RPG, Emotions, and Sales: A Conversation with Cristian Fin on the T3 Method The Team Tale

I’m delighted to kick off this series of conversations dedicated to the relationship between role-playing games and business, seen through the lens of the T3 Method – The Team Tale RPG.

"The Witch' - Jean-François Portaels, C. 1840-1895

The idea is simple: to engage in dialogue with friends and colleagues who discovered the method through this website and who bring fresh perspectives, shaped both by their professional experience and their love of role-playing.

The first guest is someone special to me: Cristian Fin, a longtime friend, gothic RPG game designer, and skilled tabletop RPG master. Beyond his creative talent for crafting scenarios where emotional interpretation takes center stage, Cristian also has a solid career as a sales manager for a leading automation company. This dual nature—immersive storytelling on one hand and high-level commercial negotiations on the other—makes him the perfect conversation partner to explore how role-playing can become a powerful tool in organizations:

Me:

Cristian, it’s wonderful to have you here on the blog after so many informal chats over the years! When you saw the T3 Method on the website, your unique background immediately came to mind: gothic RPG design on one side, and commercial responsibility in such a technical sector as automation on the other. I’m fascinated by this dual perspective: how did you perceive the idea of merging role-playing language with business dynamics?

Cristian:

Andrea, the pleasure is mine, and thank you for the invitation. As you know, my story goes back quite a while. My passion for fantastic storytelling and RPGs dates back to childhood, while my professional experience in sales spans just over 20 years.

The idea of combining my gaming background with my sales work was born right at the beginning of my sales career. I came from the technical and support office, with no sales experience whatsoever, and was suddenly “thrown” into the Italian sales division. My colleagues used prepackaged NLP techniques and reverse psychology strategies, learned from books or training courses.

But during my very first business trip—after a week of customer data training—I asked myself: “What if instead of everything my colleagues are feeding me, I used my role-playing skills? What if I interpreted the role as though I were on stage in a gaming session?”

You won’t believe it, but despite my inexperience in sales, it worked! Especially when the interaction carried the weight of emotional storytelling…

Me:

That’s fascinating. In the T3 Method, I’ve also noticed how the narrative and emotional dimension creates an incredibly powerful hook—much stronger and more immediate than traditional training. It makes me think of your games, where atmosphere and interpretation matter far more than dice or combat. It’s as if people allow themselves to be drawn in more deeply. Do you think this “weight of emotion” can also be transferred into business contexts, where it often seems that only numbers matter?

Cristian:

Yes, absolutely. Just like in RPGs, in business there’s a tendency to focus mostly on technicalities (rules, statistics, skills) while ignoring the emotional aspects—the very things that trigger feelings, sometimes even conflicting ones, but that can bring out hidden natural talents and crucial traits in collaborators.

It’s the same for work as it is for gaming: if you limit yourself to technicalities, you never spark the flame of passion in an individual, nor uncover their natural role—the one that can make them truly shine in their professional world.

Me:

Another aspect that intrigues me is your sales experience in the field. You’re trained to read between the lines, to understand the client, to interpret not only what’s being said but also what’s left unsaid. To me, that feels like pure role-playing. Do you ever feel like you’re conducting a session when you’re in front of a client, with roles, masks, and implicit goals?

Cristian:

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, it all started by chance. From that first time I applied it, every meeting felt like a gaming session.

Role-playing allows you—especially with the kind of narrative and introspective style you and I have embraced over the years—to approach interactions differently.

In practice, the first meeting with a client is like the “introductory session.” You study the characters in play (the clients, their collaborators, and so on) and their roles within the “stage” you find yourself in. You listen and observe how the skeleton of the adventure is forming. There are multiple possible endings, and if you conduct the narrative well—letting the protagonists “play”—you can guide them, even entertain them, toward the best possible conclusion.

But there’s something crucial: if you’ve matured within RPGs, you don’t force the session. You improvise, letting the story evolve in real time. And you always remember that everyone present is a protagonist of the adventure—it’s not just you.

As I said, a session is also about listening and observation, seizing as much as you can from each role.

Me:

Finally, looking to the future: one of the ambitions of the T3 Method is to unlock creativity in teams—not just to provide technical training or assessments. You’ve seen entire worlds come alive through your games and you know how a strong setting can expand people’s imagination. How do you think the “gothic-emotional” dimension of your RPGs could be used to spark new ideas and perspectives inside a company?

Cristian:

Bringing emotions to the surface—especially in these times when they’re increasingly repressed—is extremely important. I believe the T3 Method can embrace a variety of settings.

A dramatic horror or gothic setting, compared to a fantasy one, can “hit deeper,” stirring the most intimate layers of a person. Each type of setting can find its rightful place in the T3 journey.

For example, a fantasy session can highlight each participant’s potential and their natural place within the team. It can also emphasize how group strength resolves problems.

On the other hand, introducing a “gothic-emotional” setting is, in my view, more suited to an advanced stage of the work—helpful for exploring deeper emotional dynamics and resolving conscious or unconscious conflicts between colleagues.