You've assembled your creative team. You've all agreed on the basic concept of the game you'll be running. You've managed to get yourselves psyched up, energized, and whatever other adjectives you like about running an awesome campaign. But what should you do next?

I'm glad you asked. Next, you have to figure out how to go from the concept to the specifics, and a large part of that is assigning responsibilities and roles within the group. This column, I'll talk about why the most important of those roles is to pick a leader.

Democracy and Polity

"Who's running this army?!"
- Church, Red vs. Blue

You could be thinking one of two things right now. Well, technically, you could be thinking a few of an infinite number of things right now, but we'll simplify down to one of two:

1) Of course we need a leader. Why are you even bothering to tell me that?

2) Why would we need a leader? We're all friends who work well together and agree on what we're doing. Any disagreements we have we'll work out by discussion!

If you're thinking the first thought: good for you. Keep reading if you want some help trying to convince anyone else in your team of that viewpoint. If you're thinking the second thought, you've heretofore been lucky enough not to be on any teams that collapsed due to lack of leadership. The more such teams you're on, the less and less likely it will become that everyone will agree all the time.

Allow me to lean on my liberal arts education for a moment. Politics and philosophy majors, please try not to groan loudly enough to disturb your coworkers when I mention Aristotle.

According to the intellectual grandson of Socrates, there are two kinds of government ruled by the many: a good form and a bad form. In a polity, the good version, everyone manages to agree and work together without needing leaders. In a democracy, the bad version, everyone works at cross-purposes and nothing of consequence ever gets done. Even though he liked the idea of a polity, Aristotle figured rule by the many was much more likely to go bad just because of human nature.

This digression into Greek politics is intended to prove that my college money was well spent. Wait; strike that. This digression is intended to point out that it's great when everyone can work together as equals, but it's much easier to sustain a relationship when there's someone in charge¹.

So what can a leader do for you now that I've told you that you need one? I'm glad you asked.

The Presidential Veto

"No, we're not going to have animal people. I know you like them. I know we could use it to convince furries to play. It just doesn't fit in with the world."

Little is more useful in a creative group than having someone who will tell you when an idea sucks. If it's the leader, this idea might just be dropped rather than causing a two-hour argument. No matter how great you think your idea is, it's easier to give it up on the word of your chosen leader than on the word of an equal.

How often should the leader say no to the rest of the staff? Well, that depends on how bad the ideas are. Seriously, though, the leader serves as the final judge and checkpoint for concepts entering the game world and should act accordingly. Team members with an idea should be given the opportunity to propose their addition, defend it against the other team members, and explain why it enriches the game. The veto shouldn't come into play unless it's clear that the staff remains divided on an issue and only a final word will end the argument. Or if the idea was a bad joke; feel free to shoot down those ideas right away.

In short, the leader serves as arbitrator for ideas. When the rest of the team has a disagreement that will not be resolved through discussion, it's up to the leader to cast the deciding vote on whether an idea has merit.

Nobody Knows What It's Like to be the Bad Man

"I want to create some homemade explosives."
"Does your character have the Demolitions ability?"
"No, but it's really easy to do. I can make them in real life."
"Then, obviously, in real life you have the Demolitions ability."
"Can't I just have a test to see if I can make something?"
"I'll let you have a test to see if you blow your hand off."

A related job to saying no to team members is saying no to players. A little while down the road, I'll go into more detail on what to do when those clever players start touching your setting, but there's some more ground to cover before we let them get their grubby hands on your game. For now, suffice it to say, it will often be the job of the leader to provide a final word to the players. When they just won't take no for an answer from the rest of the team, they'll often grudgingly accept it from the head GM.

Players are weird like that.

The Repository, or at Least the Switchboard, of All Knowledge

"That's a cool idea, but that race believes that they are the firstborn of the gods, the perfect template from whom all the other races are descended. If they had a major change in their appearance any more recently than the misty past, it would call their whole belief structure into question. We could make a secret society or something that believes that, though."

One of the strengths of the creative team can be a weakness. In a good team, everyone is adding good idea after good idea to the whole. Unfortunately, two good ideas alone may turn into one lame idea together. The leader is in the best position to keep that from happening.

It's bound to happen sooner or later: One staff member is busily plugging away on the race background for one group. Another is carefully crafting the lore for another group's capital city. In the process they both come up with a unique artifact, villain, or other setting piece that is almost identical to the other's idea. Perhaps it's karma, perhaps it's great thinkers thinking alike, or perhaps it's that they're both ripping… er… being inspired by a character that showed up in last week's episode of Lost.

If they're flying mostly solo, they may never wind up reading each others' write-ups, especially during the time crunch a week before the game. Months later, a player may harmlessly note, "the chief advisor of our city-state rose from relative obscurity as a simple, crippled clerk. He displayed previously unknown combat prowess and wisdom when he was stranded in the wilderness with the king and his family." "How strange," another player might remark, "the founder of our race was said to have proven his worth in exactly the same way. Maybe they're one and the same!"

At best, you have players chasing after a red herring. At worst, your plots will fall apart as conflicting information tears a hole in the conception of the world.

The leader is in the position to keep up with all the details of the setting and what plots are being put into play. He or she doesn't need to know every single detail, though it helps, but does need to be able to notice broad inconsistencies before the players see them. Something as simple as saying "Bob, your NPC seems really familiar. You should talk to John and see if it will be a problem," can go a long way towards presenting a unified game to the players.

Taskmaster, Major Domo, and Clockwatcher

"Okay, in the first scene we'll have the characters led in by the sergeant. He needs to be carrying the devices to sell to the players that they'll need for the next day. They'll encounter the cultists once they get into town. I'm playing the cult leader and two more of us are needed for the big reveal later, so we should have at least three people left to play the cultists performing the ritual. We also need someone to make text props."

Unless there's someone else who really enjoys the job, it often falls on the leader to be in charge of scheduling and time management. As the individual with the highest vantage point on what everyone is doing, the leader is often the most qualified to define when and how everything gets done. In the planning stages of a game, this often means making sure that all text is written, all props are constructed or purchased, and all other materials are ready in time for the game. When the game is running, it often means making sure there is enough going on to keep the players involved or at least entertained for the full duration of the session. It also means making sure that plots are not set to trigger before the players have the means, or at least the intention, of dealing with them.

It's a big job, and I'll talk about how to delegate it in later columns. But game development can often just drift along with no clear goals or results until the leader steps in and starts setting deadlines and responsibilities. When someone asks, "so when are we actually running this game," it usually takes the leader to say, "next month! Start writing!"

What the Leader is Not

"He who governs least, governs best."
-Thomas Jefferson

The leader seems to have a lot of responsibilities towards keeping the team working together smoothly, but does the job come with any perks?

Not really.

Think of the leadership of a creative team as being a lot like the whole Arthurian "first amongst equals" deal. The leader is there to settle disputes, make sure everyone keeps working towards the same vision, and to provide an organizer and face for the team when needed. The leader is not more important than the others, and is not necessarily the best GM, the best roleplayer, or the most creative. When the leader begins to treat the rest of the staff like minions, things can go sour very quickly.

How do you lead a group without making them feel like peons? Some suggestions:

Don't see your veto as a license to roll in your own ideas without opposition, especially over the ideas of others. A leader can still participate in the creative process without taking it over entirely. Be ready to give up your ideas whenever there's significant opposition from the rest of the staff, just as you'd expect others to give up ideas when you tell them no.

Don't set yourself up as the sole point of contact for the players, and especially don't give them the impression that you do all the work. Nothing sours a staff like feeling that they've worked very hard to create the game only to have the head GM get all the credit. Just because the leader gives the final word to the players doesn't mean that the rest of the staff shouldn't have a voice.

Don't feel like you're the only one interested in the game. Often, the leader has a hand in more of the game than other teammates, even though this hand might not reach very deeply. It may seem like the others don't care about the whole or about putting in as much work as you. They probably do and they probably are, but they're looking at the game from their own point of view, which is different from yours. If you belittle their contributions to the game, you may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy where they contribute less just because they feel what they do won't be appreciated.

Don't forget that this is a game, not a job. Unless you're one of the few campaigns that have enough paying players to employ the staff, running this game is something that your teammates are doing for fun. This is the major difference between the creative team for a game and nearly any other creative team. If you take the game too seriously, it ceases to be fun and starts to become just a job for which no one is being paid. There's a fine line to walk between putting enough pressure on the staff to get everything done and enough to make them lose interest. Walking this line is the hardest job of being the leader.

Choosing the Leader

"Well how'd you become king then?"
-Dennis' Wife, Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Being the head of the gestalt is more responsibility than privilege, so how do you decide who gets stuck with it? If the above points are understood, even someone prone to power trips will probably think twice about taking on the role. Someone jumping enthusiastically for the head GM's slot may not know what he or she is getting into.

The simplest way to choose the leader is just to give the role to whoever had the original idea for the campaign. There is almost always one member of the team who had the initial idea and then involved friends to turn it into a full game. Generally, this person will be the most likely to understand when something fits into the overall vision of the game and the most interested in keeping up with what everyone is contributing to the setting. The logistical tasks can be handled to some degree by even the least organized provided there is enough dedication, or they can be delegated as discussed in later columns. When the leader is the most inspired by the game, it becomes less likely that it will die during development.

But what if there isn't a clear cut originator of the campaign, or if that first creator is utterly horrified by the prospect of being the leader? The chances are good that most of your staff members have been in the role of GM before or they probably wouldn't have signed on in the first place. This should provide several options for people that are willing to take on some more responsibility and control. Make sure all the candidates know what they're getting into, and then hold a vote. Let the most dedicated GM win.

In the end, it's not important who the leader is, just as long as there is a leader. A gestalt is not an anarchy of individuals going in different directions, but a unified group of creators all working towards the same goal. Without a single head, it's much harder to keep that goal in focus.

Next month I'll talk about what all the other organs of the gestalt should be doing now that the head is working properly.