[Forge Midwest 2008] FMW08 Mentoring Project

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey folks, 

So at Dreamation, Gen Con, Origins, and other venues we have game design seminars where we get folks to feed themselves to the wolves. One person gets the attention of a group of us, and we try to hammer on their game. This is a great process, and useful, but I was thinking there could be some usefulness on the other side. At Forge Midwest I thought we might be able to try something different and have one person talk to one person for like half an hour or so. What I'm picturing is one person who has been through the game design process a few times sitting down with someone who is trying to complete their first game.

I see two ways of trying to do this. The first would be to get mentor-ies to write something up about their game and then see if someone wants to mentor them. This of course could leave someone crying in the cold. Perhaps that's useful information? The other method would be to take mentors and mentor-ies, have them sign up anonymously, and match them randomly. The problem here could be lack of interest in the game to be discussed.

What I would like to see in this thread is criticism of the idea, positive or negative, or a discussion of the merits of different operational methods of making the idea happen. I'm not looking for volunteers, I'd like to see if the idea has merit before getting people involved

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Clyde,

Does it need formal organization? I do what you're describing nearly constantly at conventions, when I'm not organizing something, playing games, or selling stuff. It's pretty clear who's published games, especially at a small gathering like Forge Midwest. It seems to me that if anyone wants to get any feedback from anyone else, he or she can simply ask.

This isn't an authoritative or policy voice on my part, because I know that I tend to play a generally entropic role toward the ongoing attempts to formalize, structure, and match-up aspects of the community. I am familiar with the counter-argument. Yes, ideally, if every person who would benefit from design chat were to be paired up with exactly the right person to help them, it would be a great world. However, it would also be a structure that can confine and stifle, and as I see it, would do so within a short span of time.

I also think there's a positive component brought into the design process by dint of the person having to step up and use some initiative toward this end; it helps establish ownership, which otherwise I think gets diluted as the game drifts around the design community via a community structure.

Best, Ron

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Ron,

Does it need formal organization? That is an essential question. Let me give you my thinking, starting with what got me thinking about this.

At Dreamation this year there were perhaps 40 folks who showed up to stuff the meeting room where the game design roundtable was held. Lots of folks had to stand, and it was hard to move through the room. We spent about an hour and a half on about 6 games. I know there had to be other people in the room who had a game they wanted help with. (I wasn't one of them due to a conversation I had with Emily Care Boss and Ryan Macklin that I was still processing.) I think the formality of these round tables and their set times have been very popular and useful, judging by the turnout alone, not to mention games that have gotten some benefit from the process like Kingdom of Nothing, or Mob Justice. I know I personally found the attention helpful at last years Origins. I personally feel that it's established these roundtable meetings are useful.

I had some discussions with some folks at Dreamation that led me to the conclusion that individual mentoring doesn't go on perhaps as much as it used to. (If folks disagree it's cool, my perception is mine you don't have to agree.) I started to think about this on the flight home from New York. I don't think people are any less helpful, but that the community has grown well past Dunbars number and it's hard to pay attention to everything that's going on. I think this makes it hard for new folks to find people to talk to. I thought about what could be done to change things, especially things I could do other than help the few folks who email me about design stuff because of my podcast. This is the idea I came up with.

I think your post also helps point at why this could be helpful. Folks are really busy at even a friendly thing like Forge Midwest, and with Indie designers getting so much larger people don't know everyone, which I think leads to more notable folks being swamped with people wanting help, and other folks who are likely just as knowledgeable and might have the willingness to be helpful underutilized. It seems to me there is likely demand that is being unmet which is what this proposed solution is meant to address.

I understand your argument about ownership, but isn't any attempt to get help likely to increase ownership?  Your argument about stifling I don't understand, could you expand on that?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Clyde,

Let me start by saying that if you wanted to organize anything of this kind, then I am not opposing it. These aren't posts of disapproval but of reflection, wherever they might lead.

As far as the stifling is concerned, it's already happening among several of the ongoing formal round-table or scheduled "let's bash out this game" activities that go on at many conventions. I don't think it happens every time, but there's an individual stamp that that a consultant brings to such activities .... h'm, let's see, it's like a magazine article I recall that showed martial arts dude Hee-Il Cho demonstrating various self-defense moves against various attacks. Knife from behind? Jumping back kick. Grab from the front? Jumping back kick. And so on.

In other words, I am concerned that if person X formally acts as game guru over and over and over, then all the different games might end up stamped or branded, in design terms, by person X in a particular way. I try to avoid this as well as I can, primarily by not formalizing the activity of consulting, in the hope that my input will be individualized for this game at this time, not as a routine I'm performing - and certainly not as a public thing, in which case, I think, applying one's public persona can be too tempting to avoid.

Please, this is a concern, not an accusation of wrongdoing on anyone's part. (As the blogs go crazy, trying to guess whom I'm "accusing" ... well, fuck them.) If there's a conceptual way to help solve it, perhaps some structural element of the process, then that would be great. One thing I can imagine being helpful about that, for me anyway, is for me to bring my own in-design game drafts as a participant - in other words, I might be better able to avoid the poisonous guru-effect if I knew that my designs would be undergoing exactly the same sort of review by someone else in this same gathering.

Best, Ron

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Ron,

*grins* No worries. I'm taking this as two friends talking, not "that guru guy telling me I can't do my idea." I understand better what you are saying about stamps of approval, but I'm not sure I agree. Let's try to solidify it a bit with a concrete example of what I hope might happen in a small number of cases. Let's look at Luke Crane assisting Judd Karlman with his game Dictionary of Mu. I know Luke helped Judd, I imagine that help might be characterized as helped Judd a lot. I can't know for sure as I wasn't involved. Anyway, when I look at Dictionary of Mu, I don't think "Stamped with Luke Crane's Approval." Am I being Naive here? My hope if people were to participate, and frankly maybe there won't be interest, that there might be a few folks who "hook up" into the kind of thing Luke and Judd had working on Dictionary of Mu. I think some folks will happen into this kind of meeting naturally, and other folks might find a "dating service" handy. And some folks like myself won't want quite that level of assistance. (This is not a judgement of anyone else's decisions.) So I think as a process this could be immediately helpful for most folks, and for some folks it could be very helpful over the long term.

My first idea as an attempt to address your concern is we might not make the matching public. Would that help address your concern?

Let me also discuss kind of how I was thinking of organizing it. Either of the methods above would give us a list, I distribute participants email address to each other and they get together on time, etc. A secondary way would be to set aside a specific time, and make sure everyone meets up, and they then set off to discuss the games concepts, problems, whatever.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Clyde,

I think it would be a bad idea for us to point at specific examples and try to identify whether they were or weren't good. That can only lead to accusations, defensiveness, nothing good. This isn't about whether I think Joe or Bob or Sue did a poor job of mentoring in some instance, it's about the trend for people to break groups up into experts vs. supplicants, with two negative effects. First is how the designated experts will begin guru-izing themselves, and second is how people will embrace being supplicants for the rest of their lives once cast in that role. I think this is already happening to a mild extent in our subculture, and that we should all, already, be reflecting on it in order to minimize it in our own individual behaviors.

None of that is to say that your basic plan or idea is horrible or flawed. I completely understand what you're suggesting. Yes, I agree about the three points across the spectrum of seeking mentorship that you describe, and that if people want a "dating service" then any number of them will benefit from it. I agree that it can work, at least some of the time. I'm trying to get at how to make it better, by avoiding specific problems.

Anonymity isn't the issue, as I see it, and trying to establish some seems, to me, like adding complications rather than solving anything. My only suggestion is what I posted before, about how "instructors" (or whatever) should also be subjecting their designs to the same process. That may or may not accord with what you want to do, and if you decide it's not, that's perfectly OK with me.

Your ideas about organizing look solid and simple, which is probably exactly the way to go. I trust your social judgment in general and whatever you come up with, I'll participate in it as long as killing chickens or invading other nations isn't involved.

Best, Ron

[Andrew Cooper]

What if you treated it kind of like a writer's conference where writers/editors/mentors are sometimes simply available at a certain place at a certain time for folks who want an opinion or just to talk about writing in general to find and meet?  It's semi-organized in that a designer would agree to be somewhere easy to find for a period of time but informal enough that it might not feel like a guru vs supplicants. 

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey Ron,

Now I understand better what your concerns are. I was thinking more of it as a way to maybe break folks away from their cliques to maybe help new folks, perhaps just a time and place set aside for the purpose would be good. I'm going to give the weekend to giving it more consideration.

[Matt Snyder]

I've been reading this and thinking about it. I tend to lean toward Ron's approach, Clyde. This is NOT me "officially" coming down on the side of it and telling you not to do this. Just wanted to acknowledge the thread. And, to say that I'm pretty indifferent to the issue overall.

[Blankshield]

I'm a bit split on this as well. 

On the one hand, last year at FMW there was an unorganized "anyone interested in a designer's round table?" on Sunday, and I ended up being the only one at the table with a game or two out the door, and it did end up being a bit 'teacher/students' which felt awkward at times.

On the other hand, last year at FMW there was an unorganized "anyone interested in a designer's round table?" on Sunday, and it was a small gathering at one table, and there were some really focused questions and I really think everyone came away from the table with a better idea of how to get done what they wanted to do, which is awesome.

So, yeah.  Torn. 

thanks,

James

[Luke]

Clyde,

Having run dozens of design and publishing seminars in the past five years, I'm 100% in support of your idea. And I think it should be formalized. I think experienced people acting as mentors is a valuable service, all too often forgotten or disregarded.

Criteria for mentoring could be very simple -- designed a couple of games that a bunch of other people have played and I'm willing to talk about it. Beyond that, each participant could offer up a specialty: "Hey, I love to talk about the philosophy of self-publishing," or "I'm a mother fucking layout GOD and insighful game designer to boot, and I'm too humble to admit it, but if you want to talk about it a little, I'm also a really polite Midwesterner so I'd be happy to lend you a bit of my time."

Sessions could be limited to something like, 30 minutes or three questions, which ever is shorter.

Teaching and mentoring enriches both the student and the mentor. Sharing knowledge and methods creates traditions. Traditions allow ideas to sustain themselves beyond the participation of the people who spawned them.

And it could be fun!
-L

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey folks,

I'm going to give this a go. I'm sorry for the late reply I should have a plan that I'll post about here by this coming Monday.

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Alright. So Forge Midwest Saturday, if you want to talk games meet in the lobby at 7:00 a.m. If you have skills you want to offer email me by sending your mail describing a skill you have to offer to theoryfromthecloset via a little place called gmail.com. If no one emails me we'll just talk naturally. If you do I'll make you a skill tag, so folks will know you're a hotshit editor, layout artist, artist artist, theory wonk, whatever, and that you want to give advice. We'll see how this goes and examine if we need more organization next year.

Criticism?

[GamerChick]

Alright. So Forge Midwest Saturday, if you want to talk games meet in the lobby at 7:00 a.m.
Criticism?

7 am on a Saturday?  Are you mad?

Seriously, I'd be interested, but can't imagine getting up at 6 am on Saturday for it... Especially since I hope there will be some serious drinking and discussion on Friday night!

Jae