Level 30 Yinzer

Like a break in the storm, our motivation is back, and we find ourselves suddenly bounding along with our production schedule.  Our secret?  Well, it’s not much of one.  Turns out, Phil finds the coffee shop environment much more conducive to good work than the home office.  It seems the home office provides too many distractions (like dogs and cats and dishes and food and toys and…), whereas the coffee shop has just the right amount (maybe a cute barista and some conversational shrapnel).  So, yes, Phil is now utilizing an “away office” twice a week to get the bulk of the initial drafts done, and spending the rest of his time editing and polishing the work.

We’re still fiddling about with comic production.  Apart from doubts about the art direction (read: very little), and trying to master the tools to draw the comic itself (pencils are very unwieldy and mean), even updating only twice a week seems like a daunting task.  We are committed, however, as drawing and writing scripts for it is a terrific amount of fun.

We also finally ordered business cards (as seen below).  They’re not fancy, but hey, it’s our first business card, so we’re pretty excited about them.

Those of you who are fans of us on facebook will recognize the logo, of course.  And those of you who aren’t?  Well, get on that!  Just jump on over to our fan page and become a fan.  This is where we post updates during the week as we get projects done, not to mention yet another way to track when we publish new stuff to the blog or to the site.

You can also follow us on Twitter, with the surely shocking moniker of @level30yinzer.  We really look forward to connecting with y’all soon!

You may have tuned in last week when we began to wax philosophical about the overlap between running a DnD game and running your life.  You can find part one here, where we illustrate why Communication is King.  Now on to part two of the five part series:

2. Trust builds better relationships.

True story.  So I started communicating with my players without trust, as an experiment.  I tried to be open and not worry that they were going to ruin everything, but lo and behold, trusting my players turned out to be the best decision I ever made.  Of course, trusting other people is risky–there’s always the chance for heartbreak and disappointment–but without it, you’re left alone and unsupported, even when surrounded by friends.

When I gave my players the opportunity to prove themselves, they earned my trust rapidly by being as awesome as I should have known they would be.  I regret not trusting them sooner, as I see now the opening scenes of the game could only have been enhanced by their participation in planning them, and my own anxiety about whether or not they’d enjoy it would have been eliminated.  A player’s enjoyment of the game increases exponentially when they helped create it.

If I hadn’t decided to start trusting my players, I’m not sure my game would have held together.  Because I didn’t trust them, my games would lend themselves to railroading, as I tried very hard to force them to do what I wanted, as any deviation would  clearly ruin the game.  I didn’t trust their decision making skills, I didn’t trust their willingness to play through conflict.  I thought for sure they would just turn dungeons and dragons into CakeQuest.

And you know what?  Life is not a CakeQuest either.  I have also recently begun trusting people with my other real life plans and relationships.  Turns out, that ends up for the best as well.  Diets are easier to stick to.  Ideas are easier to execute.  Anxiety about the future is greatly reduced.  The chances for failure are minimized as you build a support group out of the people around you.  Trust.  It’s an amazing tool.

What about you?  Do you trust your players?  How far would you trust them with plot and ideas?