Goal-Setting
Jun. 8th, 2006 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleribGoal-setting is another one of those generic life skills that has spawned hundreds and hundreds of books. It promises weight loss and fitness, success on the job or at school, fulfilment of dreams and now, better game-mastering. And while goal-setting by itself won't actually do any of these things, it is an important tool for achieving them.
If you Google "goal-setting," you will get a whole bunch of web pages offering the same bullet points I'm about to go into here. Some, I think, are more important than others.
Break big goals into little ones. "Encourage role-playing" or "Be a better game-master" are wonderful ambitions, but how are you going to go after them? Right-sized goals should almost suggest the way that you're going to go about attaining them. Smaller goals also can be accomplished in a smaller timeframe, which gives you a sense of progress.
Be specific. "Be a better GM" is very vague as well as being very large. What's better? How will you know when you're better?
Maybe "better" in this case means "more organized." That's one ambiguity resolved, but a new one is introduced: "more." More than what? More than right now? How much more?
Well, how are you disorganized? Maybe every NPC is named Bob and you're always flipping through the books to find rules. So try instead: "I will have a list of NPC names on hand. I will bookmark the Advantages, Healing and Combat sections of the player's guide."
Well, duh?! Isn't that too simple, too specific, too easy? A bookmark? You can do that ten minutes before your game!
Yes. Yes, you can. That's the point, actually. And it will make you more organized. If you are still dissatisfied with your organization, you can add more goals for next week.
Deadlines are your friend. The most common way to sabotage your own goals is to not put a deadline on them. How many folks have a project they'll do "someday"? Yeah, I see a lot of hands out there. In the bardic arts, we have people who set goals like "Learn more songs." Okay, 1) too general, and 2) no deadline. Instead, "I will learn Finnegan's Wake and Old Dun Cow to perform them by the bardic circle at Crown Tournament."
For a game-master, your games make wonderful deadlines. Hopefully, you are already hitting your goals of "Have an adventure to run by Friday night." Now, add in other small, attainable goals each week. "This week, I will stat up all the NPCs appearing in this week's adventure on index cards." "This week, I will map the castle out ahead of time." "This week, I will write some flavor text for the most important descriptions in the adventure."
Choose the right "target number" to challenge yourself. You don't want to set goals that are too hard or too easy. "I will rewrite every NPC that's ever appeared in the game, find character portraits online, and link them all together in a Wiki on my laptop - this week!" That's just setting yourself up for failure. On the other hand, if you never challenge yourself, you will never improve.
This is a hard one, because you don't always know what the right challenge level is. You'll have to wiggle around and try some goals that are too easy and too hard to get a feel for it. Also: it's okay to fail. If you achieve every goal you ever set, on time, then you're probably not challenging yourself. Make it a little hard, and be a little disappointed if you don't get everything done that you wanted. But don't, for Pete's sake, beat yourself up about it and bemoan and bewail your limited willpower and general suckitude. You know the classic "Well, since I had that pat of butter on my bread, I may as well go ahead and have the brownie sundae" meme that infects dieters? The "If I'm not perfect, I've failed and I might as well fail in a big way"? Yeah, screw that. Nobody's perfect.
A lot of people never set goals because they're afraid they won't meet them, and then they'll be imperfect failures. Nobody's perfect. If you want to improve a skill, or work on some area of your life, don't let fear of failure keep you from it.
And we're talking about gaming, for crying out loud. The world at large really couldn't care less if you didn't manage to get the NPCs onto index cards this week. It does not make you a bad person.
Prioritize. This almost goes hand-in-hand with the one just above. If you set too many goals, there's no way you'll attain them all. There's only 24 hours in each day. If you have LOTS and LOTS of stuff you want to do (well, hello, kettle!), start with the stuff that's most important.
Be positive, write it down. These are classic entries on the lists of "how to goal-set." I don't find them quite as important, personally. Sometimes, "Thou shalt not" is what you really need. Writing things down - to do lists, notes on your GM screen - can be really helpful, or not. I think it depends on the person.
That's sort of the generic, overdone how-to guide. Additionally:
Set your goals, not somebody else's. Forget "I should." Go with "I want." If you and your players love your weekly hack-n-slash dungeon crawl, do not let all the condescending sneers in the gaming world convince you that you "should" change your playing style into something more "sophisticated."
Now, if you're curious about all this hubbub about other kinds of gaming - if you want to try something different - by all means! Go play! But don't set goals that you don't actually want to achieve.
Good goal-setting isn't just about someday, it's about today and this week. True, it's great to have long-term goals. Necessary, even. But you will not get to the distant mountain by staring at it longingly. You put one foot in front of the other. No, the mountain doesn't look any closer. You have to take it on a certain amount of faith that it'll happen.
Revisit your goals. If you keep walking toward that mountain and the dang thing never seems to get closer, maybe it's time to reconsider the approach.
I've mentioned NPCs on index cards a few times as organizational tool. Using such a tool consistently is a great goal to have - small, specific, with weekly deadlines to write new cards. I adopted that very goal myself once, and it worked with it for a while... but the index cards really didn't get me what I wanted. The tool didn't work for me, and it made no sense to maintain a goal to use a tool that didn't work. So I discarded both the tool and the goal. Isn't that much better than beating myself up for not using index cards?
...the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can... "Stop Bob from being such a power gamer weenie" is not a good goal. You cannot control Bob. At best, you can offer Bob opportunities to play in ways that do not offend you, and ask Bob if he will change his behavior. You cannot force the change, though.
You can goal-set with your players. I recommend it, in fact. If you have a goal to "Enrich the game with romantic subplots" and the PCs have a goal to "Avoid icky mushy romance stuff," you're going to be one disappointed GM. If you have a quiet player and you want him more involved, see if he has a similar goal. As an Evil Stage Hog, I tend to assume that everyone wants lots of face time, and was very worried about my shy and quiet player. I'd try and spotlight him, give him face time - and he'd shrink away from it. He didn't like attention and pressure - his style was to contribute only when he'd thought things over and was confident that he had something good to say. It surprised the heck out of me, and I dropped my goal to give him more face time.
Finding out your players' goals helps you plan campaigns, too. Does someone have a character arc they want to follow? A story arc? Is there a theme they want to explore? Do they really, really want to crack a lot of monster heads? You can find out a lot about their Power Gamer/Butt Kicker/Method Actor/etc tendencies by asking them what goals they have for the game. If, that is, they don't look at you funny when you ask them. But if you explain why you're asking (again, we're being grown-ups here), in my experience chances are good that they'll give it some thought and get back to you. I mean, you're giving them the opportunity to tell you what kind of game to run to make them happiest.
So tomorrow, we'll look at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
m_streight's goal to "Encourage more role-playing" in light of all this. I can only suggest an outline approach to attaining this goal, since I don't have all the details of his Knowledge and Skills, nor even of what he means by "more" or "role-playing."
If you Google "goal-setting," you will get a whole bunch of web pages offering the same bullet points I'm about to go into here. Some, I think, are more important than others.
Break big goals into little ones. "Encourage role-playing" or "Be a better game-master" are wonderful ambitions, but how are you going to go after them? Right-sized goals should almost suggest the way that you're going to go about attaining them. Smaller goals also can be accomplished in a smaller timeframe, which gives you a sense of progress.
Be specific. "Be a better GM" is very vague as well as being very large. What's better? How will you know when you're better?
Maybe "better" in this case means "more organized." That's one ambiguity resolved, but a new one is introduced: "more." More than what? More than right now? How much more?
Well, how are you disorganized? Maybe every NPC is named Bob and you're always flipping through the books to find rules. So try instead: "I will have a list of NPC names on hand. I will bookmark the Advantages, Healing and Combat sections of the player's guide."
Well, duh?! Isn't that too simple, too specific, too easy? A bookmark? You can do that ten minutes before your game!
Yes. Yes, you can. That's the point, actually. And it will make you more organized. If you are still dissatisfied with your organization, you can add more goals for next week.
Deadlines are your friend. The most common way to sabotage your own goals is to not put a deadline on them. How many folks have a project they'll do "someday"? Yeah, I see a lot of hands out there. In the bardic arts, we have people who set goals like "Learn more songs." Okay, 1) too general, and 2) no deadline. Instead, "I will learn Finnegan's Wake and Old Dun Cow to perform them by the bardic circle at Crown Tournament."
For a game-master, your games make wonderful deadlines. Hopefully, you are already hitting your goals of "Have an adventure to run by Friday night." Now, add in other small, attainable goals each week. "This week, I will stat up all the NPCs appearing in this week's adventure on index cards." "This week, I will map the castle out ahead of time." "This week, I will write some flavor text for the most important descriptions in the adventure."
Choose the right "target number" to challenge yourself. You don't want to set goals that are too hard or too easy. "I will rewrite every NPC that's ever appeared in the game, find character portraits online, and link them all together in a Wiki on my laptop - this week!" That's just setting yourself up for failure. On the other hand, if you never challenge yourself, you will never improve.
This is a hard one, because you don't always know what the right challenge level is. You'll have to wiggle around and try some goals that are too easy and too hard to get a feel for it. Also: it's okay to fail. If you achieve every goal you ever set, on time, then you're probably not challenging yourself. Make it a little hard, and be a little disappointed if you don't get everything done that you wanted. But don't, for Pete's sake, beat yourself up about it and bemoan and bewail your limited willpower and general suckitude. You know the classic "Well, since I had that pat of butter on my bread, I may as well go ahead and have the brownie sundae" meme that infects dieters? The "If I'm not perfect, I've failed and I might as well fail in a big way"? Yeah, screw that. Nobody's perfect.
A lot of people never set goals because they're afraid they won't meet them, and then they'll be imperfect failures. Nobody's perfect. If you want to improve a skill, or work on some area of your life, don't let fear of failure keep you from it.
And we're talking about gaming, for crying out loud. The world at large really couldn't care less if you didn't manage to get the NPCs onto index cards this week. It does not make you a bad person.
Prioritize. This almost goes hand-in-hand with the one just above. If you set too many goals, there's no way you'll attain them all. There's only 24 hours in each day. If you have LOTS and LOTS of stuff you want to do (well, hello, kettle!), start with the stuff that's most important.
Be positive, write it down. These are classic entries on the lists of "how to goal-set." I don't find them quite as important, personally. Sometimes, "Thou shalt not" is what you really need. Writing things down - to do lists, notes on your GM screen - can be really helpful, or not. I think it depends on the person.
That's sort of the generic, overdone how-to guide. Additionally:
Set your goals, not somebody else's. Forget "I should." Go with "I want." If you and your players love your weekly hack-n-slash dungeon crawl, do not let all the condescending sneers in the gaming world convince you that you "should" change your playing style into something more "sophisticated."
Now, if you're curious about all this hubbub about other kinds of gaming - if you want to try something different - by all means! Go play! But don't set goals that you don't actually want to achieve.
Good goal-setting isn't just about someday, it's about today and this week. True, it's great to have long-term goals. Necessary, even. But you will not get to the distant mountain by staring at it longingly. You put one foot in front of the other. No, the mountain doesn't look any closer. You have to take it on a certain amount of faith that it'll happen.
Revisit your goals. If you keep walking toward that mountain and the dang thing never seems to get closer, maybe it's time to reconsider the approach.
I've mentioned NPCs on index cards a few times as organizational tool. Using such a tool consistently is a great goal to have - small, specific, with weekly deadlines to write new cards. I adopted that very goal myself once, and it worked with it for a while... but the index cards really didn't get me what I wanted. The tool didn't work for me, and it made no sense to maintain a goal to use a tool that didn't work. So I discarded both the tool and the goal. Isn't that much better than beating myself up for not using index cards?
...the serenity to accept those things I cannot change, the courage to change those things I can... "Stop Bob from being such a power gamer weenie" is not a good goal. You cannot control Bob. At best, you can offer Bob opportunities to play in ways that do not offend you, and ask Bob if he will change his behavior. You cannot force the change, though.
You can goal-set with your players. I recommend it, in fact. If you have a goal to "Enrich the game with romantic subplots" and the PCs have a goal to "Avoid icky mushy romance stuff," you're going to be one disappointed GM. If you have a quiet player and you want him more involved, see if he has a similar goal. As an Evil Stage Hog, I tend to assume that everyone wants lots of face time, and was very worried about my shy and quiet player. I'd try and spotlight him, give him face time - and he'd shrink away from it. He didn't like attention and pressure - his style was to contribute only when he'd thought things over and was confident that he had something good to say. It surprised the heck out of me, and I dropped my goal to give him more face time.
Finding out your players' goals helps you plan campaigns, too. Does someone have a character arc they want to follow? A story arc? Is there a theme they want to explore? Do they really, really want to crack a lot of monster heads? You can find out a lot about their Power Gamer/Butt Kicker/Method Actor/etc tendencies by asking them what goals they have for the game. If, that is, they don't look at you funny when you ask them. But if you explain why you're asking (again, we're being grown-ups here), in my experience chances are good that they'll give it some thought and get back to you. I mean, you're giving them the opportunity to tell you what kind of game to run to make them happiest.
So tomorrow, we'll look at
m_streight's goal to "Encourage more role-playing" in light of all this. I can only suggest an outline approach to attaining this goal, since I don't have all the details of his Knowledge and Skills, nor even of what he means by "more" or "role-playing."
