Career and Lifestyle, Season 16, Theory and Technique

16.26: Working With Teams

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Your Hosts: Mary Robinette Kowal, Cassandra Khaw, Dan Wells, James L. Sutter, and Howard Tayler

Our series of game writing episodes draws to a close with a discussion about working with teams. This last skill set, these ways in which you learn to excel at collaborative projects, is often far more important than any of your other skills.

Credits: This episode was recorded by Marshall Carr, Jr., and mastered by Alex Jackson

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Spend some time brainstorming a game idea with a friend. Try to draw out and explore their best ideas, and encourage them to suggest changes to your own, to make sure you’re both contributing equally.

Heart: The City Beneath RPG, by Grant Howitt & Christopher Taylor

5 thoughts on “16.26: Working With Teams”

  1. I’m sorry this one is late. I finished a month of sketching in books on Friday the 25th, and I finished SO HARD I pretty much dropped everything else until the following Tuesday—including things like “pick up my phone when someone texts me to ask where the episode is,” which is a thing which happened on Monday.

    If this serves as an object lesson for clear team communications, or “how to fall on your sword,” so be it.

    1. Back when I was running projects, the rule was that after the crisis and the cleanup, the next step was to take a deep breath and try to figure out how to avoid that problem in the future. We tried hard to learn from the places we stumbled, so that we didn’t have to do it again…

  2. The “no head canon” rule is also great marriage advice.
    Also good team advice from quote my father: ” if it doesn’t work in multiples, it doesn’t work”
    Basically if this thing only works with one or two people but not multiples, it probably doesn’t actually work.

  3. Our team, Mary Robinette, Cassandra, Dan, James, and Howard, wrapped up their work on game writing by talking about working with teams. From the attitudes, being on a team together, compromising, stepping on people’s toes, and praising your coworkers, to advancing in a company, and avoiding burnout and head canon, they raise plenty of points that you can read all about in the transcript available now in the archives.

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