Ready to up your game in the TTRPG space? Ever wondered how project management skills could change your trajectory as a creator? We dive into the nitty-gritty of project management, starting with the basics – what a project is, who a project manager is, and the phases within a project. We’ve got your back on each step of this journey, demystifying processes and sharing relatable examples to bring clarity. And we’re not stopping at the theory, our next episode promises to unlock the world of project management tools for you.
But that’s not all. A project isn’t just about the process; it’s about people too. We unpack the art of managing your team and resources, from project initiation to dealing with setbacks. We delve into the significance of project planning and risk management, guiding you to set up budgets and team agreements effectively. We also talk about working with artists, creating an environment that respects their creativity and time. As we explore the role of a project manager, we emphasize the importance of monitoring progress and ensuring the quality of life for your team. So, whether you’re a solo creator or part of a team, these insights are here to make your TTRPG journey smoother.
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
- 00:00:08 Introduction
- 00:01:27 We’re talking about project management today
- 00:06:00 Defining projects and project management
- 00:08:54 Managing Project Phases and Team Communication
- 00:10:57 Project phases and how they relate to your ttrpg projects
- 00:33:21 Homework!
- 00:35:57 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.
Matt:
Welcome to Roll Play Grow, the bi-monthly sanctuary where fantasy meets reality. I’m Matt Joro.
Courtney:
And I’m Courtney Stover.
Matt:
Today we dive into one of our special episodes 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 today it’s time Roll Play Grow.
Courtney:
So today we are going to kick off a new series. So if you’ve been listening for a little while, ever since Matt joined on the show, we did a three-part series on building an online community, not just a following. So today we’re kicking off another series where we’re going to deep dive into project management, which, personally, I’m excited about because I’ve been doing that for a really long time.
Matt:
I think a lot of people need project management and they don’t know it. They’d be like, oh yeah, I’m just going to wing it, I’m just going to go on this project, it’s all going to come together.
Courtney:
It doesn’t work, it just never works. You get like partway into it and you’re like, okay, I found like all these team members and man, nobody’s talking to me, Nobody’s like getting their stuff turned in when they said they were going to do it Like this sucks.
Matt:
Yeah, one person who’s done, one person who hasn’t started, two people don’t know where the chat is. Yeah, next thing you know you’re past your deadline. We don’t want you to happen to you. That shouldn’t happen to you.
Courtney:
Yeah, so I’m definitely looking forward to digging into this. Matt, I’d like to know what your experience with project management is.
Matt:
So, professionally, I have a background with Scrum, so I know how to do project management in various settings. Once upon a time I owned a video game company and we did a lot when we realized we needed the project manager, because we ran into a lot of the issues that I actually mentioned before. That was me. So when you have, like, an art team and a narrative team and you have coders and all that stuff, you need to keep people on the same page and keeping them motivated and moving through all those things. So a project manager is paramount, it’s absolutely necessary and if you can’t do it yourself, absolutely find someone who can. I’ve been the project manager, I’ve worked with project managers and I will never, ever, do another large project without one. That is my experience.
Courtney:
Yeah, for me, I really started on like a project coordination into management track professionally like a decade ago, like it has been a long time, and so some of it I was like teaching myself. And then I took an official course back in 2019 so that I could get my PMP certification, which is project management professional, which if you want to do project management in the corporate world, that is really important to get that certification this way. It really helps you bump up your salary. Yes, so a lot of good things. That certification mostly focuses on what’s called waterfall project management, where there is like a specific timeline that you work through. There’s a start, there’s an end, like that’s going to be the majority of the projects out there. And then a few years later, I got my scrum certification, which you have mentioned scrum, for those of you that are like that’s a rugby term like what is that? Scrum project management is a type of what’s called agile project management, which, honestly, like the best way to think of it is think about you’ve got a software, you’ve got a video game or you’ve got Facebook, whatever. That is going to be an agile project, because you are picking like what are the biggest like upgrades that we need to do. You focus on those and what’s got to sprint for like a short amount of time like two to four weeks typically and you like get it done. If anything else comes up, great, it goes in the backlog, you’re going to deal with it later and you just do like iterative updates. So those are the types of project management. I got certifications and both. I’ve been doing it in corporate life for a very long time, so definitely excited to take into this today.
Matt:
Yeah, hopefully we can break it down for all the people who are just like what is happening right now. So stick with us and we will get you through it. And hopefully it encourages you to try out your own large projects one day. And because with this, with this expertise, I think you’ll be well equipped and on your way.
Courtney:
Definitely so, like I said, this is going to be a bit of a series. So in today’s episode we are going to get down into the absolute basics with, like, what is a project, what does a project manager do, and like, what are the phases within a waterfall project? So we’re going to focus mostly on the waterfowl style that I mentioned at first, because the majority of projects within the TTRPG space like if you’re designing a game, if you’re launching an Etsy store, like whatever are going to follow this type of project management. So there are five phases going to get into that. Give you some examples. And then in the next episode we’re going to start looking at tools that like how do you actually get it all organized?
Matt:
Awesome.
Courtney:
I’ll kick us off.
Matt:
Yeah, let’s go.
Courtney:
Okay. So, starting super basic, what’s a project? And honestly, a project is a temporary endeavor that results in a deliverable or multiple deliverables, and it has an end date. So this is not daily operations. This is not just I’m fulfilling orders. Got to make sure I get these orders done, you know, by like the deadline that I set for myself. Like this is something that is like you are working towards a specific goal and you get that objective done. You have a deliverable which is can be anything like. Okay, I am. My project is to set up a website. The deliverable is the website. You might have multiple like things within that which are different art pieces that are going up on your website, or the initial like pages need to be their own deliverable, but essentially, like you’re making that website. Once that website is live and it is done, so you can have a project that will establish how a daily operation will work. For example, I need to set up my Etsy store and I need to know how I am going to do the fulfillment like and as you set up all of those processes. Like that’s part of your project, but once you have it up and running, your project is over. Project management focuses on planning and organizing that project and all of the resources. So things you’re going to be doing are figuring out what is your project goal, what’s your timeline, what is your team, how many people are on your team, what is their schedule, and you efficiently guide that team through all of the phases that you build out with them until you finish the project. A lot of it is like kind of like to picture a spider in a web. Like you are the center point of communication between all parts of that web. You know, like you have to talk to your artist, you talk to your game designer, you talk to your layout designer, your editor, your sensitivity consultant All of these people you make sure that whomever your project sponsor is which is the person usually if it’s in tabletop, like if you’re designing a game, like the game designer that first started it and then hired you as project manager you know you’re making sure that their vision gets communicated to the rest of the team. If you are the game designer and trying to be the project manager, then you’re going to want these skills as well.
Matt:
I got a question what is the minimum amount of people that should constitute a team that requires a project manager?
Courtney:
I.
Matt:
Is it only just you and one other person? Is that good enough to put these skills to work?
Courtney:
Yes, absolutely Honestly. Even if it’s just you knowing how to plan out all of the steps that you want to do and everything you want to do for your project, it’s still going to be useful to have all of these skills.
Matt:
So, big or small project, this is helpful to everybody.
Courtney:
Absolutely yes. Yeah, so I know a lot of what I said sounds kind of corporate, so I want to just maybe give a little bit of example. You know so, matt, you’re designing the game. You found artists, you have an editor, a sensitivity reader, a layout designer. You’re having a really hard time managing everybody. People are missing deadlines. You’re communicating in three different platforms, depending on the person you’re talking to.
Matt:
That’s a nightmare. That is a nightmare scenario.
Courtney:
I was just thinking about that.
Matt:
Wow, yeah, no, yeah, definitely want to rein that in.
Courtney:
So, yeah, these tools will help you. Even if you are in that situation right now and you’re not kicking off a project, learning these tools is going to help you get that team back on track, you know, get you a schedule like come to an agreement about communication tools. Get you meeting deadlines. Just help you know how to deal with setbacks when things do go wrong, because, unfortunately, no matter how much you plan, you will still have issues. But you can have a plan on how you’re going to deal with the issues when they come up.
Matt:
I think also by being able to plan this stuff out, I think it’ll help a lot of people build the confidence to take the steps forward, to even embarking on some of these projects. Some people might just, hey, one day I want to do this. But it’s also once you start putting pen to paper and you can see, end to end, what it is you’re trying to do, you might go oh, I can do this in a weekend, so all right, yeah.
Courtney:
Absolutely. 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. Slash rpg and now back to the show. Okay, so I want to jump in to project phases and again these terms that I’m going on. I get it, they’re super corporate, but the project management professional thing has been around for decades and a lot of successful project managers have learned it and, like these, work for literally any industry. So I’m going to give you some examples of like how you would use it if you were designing like a TTRBG or launching in that store. So the very first phase is project initiation. This is when you decide that you want to do a thing. You’re writing that game, you’re writing that supplement, you’re going to make some products and put it out on Etsy or your own store or what have you what you want to do. Like the very first thing that you should do when you decide that you want to make something is write out what you’re trying to accomplish. You know what are you making. What is your hope for, like once it’s out there. You know what kinds of people are you targeting, like who’s your audience? Talked about that a lot in community building, but it’s important for this to know what resources do you need to be able to hit that goal. If you’re starting a store, Do you need a logo? Do you need different artwork to go like in the background? Do you need, like an artist for drawing, all of the art pieces to go with in your game? Are you going to do graphics or layout yourself? Like what skills do you have already that you are willing and able to do or willing and able to learn to do yourself in the project versus like what do you need help with? Because you are just, you can’t draw, you’re really bad at it, so you know you’re going to have to find art somewhere.
Matt:
So let’s say, I’m trying to make a TT RPG sticker store, right? So if I go through this, that’s what I want to do, that’s my initiation goal. And then let’s see do I need a logo? I will need a logo. Do I need an artist? I want an artist. I can kind of draw, but let’s make this really super successful and hire someone that I like and maybe I can work with someone in the community. Cool, while you’re going to do the graphics and layout, I can do the layout. Sure, let’s see skills. Otherwise, I think we’re in good shape. So, all right, I’m going to use that as an example, because now I want to make a sticker store.
Courtney:
Amazing. So you start figuring all of that out and then that helps you determine, like, who are the people that you need to find to like help you get this done. So also in project initiation, you start to find your team. So you know, matt, for your sticker store you want to find an artist. So now you’re going to have to go and out and start sourcing artists, which I see here. It’s not an expression.
Matt:
Yeah, it’s funny because, like for me, I always want to pick people that I’ve either worked with before or people who aren’t typically known for it, because I know there are a lot of people who do sticker stuff and it’s like they got their own projects. So let me reach out and grab people who might be comic book artists or digital artists for other things, and I’ll say, hey, you want to. Yeah, that’s how I would try to find people.
Courtney:
Yeah, and I feel like we can spend a whole other episode just giving tips on, like how to find team members.
Matt:
I’m still in there.
Courtney:
And they realize like oh, but you know, this is project initiation. It’s when you’re looking for your team, you know like. Or if it’s things like, oh, I need to start up an LLC, cool, look for some YouTube videos on how to do that, log articles, find a consultant if you need one, you know, look into state programs et cetera. Like, help you get that business started. All of that is what you’re doing in project initiation. You are just finding your team, you’re getting agreements going. Then you hit project planning and whether you are the project manager and not the game designer, or even if you’re like the game designer and you’re taking it on the PM role yourself, you are honestly going to spend more time in planning than you are in the next phase, which is where you actually do the creation. And the reason for that is because the better plan you have at the beginning, the smoother your project is going to go. So what are we doing in project planning? Like you have your team together. You’re going to make a communication plan. Like, okay, we are all meeting on discord, that’s where we’re going to be, like our central place to talk about things and give updates. But we’re also going to use this thing called Asana or Trello or Notion. We will get to that in the next episode. You’re going to have like some sort of system where you track all of the to do items and like who’s responsible and when it’s due. You know like that’s all going to be part of your communication plan and, like you know, are you going to have meetings as a project team Spoiler. You should Figure out like how often you’re going to do that. You’re also going to do what’s called. You’re going to define what’s called the project scope. So you are making a game. You want it to be 100 pages long. How many art pieces do you need? General rule of thumb is to have 20 to 25% of the page count in quarter size art pieces. So you want 20 to 25 art pieces for 100 page game that are a quarter page. You know that can change if you have like larger pieces. You know the number can adjust, but generally you’re going to need that many pieces of art. So how many artists did you hire? Okay, how long is it going to take each artist to work on each of these pieces? Like that all has to be accounted for as you start to develop your plan or your timeline.
Matt:
All right.
Courtney:
One thing I’m going to say is that it is absolutely essential to plan out the scope and decide on the scope at the beginning of a project. It’s going to help you stick to that plan throughout the project, because it’s very, very common for projects to get off track because of something called scope creep.
Matt:
Oh yes, oh yes, so so, okay. So for me who just made a sticker company, I need to define a project, and part of that would be what the scope would be. So say, my first sticker project scope would be I wanted 50 unique types of stickers. Would that count as scope?
Courtney:
It would.
Matt:
Okay, so I got my team. We’re now on a discord. The icons, my face it smiles when you click on it. We all hang out there, we work on how we’re going to make 50 stickers, but then someone says, well, what if we just did an additional five more for something special? What are we walking into here?
Courtney:
So that is what scope creep is, and it’s very common for things to come up. You know, someone has a really good idea or like some issue happens where like, oh, I just realized I have to get like this whole other certification before I can start selling these stickers. Whatever it is, something happens that could impact your project and make a change and the very first thing you got to do is it say, hey, you know, that’s a great idea, but hold on, we need to compare it to the scope. So that’s where you go back to your documentation, saying I’m going to do 50 stickers and as part of that, you would have defined, like why 50, you know what type of stickers are you doing and you know these additional five stickers that your artists is like, hey, we should do this. Well, talk to them, find out why they want to do it and then evaluate what the change would be. You know, like, how much additional time is this going to take? Like how much additional resources? Like how much do I have to pay these artists because that’s going to impact the budget to suddenly have to pay for five more stickers, or is this a really good idea and it’s worth it and we don’t do five stickers that were originally planned for. Like, you have to analyze the impact before you actually move forward, because when you don’t analyze the impact, it just screws your entire project up.
Matt:
So it sounds to me like if you want to manage a project properly, it really kind of demands that you’re honest about yourself and you’re disciplined with your goals. And that can be difficult because I want to make everything all the time and I want to tell myself that I can do it. But this project management system will rain me in and I will see through my original goal, which is something I wish I had 10 years ago.
Courtney:
The way to think about it is like I honestly rarely say no. When someone says, hey, I want to do this additional thing, I say, okay, let’s think about it. Like, sure, we can do that. Here’s how much it’s going to add to the budget, here’s how long it’s going to extend, like when we can go live. And when you think about it in those terms or present it in those terms to the person saying, hey, we should make this change, and a lot of the time they go, oh yeah, sorry, I can’t actually afford to pay for more things right now, so I guess we’ll hold that to a later project. Or if they think, no, it’s worth it, great, Let me make some change. Documentation, saying that we are going to make this change because you want to document everything as a project manager, so I think we’ll have to adjust your project plan.
Matt:
So it really takes being mindful of the impact of any changes you want to do.
Courtney:
Definitely All right. There’s some more things you’re going to do in the planning phase is building, not your budget? Where is it coming from? Are you fronting the costs? Are you crowdfunding? How much are you paying each of your team members? When is that payment due? On what schedule? How much of that payment is dependent on your crowdfund being successful. Honestly, I have always hated accounting, so it’s not my favorite part, but it is definitely an essential part Because, again, if an artist is like, hey, let’s do five more stickers, you need to know how much that artist charges and figure out if you can fit that into your budget or not.
Matt:
I find that, as an accountant myself, when you are working with people specifically friends on a large project that can involve money, make it the first thing you talk about, just so I know everyone can get caught up in the idea of I love this creative project. This is really cool. I’m excited to work with all of you. Nail those things down so people aren’t thinking about it later, because if it weighs on people and people are like I don’t want to bring it up, I don’t want to be the one to talk about it, what’s going on here? And then, like your first discussion ends with no one saying anything, everyone’s going to be nervous to come back and talk about it again. That’s my experience. Just get it out. Hey, this is what we’re looking at. Figure your budget out and figure out any agreements that you have with the people that are involved and how those all work.
Courtney:
Yeah, it is super, super important. So many people in this space are like, oh you know, I get like it’s a small budget and like they charge nowhere near what they’re worth. But regardless, it’s figuring out like how much you’re going to pay them and getting you know if that’s just like a deposit to reserve their services. Make sure that you have that money like ready to go. So some more things that you’re going to plan out in this big phase Like I said, it is the biggest one is really like you have found your team. You’ve figured out, like you know what they’re charging, how quickly they work. You’ve laid out all of the steps that you want to do to get this project done. That’s when you get to actually figure out the timeline and you know what things can overlap. Like artists can be working on art pieces while you’re, you know, figuring out how to set up an LLC and set up your sticker store. Like you can definitely make sure that things overlap, but you want to make sure that you give enough time for those artists to present the sticker designs to you and then you review them and then you give feedback and they revise and you probably want to have a couple of revision processes built into this timeline, as you want to make sure that things are happening in a timely manner, but you’re not stressing people out because you gave them too little time to do it. And life happens Things come up, people fall behind. You don’t have a plan on how you’re going to react if things like get delayed or if an artist suddenly has to drop out of the project. It’s going to be stressful.
Matt:
Oh yeah. So for my example, here I got my sticker guys. I’ve hired two artists who I’m going to pay upfront and they’re just going to work on, say, 10 stickers in this first, I don’t know, sprint. Do we recall this as a sprint? In this case? That’s just me and my agile background. But what would you? Is there any term for it for waterfall?
Courtney:
Not this phase.
Matt:
Phase. Okay. So our phase here we are working on getting 20 stickers set out. I’ve already paid them upfront. They’re going to do the thing. I set up the LLC. I’m going to probably also set up where these stickers are going to sell at the same time, because I want these to be seen by people. I know my budget. I got the talent covered. I’m going to set aside a little bit for marketing, which means probably reaching out to some influencers and saying hey, I need you to put this sticker on something that you care about. That’s your thing. I’m going to pay you for that. And then suddenly an artist drops out. Now I got to figure out I promise 20 stickers. Now I’m scrambling Find another artist, but fortunately it doesn’t. It’s not. It’s a lot less of a panic, because I have my plan and I can stick to. I just need to replace this one person, or maybe use two instead.
Courtney:
Yep, so that is risk management. You know they’re like okay if an artist drops out. I have already identified that these are some other artists I would be interested in working with, or I know that the other artists that didn’t drop out would be able to take on a couple more of these designs. Those are all things that you’re going to like. I’ve tried to figure out ahead of time or like planned out just in case something bad happens.
Matt:
So you would include contingency planning and planning.
Courtney:
Yes would, yes, I would.
Matt:
That’s brilliant. Yes, absolutely do that, yes.
Courtney:
So, yeah, like there is a ton of stuff to do on project planning. So once you get a plan together, you are going to move on to what’s called project execution. So this is the time that the artists are actually doing the work of drawing the stickers. You are doing the work of looking into that, like how to set up an LSE, how to set up that sticker store. If you are the person that is in charge of the work, if you are the project manager, what you’re doing during this time is, honestly, a whole lot of cat wrangling. You are checking in with the project team on whatever basis you established and agreed to within your communication plan. So if that’s going to be a weekly check-in on Discord to just say, hey, how’s it going, do you have any issues? Whatever that rhythm is, this is the time that you’re doing that. Something that I like to establish, especially with people that are not used to working with a project manager, is to say, hey, I’m going to be checking in with you on how things are going. I want you to know you’re not in trouble. There have been so many times where people are like freaked out that I’m talking to them like I’m going to get it done and I’m just like, hey, it’s all cool, I just want to make sure that you’re doing good, the things are on track. If you’re running into issues, I want to know what those issues are so I can help you figure them out. It’s just a time to be like, hey, how’s it going?
Matt:
Like a quality of life check-in.
Courtney:
Yes, so you’re doing your check-in, you’re monitoring the schedule to say all right, artist number one is supposed to be turning in three stickers on Friday. I haven’t heard from them in a while. I didn’t respond to my last check-in. I’m going to check in again and find out. Oh yeah, they’re on track. Great, don’t forget to upload them to Alessana or whatever tool you’re using so that we can get the review going. We’re just doing that and you, like I said earlier, want to document everything. Every update, whether it’s good or bad. Make sure that you are adding a comment onto that topic wherever you are tracking your projects, just so that, let’s say, something bad happens and someone else has to step in and help monitor, they’re able to see what happened. Or, honestly, like you talk to somebody and then it’s been three weeks, you’re not necessarily going to remember what they said three weeks ago.
Matt:
Yeah, yeah, for me it’s normally. I have so many projects that I’m working on that if I didn’t have those kind of notes, I need someone to catch me back up on what we’re doing. So, yeah, yeah, anyone who does documentation does those notes. Thank you.
Courtney:
Yeah. So if somebody is running behind, this is when you are juggling balls to say, okay, I get it, you’re not going to be able to turn your art in on time. How is this going to impact the project? Did we have wiggle room built in? Is it okay that, instead of you having three days to review their art, you only have one day to review their art because they’re going to be two days late? Or do I need to pull in a different artist to cover some of the sticker drawings? You have your contingency plan that you’ve already laid out and you just follow that. You work through what the impact is going to be and help come to a decision on how to move on.
Matt:
So we’re getting it all done. Now the stickers are in production, everyone’s on task, everyone’s on schedule and we’re getting results. So far, so good.
Courtney:
Eventually you launch your sticker store Woo.
Matt:
I’m excited yeah.
Courtney:
That sticker store launches, you move into the second to last phase, which is monitoring and controlling. Now, to be fair, the type of projects that you’re doing in TTRBGs. You’re probably not going to have to spend a ton of time in this phase for your sticker store. That would essentially be like you’re waiting to get feedback from customers. You find out after the first week or two that, oh, one of the stickers got misprinted or it was cut wrong. So then you would go in and deal with fixing that If you were designing a game. You’ve sent the book out and, oh no, some people found some typos that didn’t get caught. So let’s go ahead and make sure that’s documented and fixed for the next printing and updated in the PDF version. It’s just kind of monitoring everything, making sure that things are moving along, things are good, before you can say I am done with this project.
Matt:
This is long past the phase of needing beta testers. You’ve already got everything your first wave of critiques from friends and that sort of thing, and then you’ve actually launched it and now you’re responding to the feedback for version 1.01.
Courtney:
Exactly, Love it and eventually you say, all right, well, I might get feedback that would impact a later version. I’m going to officially close this project. So what you should do at this point essentially, when things are stable, you don’t anticipate any other changes you want to do things like archiving all of your documents, any conversations that are worth copy pasting into a section where you know that you can reference it later. You want to have a lessons learned area, especially if you are going to do this type of project again. Just document things that you figured out. Man, etsy charges a whole lot of fees, so I don’t ever want to move on to Etsy. I want to make sure that I set up my own store, things like that. If it was about the game like okay, I learned that with this particular artist, they said they were only going to need two weeks to draw this art piece, but actually it took them like four weeks. So I want to make sure that I budget for a much longer time if I work with this artist again. This isn’t a time to rag on people. It’s just to make notes so that you know how to do this again in the future if you want to.
Matt:
Could you revisit your ideas of Project Creep here?
Courtney:
Absolutely.
Matt:
Okay, so I can get those extra five stickers. Let’s lock those guys down.
Courtney:
Well, yeah, so if you had decided not to do the five stickers, you can say, all right, well, we’re going to do a second phase of this project where those five stickers are going to get made. Yeah, so you want to document stuff either. You know, if you want to Word document at Google Doc, whether it’s a place in your Asana board, what have you just someplace that you know that you can reference in the future? Another thing if you’re going to meet with these people or work with these people again in the future, a postmortem is actually super helpful. This is just a meeting where you get to get together with everybody, reflect on how the project went, what went well, what went wrong. You know you especially want to like set ground rules at the beginning. I’m like we’re not here to like yell at each other, like get mad. You know, it’s just want to respectfully talk about things and how we could do it better the next time.
Matt:
Nice. I usually call that the victory lap and debrief.
Courtney:
I like it. Okay, that was a lot. I know that was a crash course. We are going to dig a little bit deeper into some other things in the next couple of episodes To give you a bit more like specific examples, but before we do that, you have homework, because I just love that we started establishing homework and things that you guys can actually be doing in between these episodes. First thing I want you to do what project do you have either going on or that you want to start? Where are you within that project, if you’ve already begun, or what kinds of things do you want to do to get started in the future? Spend some time thinking about what is going well versus what is not going well and what you would like to change. Write out your goals, what are you trying to accomplish and, more importantly, why. You want to make sure that you are holding onto the why of that project throughout the entire time, because it will keep you motivated even when things are going bad. And then, finally, for now, what resources do you need to find or recruit for this project?
Matt:
Excellent. I think for people who struggle with the motivation to actually get things done, your step one should be making this list. So begin here. Use that momentum, start filling it out, start making some progress. You will get to where you’re trying to go.
Courtney:
And our next proficiency check. We are going to dig into project management tools and how to actually start making these plans that we talked about. So check in. In one week I’ll have a lovely interview with another 2TRPG creator, and then in two weeks we will continue the deep dive into project management.
Matt:
And hit us up, we can talk about it.
Courtney:
Yep, so you can find us in a lot of places, because there are a lot of places to look right now. Roleplaygrow has its own account on Blue Sky and threads and Instagram. If you are trying to find me, I’m either Ketra or Ketra RPG, depending on the platform.
Matt:
Yeah, if you’re looking for me, it’s Mad Joro. I am dungeon glitch everywhere, but really, if you want to talk to me, you can email me at glitch at gemfireflycom or hit me up on threads today for our Mad this week. Who knows? Do my best, man. That whole thing fractured.
Courtney:
I know it’s hard, but you can always find us at roleplaygrow at gmailcom too, if everything fails and dies.
Matt:
When yes, all right.
Courtney:
Well, thank you guys for listening and we will catch you next time.
Matt:
Thank you, everybody Do your homework.
Courtney:
You just finished another episode of RoleplayGrow. To check out the show notes and transcript from today’s episode, you can go to lightheartadventures. com/ rpg To keep up with every episode. Please subscribe on your podcast player of choice and, if you’re enjoying the show, I would absolutely love if you would leave me a review and share this episode with your friends. Your review might even get featured on an upcoming episode. To contact us, you can email rollplaygrow@ gmail. com. There 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 KetraRPG for my accounts and Dungeon Glitch for Matt’s accounts. Lastly, I want to give a special shout out to our editor, Sam Atkinson. Your help is always appreciated. Sam, Thank you all so much for listening and I’ll see you next time on Roll Play Grow.
Thanks for dropping by! We would love to know who would like us to interview, so please drop a comment here on the blog, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Discord to let us know who your favorite creators are! If you’d like access to more maps and content, including downloadable PDFs of our adventures, check out our Maps Patreon or Podcast Patreon. We’re able to do what we do because of all our amazing Patrons!
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