Ever feel overwhelmed by managing your tabletop role-play game project? We’ve been there, and we’ve got your back! We spent this episode of Roll Play Grow diving deep into the world of project management tools. We shed light on how tools like Asana, Wrike, Notion, and Trello can help simplify your task organization, role assignment, note-taking, and deadline setting. Whether you’re drawn to the free version of Asana, the extensive database capabilities of Notion, or the beginner-friendly interface of Trello, we’ve got the insights you need.
Let’s not stop there, though. We also tackled the planning and execution of a Monster Manual. We broke down how to create effective timelines, manage revision cycles, and implement communication strategies to get everyone on the same page. Communication is the key to keeping your team motivated, and we provided tips on building those essential relationships with your team members. We also discussed spotting signs of dwindling motivation and adjusting accordingly. We believe in celebrating every success, big or small because they all contribute to the bigger picture. So, tune in, gather some crucial pointers, and level up your game project management skills!
This episode was edited by Sam Atkinson.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
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Time Stamps
- 0:00 Introduction & Updates 1:35 Project management resources
- 9:41 How to create a task with specific subtasks in your project management system
- 18:36 How to keep your project team motivated
- 25:47 Homework time!
- 27:17 Perfectionism vs. planning
- 30:23 Wrap-up
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Transcript
Courtney:
Hello and welcome to Roll Play Grow, the podcast for tabletop entrepreneurs, creators and fans. In this show, we dig into processes, challenges, tips and really look at how to grow a business in the tabletop role-play gaming space. Sit back and join in as we learn from the creators behind your favorite brands about who they are and how they are turning their passion for gaming into a career. Welcome to Roll Play Grow, the bi-monthly sanctuary where fantasy meets reality. I’m Courtney Stover.
Matt:
And I’m Matt Joro.
Courtney:
Today we are diving into one of our special episodes of the Proficiency Check. Here we equip TTRPG creators with the tools, business insights and skills to level up their game. So grab your notebooks, adventurers, because it is time to roll, play, and grow.
Matt:
Today we want to dig into the project management tools what they are and how to use them as part two of the project management episodes. There are a bunch of resources out there that you can use to help you stay organized and do the project planning that we talked about two weeks ago. They do things like let you list out action items and individual tasks, assign them to people, set deadlines and take notes on individual tasks. Courtney, where do we begin today?
Courtney:
So I want to talk about some of the resources that are available out there, and I know I mentioned one a lot last time called Asana, but there really are a bunch and I think we’ll talk about a few of them today. But essentially, like Matt just said, they are places where you can build out a project board, a project plan, as you are figuring out all of the things that we talked about last time. Who’s your project team? You’re going to add them to this project board. What is your communication plan going to be Great, throw that into your project management system. What are all the things that you’re going to have to do to make this project come to life? You’re going to start creating individual tasks on one of these platforms with everything that Matt just said. So I prefer to use Asana on my TTRPG project. There are a couple others out there that I use for other things. Honestly, if I’m being, if I had all of the budget, I would use something called Rike. I use it in my nine to five job, but it frankly, isn’t as good like the free version, and paid version is not something that I feel like paying for at the moment. So I use Asana and the things that you can do on there are. In the free version. You can invite up to 15 people on your team where everybody would be able to have access to see the project boards. You can create private boards that are private to just you. Unfortunately, with the free version you can only make it private to you. The rest of it would be to your team. The paid versions you can start inviting people to see like specific boards, but we’re mostly going to focus on free things for you in this episode. So, anyways, you can have up to 15 people in your team. They will see any board that you make. So you can make a board that is going to be All right. Here is the marketing plan for the sticker store that you’re starting up and here is the art project board. So we’re going to list out everything that all of the artists are working on. We’re going to make another board for meeting notes just to like have one spot where everybody can refer to any of the project check-in stuff, like what happened. Really, you can make as many boards as you want, but it’s going to be a good repository to see what all is happening, get files uploaded to it and do all sorts of fun features, like. You’ve got your own personal inbox, so anytime somebody tags you and like a comment or something, then you know exactly where to go. You can go straight there from your inbox.
Matt:
Awesome. I use Asana professionally but for my own projects when I’m working on my own in this space. For my own projects, I’ll use Notion, because there’s a lot of different things you can actually do with it. And when you find your own style, like I use the collapsible menus, that sort of stuff, and you can actually, if you really want to get into it, create like a database and that’s it’s more advanced. But if you have a lot of information say you’re building a world or something like that, and you want to be able to hey, I want to check out this NPC. Where is he from? What do they do? Who do they know? You can create a database that will, just one click, show you all of your information. It’s wonderful. It takes a little time to get used to. Youtube videos will show you all of it. It’s wonderful. I’m not using that. I’m literally using the back of junk mail and just writing it and leaving it on my desk.
Courtney:
Okay, well, we don’t want to do that.
Matt:
Right, yeah, but I, but I still write something down at least.
Courtney:
That’s interesting. I’ve seen so many advertisements for Notion but I haven’t used it yet, mostly because I’ve been like oh, I’ve got a project management thing I like using, like that’s fine, but that’s really interesting about being able to build a more of like a database.
Matt:
Yeah, there’s a ton of stuff you can do with it. I haven’t explored too deeply beyond the things that I wanted it for, but I know some people are doing some amazing things with it and notions free. You can go there right now.
Courtney:
Okay, okay, awesome. Well, I’m definitely going to check that one out Some other ones that are out there. I know Trello is a very popular starter one. I’ll be honest, I don’t really like Trello all that much. I feel like it doesn’t have enough, and if you want the look of the Trello board with the columns where you can move the tasks around as you want to, you can have a board view in Asana. So I just do that. But it is a good starter resource that a lot of people like to use. It’s free.
Matt:
Yeah, instead of using Trello, what I used to do is I would just take a whole pad of sticky notes and just use an entire wall, and that was my Trello. I would just move things over and then eventually, I would have a pile of sticky notes on the ground until I was done.
Courtney:
I love that Kanban lifestyle huh.
Matt:
Yes, yes.
Courtney:
Do you want to explain Kanban?
Matt:
No, no, I don’t.
Courtney:
And up. Yeah, kanban is a organizational tool that you can use to keep track of what is happening. You know what are to do items you’re going to have to get to eventually. What are you going to focus on, too, and what are you focusing on now and what did you actually finish? You can do actual sticky notes, like Matt said, and it’s kind of fun to do it like that, but very messy. Or you can use Trello or the Soda Board or whatever.
Matt:
It’s just more fun when I can hold it in my hand.
Courtney:
Tearing it off the wall is so satisfying Sure sure I do still use like an actual pen and paper agenda for my daily stuff because I just like the activity of writing things down.
Matt:
Yes.
Courtney:
So you use Notion? What are some other tools that you use to keep organized, Matt?
Matt:
I’m pretty basic. I will use an entire Discord server and just make as many channels and posts and edit them as we go, and it’s easy for people to just kind of like pop in. I use it for Dungeons and Dragons a lot, so for my professional games, people will want to know the updates of what happened in any games that they missed or who are these NPCs. I’ll just make a channel. All the information is there. But I also know that if I need to adjust things, I can also give people homework so that they know what they need to do. I can communicate with them on their own schedule. So that’s the free, super simple version that I do. For people who don’t want to say you don’t want to be part of a team on a random site, but everyone’s on Discord, it works.
Courtney:
Yeah, I find that it’s easiest to use Discord for just chatting about what’s going on with the thing, but the reason that you want to use something like Notion as on a red fellow, whatever it is that you wind up picking is because it helps you actually lay out your project plan with dates of when is it going to be worked on, when is the due date, who is doing what. So that’s actually something that I wanted to talk about. Next was giving an example of how you would actually create a task on whatever system you choose. So I know we were talking about the stickers. I do want to give the example, though, of if you are creating a monster for your TTRPG.
Matt:
Perfect. Yeah, let’s do where we’re making. What do you want to do? A monster manual this time?
Courtney:
Yeah, yeah, cool. Well, break it down and do a monster manual.
Matt:
All right.
Courtney:
One of the things that you would have done is figure out how many monsters are you making in your monster manual. Are you going to have 50 monsters? Great, you are going to have to identify what all of those monsters are going to be. Let’s say that you have a swamp monster. Matt, do you want to name a swamp? Do you want to name?
Matt:
a swamp monster. This monster is specifically named sludge.
Courtney:
Sludge.
Matt:
Okay.
Courtney:
So you are going to create what is called a parent task. That is going to be create sludge the swamp monster, and then you’re going to have a description area, write out a note on who sludge is. You know like, what is he supposed to be? What kind of resources are you going to grab for inspiration for writing out all of the things? It’s going to be high level notes for this parent task. Then, within that task, you should have the ability to create sub tasks and, like I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, planning, plan everything. You want to plan out every single step and it feels tedious, but if you do this, you are going to realize how many steps there are to get sludge to his amazing glory and you’re going to make sure that you have enough time to do it that everybody is able to do the work that they need to do. So here are some examples of sub tasks that you would do for sludge Is draft description of sludge the swamp monster. This isn’t like the final version. It’s just write up a draft of his description and then write up a draft of the stat block and then you’re going to have a sub task that’s reviewed, the description and stat block. That could be. If you’re the one that wrote the description, you want to send it off to somebody else to look at for feedback. If somebody else is the one that wrote up this description, you would be the one reviewing it. But you’re going to review and make sure you budget out some time to revise sludge’s description and stat block, and then you need to sign off. Eventually you’re going to get to it where you’re like sludge is perfect. This is exactly what I want sludge to be. Meanwhile, other sub tasks that you would have would be grab concept art for sludge from stock images. Now do a Google search. What do you find for swamp monsters. Get some concept arts together that you can then, for your next sub task, send your off your concept art for sludge. Then again, you want to have a review and revision cycle. So have some tasks laid out for those and then sign off on it’s swap monster art. And then what are you doing with it? Is it just going to like sit in a draft or like in a folder, somewhere that you know eventually you’ll have everybody ready to go and then you start going into layout. Great, make sure that you have a task for put it in that folder, whatever it is, is going to be the final, like it’s published. If you will, personally, I like to lay out all of these steps and then figure out when they’re going to happen, which you know depending on if you have a deadline you’re working towards already, you can work backwards. If you don’t have a deadline, you can work forwards. So you know things like okay, I’ve got a deadline in three months that has to be done. So the signing off on the art and the descriptions has to be done by the day before that deadline and it’s going to take three days for me to review it. So I’m going to have a three day window, which means that the final revision needs to be done four days before that deadline and it’s going to take three weeks for that review and revision time period. So okay, and you just work your way backwards. Alternatively, if you don’t have a deadline that you’re working towards, then you start at the front and say, all right, drafting time going to take two weeks, I will give two weeks and then, after those two weeks, I’m going to give myself three days to review and then we’re going to do another two weeks to revise and just you work forwards until you kind of figure out like, okay, how long is it going to take to do this or each one of those monsters?
Matt:
Huh, so? So essentially, I come up with sludge and I say I sit down, I write sludge, what they look like in their stats, and I say, hey, courtney, I got a two day deadline and you take a look at this for me, you do it, you send it back to me, I make any changes that you recommend on time, and then I go figure out what the art is supposed to be. We get the art made and we sign off on the whole thing and we’re on schedule and it’s reviewed and stamped, marked done.
Courtney:
Exactly.
Matt:
Wonderful yeah.
Courtney:
So I realize that, like planning out all of those different sub tasks can feel really tedious at the beginning, especially if you’re not used to doing it. So some ways that help, honestly, are to make up a little template. So, okay, we’re going to have 50 monsters, I’ve written out everything for sludge, all of these sub tasks, you know, I’ve assigned who the artist is going to be and I’m just going to copy this task with all of it sub tasks and I’m going to paste and then, instead of sludge the swap monster it’s a different one, but you know, essentially then you can just like have that as a template and copy paste it like 50 times if that’s what it takes, and then just make adjustments on like who’s doing each individual art piece, like who’s drafting each monster. The one thing that you know you’ll want to make sure you’re doing is like spacing it out to where you know. If I need two weeks to write up sludges, description and stop lock, but I’m also working on a bunch of other monsters too. I can probably work on multiple at the same time. You know, just that is where that communication is really vital with coming with your talking to your team to find out, like you know, okay, in like a two week time period, how many of these could you be working on to be able to turn into all at the same time for review? You know, and then you could have some overlapping. You want to stagger some so that you know, while I’m reviewing, sludge you matter, going ahead and working on like a few more. And you know, you’re just kind of pieced it all together.
Matt:
Absolutely. We’ll get through this monster manual. I’m excited about it.
Courtney:
I am too.
Matt:
And you know it’s funny. I like to remind people, too, that when they get to the things that feel tedious or difficult, that if you’re really trying to succeed, any part that you get stuck on is where a lot of people get stuck. So all you have to do to succeed is get through that one part where most people quit and you’re automatically ahead of everybody else. So if this feels tedious, if you’re running through this and you just want to tear your face off, just keep going and you will make it.
Courtney:
Yeah, it’s very, very true. And the thing to keep in mind is, like you know, if you can just get through it, know that once you get to the execution phase that we talked about two weeks ago, like you are going to feel so much better because you know exactly like, alright, for the month of December and January, we are working on drafting up all of these monsters for the monster manual. You know, simultaneously you’ve got the whole game getting designed too, you know, and you’re just piecing everything together, and just having all of the steps laid out means that it’s super easy to just go check in. You know, third week of December to be like, okay, we’ve got the holidays coming up next week. I know a lot of people are taking time off, so that’s cool. I mean, you know what? I should probably just have a conversation to be like hey, have a good time over the holidays. We’ll meet back up after New Year’s. And just as a reminder, like, your due date for these descriptions or these art pieces is the second week of January, so just want to make sure that, like, that’s top of your mind as you head into the holidays. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, have fun.
Matt:
Mindful planning, good communication, making sure you understand what is important to the people that you work with 100%.
Courtney:
Hey, entrepreneurs, I love introducing you to new creators every episode, but I could really use your support. I would love to invite you to join our Patreon page, where you’ll gain access to behind the scenes content. Add your questions to upcoming interviews and you could even receive a shout out on our site in an upcoming episode. To learn more, go to lightheartadventurescom. And now back to the show. Okay, so we figured out. You know getting the project plan together on whatever tool it is that you’re using. Let’s talk about actually making this stuff happen. So the more that you plan, the more that you’re going to be able to work on. You know knowing how often you’re supposed to check in with people, making sure that you’re accounting for any of those risks that we talked about two weeks ago. Where something goes on and an artist drops out, you need to replace them or shuffle their assignments to somebody else. Knowing how to respond to that issue will help your stress keep your stress levels down. One thing that I really wanted to make sure we talk about is a question that we actually got from a couple people on social media, which was how do you herd the cats? How do you keep people motivated and focused on the project?
Matt:
Um, so what I like to do is I mean, if I can’t bring everyone in at the same time and get that infectious sort of hey, we’re doing this, it’s fantastic, everything’s going to be the best, then I like to remind people. Well, I first like to figure out why people want to be part of a project. If it can connect to something that they care about, whether it is monetary or virtue or some other thing that is important to them, then I know what to remind them of. Later, when things get difficult, Simon Sinek will tell you. Begin with why, and that works every time. When you get stuck, when your teammates get stuck, check in with them. This is what we’re doing. Does this still sound good to you? And have those conversations. Make sure everyone’s comfortable, be on the same page, in the same headspace, and be willing to adapt and adjust, because sometimes people do lose that motivation, and you got to be okay with that. Because sometimes you know dragging things out will only slow everything down and hurt it even more, and just letting people go is also part of project management. So when you’re working on this and you’re working with people, again, it’s always going to be communication.
Courtney:
Yeah, 100%. You know, like there’s some things that you can do preemptively, especially if you’re at the beginning of the project, which, beyond establishing a communication plan, it’s also just building a relationship with your team members, like you want them to trust you, you want them to feel comfortable coming to you if they are having an issue. Beyond the regular check-in meetings that we’ve briefly discussed, like with everybody, have regular check-ins with each of your team members and, you know, don’t make it just about the project, make it also about how you’re doing in hell’s life. Like you know, I saw this really cute picture of your dog. Like, tell me about your dog, because it just establishes trust and gets them to feel like they know that if something’s going wrong, you’re not going to yell at them about it. Especially in this industry, a lot of us are indie. You know we’re just trying to make our way and stuff happens, stuff comes up, and so if they know that they can come to you with a problem and that you will not only listen but also work to help them solve it, you’re going to be able to keep the project moving, keep them happy and motivated to keep working on things. You know. So it’s really a lot of it is preventative things that you can do. But you know, sometimes morale is low and things happen and you know, like you said, matt, like you need to be able to recognize if someone is just not going to be able to continue on with the project and doesn’t really have an interest in doing so. Like, make sure that you know, stay respectful, but it’s okay to let them go when you have to.
Matt:
Yep happens all the time, a lot of people will say higher, slow fire, fast. But I always have that spot in my heart where it’s like I want to give this person a chance and it’s like sometimes it works out great. Sometimes it is a mistake, but being honest with them and yourself will be what gets you through it. And with this plan, then you already know the risks and impact to your budget and your schedule and you have to measure things accordingly when you need to make these leadership decisions. So you are well equipped here, instead of just going by the gut and feeling like I don’t want to call this person anymore. Yeah absolutely.
Courtney:
You know like it sucks when it happens. But if you know going in that it could happen, then at least you know how to deal with it when it does. But just because somebody is having a hard time doesn’t necessarily mean that they need to leave at the project. So you’re going to want to just do that personal, like one-on-one check-in. Is there something going on in their personal life and they just need to deal with it for a couple of weeks? But then they can come back. Okay, how much can you delay the stuff they were working on? Is there someone else you can shift it off to? Maybe they’re just feeling disconnected and it’s like, okay, cool, I will make sure that we do some more stuff with the team so that we can do some show and tells and see like what it is that they’re working on. It’s one thing that I’ve learned and just seen over the last decade is that when project team members can see more of the project than just what they’re working on and when they understand the impact that their things have on the other team members and honestly most people feel motivated then to not let the other folks down and so like having a little bit of a show and tell them say like, hey, this is what I’ve been working on and it’s still in development. Would love your feedback. That can help inspire them if they’re feeling stuck and it helps them realize like, ooh, yeah, you are waiting on my art to put into your layout. I really need to finish this piece. Let me work on that for you.
Matt:
Yeah, that sort of thing I actually found worked out really well for me on my last big project, because it was a lot less of hey, get your piece over, it’s a handoff, do your thing, it sort of. We developed this sort of speech where it was almost like hey, who have you helped today? Who helped you today? And it’s examining the impact and the meaning of your progress and because of that, everyone sort of just felt more attached, more integrated and just immersed in the project and in the end they felt a lot more pride as a team because it was like, hey, I got to make this easier for someone because I did it, I did it on time, it was perfect, we’re an excellent team. And like, hey, high five, we were on the other side of the world, but this is fantastic and you’re great to work with, as opposed to, again, just checklists.
Courtney:
There is one thing that you will make as a project manager. It will be every checklist you can possibly think of.
Matt:
Oh yeah.
Courtney:
Okay, I think that that is a good point to wrap up today. So, as usual, you have some homework. You are gonna take what you did after the last episode, which was thinking about what is your goal, what is your why? What is like project are you making? What do you need? What are you missing? And then you are going to look at some of the resources that we talked about, which I will have linked in the show notes, about Notion Asana. I’ll even give you a Trello so you can look at it if you want to, but you’re gonna pick one or a couple and you’re gonna just experiment with them, make a free account, play around, find out which one you like until you get a little bit of a system going. And then you are gonna take the goals that you laid out and just make a board that is project goals and write it all out so it’s documented, and then start making some other boards. Like, okay, I am starting my sticker store, so I’m gonna have a whole project board that is around getting the LLC started and setting up the actual web store. And then I’m gonna have a project board that is about working with artists to design all of my 50 stickers. You’re gonna just start playing around and then, if you’ve got a project team, you can start adding them to it, but your main homework is to find the system that works for you and add all of the things you can possibly think of to it.
Matt:
I have a bonus question, if we have time Totally, what are your thoughts on like perfectionism versus planning? When do I know I’m done? Planning?
Courtney:
That, I think, is a constant battle. Yeah, I would say that done is better than perfect. That’s the saying that I always really appreciate, as it is, especially if you are a perfectionist, and it’s really easy to get stuck into. No, I got to do more planning. I got to do more planning. I give you examples of all the subtasks that you could have. That would be standard, but at the end of the day, if all you have is create sludge the swamp monster, as long as you budget enough time for the beginning of the drafting to when you have to have it signed off on, you can just start with that. Don’t let making subtask after subtask stop you from actually getting your project going.
Matt:
Oh, so like planning as procrastination too, yeah, yeah, so if you’re sitting there and you have pages and pages of things that you want to do and you have executed on zero, what would you advise?
Courtney:
Yeah, that is when you need to just pick one thing. I like to honestly start with. What is the thing that is going to take the least amount of effort. Let me do it so I can check it off. And then pick another thing that’s going to be lower effort, so that you can check it off. And as you start getting through those things, then hopefully you get motivation for yourself on like, okay, I got these things done. I feel really good about doing that. It’s time to like pick the next thing, or you know what. That’s all I’m going to be able to do today, but tomorrow I’m going to do this one thing.
Matt:
Like a motivation snowball effect. Exactly, yeah. So if you’ve been listening to all of this and you have your homework, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Does that conclude our project management episodes?
Courtney:
I think for now it does yeah.
Matt:
So, again, if you enjoyed any of these, please reach out to us. Let us know how your homework went. We would love to hear about it, and we would love to hear about anything else that you would like to hear about.
Courtney:
Yeah, definitely be sure to head us up. You can email roleplaygrow at gmailcom. You can find roleplaygrow on Patreon, on Blue Sky, on threads. Haven’t made a Twitter account because I don’t know if Twitter is going to live, but you can find me at catcherrpg on Twitter.
Matt:
Yes, and as usual, I am Dungeon Glitch and you can find me anywhere that you probably look. So, yeah, if you message our email account here, then we will work on what you send us and it’s a lot of fun for us. So thank you so much for hanging out.
Courtney:
Yes, y’all are the best and we will see you next time.
Matt:
Bye.
Courtney:
To contact us. You rollplaygrow@gmail. com email . T. here are a lot of social media sites out there right now, so look for roleplaygrow for the show account and look for either Ketra or Ketra RPG for my accounts and Dungeon Glitch for Matt’s accounts. Lastly, I want to give a special shout out to our editor, Sam Atkinson, for help, as always. Appreciated. Sam, Thank you all so much for listening and I’ll see you next time on Roll Play Grow.
