Know your weaknesses - TTRPG babble

 I recently shared this with a friend and thought it is worth mentioning here as well.

As a GM, I have one big weakness that's very difficult to overcome: 

I am kind.

In the GM seat you sometimes have to take the role of adversary - the monsters are trying to capture/maim/kill the heroes and they're not going to pull their punches. Now, I am fortunate that my dice rolls are rarely deadly, but when they are, I sit with a real emotional conundrum of wanting my player characters to overcome whatever obstacle I've thrown at them. 

Last year, I did a Pugmire oneshot with friends - veteran and newbie players. The game was okay, there were a few mechanical snags that I hadn't foreseen and didn't know how to amend on the fly, but the biggest truthful critique I received from the encounter was "You're too kind."

I'm not competitive, and I think that also is the reason why my encounters are rarely deadly. It's difficult for me to think to 'win' even if for only the brief moment where I'm thinking like the villain.

Knowing your weaknesses is just as important as knowing your strengths. Because there's no way that you're going to balance and improve if you're not aware on what you should be working on.

So how does one stop being a kind GM? I have no friggen clue, but I am practicing by trying to distance myself emotionally from the fights my villains inevitably have against my players' characters. And it is something I feel like I should be working on. Not because I want to be a mean, old hag who makes players miserable, but because I had a few combat encounters where players were genuinely worried and triumphed and were beautifully rewarded for the tense encounter. That's something I'd like to see more of. But I don't believe in a GM bringing in Deus Ex Machina when things go poorly... it's either a win or a wash and that is always going to be a gamble.

 

Babble: GMing with Anxiety

 This post is probably not going to have a point and will be all over the place, but hopefully I will succeed in sticking, generally, to the title of it.

I struggle quite a bit with anxiety. Being among people sets it off, being alone sets it off, prepping for TTRPG games sets it off, not prepping for games sets it off. There are a multitude of triggers and most of the time I don't know why I am reaching for my anti-anxiety meds. 

Doing conventions and in-person games are thus particularly challenging for me because there you are under scrutiny and there's an expectation and performance anxiety and all that jazz. I find that running games online is my sweet spot because, while I still am in front of people, I'm not physically being under scrutiny and I can tell my brain to calm down. It doesn't mean I don't have anxiety when I run games, but it lessens the blow somewhat.

I wish I could say, after 10 years of GMing in some kind of capacity, the anxiety has waned, but I would be lying. Because in some ways, while related to the activity, anxiety is also its own beast that will take any opportunity to rear its head and take a bite out of you.

So what is this post about then if not a 'It gets better'?

In a sense it is that. A lot of people fear the GM's chair and wait until they are less afraid. The truth is that the victory is in fighting through the fear. The feeling doesn't get better, but you do. You become more competent at handling it.

I read a Joe Abercrombie book many, many years ago. And I can't find the quote so that's a sure sign that my brain has butchered it and stitched it together to make a different kind of sense. Essentially the concept was that courage was like a whetstone: with use and time, it becomes smaller. Meaning the older you become, the less geared you are towards doing daunting things. As someone who lives with anxiety, I certainly see the truth of that. Now, in my forties, I'm even more skittish than I was before.

I guess, in a sense, the ultimate message of this post is this: Don't wait to feel braver. Don't wait to feel more assured. Don't wait. 

You might feel braver and more assured - you're not me with my anxiety. You might find it in you to jump into the GMing seat after a pause. But you might never feel that assurance. And if you wait for that before you do anything, you're going to miss out on a very enriching experience.