Re: (TFT) Contest?

[raito@raito.com]

Quoting Jay Carlisle <maou.tsaou@gmail.com>:

> How do you deal with people smarter than you? Are are you always the
> smartest guy in the room?

Often, I am. Sometimes, I'm not. 

When I was a manager, it was pretty easy to deal with the guys smarter 
than I. A good chunk of the guys I managed now have PhD's in the string 
theory side of physics. One of them (the graphics guy) had pixels 
running in his blood. All I did was to point them in the right 
direction, and keep the execs off their backs as much as I could. We 
delivered every contract on time and under budget, and had the 
company's first profitable quarters in a couple years. This was in 
contrast to my predecessor, who just had to be the smartest guy (and it 
was a low bar). A lot of talent left while he was there. Anyway, the 
guys working for me made me look good. And there was a lot of stuff we 
could teach each other. I learned a lot about graphics and physics. 
They learned a lot about professional code development. 

But as for a campaign, it's still not that hard. The smart guys know 
that while the adventure is in some sense a collaboration between GM 
and player, it's the GM that sets the milieu and rules, and they don't 
argue that part of it. And if I make a rules mistake, either it gets 
repaired, or there's no harm and it's play on, or there's a reason it 
happened the way it did. 

The truly intelligent have little reason to be contentious. 

Neil Gilmore
raito@raito.com
=====
Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com.
Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body
"unsubscribe tft"