A hobby full of lessons

Community Manager

I'm sure we all have a wide range of hobbies, over the past few years I have been world building for a Tabletop RPG campaign. 


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Before I started this, I was absolutely naïve to the effort required to Game Master a longform homebrew campaign. Saying I have had to learn flexibility and problem solving is a major understatement!

I'm curious, what is a hobby of yours that has helped your grow and learn both individually & professionally? 

2 Replies

@Dylan Snodgrass I'm one of the founders of a group in Seattle called Queer Geek! Seattle about 10 years ago, a social/advocacy group for LGBTQ folks in the Seattle area interested in "geeky" topics such as gaming, SF/fantasy, anime, etc. It was an early foray into community management before I had any direct work experience in the area (running a group on Facebook and Meetup). I had to deal with some very directly relatable situations - moderating conflicts/messaging, mitigating self-promotion, retaining interest.

 

I also networked with a lot of folks and it directly/indirectly led me to some work opportunities (I became part of a game professionals group through contacts there, which got me a job as a social media manager for a streaming games festival several years back).

 

I really just started it for fun, and because I wanted more ways to meet people outside of nightlife. It all started with getting people together at our local arcade for dinner and video games once a month and spiraled from there.

 

Also related to your answer, my partner has said on many occasions that they've learned everything about working in corporate life from playing in and running Vampire: the Masquerade tabletop and live-action role-playing games :D 

@Dylan Snodgrass 

 

I spent a lot of time pulling together stuff for a desktop RPG session, a couple of years back, and it's the little details that make it, usually. Of course, there's the ability to adapt to the situation - PCs (player characters to the muggles) are always unpredictable, at best!

 

There's also a really useful Stack on Stack Exchange, called Role-Playing Games (https://rpg.stackexchange.com/).