Melody [0:00]
The Game Master Certification Organization welcomes you to our interview excerpt podcast series - currently interviewing ShauntelleB - an actress, psychologist, and a creative artist across multiple mediums and genres! Hi, I'm your host Melody Rainelle. This podcast episode will touch on a variety of topics within the administration, judiciary, and analysis categories. So, we got a bunch to chat about today - let's get started! Shauntelle, why don't you talk to us about how you administer or organize yourself and manage your time effectively to support yourself as an artist?

ShauntelleB [0:41]
Yeah. The life of an artist is often fraught and difficult. Much more difficult than I think people realize. I am consistently aware of whether or not my voice is awake before I before I do interviews, before I perform in any capacity. By awake, I mean, am I growling? Do I have my full range of voice? Do I have my full range of tone? Um. Do I sound tired? If I sound tired, then my voice is probably not awake yet. Then there's my body. Is my body awake? Have my muscles warmed up? Could I jump a couple of times and not feel like I'm jarring myself? There's a lot of different aspects to taking care of yourself physically that are sort of at the basis of looking after yourself as a creative. And that is the basis of everything, also because, I mean, if my voice doesn't work, if my body doesn't work, to the extent that it can on any given day and sometimes that changes and that's fine. If my voice and my body can't do 70% of what I need them to do on any given day that I can't do my job, my job becomes obsolete... or not obsolete, but unworkable. Mental health is also incredibly important. Have I had enough sunshine? Have I been out? Have I moved through the world? Have I experienced other people? Have I- I dunno, done yoga for a long time? Have I gone for a run? Have I had a bath? Have I had a day where I haven't been expected to say anything? Have I had a day where I've needed to say something? All of those varying experiences are part of self care, and that is a very broad subject but it's also a very important one. Actors will often go to the gym a lot, because they need to keep their bodies strong and fit and healthy. But it's also really important to remember that not all actors do that, and it's important to realize why that is. And a lot of time, the reason why is because the type of actor they are, the types of things that they're prioritizing might not be those aspects. Someone who is a dancer is not going to need to warm their voice up every day. Someone who is a voice actor is only going to need to warm up their voice, although you do need a warm body to be a voice actor as well. If anything you need a full working set to be a voice actor because of all of the things that go into it. Within the purely administrative side, being very aware of your limitations is crucial. I can struggle with that. And I am very aware that I can struggle with that. But I'm also very flexible. I will plan for myself on any given day, maybe three activities, and by that I mean, one of the activities, if I know that I'm going to have a difficult week, one of those activities might just be lunch. Or one of them might be going for a walk. One of them might be learning that monologue. One of them might be prepping that game. And they're all going to be different amounts of work. One of them might be flushing out that piece of world that I haven't done yet. It might be typing up some ideas that I had before I fell asleep, it might be making notes on something that happened. It might be sketching and just making sure that the idea that I had in my head is somewhere that's not in my head. For anyone that is going to be professionally, engaging with players or audiences, you're performing for an audience, whether that audience is the people at your table, or people elsewhere, or people in, like, physical audience somewhere. Doesn't matter. You're still performing, and so that can take its own toll and have a psychological toll. It's important at that point to make sure you're taking a step back every now and then and just saying: "Hey, do I really want to be doing this? Is this for me? Is this enough? Is this not enough? Is there anything I can do to change those things? Is there anything I want to do to change those things? Don't force yourself to do something that you dislike, because you feel like you should. That's really important. And it's very difficult for people to have fun. If you're not having fun. And that comes in every realm of performance. If you're not having fun, the audience will not have fun. They just, they will feel it. It's there.

Melody [4:54]
Ooh, that's a good point. It's important to have fun and play. Definitely like that. Thank you for sharing those thoughts. Alright, next question. How do you get players to start engaging?

ShauntelleB [5:07]
Players will engage at the rate that they want to engage. All I will do is start telling a story, and continue to tell that story until someone else has something to say. When someone else has something to say, then I will stop talking and let them talk. I am happy to allow them to take as long as they'd like to engage. All I do is leave space for them to say something if they want to. I might tilt a question toward someone. I might sort of go: "Okay, so what do you think about this situation? Or what's happening for this character? And I do that a lot actually. One of the things that I'll often say is: "Okay, but what are you trying to do in this moment? What's the character trying to- how is the character trying to affect the other character? And that very much comes from acting. But it's also a case of: "What are you trying to do? What's the aim? What is the intention? We go back to goals, we go back to motivations, we go back to wants and needs. What are those things? And sometimes it's not about what does the character want or need, It's: "Hey, I know you don't want this thing. I know the character doesn't want this thing. Do you the player want it?" And there have been times for me, very recently in fact, where someone said, "Okay, so my character's gonna try to, like, throw yours through a window." And my response was, "My character absolutely does not want that, but I think it's fantastic, go ahead." And so that kind of engagement is really important if you're finding that appealing to the player isn't working sometimes appealing to the character and calling the character by name can help draw people in. Problem is, depending on the people you're playing with, it might also alienate them. So I mean everything with consent. Ask them which they prefer. Ask them if they prefer being called by the character name or by the player name. You know, are they talking in first or third person? Often we'll do a mix of the two. So, you will hear very quickly, which is happening, and if they are speaking in first person... so if they are saying: "I do this, I do that." Two things on that one. The first thing is if you start to hear that they are in the character. They are the character, "I am doing this, I am doing that." Whatever you expose them to, they are going to experience, so be careful, is the first thing. Second thing is, if they're in third person, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're not in the character or in character, it might just mean that they are aware of how close they are to being in the character and are pulling away because they're afraid or don't want to engage, just to that extent. Some people prefer to look at, some people prefer to sit in, and often that'll come from, you know, "How do you tell a story?" Do you tell a story from- like if you were to tell a story about going to the store, do you watch yourself go to the store and tell the story from that perspective? Or do you tell people about what you saw as you went to the store?" It's that. Those are little signs of engagement is what pronouns people are using. My pronouns are they, them. They are morphing. Largely because I don't like sitting in pronouns, I don't like sitting with pronouns. My gender changes every day. And that's fine. In terms of character pronouns, as much as possible, separate the character pronouns from the person pronouns, unless the person starts to say, "Actually, I really like the sound of that for me. Can you try it?" And then test it, why not? That's kind of it for me.

Melody [8:27]
I guess it's all about the perspectives, isn't it. I like the way you started that too - where you provide the story and you continue the story until someone decides to jump in. Because that does take the pressure off of the players too. So nice point there, thank you. Now we'll jump over to the judiciary category. Mistakes - how do you handle them?

ShauntelleB [8:48]
I don't make mistakes - that's how I handle them. That's problem solved. I don't see anything as a mistake, unless someone is hurt. If someone's hurt, that then to me is a mistake. Something went wrong, something went wrong that I did not intend. I don't mind, me personally, I do not mind, I do not care if a character is hurting, if a character is crying, if a character is in an awful place. I do care if the player is. That to me is a mistake. That was not intentional. So, that is when I would go into aftercare mode. "Hey, how have you been? How are you going? Are we still committed to this character? What do we want to do? Do we want to change anything about that? Do we want to skip past this? Do we want to move over it? Do we want to retcon it? Do we want to change something about what happened? Because it probably shouldn't have happened. If you're upset about it, genuinely upset about it, then it should not have happened. And how do we change it for the future? Because if something happened that you did not want to happen, we stumbled into it somewhere along the way. Can we notice and pick up where we noticed it was happening so that we can try to avoid next time? We don't need to be there. We're here to play. We're here to have a good time. Whether or not we're crying - we can have a good time and cry. But I don't want you to be hurting two days later. So, if I were ever to make a mistake, that would be the mistake that I would make. World building - don't care. Anything I say becomes canon anyway. Yeah, I mean, really - at the end of the day, I'm telling a story. Even if I were to put it into a book, I'm telling a story and the mind is a fallable thing and I don't believe in spending a whole load of time being anxious about something that I said that is still- that at the time the characters thought was great. The players thought was great, that kept them in the story that kept them engaged with the story. So yeah, I just refuse to believe that I've made a mistake and say it is all canon now.

Melody [10:35]
Okay, great. Do you ever see players with interpersonal conflicts?

ShauntelleB [10:40]
Ah, do I see it? Yes.

Melody [10:42]
And how do you handle that?

ShauntelleB [10:44]
Usually it doesn't happen around my table, so I don't. Interpersonal or intrapersonal conflict tends to be a result of people not being on the same page in terms of the narrative, in terms of what they're trying to achieve, in terms of what outcomes they're hoping for. Anyone that I sit down at a table with, I tried to find those things out so that I can not have that problem. It comes back to being intentional with the system that you are using and being intentional with the story that you're telling. Because if you've got someone who wants to be a murder hobo... I don't like that term thinking about it but I don't have another one that explains what it is that I'm talking about. If you have someone that just wants to kill everyone that they meet, and the rest of the group is trying to be peaceful. Then you're going to have that conflict. And that doesn't mean that either playstyle is incorrect or wrong or bad, it just means you're playing different games. And if that's what's happening. It might be that you need a different group to play with. It might be that you need to get on track with what everyone else is playing. Usually it's a case of, "Hey, if this is the story you want to tell, why don't we just find different people to play with because it's not worth it." The kind of story that you lean to is the kind of story you wanna tell, so find people that are playing that cause there will be others.

Melody [11:58]
Nice thoughts on that scenario with interpersonal conflicts. Alright, let's switch over to analysis. What tools do you use to evaluate your performance as a game master?

ShauntelleB [12:09]
I will ask them. That's my primary one. I'll ask, you know, "What did you enjoy? What did you not enjoy? Stars, wishes." I might ask, "What do you want to see more of? What do you want from the next session? What do you feel like you didn't get enough of? What do you feel like you had too much of? Is there any focus that you'd like me to take? There are times when I will... quite frequently actually... I will say to players, "Hey, are there any characters that you haven't had a chance to talk to for a while that you would like to?" That's a really nice one for me, because it's not that I don't keep track of what the characters want and what the players want but it's about the fact that, you know, we might get carried away, we might get so involved in a scene somewhere that we miss a scene somewhere else or, you know, players might miss interacting with other players, and that is fine. And none of that to me is metagaming, none of that to me is railroady. I am here to tell a story with my friends. I'm here to tell a story with the people that I'm playing with, whether or not they're my friends, I'm here to tell a story. We want the story to be one that everyone will look back on fondly. And so, the most important thing is to find out what aspects everyone around the table needs for that to happen.

Melody [13:25]
The power of communication. Awesome. Here's my last question for this podcast episode: We'd like to know your opinion on this one - what are some milestones you think game masters might see along their journey?

ShauntelleB [13:41]
Milestones. First session achievement get. I guess. Second milestone would be do I want to go back? Yes. Huzzah, we did it. After that, it's: "Do I still want to do it?" Yay! That's my third one, all done!

Melody [13:58]
Alright, great. Well, again, thank you, Shauntelle, for being with us as always! We really appreciate having you here with us.

ShauntelleB [14:07]
Thank you.

Melody [14:09]
To our listeners: Please, check out the podcast description for details on how you can connect with ShauntelleB! In our next podcast episode, we will be touching on the category of performance. So, acting and improvisation within tabletop role playing games. We'll also get some thoughts on helping players to engage with their character better, so stay tuned! Follow us to receive notifications when new podcasts are released. For more podcasts and information, check out our website: https://www.gamemastercertification.org/. If you liked what you've heard in this episode, please consider hitting that share button and help us spread the word! Thank you for listening!