you're not going to I mean, you're not going to use the X card in a work meeting. I don't think John who invented it even does that. Yeah. But some of the other ones like lines and veils are like very applicable. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. Okay, I don't I don't have a
bunch on the top of my head right now, um but they quest the comment was to talk just a little bit more about safety Um so, I mentioned I mentioned the X card, um which is this idea that you have basically like literally an X card on Let's try to describe it not inaccurately. Like basically like that's kind of a hard line safety tool where if if
a game, which can have all kinds of thematic content, could be triggering, could be problematic for people. If something is happening that you just want to stop in the game, you pick up the X card and that basically signals to everyone like this is not what we're doing. Um but then you mentioned lines and veils, which we actually did uh did as an exercise early on in
our game to sort of establish some of those boundaries. Um and so, that's an idea of um You can um Um you can if you search for this, you can find some like pre-made ones that have a bunch of subject matter. Um they help you sort of line that out, but basically you take a bunch of things that could be um, could be triggering, could be things
people don't want to deal with. I mean, for instance, you know, one of one of my best friends that's in the game, you you cannot talk about teeth with her more than saying the word once and moving on. Right? And so, lines and veils is the idea that for these things you kind of have like uh, you know, you can also think of it as like a
red light, green light, yellow light, where it's like green is fine. Like, so so you maybe you're fine with some of this stuff, but then you have lines are like hard lines, like this is a line we don't cross. Uh, and so you might end up, you know, depending on how you gather the information, you might indicate like, okay, well, we don't go into this, you know,
subject. And then the veils are um, and correct me if I'm wrong, but basically like it it can be part of the game, but it needs to sort of be moved on from quickly and it's generally happening off screen, so to say. So, like it can be there thematically, but you're not necessarily like staring at it. Um, and if you think about even just how movies are
shot, like that's how a lot of things are, too, right? Like you could have the same scene, you know, semi-horror thing shot in like a PG-13 way or an R way, right? And um, um, and actually like the movie ratings is also sort of a good way to talk about it as well. Um, but there's a whole lot of others, you know, there's a lot of other
techniques out there um, in terms of Uh, another one that is common and uh, is to have some sort of phrase that everyone understands means like, we're not stopping what we're doing, but we're moving on from this. uh, yes. Just continuing that. I I mean, I think the important part about the safety tools is the purpose of them is to make it a safe place for everyone
to participate. Yes. And hopefully in your project meetings you're not having violence and violent language that getting. But um so the tools might be different, but it's really like you said about collecting information and understanding what's going to make it a safe place. The The tools might be a little different and um and uh and the way that those subjects and uncomfortable things come into the workplace
is different, but certainly there's still more of things happening that are excluding or shutting someone down or you know, making someone uncomfortable at work, you know, than there should be. Uh you can also use it for just topics stuff. Yeah. >> Like we have a line that we're not talking about switching to this distro don't move that. Make that a line too. So it doesn't have um
uncomfortable content. It can just be factual stuff as well. And also And also I think you probably see at work a lot how you know, you do establish limits to how much the outside world comes into the conference table, at times. The professional version of the X card is the parking lot. That's a great comment. Let's put it in the parking lot and talk about it another
time. All right. Yeah, um I can take one more. Yeah. Yeah, I was uh I guess one of the things that I was thinking about while you were talking was like the during that sec- section, right? Like I think both for for professional meetings and for DMing there's an aspect of prep where you need to take input from, you know, people outside. And sometimes like determining how
much input to be taken and how to prioritize what input to get. You know, I guess I'm just curious generally. It's not I know it's not specific, but your thoughts kind of in both areas and how they might differ. Um so if I'm if I'm kind of taking that in correctly, I think you're kind of asking about like how to how you plan for and incorporate the
outside stakeholders. Yeah. Yeah. So I I actually kind of I mentioned that earlier on and and yes, could have gone into it more um because that actually is it's a really critical aspect because um you need to you need to know who all of those outside characters are um because that's the easiest way to like have all of your work together derailed. Um less so in the
D&D game where you are at like the Dungeon Master is actually playing all those outside characters. Um but it's still um very much real in the Um I guess I was thinking about like input from your players. Yeah. >> Regarding to like knowing kind of what kind of input they want to provide you for what they want out of the session for example or the campaign. Oh.
>> Scoping. Scoping. Okay. Um Yeah. So I think that that's getting back to the A, that's really good to do in those one-on-one ones. Um cuz you can talk about like, you why do you even want to play the game? Like what do you what do you want out of it? And uh um can also be done in um you know, like retrospectives and and surveys and
stuff. Um I know uh I took over our game from a previous DM and I did a big survey to see what everybody was like getting out of it, what they want. And then I've checked in in smaller ways at other times. Um and I think similarly it's it's taken that temperature up front and in terms of scoping in the workplace, it a lot of it may
be external. Like you you know, kind of a charter or a call or you have a project you have to deliver. Um but when it is more open-ended then it becomes about the same thing. I think talking to the individuals about uh you know, what what they need to get out of it. And and then checking in with that like regularly because it will shift and change.
Yeah. Thank you. Good. All right. I think I have to wrap. I I have a fun question. Okay, a fun >> Other than D&D, what are some of your favorite games? Uh other than D&D, what are some of my favorite games? Uh yeah, we did a whole thing this summer where I took a long break as DM and I had everyone else run games. Um which also
I think is a semi answer to Andre's question. Just cultivate that in people as well. Like I really like uh I think his name is Grant Howitt. He does these like one-pagers that are just laugh riots. Um so if you look up uh Honey Heist Yeah. uh or The Witch Is Dead um and he makes these ones that are one page, simple idea you know, and you
play it for a few hours and and it gets really ridiculous because it's just a loose you know, loose thing anyways. All right. Well, I think that'll wrap it up. Thank everybody for coming out. yeah, good luck out there.
