Research Projects — The Management Game: design note

A single self-contained HTML page (index.html), no dependencies, no network, state in localStorage (rpm_v1). Sister of the Research Pitfalls game and built on the same stylesheet and engine helpers (tooltips, term chips, verdict boxes, profile spectra).

What it is for

The year a PhD student first leads a project: a supervisor with no time, a senior collaborator with many projects and few time pressures, a master’s student the player is responsible for, and a deadline in month eight. The soft-skill problems that follow (time pressure, authorship fights, silent collaborators, dropped balls, late feedback, burnout) are not taught and are expected. The game makes them consequences of decisions, so the player can see which decision seeded which problem and what would have prevented it.

Sources: lab-culture discussions (roles only, no names: the PI, a student, a postdoc, a senior collaborator), the crisis-management and feedback notes behind them (three components of feedback, situation-behavior-impact, “can I give you some feedback?”, start/stop/continue, kind versus nice, ask for advice not feedback, “can this conflict deepen the relationship?”), two collaboration postmortems (a project stalled across two fields and mismatched time horizons; leading projects as the most junior member, where the coaches’ answer was “you told them how you work; have you asked how they work?”), and the Path to PhD posts on expectations, deadlines, planning, contingency, open-loop projects, meetings, rest, failure, conflict and delegated speed.

Four parts

1. Run a project. Nine months, two decisions per month drawn from a pool of about three (the kickoff, the deadline week, the submission form and the postmortem are always drawn), plus the problems that fire. Six dials, 0 to 100: alignment, trust, buffer, credit, energy, loop; a progress bar; and a relationship bar per character. Every option is sound, the trap, or defensible-but-costly; the reveal names the effect on the dials, the reason, the sound move if missed, and the problem the option seeds.
   • Seeds. Options set named seeds (auth_unspoken, expect_written, hero, …). At the start of each month the game evaluates the problems due that month: each has a base risk and a risk(state) function that adds for the seeds that cause it and subtracts for the ones that prevent it, plus a few dial thresholds (energy below 35 raises burnout). A roll under the risk fires the problem as an incident card with a “why now” banner that names the decisions behind it; a roll above it when the risk was pushed below the base is logged as prevented, with the decision that did it. Some problems fire at low odds whatever the player did, because some cannot be avoided, only handled.
   • Progress grows with every decision by a base amount that the loop and alignment dials raise and an empty buffer or an empty tank halve; a few options add or remove progress directly. Submission at the deadline needs progress above 55 and buffer above zero.
   • Outcome. Submitted; paper quality (progress and loop); team health (trust, alignment, relationships); energy; credit. Verdict bands: Ran it well (75), Shipped at a cost (58), Survived it (40), Learned the hard way. The submission is worth 30 points, so a paper shipped over a broken team or an empty tank does not read as a success.
2. Debrief (the analytics module). A line chart of the six dials and progress over the year with the months a problem fired marked; a timeline that lists every problem that fired with its odds and the decisions it traces back to, every problem prevented with the decision that prevented it, and every trap or costly call with the problem it seeded; a management profile on five spectra (controller–servant leader, assumes–writes it down, keeps the peace–says the hard thing, hero–delegates, sprinter–pacer), this run hollow and all runs filled, each pole with a virtue and a vice; three things to do differently (the problems that fired first, then the lowest dials); a reading list; a copyable summary. A cumulative profile screen shows, across runs, which problems were hit, prevented and repaired.
3. Say it better (the drills). Fourteen pairs of messages for the hard moments: the collaborator who went quiet, the authorship opener, the reminder to a silent PI, feedback on a late section, asking for advice rather than feedback, declining a request, the weekly update, reporting a dead result, a meeting invite, disagreeing with the PI’s framing, a cold email, checking the target venue, inviting a postmortem, telling the PI about burnout. The weaker message is written long on purpose (apologies, hedges, over-explanation), so length is not the tell; the better one carries context, a concrete ask, a date, and a way for the other person to answer in one line. Rounds of eight, unseen items first.
4. Field manual. Sixteen problems in three groups (alignment and communication; time and load; credit and trust), each with what it looks like, what causes it, how to prevent it, how to repair it once it has fired, and what to read; hit and prevented counts from this device; a glossary with hover tooltips on every card; the readings in five groups.

Didactic choices

• Delayed consequences with a visible trace. The point of the game is that management failures are seeded months before they fire. Every incident banner and every debrief entry names the seeding decision, in the player’s own words, so the lesson is causal rather than moral.
• Prevented problems are shown. Good management is invisible; the debrief makes it visible by listing what did not fire and why.
• Repair is scored separately from prevention. A fired problem has a sound repair, a trap, and a costly option, so the game teaches recovery as well as avoidance.
• Both directions of subjectivity. Which move is sound is one researcher’s judgment; the home screen says so and every reveal gives its reasons. The profile is descriptive, and each pole has a virtue.
• Voice. Peer address, sentence case, American English, typographic quotes, no emoji, no first person outside quoted messages. Terms get a tooltip on first use per card.

Deep links

?mode=run|drills|manual|profile.