Project Management (PMBOK) is a skill to structure Uncertainty. It’s for those who want to deal with uncertainty systematically. Its funny that the skill falls under Engineer, Management, and Analysis fields.
I dont know how many PMBOK gamers there are that when facing a Challenge go through their PMBOK hard-wired skillsets: Identify Stakeholders and Develop Charter. It’s weird because outside of PMBOK there is no structure or standard how best to approach uncertainty. Having a hard-wired/ conditioned response is a pretty important skillset when shit-hit-the-fan…
I guess its the belief that Characters have “Moxy” or agency. This is where GM’s and their personal beliefs come into the game – where Heroism or Agency is something that can be TRAINED and its inherent quality (A genre of Storytelling that I seem to have encountered )
Questions
- Does it matter? Kinda for me ever since I struggled with Anxiety I found having a skillset to face uncertainty very useful. Combined with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy techniques I’m able to better regulate the emotions I feel when Problems happen and I have to act.
- Who will it negatively affect? People who don’t believe in skills or learnable behavior. People are able to compartmentalize Agency as “Their Agency” and everyone as an “NPC” as well as blame the victim. There are people who believe being Poor is a Choice, even among gamers, and don’t see problems of Agency, Learned Helplessness , Social Injustice or Problems as something that does not affect them. Gaming has many strong reasons to have an audience: it is fun in itself and you don’t need to be a History, someone who observers and deals with social problems or come from a different set of experiences.
It will affect those who have a very different sense of ethics to the GM, because there are limits to tolerating pretend bad behavior. The way a regular person doesn’t dream up mutilating or harming their loved ones – a regular person has problems dealing with even imagined harm and behavior far outside their own.
Actions
- Admin (Traveller) or Administration (GURPS) or Intelligence Rolls to Structure Uncertainty.
- It’s not bad to slow down and breakdown the Problem. It only becomes boring if other players don’t feel engaged if they have no stakes. The GM or other Players (the Project Manager).
- If you do get into PMBOK then practicing Stakeholder Analysis and Management becomes one of the most practiced skill with dealing with players. Action being that – if they are no Engage find out why and ask how can they be.
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