High-Performance Gaming Groups

Should a role-playing game group be viewed through the characteristics of a high-performance team? I started this post not knowing exactly where it would go. I felt from my experience of playing and running role-playing games and my career that there was probably something in it.

I found the answer through writing the post, hopefully you will as well.

Inspiration

Where did the inspiration for this post come from? The usual source, either an exchange on Twitter or me posting a random thought that coalesced into something more useful. The random thought was the tweet below: –

A small leap of logic later and I’m thinking about how role-playing groups may or may not have similarities to the concept of high-performance teams.

So here we are.

Is This A Good Idea?

Is it a good idea to apply the characteristics of high-performance teams to gaming groups? I think so, they share many characteristics. In both cases, a group of people have come together to be purposefully successful at achieving something. True, the stakes might not be as high in a gaming group, but there is a purposeful goal especially among gaming groups that want to get better at the practice of running role-playing games.

Because running role-playing games is a practice. People call it a skill but that does it a disservice as that indicates it is a singular thing. It’s not, it’s a cornucopia of skills and tools which different groups assemble in different ways. In that way, it shares similarities with things like Project Management or Business Analysis which have whole bodies of knowledge about the wide-ranging skills and tools in their practice.

So it’s very much a good idea, as would be putting together a body of knowledge on the ‘running a role-playing game practice’ but that’s a whole other endeavour.

What Does Success Look Like?

In order to decide if a team is high-performing, it has to be highly successful at achieving success. In the business world, you’d hope a common understanding of what success looked like had been defined or, in a more dysfunctional environment, the team had defined it themselves and enough people agreed.

It’s important for everyone to understand what success looks like in your gaming group. Not least because it can vary considerably from group to group. I’d even say it varies from game to game.

We can take some examples.

What success looks like in a game of psychological horror set in Berlin shortly after World War II is going to be very different to one meant to simulate a comic book about an Avengers-like team in a fantasy world.

Similarly, success is going to look very different in a group dedicated to OSR principles and the concept of player challenge as opposed to a group focusing on a story as an intended outcome dedicated to fiction first.

So, know what success looks like.

Characteristics of a High Performance Team

How is this going to work? I’ve scanned the internet for characteristics of high-performance teams. I’ve not performed an in-depth literature review. There are common themes, so I picked the article that best served my purpose and went with it. The list of characteristics was sourced from the Forbes article 15 Characteristics Of High-Performance Teams.

I’ll let any academics howl in horror.

Then for each characteristic I’ve chosen to explore (listed below), I’ve quoted the description of the characteristic and then explained why I believe it’s important in the context of gaming groups.

Shared Vision • High Trust • High Participation • Service Leadership • Culture of Accountability • Seamless Communication • Self Managed • Learning Culture • Comfort Zone Expansion • Time Orientated • Celebrating Success

Shard Vision

All team members share and support a common vision that the team is working to achieve. Team members are highly focused on objectives. They are emotionally connected to the narrative of the mission.

In order to be successful everyone has to have a shared vision of what success looks like. This is particularly important in role-playing games as we all have different expectations and approaches, different philosophies exist promising different outcomes and different rules either support or hinder your desires.

And that’s assuming all those things are present in an implicit way rather than obscured or implied.

A common vision of what success looks like across rules chosen, theme, mood and genre conventions, etc, is essential.

High-performing gaming groups realise that they all need to be fully on board and in sync with what success looks like so they can support and create as the game unfolds in ways that enrich it rather than erode the experience.

High Trust

The team understands that trust has a direct impact on productivity, engagement and profitability. Integrity, honesty and transparency (appropriate times and context) are part of the organization’s expected behavioral norms.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. As a cohort, gamers are often introverts ridden with performance anxiety and imposter syndrome that means, to one degree or another, we can limit our own success. In many ways, role-playing games aren’t a perfect environment for us as they involve being creative in the moment and running with narratives that might be deeply important to us or, in small or large ways, revealing about ourselves.

You can’t do that in a culture of ridicule or one where you can’t trust your fellow participants to work with your ideas in the honest way they were intended.

Trust is everything in a role-playing game.

High-performing gaming groups realise that role-playing is a medium of spontaneous creativity and for people to contribute fully in such an environment trust between the participants is important. They foster that trust. They ensure it exists.

High Participation

Members work to make certain that everyone is involved. Engagement drives participation. Very few (if any) team members are disengaged or actively disengaged (working against the team).

We’ve all seen it. Bob goes to his phone as the game whenever the game is personally not about him. Geoff isn’t really that interested in the game but turns up anyway to see his mates. Kate has created a character either by accident or design that doesn’t fit in but is now doubling down on it session after session.

These are all signals of a lack of engagement with a shared vision of success or the game generally. The honest truth? You have no time for this shit. You want high participation. You want everyone’s A-game. These people may be your friends, but your friends should also be understanding they are holding ‘the team’ back. Don’t put up with anything less as a group.

And yes, everyone realises everyone has their off days and understanding that is part of this.

High-performing gaming groups realise that everyone has to bring their A-game at all times. Always be alert. Always look for opportunities to contribute. No reading your phone. Shutting down ‘when it is not your turn’. Be present. Deal with people not bringing their A-game.

Service Leadership

The organization embraces a leadership philosophy in which the main goal of the leader is to serve. They maintain focus on goal achievement while remaining humble and putting the team’s needs before their own.

Since this is about avoiding organisational leadership stifling the team, we’re obviously talking about the GM here and how their ‘power is applied’. What is service leadership in the context of the gaming group? I think it’s just another way of saying that the GM is another player.

That is not to say the GM doesn’t have some responsibilities the players do not have or that what counts as play is the same but they are a player, not a dictatorial authority. Exerting too much authority and control essentially inhibits the high-performance factors of the team as a whole. It acts as a suppression factor.

It’s worth noting this can be about a player. I’ve been in gaming groups in the past where one player was so dominant it was damaging the success of the experience.

High-performance gaming groups realise: The GM is not singularly responsible for success. The GM should not be overly directing the group towards success, or selfishly assume it is his job, but instead enabling the gaming group as a whole to succeed. They realise players should not try to dominate the game.

Culture of Accountability

The organization not only talks about the importance of accountability but have frameworks in place that align experiences, beliefs and actions with desired business results.

While I am sure, in some corner of the gaming universe, there are groups that put in frameworks of official review questionnaires, debriefs and scoring mechanisms – accountability is a simpler ask in a gaming group context.

In a high-performance gaming group, everyone is accountable for the success of the team and as such the game. This is the reverse of service leadership as the abdication of shared accountability essentially cripples it by shifting responsibility to the GM. The GM is NOT the only person accountable for everyone’s fun or success. Everyone at the table is.

High-performing gaming groups realise that they are all accountable in unnumerable, hopefully implicit, ways for making the experience successful.

Seamless Communication

Everyone makes extraordinary efforts to ensure the plan – and progress toward the plan – are clearly understood. Proper tools are utilized. Leaders and managers engage in purposeful storytelling through formal and informal mechanisms for sharing information across the organization.

The complex thing about a role-playing game is unlike in the business world where there is likely to be at least some implicit plans and understanding of success that can then be communicated role-playing games are often ridden with a rats nest of hidden or unverbalised criteria that would contribute to success. So, not only is open communication suppressed what to communicate about is sometimes not clear.

We’ve discussed this before by describing success in running a role-playing game as deftly communicating and responding to a layer of signals.

These signals shuffle on down from the vision of the campaign and work their way up from signals embedded in the characters and weave a subtle need for seamless communication in scene after scene as the game unfolds. High-performing gaming groups are very adept at doing this and implementing the tools, say a good session zero, or making these things implicit rather than implied.

High-performing gaming groups realise that open, honest and seamless communication is paramount and constant. They also realise where and how that communication takes place and may even have implicit mechanisms, tools and patterns for it.

Self Managed

Team leadership changes according to expertise required. Team members jump into the breech as weaknesses or gaps are discovered.

This is a subtle one, but while it’s often the one hardest to detect it reaps a lot of benefits. Your gaming group will have different skills. Recognising that different members of the group can take the lead on things depending on what they can contribute enhances the game and can also reduce the stress of GM’ing.

Maybe someone is better at remembering the rules. Use them. Maybe you’re not as good at thinking up awesome things on the spot. Let the players who are better at it offer suggestions. Use the ability of the group to self-manage where they can contribute and support to ensure success.

Sometimes you’re not even aware of how you are contributing to this self-managed characteristic. It was only recently it was described to me how I construct my characters around a premise contributes to another person’s GM’ing.

High-performing gaming groups realise that not only can the whole group contribute to success, but they are also aware of each other’s skills and that everyone will self-manage to bring those skills together to ensure success.

Learning Culture

The organization constantly pursues excellence through learning and development. They are never satisfied with the status quo.

Never be satisfied with the status quo. Your games can always get better. You can always improve your ‘practice’ of running role-playing games.

You should improve your practice of running role-playing games.

While it may not be true of every, single participants I believe the highest-performing gaming groups always have a nucleus who are interested enough in the practice itself that they will both consciously seek to improve and also openly discuss between themselves what that involves.

I know the core three members of our gaming group do. Breaking these things down and talking about them does not ruin the magic. The discussions after our first few Star Trek campaign sessions were long, deep and fascinating. These discussions can also remove the obscurity of success that is rife within role-playing games.

High-performing gaming groups realise that running role-playings games is a practice consisting of a mosaic of skills, techniques and tools and you can consciously get better at that practice and that is important. They even realise these things have power in real life.

Comfort Zone Expansion

The work of the team is beyond the team’s zone of comfort. Calculated risks are taken and they are always asking themselves “what if?” The team embraces and thrives on adversity. The organization plans for contingencies and is more resilient when obstacles present themselves.

Do you just play the same game in the same way for years, if not decades, at a time?

I’m a solid proponent of high-performing gaming groups being groups that try different things. They will play many different games. The chances are multiple participants are GMs. They will try different styles of game. Different types of stories. They will mix it up in how the narrative is delivered. Some will work some won’t, most result in improvements or future improvements.

Don’t just sit with the same rules. Interpreted in the same way. In the same campaign. In the same world. Push it and learn from it. Okay, I’m pushing my agenda a bit to stress a point, it’s perfectly possible to push the conform zone in a forever GM, single campaign world, always the same style, long-running campaign. Do it.

I’m still a solid supporter of the play different games argument though.

High-performing gaming groups realise that pushing your comfort zone results in better games. Shake it up by trying different themes, moods and tones. Push yourself in terms of how you portray your characters. Push every button. See where it goes.

Time Orientated

The team operates under specific deadlines for achieving results. SMART goals are the norm.

I was going to drop this one but chose to leave it in because: as a group, we are conscious that time constraints enhance creativity, so it became more directly relevant.

We run short campaigns. They’re often 8-12 sessions. A rare few will have a second season of another 8-12 sessions but this often comes with a change in focus. We have only done one three-season long, played relatively consistently year plus long campaign. We look at other campaigns, say Critical Role, and tend to feel they don’t have radically more content in for the length they just take their bloody time getting to it.

We also run sessions hovering around three hours which engenders a philosophy of maintaining a subconscious focus on outcomes.

This gives our campaigns the feel of a well-paced TV show. We get to the points of dramatic importance and the interesting bits. No hours of shopping or procrastination. Being aware of time and the pacing in some oddly self-managed, democratised way is a factor in our high performance.

Does this have some disadvantages? Yes. We are conscious (always learning!) we should sometimes just slow down a bit and soak it up. For a moment at least, not excessively.

High-performing gaming groups realise that they only have so much time. They don’t see their time as infinite. This means they can focus on the time their game has and make every moment of it high worth.

Celebrating Success

High-performance teams celebrate small victories toward goal achievement. Team members work to build each other up. They care deeply about each others’ development and personal growth.

You know what the single, biggest thing I detest about the role-playing game experience is: the obscurity of success. It is so easy for how successful your endeavours are at the table, especially from a GM perspective, to be mired in obscurity so you only think or assume it is successful but you’re never exactly sure you just know people keep turning up.

That is a total crock of shit and, to put it bluntly, needs to stop. Celebrate what works. Call out what was awesome. All the time.

If nothing else it is the one thing you can do to ensure your group finishes a game it starts.

High-performing gaming groups realise that calling out their successes, and not being shy of doing so, is very important as it both removes the obscurity of success and maintains their games over time.

And, Finally…

This has been an interesting experience. Primarily because I started the post thinking there was something in it but ended it fully believing the concept of a high-performance team as it relates to running role-playing games IS a thing and more people should consider it that way.

It’s also reminded that our gaming group is…pretty awesome for us. I was reminded of this fact when writing the why you might be frustrated with Fate post. We are pretty good at getting at the outcomes we want, albeit they may be completely frustrating to many other people! We also have all the usual contextual advantages (some might say ‘privilege’) of being a long-term, consistent group that understand each other fairly well.

There is something that is also true about this topic. We’ve assumed, for brevity, the direction of travel is learning from the ‘business world’ into the ‘role-playing game world’ but the truth is this is very bi-directional for the individuals involved.

Anyway, it’s been an interesting experience for me, hopefully, it has for you? If you got this far.