How to Play Good: 2-fer!
Because I missed Wednesday, here’s a Two For One post! I’ve got a lot more of this stuff, and I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, if you have a question or comment, drop it below and let’s talk.
Share the spotlight.
Okay, you’re attentive and engaged. Now you need to share the spotlight. Again, it’s a matter of being mindful of the other people playing the game. Give the less-assertive players a chance to shine occasionally. Cheer others on. More on that in an upcoming post.
Be prepared for bad things to happen to your character.
Conflict, struggle, risk, and loss form the basis of stories. Tabletop role-playing games are collaborative storytelling. Your character is part of that story. While your GM shouldn’t arbitrarily harm or kill your characters, you must expect that occasionally your character will suffer loss. Their property, their powers, or their friends may be harmed, lost, or killed. It’s unpleasant, but it’s the basis for a good story.
Without real risk, you cannot have real rewards. It’s infinitely more satisfying to win by the skin of your teeth than to dominate an encounter with the outcome never in doubt. It’s also passing up the opportunity for great drama. Look at the emotion evoked by Gandalf’s death on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm or Wash’s death in Serenity. The most highly-regarded stories in the modern age have characters dying all the time. Just ask George R R Martin.
Now, imagine GRRM was your GM and you were playing Jon Snow. Yeah, it’d suck. But damn, what a great story!
Character death sucks, but it happens. No matter how attached you are to that character, for whatever reason that character’s part of the story is over, and now you have an opportunity to start a new part of the story. Rather than lament your dead character, cherish that new opportunity.
Next week, we talk about how the game is a game. (It may sound silly, but people forget that all the time.) Stay tuned!
Every week as part of the How To Play Good series you’ll get a different post with tips and tricks in this series. But if you don’t want to wait, you can get the whole thing here, along with a crap-ton of GM tips.
