The Culture: Pick The Right Player For The Role

(Following from yesterday's post.)

You want to run a Grand Campaign, like you see the Bros report about online.

This is despite the Bros talking about the issues they encounter doing so, and after reading the After Action Reports from the big events like Decembork and BROvenloft.

I want you to succeed, Anon. I want you to do so well that you flex good and hard on everyone before you, showing that you learned from them and then surpassed them to go even further.

But you're going to need more than a well-organized Referee, Anon, and that means briefing you on the cutting edge of (re)developments.

From The Club It Came, To The Club It Must Return

Let me tell you something about what you're contemplating, Anon.

This hobby we're in, this thing about Fantastic Adventure Wargaming, arose in a social environment that you are highly unlikely to have experienced if you are under the age of 30 and grew up in the West- and as most of you reading this grew up in the West, that's most of you.

Back in the 1970s, hobby pursuits of a multi-participant nature (like social organizations of all sorts) revolved around clubs. This isn't just a neighborhood bowling league, or a circle of stitch-and-bitch hens. This is the Veterans of Foreign Wars local club. This is the American Legion post. This is that classy Members Only gambling club that opened up Dr. No. back in the 1960s.

Like it or not, this club environment is also a relic of the wargaming roots of this hobby- a holdover of the 19th century when social clubs were how Respectiable Men socialized outside of their work (and, often, faciliated careers), from which not only this hobby in particular but more weighty offshots like War Colleges began.

How does this matter to you, Anon?

A club is a formal organization. It has a leader. It has a leadership cadre supporting the leader. It has rules. Those rules provide structure to activities, erect standards for members (and membership) to adhere to, and establish support for the club's core pursuits.

As clubs are organizations, they have positions to fill. Those positions have requirements, and the competently-run club depreciates sentiment and agreeableness in favor of merit; the leadership puts their members in the positions where they are best able to contribute to the club's success.

The Campaign Is A Club

A gaming club will have a core activity. This is going to be a campaign. The Referee is the leader. His first job is to recruit a cadre of capable lieutenants to support his mission, which is defined by the campaign.

You, Anon, in pursuing a Grand Campaign, need to have around you people that both see things as you do and are able to make that happen. This distributes the burden of running the campaign, and I report from field experience that this does work to keep a campaign with several score of players engaged and satifised.

That's right, you're not doing this alone. You're leading a team. It may be a small team--you and maybe two or three others--but it is a team, and teamwork has a synergistic effect when done properly. At this point you and your team hammer out campaign (club) structures, rules, and procedures; you build the clubhouse (Discord server, Slack channel, whatever) and put the rules up for members (players) to see.

After you get a couple of people to help out, you can start recruiting players. But you don't just recruit anyone. If this is a game with Faction Play, then you're wanting to hand Factions off to players. You recruit competent wargamers to fill these positions. If you are doing something like Jon Mollison is doing, and starting with a blank map, then you recruit the curious and persistent explorer sorts to play.

Why would you do this?

It is not obvious? Two things are at work here: (1) Interests are not equal; different people like different things and so will accept some offers and reject others; (2) People are not equal; some people are flat-out better than others, so it is in your best interests to slot the best man you can get into whatever positions you need to fill.

In both cases, you're recruiting for the core players that drive the campaign because they're interested in the core gameplay loop that drives all campaign activity. Those people fit specific profiles, and you must recruit those who fit those profiles, or you're going to have a bad time.

Once your star players are in position, then you can get the more casual hobbyist who wants to roll up some mans and go adventuring; part of those star players' duties must be to recruit and wrangle those players by giving them direction. If the star player is the Team Captain, the rest of the players are the other players on the team who follow his lead.

No matter how you slice it, the core campaign activity must be front and center in ongoing play. In a Grand Campaign, that's the top-level wargaming between Factions; in a smaller "explore the frontier/fill in the map" campaign, that's sending out expeditions to seek out places of interest and resources to feed into the fortified base camp that the expeditions operate out of. You get the idea.

Away from the table, you and your cadre stay on the ball; make certain that you vet prospects before they hit the table, ensure that lines of communication stay clear and open, that everyone is on the same page (and thus abides by club rules and protocol), and that the action keeps rolling until the campaign's premise (being a wargame campaign, and thus with Objectives, Win and Loss Conditions) is played out and the game is over.

Y'know, like it is in any other club activity.

Turns out that if you want to have the full experience of a hobby that originated in a social club environment, you need to form and run a social club.

So pick the right people for the job- and don't be shy about not putting merit over sentiment, not when success depends upon it.