Roll For Insight

Tag: group dynamics

  • Why Emotional Intelligence Is Basically the GM Screen of Real Life

    Why Emotional Intelligence Is Basically the GM Screen of Real Life

    Back when I first started GMing tabletop games, I thought the little cardboard screen was mostly there to hide my dice rolls when I fudged the numbers to keep the rogue from dying in a sewer. And yes, it did that job just fine. But over time, I realized the real power of that screen wasn’t secrecy—it was stability. The GM screen lets me manage perception. It let me project confidence even when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. When the bard decided to barter with a dragon mid-combat and the plan somehow worked, the screen let me scramble silently while saying, “Interesting choice. Give me just a moment to calculate how that would work.” Behind the cardboard? Full panic. In front of it? Implacable dungeon master. That, my friends, is Emotional Intelligence.

    If you’ve ever been in charge of anything—whether it’s coordinating a crew of overcaffeinated delivery drivers or guiding your friends through a dungeon full of murder skeletons—you already know what it’s like to look serene on the outside while your brain is breakdancing through a five-alarm crisis. Emotional Intelligence, or EQ if you’re trying to sound fancy in a meeting, isn’t about shutting off your emotions like some kind of sociopathic vending machine. It’s about mastering the subtle art of emotional stagecraft: knowing which feelings to air out, which ones to fold up and tuck behind your metaphorical GM screen, and when to pull yourself together just long enough to keep the whole table from flipping over. Because let’s be honest—if you’re leading without Emotional Intelligence, it’s not a game anymore. It’s just trauma with dice.

    aniel Goleman—the guy who basically turned Emotional Intelligence into a bestselling brand—divides it into five domains: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Sounds tidy enough to fit on a poster in a corporate hallway next to a stock photo of people high-fiving in a wheat field. But here’s what most leadership books don’t tell you: nobody can see you doing any of this. There’s no glittery badge that lights up when you regulate your emotions or empathize correctly in a staff meeting. These skills operate in stealth mode. They live in the five-second pause after someone screws up and you’re deciding whether to guide them through the wreckage or launch into a “what the hell is wrong with you” monologue. Emotional Intelligence is like a hidden dice roll behind the GM screen—no one at the table sees the number, but they all feel whether you rolled a nat 20 or a critical fail based on what happens next.

    One of the coolest things Emotional Intelligence gives you is the ability to pause the movie before your brain hits the “yell and break things” button. It lets you choose your reaction instead of letting it choose you like some rage-filled claw machine. Back when I was still new to management and clinging to my systems like they were ancient scrolls of forbidden knowledge, one of my team members absolutely annihilated a process I’d spent weeks building. Not out of spite—just out of panic, pressure, and possibly a complete misunderstanding of how calendars work. The whole thing imploded and we lost an entire day’s worth of work. My gut reaction was the usual greatest hits: jaw clench, pulse spike, and a deep internal scream that translated to, “How?! Why?! What is wrong with you?!”

    But this is where EQ stepped in like the friend who quietly takes your drink away before you do something you’ll regret. I took a walk, breathed like a Buddhist monk who just sat on a Lego, and reminded myself that throwing a tantrum wouldn’t magically fix the inventory or make the team smarter. So I came back and said—calmly, somehow—“Walk me through this. I want to make sure we set you up better next time so this doesn’t feel like your only option.” That moment of controlled response didn’t just fix the process. It built trust. It said, “Yeah, you screwed up—but I’m not gonna throw you into the volcano for it.” And that quiet, invisible choice right there? That’s the kind of leadership that keeps the party from turning on each other and flipping the whole damn table.

    Now, some people hear “Emotional Intelligence” and think it’s just a fancy word for not showing weakness. The toxic version of that idea turns into the blank-faced, corporate manager archetype who says things like “Let’s circle back” and “Appreciate your candor” while privately fantasizing about rage-punching the break room fridge. But EQ isn’t about bottling everything up and sealing it with a smile. It’s about using emotion with intention. If someone drops the ball and you don’t feel even a flicker of frustration, congratulations—you’ve officially detached from reality. But the moment you let that frustration blast out like a busted fire hydrant, you’re not leading anymore. It’s not cathartic. It’s damaging. And once your players—sorry, I mean employees—realize your screen has holes, they start making decisions based on your volatility rather than your vision.

    This is the fork in the road where Emotional Intelligence separates actual leaders from people who just have the bigger desk. Because here’s the thing, your team isn’t a set of problems to be fixed—they’re a party of weird, unpredictable adventurers, each hauling around their own unique stats and baggage. You don’t get loyalty by being louder or squeezing harder. You don’t get trust by demanding it like a toddler screaming for snacks. You have to earn those things the hard way—by listening when it’s inconvenient, by managing your own emotional mess before cleaning up someone else’s, and by realizing that just because you feel something doesn’t mean it gets to grab the wheel. Feelings are passengers. You’re the one supposed to be steering.

    I once had a player who treated failure like a personal insult from the universe. If a plan fell apart, he’d slump in his chair, glare at the dice like they owed him money, and spend the next hour passive-aggressively dismantling the vibe. I had every excuse to boot him from the table or call him out in front of the group, but that would’ve been leadership in the same way a fire extinguisher is interior design. Instead, I remembered something from a leadership book that actually stuck: Emotional Intelligence lets you guide people without turning everything into a power struggle. So I pulled him aside and said, “Look, the dice aren’t out to get you. They’re just throwing curveballs. This is improv, not a performance review. Let’s figure out how to make the twist part of the story.” He didn’t suddenly become a model player, but he did start seeing the GM screen as a boundary—not a battleground. That’s the job. Leadership isn’t about proving how right you are. It’s about steering the ship through the storm without convincing the crew they’re all going to drown.

    And make no mistake: your plan will fall apart. Leadership is improv. It’s crisis management. It’s trying to guide a group of people toward a shared goal when everyone has a different idea of what that goal should look like—and someone keeps trying to seduce the dragon. Emotional Intelligence doesn’t make you immune to stress, it just keeps you from turning that stress into shrapnel.

    So if you’re in charge and find yourself saying, “I’m just being real,” or “They need to toughen up,” take a second and ask: who’s actually behind the screen right now—the leader who sees the group’s needs and responds accordingly or the panicked goblin in your head that’s slapping at the controls, trying not to lose control? 

    Because the screen isn’t there to block out your humanity—it’s there to keep you from flinging it around like a live grenade.

  • The Most Toxic Alignment at the Table: Chaotic Selfish

    The Most Toxic Alignment at the Table: Chaotic Selfish

    There’s a certain kind of player who shows up to your game table and, within five minutes, makes it clear that they’re “Chaotic Neutral.” Not just in character sheet alignment, but in the very marrow of their bones. You can smell it on them like Axe body spray and misplaced confidence. They say it with a grin, usually while licking a dagger or attempting to steal from the party’s healer. They believe this gives them permission to act entirely on impulse, with no consideration for the rest of the group or the broader story. They will gleefully derail entire plot arcs, antagonize NPCs for no reason, betray the party for a shiny trinket, and defend it all with one sacred phrase: “I’m just playing my character.”

    And if you’re lucky, they’ll do it before you’ve printed everyone’s Session Zero handouts.

    Now, let’s not misunderstand the assignment. Chaotic Neutral as an alignment isn’t inherently broken. In fact, when played with nuance, it can be one of the most textured roles at the table. These characters are wild cards, but they should still have values—they might reject laws, but not consequences; they might be unpredictable, but not purposeless. The problem is that, more often than not, what we’re dealing with isn’t Chaotic Neutral. It’s something much worse: Chaotic Selfish. It’s a player who confuses impulsiveness with entitlement. A player who believes that because they have chosen to act like a gremlin, the group is now obligated to revolve around that behavior or risk “ruining the fun.” It’s not a character flaw they’ve built into their backstory—it’s a leadership vacuum they’ve dragged in from real life.

    This is where the leadership lesson kicks in with a steel-toed boot. Every GM is a de facto leader, whether they asked for it or not. You’re not just managing a story—you’re managing a group of people, each of whom has different motivations, energy levels, social cues, and expectations about what a “fun” game night looks like. And one of the most insidious leadership traps you’ll fall into is thinking that everyone in the group is here to play the same game. They’re not. One player might want a deep character arc and emotional growth. Another is here to unwind after work by punching ghosts. A third thinks they’re auditioning for Critical Role, and a fourth just wants to do math with fireballs. If your Chaotic Selfish player isn’t corrected early, they will fracture that group like a bad manager who mistakes “disruption” for innovation.

    Because here’s the uncomfortable truth most leadership books won’t tell you: not all conflict is healthy. Yes, diversity of thought is valuable. Yes, challenging the status quo can drive innovation. But when someone insists on setting fires inside the team dynamic just to watch what happens, they’re not challenging assumptions—they’re demanding attention. And when leaders tolerate that behavior under the banner of “freedom,” they’re not being inclusive; they’re abandoning the rest of the team to fend for themselves. If you’ve ever worked with someone who constantly interrupts meetings with off-topic jokes, undercuts colleagues with passive-aggressive remarks, or ignores deadlines because they “work best under pressure,” you’ve already met this person. You just called them Carl from marketing instead of Zorkas the Knife-Licker.

    The problem gets worse because many GMs, like many new managers, are conflict-avoidant. They don’t want to “ruin the vibe.” They want to be liked. And so they let the behavior slide, justifying it as flavor or roleplay. After all, isn’t the point of a tabletop RPG to allow people to do things they can’t do in real life? Sure. But there’s a difference between a fantasy of power and a fantasy of lack of consequences. One is healthy escapism; the other is what you get when you let someone live out their worst impulses in a sandbox with no boundaries. You don’t have to let it slide. You shouldn’t. Good leadership doesn’t mean letting everyone do whatever they want. It means setting a culture where everyone can thrive, not just the loudest person with a backstory written in blood.

    If you need a scholarly anchor to hang your GM screen on, let’s talk about transformational leadership, the kind that focuses on inspiring and guiding individuals toward a shared vision. Bernard Bass (1990) outlined the four components: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. If your “chaotic” player is stifling any one of those pillars, your leadership mandate is clear—they need coaching, redirection, or, in some rare cases, a one-way ticket out of the campaign. When someone makes the game unplayable for others, that is a leadership problem, not a roleplay quirk. Letting it fester because “that’s just how they are” is the same as letting a team member steamroll meetings because “they’re just passionate.” No—they’re just inconsiderate. And inconsiderate people don’t improve by being enabled.

    There’s a reason most TTRPG safety tools—like The X-Card—exist in the first place: because the social contract of the table is fragile. Most of us are awkward nerds with damage and anxiety and jobs we’re trying to escape for three hours on a Thursday. The emotional risk of collaborative storytelling is real. So when someone shows up determined to be the unpredictable gremlin who pees in the soup and blames the character sheet, what they’re really doing is violating that social contract—and trusting you, the GM, not to call them on it.

    So call them on it.

    Do it early, do it privately, and do it with the same calm confidence you’d use to tell someone they forgot deodorant. Be direct: “I want to make sure this game is fun for everyone, and I’ve noticed that some of your character’s actions are making that harder. Can we talk about ways to channel that chaotic energy without disrupting the table?” That’s not confrontation. That’s leadership. That’s you refusing to let one person ruin a shared experience because they don’t know the difference between playing a complex character and throwing a tantrum with dice.

    Look, no group is perfect. And no GM is either. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to let stuff slide that you shouldn’t, or come down hard when you should’ve asked a question instead. That’s the job. That’s why they call it “running” a game—you’re always in motion, always responding, always adjusting. But you don’t have to do it with a party member standing on the roof of the tavern, throwing Molotov cocktails into your narrative because they thought it would be funny. You don’t have to let selfishness wear the mask of alignment.

    Chaotic Neutral doesn’t have to mean chaos without care. It can mean unpredictability with purpose. It can mean wildness tempered by curiosity. And most importantly, it can mean a table where everyone—not just the loudest—gets to be the main character in their own little story.

  • Most TTRPG Groups Don’t Fail Because of Bad Rules. They Fail Because Nobody Talks About What They Want.

    Most TTRPG Groups Don’t Fail Because of Bad Rules. They Fail Because Nobody Talks About What They Want.

    If you’ve ever watched a tabletop RPG group implode halfway through a campaign, odds are it didn’t happen because the rogue broke the stealth rules or someone forgot how grappling works. 

    It happened because the group never agreed on what kind of story they were telling. 

    That’s the real killer. Not bad dice rolls, not min-maxing, not even a toxic player (although that’ll do it too.) It’s mismatched expectations. One player wants a deep, interesting story where their backstory matters. Another just wants to vibe and roll for soup. A third is out here trying to trigger every combat encounter because they thought it was going to be dungeon-crawl heavy. 

    Nobody’s wrong. 

    But when nobody talks about it ahead of time, the group ends up playing three different games on the same night. And resenting each other for it. 

    A while back, I ran a Star Wars campaign set aboard a derelict research vessel in deep space. The tone I was going for was budget Event Horizon but everyone’s tired and no one trusts each other. No heroes. No clean uniforms. Just scavengers trying not to get pulled apart by a haunted ship with bad wiring and worse intentions. 

    The first character to show up was perfect. A burned-out salvager with a busted EVA suit and a cybernetic eye that twitched when the humidity got too high. Total grunge vibes. Paranoia baked into the character sheet. We were locked in. 

    Then came the next player.

    They introduced a rogue Jedi who was–how do I put this?–absolutely unhinged. 

    Imagine if Charlie Day got knighted by accident and now he has a lightsaber and a working knowledge of Force Push. He talked a mile a minute, stole rations from NPCs for “training,” and once used his telekinesis to hurl a toilet at a hallway camera for reasons I still don’t understand. His entire backstory hinged on being kicked out of multiple Jedi temples for “philosophical differences.”

    Now, this wasn’t a bad character. It just didn’t belong in this game. 

    By the third session, the tone was wrecked. One moment we were crawling through vent shafts trying to avoid a sentient virus, the next he was trying to telepathically convince the ship’s AI to adopt him. The salvager’s player pulled me aside, asking if I could “get things back on track.” The Jedi’s player thought they were keeping things fun. 

    Neither of them was wrong.
    But we never had the conversation.
    And by the time we tried, the tone whiplash had already torn the party apart.

    The game died a couple of sessions later. 

    It’s the same in leadership, by the way. 

    Small teams don’t fall apart because the spreadsheet formatting was wrong. They fall apart because no one agreed on what success looked like. No one clarified how they wanted to work together. Everyone just assumed their way was the default. 

    You have to talk about it. 

    You have to talk about tone, pacing, player buy-in, safety tools, table culture–all the boring stuff that keeps your game from catching fire three weeks in. It’s not exciting, but it’s essential. 

    Same goes for coaching.
    Same goes for management.
    Same goes for any environment where human beings are expected to collaborate and make something together. 

    If you’re leading a game–or a team–you are responsible for helping people articulate what they want. And then you’re responsible for guiding the group toward a shared direction that honors as much of that as possible. 

    Because if you don’t?

    You’ll end up with a group of well-meaning, creative, passionate people–who can’t stand playing together.