You find yourself seated at a large table. A soft light illuminates the table’s surface and the many objects upon it. Seated beside you around the table are familiar faces. A few you’ve known for some time, and would even call friends, while others are newer acquaintances.
However, your position at the table is not like that of the others. You sit behind a barrier, whether literally or figuratively. This barrier somewhat obscures your view of the others and their view of you. You can still interact with the others at the table on a personal and mostly unimpeded level, just as they can with each other. Yet, you possess information and insight that the others do not. You possess a higher position of power, of authority. Or so, at least, is an easy assumption to make.
The others at the table have expectations of you. They want you to deliver something, they want to be supported, they want to be heard, they want to be offered an accomplishable challenge. However, they may also feel vulnerable sitting at the table. They may feel uncertain, apprehensive, or anxious about what the next moments may bring. They may see you as a source of potential relief or a source of potential discomfort.
But, what you must bear in mind is: although you have prepared, you can never be prepared. Although you sit in a position of apparent control, you are the one with the least of it. Even if the others around the table do not yet see it, you must always know this, or it will be your undoing.
There are many of them, with their own stories, their own experiences, and their own insights. You bring them an idea, a pitch, a story, and they swiftly take it and transform it into something you could have never imagined. Your preparation, your research, your darling, seemingly taken from you and shaped into something that feels foreign. You can either force them to do as you intended or embrace your lack of control.
Although you have prepared, you can never be prepared.
Although you sit in a position of apparent control, you are the one with the least of it.
You must have trust in the people around the table and be open to where the others end up with your guidance, not your command.
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What I have attempted to describe above is the experience I feel of being both a practitioner of design in my academic life and being a game master for tabletop games in my personal life. The dynamics, assumptions, and lessons that unfold in either situation mirror each other in ways I never would have expected. How can insight from one apply to the other?
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