‘Watching Time’ courtesy freeimages.com / Richard Dudley

Every GM experiences deadlines and deadline stress. There comes a point at which you have to be ready to play, whether you are or not, and whether you feel adequately prepared or not. In learning how to cope with that situation, you also learn how to manage – at least somewhat – the many analogous situations that you will encounter in real life, whether that being a work-related presentation, a speech, or committing to a regular publication schedule.

Quite often, the only solution open to you is to go with whatever you have on hand and hope to polish up the rough spots as you go. That’s where the standards of the individual, and their levels of self-confidence, are on display in their rawest state. What one person feels is an inadequate level of prep may be perfectly satisfactory to someone else.

What I have found as a result of the diversity of campaigns and genres that I have GM’d is that we each have multiple such standards, whether we realize it or not. I can be completely comfortable in a D&D session having performed prep that wouldn’t begin to cut the mustard in my Zenith-3 (superhero) campaign, which is a Swiss watch of precision in comparison. The Zener Gate campaign that I’ve been developing off-and-on is intended to be as close to zero prep as I come. And my Dr Who campaign requires still more effort in some areas than the Zenith-3 campaign, while in others it is more at the D&D-session standard.

Which shows that, in fact, there are a whole array of standards at play that are sometimes collated into a general statement of prep, and that different GMing styles (because that’s the primary non-genre distinction between those campaigns) affect different aspects of the prep array in different ways – heightening sensitivity in some areas and diminishing it in others.

If I were to be asked what my top three pieces of advice to new GMs would be, it’s the following:

1. Don’t over-prep to the point that spontaneity is lost or causes prep to be wasted time; keep things loose.
2. Don’t under-prep in the areas that are weak, especially if they are critical to the GMing style that you have adopted; prep smart, not more, target your weak areas, and prioritize what time you have.
3. Become aware of the correlation between GMing style and prep requirements and alter the first to accommodate the realities imposed by your current situation on the second.

Today’s post is an example of the last of those pieces of advice. I had definite plans for what I wanted to do today, but real life has compromised my capacity to adequately execute those plans. Nothing important, no personal disasters – just a shortage of enough time to adequately prepare and compose the article that I wanted to write.

When that happens, you have four choices:

1. Do the best you can to execute what you had planned, knowing that it won’t be up to your usual standards;
2. Do something else that requires less prep;
3. Shift the deadline, if at all possible;
4. Roll out something that you have “on standby” for just this sort of occasion.

The last of these is always my first preference, while the second-last one tends to be my last resort. I have – once, in more than thirty years as a GM – had to admit that I wasn’t ready to run, and could we please do something else this week? I have also – two or three times – pulled out a canned module or adventure from the internet and said, ‘Okay, this week is a “what if” adventure completely divorced from ongoing reality within the campaign, a “fill-in issue” as it were’.

It must also be said that the options available aren’t quite as black-and-white as the above list suggests. It is sometimes possible to find a compromise between two or more choices.

Which is where today’s article re-enters the discussion. It is a blending of options 2 and 3 – what I had intended to write today will now appear on Thursday evening, Australian time. And, instead of compromising quality (option 1) by doing an inadequate job today, I am instead talking about deadlines and deadline stress, a subject that has absolutely no relation to the intended subject.

Having ameliorated the proximate cause of deadline stress, does that mean that you no longer suffer from the effects? Absolutely not – these prevent further “damage”, but don’t undo the mental and emotional impact of such stress experienced in the past, or while agonizing over the best plan of action to choose in response to whatever situation has impacted on your plans and intentions.

You can tell how much as I love doing Campaign Mastery from the fact that in almost 9 years, there have been only two occasions when I’ve completely missed posting, and another couple of occasions when I’ve done what I’m doing here today. That’s nine years of weekly (to mid-2012) or twice-weekly (4 1/4 years)) articles. 744 of the articles published here (not counting this one) have my by-line.

That’s nine years without a break in the publishing schedule. With most jobs, you get at least two and more often four weeks off, a year, to recharge your batteries. My former partner in the site, Johnn Four, has started taking a month off each year to avoid burnout and discharge the accumulated deadline stress. Most of my campaigns are on a schedule that gives a month off somewhere in the December-January period (because people are busy doing other things).

Nevertheless, there are times when it feels more like a job than a fun activity. That’s when the deadline stress is really starting to bite.

It probably doesn’t help that I have started sidelining intended content simply because there didn’t seem to be enough time available to write the article – I have a long list of post ideas that are simply not on the agenda at the moment for that reason, and that reason alone. Never fear – I have a plan to start tackling those as part of the 10th anniversary buildup, starting just a few months away, a plan that also has the side-benefit of giving me even more free time. Potentially enough that aside from an hour or two of housekeeping each day, I will be able to build up enough material in advance of publication that I will even be able to start taking the occasional fortnight’s holiday without stressing about it for months in advance.

There will be more news on that front in a couple of months – stay tuned!

In the meantime, though, I have other means of de-stressing.

The first is GMing – which may sound paradoxical. After all, I started by pointing out that every GM feels deadline stress for the same reasons that a blogger with a regular schedule does. But the fact remains that actually GMing (as opposed to doing prep) can be a great relief simply because of the fun that you have.

Mindless computer games – my favorite games in this respect are Bubble Shooter, and Mega Miner, and Mad Virus. I’ve also had a great time playing the Into Space series (Into Space!, Into Space 2. Into Space 3: Xmas Story), Galaxy Seige 3, and GrandPrix Management.

Non-documentary Television – I can relax by watching shows that I find entertaining more than interesting. My choices range from VS Arashi to Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. to the various incarnations of NCIS.

I also used to be able to count reading favorite fiction in this category, but failing eyesight has made this more problematic lately. With new reading glasses in tow, I hope that I can now return to that method of stress relief!

Am I the most highly-stressed of people? Absolutely not! There are a lot of people out there doing it a lot tougher than I am, which is one reason why I give to charities what I can when I can. Things used to be a lot worse for me, which is why I don’t often complain!

So, what would my advice be to anyone else out there suffering from deadline stress? Try one of the above activities – but be aware that they are all time-consuming, and therefore inherently compound deadline stress even as they are relieving it. If that’s not enough, you may need to look at reducing your commitments, or taking a break for a month or so.

Everyone is different, feels and reacts to deadline stress differently, and hence requires a different combination of “therapeutic releases”. Your best answer might not even appear on my list!

The best and only substantive answer I can provide is to try all of these, and anything else that you enjoy, in moderation, and see what works best for you and in what proportions.

Reality deadlines don’t have to be a killer burden. If you suffer from deadline stress, no matter how moderately, do something about it – because it will only grow worse if you don’t.