Author: Eliot Lefebvre (---.Level3.net)
Date: 09-24-2004 06:08
As always, an excellent column - and like the one just prior to it, a topic near and dear to my heart, although for very different reasons. Playing cross-gender characters is the norm for me more than the exception (helped by the fact that the regular group that I seem to have formed - inadvertantly - is by its very nature suited to online gaming rather than playing in-person), and your column made me go back and examine a bit more closely my motivation for doing so. In this case, however, the column hit close to home because I tend to find myself taking a position of authority in real life, nine times out of ten - which means that I do have a bit of perspective on leadership as it applies in games.
I think you've done a good job exploring most of the basics, but one thing that I think you rather left out is the idea of the responsibility that the leader faces - above and beyond simply giving those being led a goal to work toward. Being the leader is more than simply standing up, giving everyone a common goal, and telling them what they need to do in order to get it done. That's a good part of what makes someone's leadership effective as opposed to meandering, but there are other qualifiers for being a leader. A goodly portion of what makes a leader continue to be followed is what happens when things go wrong - how a leader responds to challenges, and whether or not the person "in charge" is willing to deal with those challenges.
The fun part of leadership, of course, is that you get to look dramatic, pose menacingly, shout out commands and expect people to obey them. That's where the inclination to become leader springs from, for most people, and that's the part of leadership that most bad leaders begin and end at. Actually being in charge, however, is more often than not a matter of taking blame for things going wrong, for being willing to take responsibility for a problem that isn't yours, for trying to solve something that you're grasping at straws to even understand - and then being the one that everyone points a finger at when things go wrong. It's hard to express, in so many words, what the burdens of leadership are... you only see them prominently when they're not taken care of, and things begin to fall apart as a result.
As a real-world example: during my time at college, I was fairly active in the local anime club, along with a small group of my friends. When the officer positions were open for the taking in the club, we decided that we ought to run for them, since we'd been vocal enough in the club anyway. Before I even suggested it, everyone had already assumed that I would be president. Not because I was smarter, not because I was taller, not because I was more charismatic, certainly not because of my mastery of small-unit SWAT tactics. No, a good portion of why was the simple fact that I'd be willing to put up with the responsibilities involved and - perhaps most importantly - would take the blame when something went wrong and try to fix it.
I suppose this has become rambling pretty quickly, but my point (which I lost somewhere up there) is that the burdens of being a leader are an important consideration as well. You should be prepared to deal with those - and those might be the reason that your character's in charge anyway. He might have no other qualifications to lead the group except the fact that he'll take responsibility gleefully - or at least maturely. And if he happens to be a decently inspiring figure on top of that, so much the better.
-Eliot "I had a point when I started, I lost it halfway through..." Lefebvre
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