2023-05-14

I want to be a good player

I want to change something in my gaming life: I want to focus on playing, rather than GM'ing. I'll try to be a good player.

A change of perspective

Since I rediscovered the role playing hobby about 10 year ago, I've mostly ran the games as DM, referee, GM, however you want to call it. In essence, I made assumptions about how the game should be run, and tried to stick to those assumptions while running the games. It's not that I don't try to take any feedback into account, my players give me. Probably, and hopefully, most GMs are conscious of that. But still, that's how it goes for most of us, I guess. You have an idea of a game you'd like to happen, and then you'll try to run it that way.

The thing is, while I liked the games I ran so far, and while I feel they provided some decent entertainment for our group, I also found them lacking in some respects. Some things I'd imagine I'd like as a player, simply did never happen, or to a much lesser extent, than I'd hoped for. That's o.k., I don't blame anyone, except possibly myself for running the games based too much on assumptions of what I as a player would like to see.

Honoring great games

Here's another reason: there are great games being run in our online community all the time. The Monday Games run by @kensanata, @phf and other referees on our Grenzland Discord Server. I feel I've missed out on a lot of great gaming sessions. I hope I can pick up some of the neglected characters I had start out in those games at some point, and play them, while those campaigns are still running.

My Resolution

I'll try to:

invest in my characters, make them interesting,
always do character sketches,
immerse myself into my characters and the shared imagined world given,
come up with plans and objectives for my characters,
drive my characters stories,
cooperate with, or contest my fellow characters, depending on the situation given,
ask questions,
prefer asking questions in character,
prefer adressing other player characters, instead of talking to the GM out of character,
think about downtime activities for my characters and communicate those to my GM and fellow players,
do the shopping and encumbrance math. I find these things surprisingly conducive to immersion.
I'll try to not wait until our GM not only (a) bought all the books, (b) prepared the game, but also (c) managed to do the scheduling, and (d) getting together a gaming party for us. But instead I'll offer to try and drum up a party myself and ask our GMs if they'd run for us.

Let's play play those roles! Let's play those characters to the hilt!

PS: I'll still run games, for sure, but I'll make no promises about when. The Grenzland-Kampagne is on hiatus now for the summer months. Once Fall comes around and any of the players will ask for a session, I'll probably run it anyway. Maybe not on a regular schedule, though, since I need time for playing 😉

Please send any comments or questions to wandererbill@betola.de or @wandererbill@tabletop.social

Copyright: ~lkh • So. Mai 14 10:21:30 CEST 2023 • License: CC BY-NC 4.0 • Hosted by: SDF-EU Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf-eu.org