✒️ Coordinating TTRPG Writing - Feedback Basics ✒️
Project Management for TTRPGs
TL;DR: This post covers the basics of feedback and deciding what feedback your project needs.
This is part of a series on Project Management for TTRPGs. Stay up to date on this series by subscribing:
Feedback
Last post I talked about coordinating writing up-front by providing documentation around writing expectations, templates, and checklists. As I mentioned, the main difference between working alone and working with a group is coordination. But coordination doesn't stop when the writing starts. This is the ✨magical gift of collaboration✨: everyone gets feedback. Feedback is great. I mentioned it in my very first article for this series as a major reason I sought out collaboration.
As a project lead, it's your job to coordinate feedback. This means making sure everyone on the team gets the feedback they need by deciding:
What type of feedback is needed
Who gives feedback and when
Your feedback process
What to do with conflicting feedback
In this post, I'll cover steps 1 and 2. The next post will cover steps 3 and 4, as well as a case study.
Types of Feedback
If you're asking for feedback, you need to be clear about the type of feedback you're looking for. Saying "please give me feedback on this writing" could mean anything: do you want comments on a missing comma or comments on if your adventure premise is confusing? Depending on where you're at in your writing process, the comment about the comma might be very helpful (if you're about to finalize the layout) or completely useless (if you are writing a messy draft to get your basic premise down).
The exact terminology is a little flexible, but here's my take on different types of common feedback:
Developmental Edits: Developmental feedback covers the core structure or the basic mechanics of the writing. This feedback is zoomed out, not necessarily paying attention to sentences or even paragraphs, but rather the flow of entire sections, chapters, or even basic structural considerations (perhaps you employ way too much read-aloud text). Developmental feedback focuses on whether the story or rules make sense, are internally coherent, and are playable.
Example: A developmental editor catches that key information that should be in the adventure premise is introduced too late in the text, and that your adventure premise is too specific, as it only makes sense if one of the characters is dwarven.
Sensitivity Feedback: Sensitivity feedback reviews whether your writing reinforces harmful stereotypes or biases. Folks offering sensitivity feedback have particular areas they can provide sensitivity editing for, often due to lived experience. Examples of sensitivity editing expertises include cultural, orientation, gender, and disability (including both physical and neurodivergent) expertise.
Example: A sensitivity editor flags that your adventure premise has some harmful stereotypes involving a main villain with mental health issues.
Line Edits: This feedback is at a paragraph or sentence level. It focuses on whether the language is clear, concise, and properly structured.
Example: A line edit suggests adding a final sentence to the adventure premise section that summarizes what the heroes' goals are.
Copy Edits: This feedback focuses on grammar, spelling, and matching the style guide.
Example: A copy edit for catches that you must italicize the wish spell when it's mentioned in the adventure premise, as per the D&D style guide.
Proofreading: This is one of the final feedback steps, often after the text is laid out. It's there to catch any minor issues so that the piece is ready for publishing.
Example: A proofreader catches that there's a misspelling of the main villain's name in the adventure premise.
Playtesting: Playtesting is the act of playing part or all of your game. Playtesting is such an important feedback source and there are many different types and strategies for playtesting, all of which give you different types of playtesting feedback. There's enough to say about playtesting that it deserves – and might get – its own post. In the meantime, I've found this article, Playtesting your TTRPG by Vee Hendro, a great place to get started. Do you want me to write about playtesting? Let me know your questions about playtesting by leaving a comment:
Other feedback: I've also seen folks hired specifically for editing stat blocks or mechanics (especially for D&D). Finally, I've seen folks hired to consult on an area they're knowledgeable about, outside of sensitivity editing. Examples include being hired for expertise in journalism, military strategy, or a particular historical era.
Aside: Self-Editing or Tech-Assisted Editing
Self-editing can only get you so far, but it's also not nothing. Especially for new writers, there are a few tools or expectations you can set for what they should check before they submit their work:
Editing Checklists: This is a form of self-editing, and you can ask writers to check themselves. See my last post for an example.
Read it out loud: I often do a pass where I read my text out loud, which can help catch confusing sentence structure or awkward phrasing. You can also have your computer read aloud the text to you—For example, Microsoft Word has a "Read Aloud" tool.
Spelling and grammar checkers: I run everything I submit through a spelling and grammar checker. I've been impressed with Microsoft Word's checker more so than the default one in Google Docs. I also use the free version of Grammarly. I find it helpful but not life-changing, and occasionally the UI gets in the way of writing.
Who Gives Feedback When
Should I Hire an Editor?
Editors are essentially professional feedback givers. They often specialize in one or more of the feedback types mentioned above. Assuming you know of a good editor, you can compensate them, and they have time for your project, you should hire a dedicated expert editor and give them a lot of editorial power. Having a single, expert editor is a simpler way to handle editing compared to having a whole army of non-expert peer reviewers. If you have a bunch of newer authors and one empowered senior editor, that editor can elevate everyone's work. They will ensure consistency across your book so that it matches the format and style guide. They can also act as another high-level reviewer. Besides an editor, you might be the only person reading the entire book. An extra set of eyes (👁️ 👁️) is always helpful for flagging structural issues, such as two encounters that are very similar or that all of your NPCs are women, etc.
That said the question is often not whether you should hire an editor, but rather whether you can hire an editor. You'll want to find a good editor and you'll need to compensate them - and these barriers often keep new creators from accessing a good editor. If you're considering hiring an editor, either for an upfront rate or for a royalty split, I suggest:
Watching the So You Want to Hire an Editor panel from Big Bad Con Online 2022.
You can get a sense of editor skills and rates by looking at different products and seeing who is listed as the editor. Many editors will list their rates and provide contact information on their websites, such as Jenn Martin's website which also has a great breakdown of different editing services.
The Rising Tide, Roll20 | DriveThru, and Storytelling Collective discords all have different variations of an "editor" role and folks seeking work and experience editing. Checkout my Finding Collaborators When You’re New post for links and advice about reaching out.
If finding an editor is not an option, in the next post I'll talk about how I coordinated collaborators to do editing for Encounters in the Radiant Citadel. You can get that post right when it comes out by subscribing:
Feedback Stages
Feedback should have dedicated time accounted for in your Project Schedule. Here's generally what I did for Encounters and a reasonable amount of feedback for a simple collaborative project:
Stage One (First Draft): In this step, you focus on "does this game/story/experience work?". Consider:
Playtesting: Early playtesting amongst the team
Developmental Editing: Either with you as the project lead or a developmental editor
Sensitivity Editing: If you're tackling tricky topics, see if you can run outlines by a sensitivity consultant well-versed in the topic you're writing about
Stage Two (Final Draft): Here you focus on getting the text to its final state. Consider:
Playtesting: Playtesting with folks outside the project
Line and copy edits: Line and copy edits from either a dedicated editor or other collaborators
Stage Three (Ready to Publish): At this point, the text is laid out, the language is fixed, and you're doing a final pass to correct easily correctable issues (that missing comma or the wrong heading style applied). Any edits more major than that should have been caught earlier – and if they weren't, you should question whether it's worth delaying the book to fix it.
Proofreading: At a minimum, you and a dedicated proofreader should review the final text. The general advice is that you should find someone unfamiliar with the text to do a proofread. Since you're only fixing small, clear problems, this is a great time to involve your collaborators, who can read through the text and report any proofreading edits.
Aside: Power Hours
Of all the coordination I did during Encounters, can you guess what was rated the most unambiguously helpful? It was my optional ⚡power hours⚡. Twice a week collaborators could drop in for one hour-long coworking or brainstorming sessions. The power hours provided an optional space where collaborators could meet and work together, and in doing so get feedback from myself and each other.
Here's how it was setup:
I asked folks if they were interested in power hours when they formally signed up for the project during onboarding.
For interested folks, I gathered their schedules in When2meet.
I scheduled two meetings based on folks’ availability and time zones (we had US and European collaborators) and invited collaborators to the calendar event.
Right before each power hour, I sent a Discord notification with a link to the call.
The general structure of the power hours depended on who showed up and their needs. We'd always start by saying what we were working on. About half the time the rest of the hour was quiet coworking. The other half of the time, writers had specific feedback they were looking for or issues they needed to solve, and we spent the meeting talking. In the words of one collaborator “Power hour was very helpful when I went! And I felt like I could always ask for help in shortening my encounter, even before we reached the next editing phase.” and “10/10 very powerful and hourful”.
The only thing I might change is adding more hours during the heaviest writing times since that was when they were in the highest demand.
Conclusion
I've covered the basics of what, who, and when for collaborative writing feedback. In the next post, I'll talk about the actual feedback process and what I learned from coordinating feedback during Encounters.
Speaking of feedback, the talented Taylor Navarro gave feedback on this post! Do you want more TTRPG project leadership content? Taylor's been doing a series of LinkedIn posts about project management:
That's all for now! Have a lovely week and good luck with all your gaming endeavors.
Over and out,
🫙 👁️ 👁️
Great info! I’ll definitely be coming back to this article someday.