selecting an appropriate game type for a
tabletop exercise is a pretty crucial decision it impacts the effectiveness of the overall
training or the scenario when planning the session choosing the right game type not only
engages participants in the right way but it ensures that the learning objectives are met
so I've tried to create a bit of a structured approach to trying to make a decision it's
obviously a guide it's the way that I think about it once you have your head around the
differ
ent types of games you can definitely start to have your own ways of selecting What
type of game you'll probably have some that you're more familiar with or more confident with so bear
with me as we look through this very complicated diagram that I've put up but all the orange boxes
contain all of the different types of games that we were talking about in the last lesson and we're
just going to go through step by step from the top and break down why that choice matters for that
particular g
ame selection so let's zoom in on the top here what game type should you use first
of all very first question most important thing do you know what your aim is I've mentioned this
before it's very important if you haven't had a discussion or thinking about what your aim is this
is where you brainstorm this is where you actually come up with your objective about what you want
to achieve and that's definitely going to inform the rest of your choice moving down we want to
know how many players
are going to be there is it going to be one player if so you might want to
choose a solo game that's totally okay there are many types of games of solo games like journaling
games that exist and when it comes to quantifying the players I've just broken it up to do they fit
on a small table is it a big table or is it more than a big table looking at the small table
a bit more closely we want to just ask again what is the objective now you actually have the
objective in your mind you'll prob
ably understand is the objective for practicing structured group
voting if so you've got a committee game if it's improvization or confidence or communication for
small groups theater games but if it's anything else to do with hypothesis testing or generated
you got to move down the tree big table games are usually about hypothesis generating and testing
so I've moved them straight down and if you've got a large group or more than a big table if your
objective is hypothesis generation and t
esting again we're going to go straight down but there
are some other fields here which might fit if you're doing a large field test operation you want
to use a functional exercise if you want to put on a show or a performance use a spectacle game if
you have multiple mini games with a particular narrative you want to test that's a mega game and
if you're after teaching a specific skill or task or concept a seminar game might be useful for a
large group going down now if we have a hypothesi
s that needs testing this is where we split up
if the hypothesis is being tested or if it's being generated do we have an idea already that we
want to test or do we not know something about the situation or the context or the cause and are we
trying to find that sometimes you want to do both test and generate in a dynamic scenario they're
the more complicated games and they go straight down we'll talk about them in a second let's say
we want to test a hypothesis how many hypotheses do we ha
ve do we not have enough in that case
competing hypothesis is the right type of game to play we actually want to generate more hypotheses
if we only have one leading hypothesis that can be strategically dangerous so Devil's ad Advocate
might be the game that we want to test if we're only testing one hypothesis if we have two we want
to do an AB game if we have many early contenders we want to do key assumptions checking to try and
see which of those hypothesis might be leading and you can a
lways run through multiple versions of
this let's just say you don't have enough and then you come up with a bunch so you have too many then
you want to check their key assumptions narrow it down to two run an AB game and when you have a
leading One play Devil's Advocate great but what about if we don't have a hypothesis and we need
to generate one from the situation or the event that we are looking at and analyzing do we want
to look forwards in time backwards in time or from the outside i
n thinking about external factors
outside in requires outside in thinking looking backwards trying to think about cause of effects
and chain analysis we want to use backwards what if thinking and if we're looking forward in time
from the event How likely is that event if it's a high probability I.E it's already happened and we
know that it's happened therefore the probability is 100% or if it's very likely thing to happen
soon and we want to know what happens way in the future we want to us
e alternative Futures if
it's a low probability then the situation or event under analysis is probably going to have
a high impact so we're going to have low Chance High Impact thinking games if the situation or
game doesn't fit any of the current questions we've asked we're going to be moving on down
to larger simulations more complex and dynamic situations here I want to split these up into two
components and the question to ask is what is the most important thing to simulate in this game
is
it physical elements like time and space or is it relationships diplomacy choices narratives
more softer elements let's have a look at the softer elements first the question to ask is what
perspectives do the players need to take is it the perspective of an adversary that we're interested
in if so red teaming is the option if it's a particular organization or person or a series of
those maybe role playing is the right one to use if it's a command or a tactical perspective where
you're
in charge of a group of different people then it might be a matrix game given that Matrix
games are better than war games when it comes to things like relationships diplomacy and soft
elements there are two extra perspectives that I've included here we mentioned meta games if
you want people to break that fourth wall and think about outside the game met games are quite
Advanced to design but they can be used here and if you want the players to be omnip potent and
know everything like a Godl
ike perspective a narrative game is probably useful moving across
to the other side if we're talking about physical game elements again the question to ask is what
perspective should the players take the reason why I'm asking this on both sides is because
games that have both physical elements and soft elements can be designed for adversarial
red teaming role playing a particular personal organization or Matrix gaming command or tactical
things they just need more crunchier rules however in
particular deciding between a matrix game and
a war game is really about how you want to resolve actions do you want to do it by discussion in a
matrix game or by predetermined rule sets that are common in war games so there we have it a large
framework in how to choose games going through it from the top to the bottom again we just want
to know what the aim is how many players we have what's the specific objective are we testing
or are we generating hypothesis does it have physical elemen
ts in the game or is it more softer
relationships diplomacy Etc and what perspective do the players need to take they're the main
questions that I outlined to begin with and that's the way I categorize and think about what type
of flavor of game or what type of tool we need to use we now have a little test where I've going
to give you some aims about games and I want you to ask yourself what is the tool that needs using
for this particular game start from the white box up the top run down a
nd see if you can figure out
the best type of category of game to use for these particular questions good [Music] luck thanks for
watching these lessons will be dropping weekly on YouTube but if you want to get them all right
now you can take the foundation course for free on our website where you will also get the lesson
notes summaries assignments checklists that guide you through all the learning objectives we've
covered at the end of that course you'll also get a certificate of completi
on and an invite to
our directory and Community where you can meet some other game Masters and use the long game
project as a platform to Showcase your work if you want to take your game Mastery further
completion of this course is a prerequisite to unlock the advanced professional course along
with the game master track where we dive deeper into the content and further along the skill
treat you can also check out some of our other free tools in the description below including
our tabletop
exercise starter kit our scenario generator the Trove of existing scenarios our sop
checklist Library oh and our new RPG character sheet CV and Linkedin template which is really
cool I did mine this morning and now all my network knows that my dump stat is probably
Dex and I'm definitely neutral good roll on
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