So…

This is kind of awkward. It’s been three months since I introduced this course and then vanished. Do you even remember what it’s about?

This course follows up my brilliant and much-loved year-long course on running your best damned game ever: True Game Mastery. And, since this is a sequel, it absolutely won’t live up to the original. But what can you do?

I blame the subject matter. This topic sucks. Running a game is fun; managing a campaign blows gross chunks. Why do I say that? Because managing a campaign isn’t what you think it is. It’s not about world-building and stringing stories together into epic arcs — sure, Game Masters do that, but half of it’s True Game Mastering skill stretched out to perpetuity and the other half is True Scenario Designery — rather, it’s about keeping the game from shaking itself apart for totally boring and totally annoying reasons. It’s about managing the interactions between the players and the game, between the players themselves, and between the players and you. Its…

You know what? I did this shit already, I warned you what you were in for. And I ain’t wasting another five thousand words reintroducing this shit and re-disappointing you. Go back and read the intro if you can’t remember why you’re here. Then, feel free to leave when you decide it ain’t for you.

That said…

While I ain’t reintroducing the series today, I am changing the outline a bit. I’m adding a prequel. A pre-requisite lesson. Because the interactions I had following that introduction have revealed that most of you ain’t ready to manage your player’s interactions because you can’t even manage your own. And because what little advice is floating around out there on this topic is pretty shitty. And it’s left lots of you with a skewed idea of social morality and what you owe to your players.

So settle in for a crash course on Practical Social Economics. That’s what we’re doing. And if you can’t pass this test, you can’t run a campaign. Sorry.

Social Economics for Fun and Profit

As I noted in the introduction above, most of you have revealed to me that you ain’t ready to run a campaign. Lots of you seem not to have learned some very basic social shit you should have learned years ago. And more than a few of you have been listening to over-moralizing online Game Mastering dumbasses and have thus been poisoned with a toxic sense of social selflessness that’ll just wreck your games and leave you miserable.

Today, I’mma teach you how to be selfish.

Lots of you don’t know how to take care of your own needs. Or you feel like there’s something wrong with putting your needs first. As a departure from my usual ova, I’m not going to psychoanalyze the reasons why you’re all so screwed up and I’m going to keep this lesson firmly rooted in the realm of pretend elf games. I’m not even going to joke that I’m not giving you life advice even though it’s clear that my Game Mastering lessons aren’t just good for improving your pretend life.

This is just an imminently practical lesson in social management that’ll help you run a personal, social, gaming club. Because, really, that’s what you’re doing when you run a campaign.

Electing Yourself Club President

Like it or not, as a Campaign Manager, you’re effectively President of a Social Club. In fact, the main difference between running a short-run TTRPG and a TTRPG campaign is that you basically have to do all the shit a club president or team captain has to do in addition to planning and running a game. Running a campaign is no different from running a bowling league or a baseball team or a book club or a survivalist retreat or a doomsday cult or a Cub Scout den.

Acting as de facto president of a social gaming club is part and parcel of the whole campaign gaming gig. You can’t avoid it, you can’t delegate it, and you can’t count on your members to just settle shit for themselves. Because that ain’t how humans work.

You see, humans are tricky. A social club can tick along fine for months or years without social management. Many campaigns do. Until the day they don’t. That day may never come, but when it does come, if you aren’t prepared to step up to the club president’s podium and start whacking people with your gavel, that’s the day your game breaks.

Worse, though, is that humans can — and will — stick things out for a long time after they’ve stopped being fun. In fact, humans prioritize things like comfort and safety and regularity and routine over enjoyment and engagement and happiness. Thus, players can spend months or years showing up to a game that just ain’t that fun and, worse yet, many Game Masters can — and do — spend many, many long years running campaigns they aren’t enjoying. Sometimes, they feel trapped and keep doing it forever. Sometimes they break. Sometimes they burn out. Sometimes the game dies. And sometimes they quit the hobby forever.

Being your Gaming Club President means accepting responsibility for the game as a shared, social activity. It means saying, “It is my job and my job alone to ensure this game remains a stable, enjoyable social pursuit for as long as I choose to keep running it.” And if you ain’t prepared to put that on your gaming resume, you can’t run a campaign. Sorry. Get out of my classroom.

But even if you are prepared to take that job, you might still be unfit for campaign management. In fact, the people who are most prepared to do that job — the ones who accept it most readily — are often the ones least capable of doing it well. Because they’re too damned selfless.

You Owe No One Nothing

I don’t want to belabor this point. Either you’re going to believe it — and you’re going to get it — or you’re not. Originally, I had this long speech that went on for paragraphs and paragraphs. But I’ve cut it down to its essence and I’m delivering it as pure, axiomatic fact. And it’s still pretty long.

This is your hobby. This is how you spend your personal leisure time. It’s what you do to make all the time you spend working to take care of yourself and your family worthwhile. One of the things. Gaming time is your time and you have a God-given right to enjoy it however you want.

No one — and I mean no one — is entitled to a seat at your table. No one is entitled to your free time. No one is entitled to your friendship. You decide with who you share your hobby with and you do so only insofar as it is rewarding for you to do so. I can’t tell you why you find this dumbass pretend elf bullshit rewarding — nor that you should nor why you should — but I can tell you, categorically and axiomatically — that if you keep it doing it when it’s not rewarding, you’re a dumbass.

There’s a lot of bullshit moralizing that gets flung at Game Masters about how you should — how you must — accommodate this or that player or this or that situation. There’s no should here. No must. Not when it comes to your personal leisure time. If there’s a player whose needs make it hard to run the game you want to run, you have every right to exclude them if that’s what you want to do. And anyone who says that you should accommodate them or that you’re somehow wrong for not is a fascist, leisure-time tyrant. They are demanding control over how you spend your leisure time.

Keep in mind, that we’re talking about pretend elf games we play for fun. This isn’t about whether human beings are entitled to basic services here. This ain’t about whether human beings should be allowed to pursue any opportunity to the best of their ability. We’re talking about who you play with. For fun. And that’s all.

When it comes to your leisure time, you owe no one nothing. Your fun time is yours to do with as you please with whomever you please. And that is the only moral imperative that matters here.

Disinvested Game Masters Run Shit Games

I don’t want to harp on my point about no one owing an iota of their personal leisure time to anyone else — though I could and I’d continue to be right — and I frankly think that point stands as flagrantly, obviously, unarguably self-evident, but I know you’re still itching to fight me on it. Game Masters have a real problem with that basic truth. And that’s because Game Mastering is inherently a selfless act. Unless you’re one of those profiteers who demands payment, you’re willing to devote your free time to giving others a good time. Not only that, but for every hour of fun you preside over, you also sacrifice at least another hour doing a bunch of math and paperwork to make it happen. If you weren’t generous of spirit, you wouldn’t do that shit.

The issue’s just that that kind of selflessness often leads folks to miserable burnout. If you bend over backward to please your players without ever demanding your players bend over and please you — you heard me — you’re going to break yourself. And then you’re going to break your game.

Ever had a player you just kinda didn’t really like? They weren’t bad or rude and they didn’t misbehave, they just rubbed you the wrong way. They annoyed you. Sometimes, that happens. Some personalities just don’t gel. Well, that happened to me once. And it got to the point where I was spending my pre-game setup time thinking, “I am so not up for dealing with Karen tonight.” Do you know what happened to that game? It died. Everyone lost. Even me.

If running the game ever becomes a burden — or if it ever stops feeling rewarding — you’re going to run a crappy game. And eventually, you’ll stop. So, if you absolutely must hold yourself to the ridiculous standard of player-pleasing selflessness — if you really can’t grasp why you shouldn’t spend your valuable leisure time on shit that ain’t leisurely — consider how little good you’re doing anyone running a game you ain’t happy to run.

Emotions Know No Reason

I really want to move on from telling you all to adopt Scrooge McDuck levels of stinginess with your free time — especially because I know there are folks prepared to use this as evidence that I’m a shitty, selfish, toxic monster — I just can’t. Because I have to remind you that feelings be cray.

Sometimes, you’re going to be unhappy or angry or frustrated or whatever for what you think is a bad reason. Or for no reason you can see.

Take Karen above. I can’t point to any single thing she did wrong. I had no objective reason to dislike her. I had no objective reason to kick her from the group. At least none that would hold up in court. But I still didn’t like her. And there was — there is — nothing wrong with that. But because I thought I was morally required to like every damned person — or have a good, defensible reason whenever I didn’t — and because I held myself to a ridiculous moral standard that said I could exclude no one from my fun, free-time personal game,… well, I let that game die.

That’s why I’m harping on the “your free time is your treasure and no one’s entitled to it” angle instead of appealing to your dedication to running a great game. Your selflessness will lead you to sacrifice your own happiness for what’s right but there’s nothing right or moral here. Not when it comes to your personal fun time. That shit’s yours and yours alone.

Social Calculus

My more astute students — if I have any such students — are probably itching to call out a flaw in my Selfishness Thesis. If you only concern yourself with your own needs, no one will want to play games with you. And that’s a big problem if your chosen leisure pursuit is playing games with people. Well, non fret, mon freter, there’s no flaw here. There’s just another layer to all of this shit. It’s just that, for reasons I’ll demonstrate below, the first layer must be selfishness. I shit you not.

But let’s do talk a bit about social math.

Running the Social Numbers

Every adult must eventually learn that everything — every damned thing — has a price. Everything — every damned thing — has costs that must be paid. And everyone — every damned one — is constantly — consciously or otherwise — running the numbers on every choice they make. At least, they should be. If they’re not, they’ll end up in trouble. Or miserable.

But pretend elves…

You, as a Game Master, have a scale in your head. It ain’t a conscious scale, but it’s there. And it determines whether you’re happy.

On one side of the scale goes everything you get out of running games. Every intrinsic or extrinsic benefit. On that side of the scale go the warm fuzzies you get from a game well run, the sense of fun that comes from watching your players squirm and struggle and succeed, the joy of buying new supplements and adding them to your shelf, the excitement you feel when you’ve got a brilliant idea for your next adventure, and every other thing that feels good about running games.

That pile, by the way, and the weight of every item in it, is different for absolutely everyone. That’s why no one can help you figure out why this shit’s worth doing. Or when it’s not.

On the other side of the scale sits everything that running games costs you. Every downside. The hours sunk into game prep are there, as is the frustration you feel over having to break up another spat between your players, as is every time you’ve ever told your buddy you can’t go to the bar and watch his band play because you have to pretend to be an elf tonight. Everything the game costs you in terms of time, stress, lost opportunities, anxieties, annoyances, and money all weigh against whatever the hell makes this hobby fun. And this side of the scale’s all personal and subjective too.

Everything you feel affects the balance. The presence of a single player whose personality just doesn’t gel with yours weighs down the wrong side of the scale. Beth’s obnoxious gnome bard that gets in the way of your epic, heroic, serious fantasy story. The hour you spend vacuuming and doing dishes after your players leave. Everything. And every decision you make and every event that happens affects the balance.

Sometimes, the scale’s gonna tip the wrong way. It happens in the best games. As long as it’s temporary, all the accumulated joy you’ve felt and your optimism that the dip will pass will get you through. But if the scale dips the wrong way and stays there, you’re in trouble. You cannot be happy when your scale is tipped the wrong way. It’s literally impossible.

“Duh, Angry,” you’re saying, “tell me something I don’t know. This ain’t exactly a sock-off-blowing revelation.”

Well, how about this: even if your scale is tipped the right way, that still doesn’t guarantee you’ll be happy. How’s that for a revelation.

But Could I Be Happier…?

Imagine you could somehow assign actual numbers to this shit and speak categorically and mathematically and objectively. You can’t — it’s literally impossible and you’d have to be a total dumbass to try — but imagine if you could. And imagine that your campaign sits right now at a nice, comfortable +3. You’re happy, right?

Now, suppose an old friend of yours invites you to join his bowling league. You have literally zero extra free time. And the league meets on the same night as your game. You’ve got to choose. And you find yourself thinking that, unlike your online game, the bowling league gets you out of the house and drinking booze with real friends in the real world. And the bowling league doesn’t demand five hours of math and paperwork every week to make it happen. When you run the numbers, the bowling league sits at +6.

Well, your game is screwed. Gaming is ruined. Even if you stick with pretend elves — because you have a sense of selfless obligation or some horseshit like that — you ain’t gonna be happy with that choice. Not for a while anyway. Every dull hour of prep and every argument you have to end between Beth and Chris will remind you could be drinking brews with the boys at the bowling lane and that would be so much better. And now you’re running a shit game and hurtling toward burnout.

Where X Equals Who the Hell Knows What?

As I said, every choice you make — or every choice you could make — jostles your inner scale. But you are a mortal human and you’re stuck in a universe with linear time. So, you can’t predict how any event will change the balance. Nor can you predict how you’ll actually feel, emotionally, after the scale settles down and stops moving. So most choices don’t carry known costs, they carry unknown risks.

Imagine that I like Beth. As a friend. Or at least, as a player. I’m not friends with my players because that’s a conflict of interest and players aren’t really the kinds of people I want to be friends with. But insofar as I can like a player, I like Beth. But I also want a serious game. If this game’s worth my time and work, it’s got to be more than dicking around and joking silliness. But Beth likes her joking silliness. She likes her gnome bards and she likes her Performative antics. So, currently, my scale’s sitting at a scant +1 and I’m starting to think that I’d have more fun and less stress if I just spent my pretend elf nights playing video games alone instead.

I have no idea how Beth will take it if I try to resolve the issue. She might be willing to adjust her play style. That’ll demand some time and patience on my part and she might not actually pull it off despite her best efforts. Or she might not be able to enjoy the serious game I want to run. Because Beth’s got a scale in her head. I have no idea where it sits or what I’m doing to it. Beth and I might end up in a conflict. Or she might refuse to adjust. What then? Do I say, “Well, if you won’t play the game I want to run, you need to find a different table?” How will that work out? Can I run my game for three players? Will Chris walk out if I kick Beth out? Will I lose the whole game? And if we keep playing without Beth, how guilty will I feel for how long for excluding her? And will I lose Beth as a friend? Is that worth it?

There’s no way to know those answers in advance. Hell, I can’t even predict my own feelings, let alone Beth’s reactions. I might think I’ve done my game a service but find, a month later, my guilt over my lost friendship has totally ruined gaming. And Beth can’t predict her feelings either. She might think she can adjust her playstyle and she might actually do it. But she might find out that, two months on, she’s just not having fun anymore.

That’s just how this shit is. This is what playing pretend elf games with people entails. You can’t mitigate it and you can’t avoid it. Everyone’s got scales in their heads, everyone’s got feelings no one can read and they can’t predict, and everyone’s just trying to do the best they can.

Open Hailing Frequencies

So, if everyone’s got their own subjective internal scale and if no one can predict how any action will tip anyone’s scale and if no one is really even fully cognizant of their own scale, how is it remotely possible to set up a social gaming situation such that five people can all be happy? How the hell does social fun even work?

The answer has nothing to do with setting expectations. Nor is it to do with drawing lines and hanging veils. And there’s nothing about written or implied social contracts that’ll help. All of those are preemptive measures. And preemptive measures are worthless given that shit about mortality and time and subjective emotionalness. If you can’t predict the future, you can’t preempt it.

The only solution is Negotiation. That is, open communication, collaboration, compromise, and conflict resolution. And, before this course is over, I’m going to teach you how to do that shit. You will get not one, but two crash courses in Social Negotiation. One’s about building compromise and the other’s about resolving conflict. Because, as President of the Social Gaming Club, you must know how to guide your socially stunted, idiot players toward compromise and resolve their conflicts before that shit rips your game apart.

But you can’t do any of that unless you know how to be selfish.

The Invisible Hand of Self-Interest

Fact numero uno: you’re the only one with any chance of knowing how your scale is balanced. And even you barely know it. And you sure as shit can’t predict how it’ll rebalance itself after anything happens. You’re guessing. Just like everyone else.

Fact numero doso: your Social Gaming Club only keeps meeting if every participant’s scale is firmly tipped toward the positive. And not just sorta tipped. If your game isn’t the best way for every participant to have a good time with the four hours they’ve committed, it’ll fall apart. Just like it’ll fall apart if the good time you have running it doesn’t counterbalance everything you have to do and give up and put up with to make it happen.

Given those two facts, the only resolution is selfishness. Or rather, self-interest. There’s no other way it can work. Everyone at the table — you included — must assume responsibility for their own inner scale. They have to know the things they guess will make them happy and, more importantly, the things they think will make them unhappy. Only once everyone’s needs and wants are known is any good faith, open, and honest negotiation possible.

Have you ever had one of those character generation sessions where none of the players wants to voice a preference? One where you know Adam is thinking, “Boy, I really want to be a fighter. But I don’t want to keep anyone else from playing a fighter if that’s what they want. I’ll just be quiet and let everyone else talk. I can play pretty much anything anyway” and Beth is thinking, “I don’t care what I play, I just want to play. Character generation sucks. Can’t someone just hand me a character and tell me what to do?” But Adam and Beth and Chris and Danielle are all sitting in awkward silence. And it won’t end until Adam grows a pair and finally says “Well… I don’t want to stop anyone from playing what they want and if anyone else really wants it, I’ll totally step aside because I’m really happy playing anything, but if I had my choice and if it didn’t step on anyone’s toes, but also, I’ll fill in any role we need, so… yeah.” And then you point out that in his waffling, wishy-washy, pussiness, he didn’t actually say what his preference actually is.

Which is why you need to handle this character generation crap differently. I’ll teach you that too.

If Adam and Chris both say, “I want to be the fighter,” we — as a group and with my excellent mediation — can resolve that. We can talk about it. We can find a solution. But if Adam and Chris clam up because they think they’re being selfless, polite, good people, then we’re just sitting around with our thumbs up our asses wishing we were playing Dungeons & Dragons. Worse yet, if Adam never admits how much he wants to play the fighter and Chris just says fighter because he feels on the spot, then neither of them ends up happy. Adam won’t speak up because Chris claimed the fighter and Chris won’t admit he just picked the fighter by default. If Chris and Adam were both honest, we could have found a way to make both of them much happier.

The same’s true if I let Beth play her damned gnome bard and try to convince myself it won’t bother me even though I know it will. If I’d been honest from the get-go, Beth might have ended up with a better fit for my game and I wouldn’t have ended up kicking her out or ending the game.

The Takeaway

This ain’t really about selfishness or selflessness. You should have realized that given that those are moral judgment words and I said morality doesn’t even enter into this. There is nothing selfish about admitting that you want something. Having a want isn’t the same as demanding you get it. This is about assertiveness. That’s what they call it in psychology. The willingness to state your wants and needs and to treat them as valid things. You have to make yourself the social leader of your Social Gaming Club. This means you have to know how to properly navigate social situations in a way that maximizes the outcome for everyone. And the polite selflessness you use to convince yourself you’re a good person and that you’re not a burden on everyone? That won’t get you there. At least when it comes to your pretend elf leisure.

The only proper starting place for social interaction is honest self-interest. You must take responsibility for your own happiness scale and trust that everyone else is taking responsibility for theirs. Only then can you help them work out the best path to a good game. And I promise I’ll teach you how before this course is done.

That said, I have to end with this somber, sober, shitty warning…

There will come a day when you must choose between your own happiness scale and someone else’s. There will come a day when, for the good of your own gaming fun, you will have to deny someone else theirs. You will someday have to say to Karen, “This isn’t working; you need to find another game.” And that will be a really, really shitty day. But in the end, this is still about your own personal stash of invaluable leisure time. Karen will have to find her own best path to leisure time treasure. And she’ll have to do it somewhere else.