Delegating and Why It’s Important

(or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Loved Asking For Help)

This one is kind of going to hit on both a meta- and gaming-specific level. Because one thing I’ve often noticed is that awesome, creative, ambitious people tend to be really bad at asking for help. Which is a shame. Because awesome, creative, ambitious people often make the best GMs, and the best people to go into business creating a streaming network with. But then, you find yourself getting frustrated because they promise a lot of amazing things, and then aren’t able to deliver on all of them.

And of course they can’t! No one can. These people usually have ideas and thoughts that, while amazing, are far beyond what any human being has time and energy (or spoons) to accomplish.

Case in point? I wasn’t the one who was supposed to write this week’s blog. Today’s topic came from a list that Alex had laid out at the end of 2023 as a road-map for 2024, designed to make sure that we had new content on both the blog and on our Patreon (are you supporting our Patreon yet? You can, at patreon.com/UntoldStoriesProject.) If you know Alex, you’ll also realize that he had filled out topic ideas for the first six months of the year, week-by-week, and that he had the first four or five posts ready as of January 1.

You also know that Alex is the Line Developer for Mutants & Masterminds at Green Ronin Publishing, and they’re in the middle of a pretty significant project (namely the Kickstarter and launch of Valiant Adventures, which I’ve heard a few people call Mutants & Masterminds Third-and-a-Half Edition). He’s an author, working on the next book in his Titan City Chronicles series, and several other projects related to Titan City. He runs one of our weekly shows here at USP, and runs the stream and plays in another. He also has a day job, and a wife, and several other side gigs.

In other words, he literally doesn’t have enough hours in the day to do everything he wants to do. But he’s ambitious and creative (and awesome) and wants to do it all.

The problem there is that when you promise a bunch of stuff, and then realize you can’t carry all of it, you end up dropping things. And then you have people wondering why the thing was dropped, when they would have been happy to carry it for you.

All of which is why I jumped in to write this blog post. And you’ll see that across USP – we want to give you much more than we’re able to do. And occasionally we need a reality check. But we could also ask for help from other people.

But this is also good advice around the gaming table, for GMs and for players.

Most GMs (me included), want to make our campaigns as immersive as possible. We have ideas for maintaining calendars, and maps, and information about all aspects of the campaign world, and lists of loot that the characters have gathered, and information about all the NPCs that they’ve met (or know). And it’s way more than anyone can maintain – especially in the middle of the session where you’re running a game.

We can delegate to our players. If I (Aaron) am running a game for Brandon, Calvin, Deuce and Everly, rather than trying to do everything myself I can break the work out.

So, a traditional awesome, creative, ambitious GM might look at the division of work as such:
A – Write the game, run the game, prep the stat sheets, keep notes on all NPCs, maintain in-game calendar, keep track of party loot

B – Have fun playing!

C – Have fun playing!

D – Have fun playing!

E – Have fun playing!

All of which works for one or two sessions, and then the GM burns out and doesn’t want to run another game for six months.

Perhaps a healthier model might be one in which the division of labor is:

A – Write the game, run the game, prep the stat sheets and have fun running!

B – Keep the campaign journal with an overview of the sessions, and timekeeper, noting when things happened, and have fun playing!

C – Keep the list of all of the loot and figure out each person’s share, and have fun playing!

D – Keep notes abut NPCs the party has met, and have fun playing!

E – Coordinate who is bringing snacks, work on art resources for the campaign, and have fun playing!

But this idea can also apply for players and how they can delegate to the other players. In some games, especially superhero games where characters can be hyper competent, there can be a desire to make sure your character can do something about any given problem. These are the characters with variable powers, huge skill lists, etc. On the one hand, these characters are rarely completely unprepared, but one thing they can do is make the other heroes in the party feel redundant.

This is a place where a Session 0 can be incredibly helpful. Make sure when designing your character, you don’t have to figure out how they can do it all. Figure out the things that your character is completely unprepared for, and talk with the other players and make sure everyone has a niche.

In a typical fantasy adventuring party, you don’t want five fighters, or five wizards, or five rogues, or five clerics. Ideally, you want a mix of a front-line fighter type, an arcane magic specialist, a divine magic/healing specialist, and a trap-finder/disarmer, and then the fifth character can either double-up or be a pinch-hitter for one or more of the other roles (perhaps a bard). And while you can perhaps have a competent party with five bards, you still really want those bards to specialize their focus.

Gaming is fun and a great pastime and a way to stretch your creative muscles. And we all want to enrich that experience for ourselves and the other people at the table. But if we’re willing to delegate some of that work to the other people engaged in it, we can accomplish a lot more for a lot longer.

Happy gaming!