Another snag for a team, but not one that always requires hefting the person off the team, is the "Backseat designer". Someone who, whatever they're function on the team, isn't the designer or ideas person, but insists you should add this, change this, or do this his or her way instead of that way. You can see how annoying this can get and how fast it can get there. Gets annoying even faster if the team already has a solid idea of what they want and how they want to get there. You don't have to smite this person right away though, see if you can work *with* instead of *against* for instance. Ask this person if they feel they have a valid idea to add, or a valid point to change something in the design. Instead of having them just bicker and make noise about it, get them to write out exactly what the problem is, and why they think it needs to be improved or changed. From there you can decide if they actually have a point, or if they are indeed, just annoying.
If they refuse to do this and compromise, then heft them, a bull headed team member that thinks everything should be done his way or no way can be pitched onto the highway, preferably in traffic. Granted its hard to pitch him if the bull headed one in question is the lead designer. If in this case you find yourself working under such a designer, try the same approach. Write down the perceived problem, why and how you think it should be changed or improved, and ask them to go over it with you or at least read and consider it. Any lead designer worth his weight will listen.
Now that you can handle
recruitment, lets move on to the actual talent. The second most important part
of a team is that you've covered *all* the bases for what work you believe needs
to be done. Its good to sit down and figure out exactly what work needs to be
done, and what kind of person and how many you need to accomplish this work. You
need similar things for both a mod and a game, obviously you need someone to do
the code work, someone to do 2d artwork, 2d character art for sprites, etc. If
its a 3d game or mod, then you'll obviously need some 3d talent, 3d map makers,
modelers, animators, etc. Just make sure that at no point you'll ever have to
say "Gee, guess we don't have anyone to do this....". Take this as far as the
website for the project if you have one, look for a suitable webmaster or web
page designer to start up base page. Cover all you're bases, and the cruel
talons of game industry fate won't score make it to home base as easily.
A game is four things, what you see (graphics), what you hear (sound and music), what you play (game design, interface and gameplay as a whole) and what you experience (The experience is the total sum of the games parts, this is what you aim for, a gaming experience. This is often helped along by such fine people as story writers). Make sure you cover all four, or plan to cover all four as work progresses.