Tag: what makes a good player

What Makes a Good Player? Reflections

On October 1, I announced the What Makes a Good Player? series. It’s been pretty great, and I wanted to give a brief review of some of what I think has come through as important in the interviews. For sure, none of these are strict guidelines, and they might not work for everyone, but they’re good ideas to keep in mind. My little analysis is below! Thank you so much for reading.

I asked the interviewees:

What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

The biggest trends I saw here were group character development (banter, relationship development) and creative involvement (drawing character portraits, helping others with their characters), and sharing the spotlight. When we think about good players, I wonder how many people think of clever or snarky people who are entertaining, but might not share the spotlight much? I know I used to fall into this trap, where I thought that the person with the most laughs or the coolest moves was the best player, but now I’m seeing that I (personally) enjoy players who know how to tell their own story while letting others tell their own, too.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

This was interesting because almost everyone uses the improv tool of “yes, and…” I’m familiar with the technique from before I played games much, and before I used it in games. Improv tools can be very useful, but I honestly sometimes feel locked down by them in games. Being open to suggestions and not blocking people can be valuable, yes. However, I created Script Change in response to the ever-present expectation of saying “yes, and…” without any means of taking respectful control of the narrative. It interests me to know that so many players put huge value on accepting the suggestions of their peers, while I personally prefer to be able to say “No, but…” some of the time, too. Does that make me a bad player?

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

This response went everywhere from “whenever I can” to “have to game at least once a week,” which is a fascinating turn of events. I was expecting a lot of people to fall into the range of weekly, or biweekly. Instead there is a lot of flexibility in the responses, factoring in adult life and health considerations, as well as general energy. As someone who has too busy a schedule to game recently, it gave me a little comfort to see that even good players have a need for down time.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I enjoyed reading these responses, because while there were some trends (Powered by the Apocalypse games, for one), there was a fair amount of diversity in game preferences. Some people liked parlor larps, others liked D&D 3.5 (my favorite of D&D). There were PbtA fans, but others liked Fate. Some players expressed a preference for mechanics – some crunchy, some not. As someone whose taste ranges widely in games for different types of games and different settings, I thought that was really cool to see – being a good player isn’t restricted to a type of game or mechanical structure. Some of the players expressed genre preferences, while others just cared about experience – enthusiasm, enjoyment, and so on.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

This was a fun section to read! I really recommend checking out everyone’s stories about games where they felt like they did a good job. While I know it can be hard to recognize our abilities and skills, especially when it comes to things like influencing other people’s enjoyment, it’s always nice to see someone talk about their positive actions. Some players talked about ways they changed up standard expectations of play, while others talked about how they perceived characters or gameplay differently than others. I really loved where people talked about influencing even the themes of the entire game, because it really shows how much one player can do. 
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There are a lot of takeaways from this for me, but I’ll try to bullet list them:
  • There is no restriction on who can be a good player, regardless of their background or their familiarity with the game or type of interaction with the game.
  • Any type of RPG can have good roleplayers.
  • There are intersections between playing games and our health and wellbeing, including our energy levels and interest.
  • There are things you can learn that help you understand roleplaying better and that make it easier for you to participate, but you can get along just fine without them. No “skills” are required.
  • There is no one way to be a good roleplayer.
Whew!

During the time I was working on the series, there were a number of discussions about good player habits and behaviors on Google+ that I wanted to talk about a little. The first I read was from Paul Beakley discussing “Talky-Talky Games” and as a followup, Christian Griffen continued the discussion and they both had really good points, some of which match up with or expand upon my notes above and those of my interviewees.

Christian mentions Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley, which is a great resource for new players and legacy players alike. I enjoyed reading it, and I will note that those with history of improv will recognize some tips and concepts within it. 

I really hope that you all enjoyed reading this series, and that you’ll revisit them after this post. I know that it was a really great experience for me to do all of these interviews and learn about these players and their experiences. Share your good player stories in the comments and shares of this post, and tag me in to see!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Andreas Stein

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Andreas Stein, who has some pretty detailed thoughts on how his play style makes a difference.

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

Generally speaking, I think good roleplaying is having an awareness of the game and the other players. Here are a few things I consider during character creation and gameplay:

I don’t pick the Jedi.

My first roleplaying game was Cyberpunk 2020, and the first character I created after giving the book a good read-through was a highly min/maxed Solo – let’s call him “Fighty McFighterson” – who could single-handedly take out a whole squad of cyber-ninjas or corporate security agents, but he wasn’t good for much else, and he wasn’t really fun to roleplay. When I discovered D&D, the question before every new game was “Who’s going to play the cleric?” Out of politeness to those who wanted to be stealthy-cool or smashy-cool, I took up that necessary if oft-neglected class so we could get started already. It should go without saying that the abundance of healer classes that came about in 4E made me really happy (haters gonna hate).

My method these days is to listen to what type of character everyone else is making and then fill in whatever role(s) are needed to form a balanced party. Part of the fun is how this challenges me into creating some interesting, versatile characters. I oftentimes play the “Swiss army knife” of the group or someone who’s specialized in some common part of the setting that nobody else is interested in dealing with – somebody sooner or later is going to have to hack a security door, talk their way past the guards, heal everyone up, communicate with the locals, keep up the magic barrier, or fix that damn hyperdrive. The kicker is that so many of these situations are dramatic (or comedic) gold. This doesn’t necessarily limit me to “support” characters; if the party is a bunch of scientists and scoundrels, I’ll gladly roll up a tank or assassin to round things out.

I play to the story.

I think about the setting and ask myself “What’s going to keep me busy and having fun for a long campaign?” or “What aspect of the setting interests me the most?” When I create a character, I create a *character* rather than just a vessel for my ego. I learn what the setting is about and find my character’s place in that world. I don’t see the need to create a super-complex character background for the emergent fiction of an RPG – there’s more fun in discovering aspects of my creation as the story progresses – so in the beginning I only provide enough raw substance to plausibly plant myself in the story. Roleplaying game characters should be easily recognizable, iconic, and “developable.”

I think about group dynamics.

The point of a social game is for everybody to be entertained, not just me. A big pet peeve of mine is when a player tries to have some “fun” screwing with the group by creating a character that’s so far out of the scope of the common consensus that the GM as well as all the rest of the players are constantly floundering to actively shoe-horn them into the story, because they apparently want to be off doing their own thing or working against everyone else’s interests. If “My character would do it!” is your excuse, you made a crappy character. Nobody likes the thief who’s always out to double-cross the party. I’m not telling anyone to stifle their creativity, but remember that what works in books doesn’t always translate to a roleplaying game; don’t make a broody, loner, one-trick pony of a character that is obsessed about their own darkness and then act surprised when you have nothing to do and nobody to interact with. The players in a roleplaying game should be as much of a team as their characters are.

The same advice, I feel, goes for GMs: you have the social responsibility of making sure everyone is having fun, not abusing your friends for your own entertainment. Just as bad as the iconic “sadistic GM” is the boring one who doesn’t let players sit on the plastic-covered furniture that is their lovingly-(over)crafted game world.

I don’t hog the spotlight.

I can’t overstate the importance of this. When I GM, I make sure every character has a place and time where they shine, and as a player I try to check myself and make sure to let other players’ characters do their thing. I’ll even ask another player, “Hey, can’t you [ability]?” or “Don’t you have [skill/thing]?” or “Don’t you know [subject of expertise/person]?” There’s nothing worse than sitting there watching the rest of the party be badasses without getting a word in, so I help out where I can.

I blow shit up.

My current GM once told me he likes my play style because I “bring the awesome” – in other words, I keep things from getting stale. Truth is, I tend to get bored by excessive navel-gazing and playing it safe in a roleplaying game; I’m not afraid to cause problems for my character in the name of moving the story along. I’m a big fan of half-assed plans and anything that adds an epic cinematic quality to the game – because that’s what folks always talk about afterward. My characters take big risks and are always out to create sweeping badass moments of glory. It usually doesn’t take much to spur the rest of the crew into some heated dice rolls along with me. And it’s not just combat – pulling off an epic con, heist, or jury-rig is just as satisfying as a glorious battle in my book. As always, however, I check in with the other players before I pull some crazy stunt that may adversely affect the party.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

A close friend of mine and fellow gamer likes to say that nothing is cliché if it’s happening to you, and I have lots of fun living by that in an RPG. If there’s a chance of a sci-fi/fantasy/adventure trope being dangerously close to happening, you can bet I’m going for it – busting a steam pipe, stealing a spaceship, running into a burning building, using a Trojan Horse tactic, robbing a train, starting a bar fight – it’s all fair game.

I’m kind of a smartass, so my characters usually are too; I’m not above a James-Bond-style pun, a pop-culture callback, or hanging a lampshade on some aspect of the setting via group banter. At the table I’ve been known to briefly pull up a song or sound effect that seems dramatically appropriate to the moment. Recently we were playing the Cortex+ Marvel RPG with me as Iron Man. Our fantastic Captain America player had just finished an on-point speech about justice when after a beat or two I played the “Cinematic Eagle Cry” I’d pulled off of YouTube. After a second of silence, I continued as Tony “…am I the only one that thought that was funny?”, narrating him retracting a speaker back into his suit. I usually try to keep that kind of thing just below being annoying.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

If we’re running a long-form campaign, I don’t like to go months without gaming because I forget what’s going on and need to spend half the session recapping. It personally removes me from the organic problem solving I rely very heavily on. I don’t take notes because it distracts from the gameplay and messes with my immersion (most notes I take I can never make sense of later anyway if it’s been too long). If it’s more of an episodic thing, I’m okay with longer gaps, but there’s a time when even then I will forget certain things about a character, like their personality, that make things inconsistent.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I like an episodic game with an overall story arc, so I know choices I make now may come to bite me later. On the contrary, I admit I like the gonzo no-safety-net gameplay of a one-off, like a con game, where characters can end with a really dramatic crash. My home-group environment is still the best, though – we know each other’s personalities very well and we have a great deal of trust that we’re all there to help one another have a good time.

System-wise I enjoy narrative-heavy games, especially where failure has a mechanical bonus, like FATE or Cortex+. Failure can be fun in any game if you have a good group and GM, but I like asking the GM “What did I break this time?” while holding my hand out for that bonus I will definitely be needing later.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

In our current Star Trek game, our ship made contact with a planet notable for two things: they had a super-efficient food source that the Federation was interested in, and everyone was constantly connected to what was basically a planet-wide social network that governed their lives. At an embassy gala, my science officer noted loudly that he was suspicious of the food they were serving; news quickly spread to the whole planet, and my character instantly became the most hated person on this world.

Later in the evening, the ambassador’s aide made some faux pas that the entire planet felt had embarrassed them as a species in view of the visitors. By the will of the network, the offending staffer was sentenced to death, as by their laws and customs. Through a series of dramatic events, he ended up in the custody of our crew, putting us in a diplomatic standoff vis-à-vis the Prime Directive.

It was a classic Star Trek situation: we needed to establish relations by honoring the inhabitants’ way of life but wanted to spare the ill-fated government attaché. In the discussion we had about how a real Trek crew would handle this, I came upon the idea that we should use a classic Trek trope to solve the dispute: we would hold a debate! My character, the vilified alien from beyond, would debate the merits of Federation law and culture with our recently disgraced refugee representing the merits of his home world’s ways, essentially arguing for his own right to be executed. Through the teamwork of all the players, our plan succeeded in using the planet’s culture of social media persecution against itself; the attaché became a martyred darling to the inhabitants, saving his life, whilst giving the Federation the platform to share their alternative views and perhaps causing them to reconsider their system. To this day we all feel that that was one of the most perfect RPG sessions we’ve ever played.

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Thanks so much to Andreas for his interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Alan Vannes

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Alan Vannes. Alan talks a little about experience in Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy, as well as playing longer sessions. Check it out!

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

I’ve found that one of the most effective ways to enhance the experience of both myself, and the other players at the table is to simply invest effort into my character, a well thought out character with a good back story brings so much more to the table than when all you have is numbers on a sheet. I’ve found that a well thought out three dimensional character tends to get me more invested in the role-play, and my enthusiasm often becomes infectious, helping to bring out the best in the players around me.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I tend to have a very improvisational style to my play, nine times out of ten even when I tell my fellow players that I have a plan I’m really just making everything up as I go (I guess you could call me the Jack Sparrow of gaming). That being said I don’t really use any established techniques as such, but simply respond to the group and game as my own instincts, and experience dictate.


How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

I generally favor weekly, or bi-weekly games, any longer between sessions and I tend to lose some of the feel for the game/character. As for comfort, I personally favor longer sessions in a relaxed atmosphere (such as one of the players homes), and I find that it’s best to keep the group size between four and six people, it is possible to do larger groups, but it often becomes difficult to keep the focus on the game, and combat often drags out far too long (I recall a case where I was in a group consisting of the GM plus nine players using the 3.5 edition D&D rules and we had a combat that in game was only four rounds long, but took three sessions to get through).

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I tend towards a more narrative driven play style so I favor games that support that, and of course I have deep roots in fantasy gaming, but with a little time to learn the game I’m comfortable playing just about anything. I have a particular love of dark fantasy, sword & sorcery, gothic horror, weird western, and cyberpunk settings.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

After over twenty years of gaming it’s difficult to choose a single anecdote, but I asked a couple of my friends with whom I’ve gamed with quite a bit over the course of those years, and several of them recalled the same story as being one of their favorites so I’ll relate that one.

I was playing in a Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy campaign (set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, which is something of a dystopian sci-fi setting with strong fantasy elements). In Dark Heresy the players take on the role of agents of the Inquisition, ferreting out heresy, and other threats to the imperial doctrine, and any signs of corruption are to be responded to with absolute punitive action (a setting where having your character say ‘cleanse it with fire’ would not actually be all that ridiculous). 

Our group was investigating rumors of a heretical cult on a factory planet, and I was playing the part of what would essentially be the groups ‘rogue’ archetype, he was a skilled gunslinger, and an expert at infiltrating secured locations as well as having a glib tongue that often allowed him to con potential heretics into slipping up and revealing their true nature. As such the other players in the group often asked my character to slip into various locales ahead of the rest of them to suss out the situation, whether it be scouting an enemy base, or making first contact with a group of potential heretics in order to feel them out. 

In this particular case our tactic of having my scoundrel make the first contact with the enemy backfired, as I snuck into the heretic’s supposedly secret headquarters to scout out their security only to find arrive just as they were summoning a demon out of the Warp (this setting variant of hell, and the dimension through which faster than light travel was achieved), and my character was temporarily possessed by the demon. The demon, having drawn information out of my characters mind about the nature of his mission, as well as the identities of his fellow inquisitorial agents (the other player characters) proceeded to attempt to rejoin the group most likely with the intent of corrupting them. My GM, being a generous individual, allowed me to roll to regain control of my characters actions at regular intervals as the demon progressed in it’s intent. 
The rest of the group was waiting outside of the heretic’s headquarters in a nearby alley way, as my demon possessed character was crossing the street to rejoin them the dice favored me, and I was able to regain control of my character. My GM told me I had time to take one action before the demon would regain control so I did the only thing that seemed logical within the settings rules and my own characters mindset. My fast-talking scum drew his pistol, put it to his head, and after locking eyes with his closest friend within the group (an assassin played by an old friend of mine) pulled the trigger. Even my GM was stunned by my chosen course of action, but my choice to stay in character, and do what a true servant of the Emperor would inevitably do ended up preventing what my GM later admitted would probably have been a total party kill, and allowed the other players to retreat, and deal with the threat appropriately.

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Thanks so much to Alan for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Alex Carlson


Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Alex Carlson. They talk in detail about how they play for themselves and others, as well as noting how chronic illness and stress can impact gaming.

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

My initial answer to this question was very long and roundabout because, for me, there are kind of three questions here, and I was trying to answer them at the same time. There is obviously what I do to enhance the experience for myself, but then there’s “others.” “Others” is usually, in the games I play, either the other players or the facilitator (GM, MC, ST, etc.). There are things I try to do to help out everyone at the table, there are considerations I primarily afford other players, and there are attitudes I usually only hold towards the GM, and then there’s where each of those relationships has priority.
In the category of things I do to enhance everyone’s experience, one jumps out right away. I started improvising a few years before I started playing role playing games regularly, and one of the biggest influences from that on my roleplaying (and life) is that the best way to take care of your scene partner, or other players, (or people in your life,) is to take care of yourself. In games, this means having a character that is interesting and interested, so that there are ways for others to engage with my character and ways for me to engage with and encourage other PCs.
Things I do for other players are also kind of things that I do for myself, because it’s geared a lot towards modelling the behavior that makes me the most comfortable in a game. This is where a second improv lesson comes into play: sharing focus. I have a good sense of interesting plot hooks to get things started right away for my character, and that can end up with the narrative spotlight getting kind of stuck as the game finds it’s footing. I am happy to give up “screen time” for other characters, and if the person running the game (when there is one) doesn’t realize that I’m getting a lot of time, I make sure to find chances to pass the focus to other characters or story lines. If I know there are more hesitant players in the game, I try to present opportunities in my character’s motivations and decisions for them to get involved without pressuring them to jump in, I also have some pretty strict lines on consent, and not just with in-game events. If there is a player struggling with the rules or character decisions, I’ll offer my help, but don’t force my way in to “helping” them if they don’t want it. I’ve seen a lot of shy players get totally turned off to the idea of gaming when someone takes over telling them how to make the most effective character without any thought to what they want or what they’ve asked for.
With respect to the facilitator (if the game has one), I think I’m a lot more deferential than a lot of people I play with. I’ve run a lot of games, and I know how hard it can be, how much time and commitment and risk is involved, and I take that very seriously. If a game puts a lot of power in the facilitators hands, I don’t try and fight them for it, though I’m happy to help out if they ask. If the game is set up as participationist (where the facilitator has a set plot in mind and the players don’t have a lot of control and everyone knows and accepts this ahead of time), I’m okay with the occasional fudged roll or GM fiat. I follow similar rules of consent as well. There have been a few occasions where a friend has expressed an interest in running a system, only to follow it up by saying they’d be too embarrassed to run it for me because I’m very experienced with the game. My response to that is always pure encouragement and reassurance that, unless they ask for my help with rules, I’m not going to challenge them on how they rule or interpret the mechanics for their game. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a facilitator is let them run the game without trying to turn it in to what you think is a good game.
Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
I mentioned a few above, but improv absolutely influences how I engage at the table. It’s hard for me to pull out specific tools that I use because so much of improv is learning techniques that influence how you behave in every situation, and doubly so in other creative media. “Yes, and,” is one of the biggest and well known tools, and it is definitely relevant in games, but there’s also “No, but,” which is useful when players are steamrolling or suggesting things that I’m not comfortable with or that seem to be causing distress at the table. “No, but,” is sort of like failure in Apocalypse World. You don’t get what you want (most of the time), but there’s more to the story, an alternative fictional element that keeps the action moving forward.
How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
I have to game at least once a week. I used to do at least two games a week in college, and I’m currently playing in two games. I’m a creative person with terrible anxiety and gaming is the creative outlet I use to keep feelings of artistic stagnation at bay. It’s like a workout. I’m also super susceptible to stress, so tension at the table usually throws me off unless there’s a resolution to the stressor or off-game time after two people butt heads. I also find that it’s important to keep a good balance of meta conversation and in game play, which varies from group to group. Trying to keep everyone in character all the time just doesn’t work for some groups, but too much out of character time can leave less socially assertive members of the group out in the cold.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
I gain a LOT of vicarious enjoyment from games. If the facilitator is really into it, or the other players are on a roll, I’m happy. I really enjoy games where “failure” doesn’t just stop the action, because you don’t run the risk of ruining the mood at the table if you flop on a roll, which makes getting involved have much lower stakes.
To get specific, I’d say that my initial comfort level is highest with most of games that are Powered by the Apocalypse and Burning Wheel. I feel like they both address “failure” as something more interesting, and they both give players a high amount of narrative control with the level of world building and plot creating put into the hands of the players. I feel like I always have something to do in those games.
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
This is a tricky question for a number of reasons. I have a chronic illness that has made it difficult to remember things that have happened in the past few years, the group of people I play with shifted dramatically a few years ago, shifting my habits along with it, and I don’t know that I ever reflect positively on things I do without major external influence. There was a moment that, in hindsight, feels very brief but is also the first thing that’s come to mind that feels like a good answer for this question. It was a game of Unknown Armies in the year after I graduated college. I was playing a doctor who was pursuing the Avatar path for the Mother (an Avatar is like a socially accepted or recognized archetype that gives powers to those who fit the archetype, because in Unknown Armies, a lot of true occult power comes from human belief and expectation). 
My character’s husband (another PC) had recently been killed because the player was no longer able to be in the game, and in the time since that had happened, she had formed a super codependent relationship with another PC who was an adept of a school of magic that the player had designed called pneumomancy. It involved inhaling toxic substances to gain charges, the resource needed to cast magic, and breathing clean air was the taboo, or forbidden action that would mean the PC would lose all of his charges. Despite her oath as a medical professional, she enabled this other PC constantly by explicitly being on hand to provide medical attention should a substance ever prove to be too toxic. 
One night, these two PCs were locked in a room together for the night, and the pneumomancer inhaled something and failed his check, so he passed out. My character was unable to revive him, so, instead of just letting him lose his charges, she use her Stay Up All Night skill to sit by him and hold a lit cigarette in front of his mouth until he woke up. I feel like this moment lined up to be really cool in several ways. It turned what would have otherwise just been downtime into a very intimate moment, it gave the other player a very significant choice to respond to, as his character, until that point, had been super aloof and stubbornly independent, and it refined how my character was channeling the Mother archetype. It also had mechanical benefits (he didn’t lose his charges) and was strongly in sync with the tone of the game.

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Thanks so much to Alex for answering my questions! I hope you all enjoyed reading!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Kaetlyn Kuchta

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Kaetlyn Kuchta. Kaetlyn talks a little about being a badass and asking questions (and you all know how I love asking questions!). Check it out below!

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

I think the most important thing you can do is ask questions about the world. If you’re asking about the environment that everyone is playing in, it helps to keep everyone invested in the game. Yes this happens during character creation and world building in certain games, but it would be impossible to answer every question at that time. I like to ask about the way places look, how people on the street are acting, or if there are any nifty monuments around. This is always open for discussion between the other players and the GM as well, and it helps to create a rich world that the entire table gets to create and love.

I also tend to do whatever action I think is going to be the most fun. Sometimes it gets my character into a lot of trouble, like when they follow their impulsive nature to touch the ancient cursed artifact, but it always creates a really interesting story. I don’t go out of my way to cause trouble for the rest of the party, but I try to play true to any aspects or alignments that I put on the character sheet.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I use the tried and true improv rule “Yes and…” Meaning no matter what the other players say/do or what the consequences of roll are, I agree to it and build upon it. This doesn’t always mean my character is happy with it. For instance, if a player character beats up a subdued criminal and my character is against random violence, she isn’t going to let them get away with that. The “Yes” is seeing and accepting that the action happened and that there is no way to take that back. The “and…” part is having my character confront the other player character about it.

I also think making sure those in game conflicts stay in game. It doesn’t do any good for me to harass the player for acting out their character the way they imagine them. There were plenty of times when I first started role playing where a player would do something in game that I disagreed with and I would openly ask them why they did that dumb thing. It only created friction between players and created guilt. Itchy itchy guilt. I’ve since discovered that having characters that butt heads from time to time is really fun, especially in games that set you up for PvP conflict that doesn’t result in murder such as Fate or Masks, or most games with social skills. Now I can have my character confront another character while I high five the player for being a badass.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

I game once a week, and for me that’s enough. I tend to become really invested in my characters so having more than one or two to focus on gets a little confusing for me and I’ll end up playing them all the same instead of letting them blossom into individuals. That being said, I also like to switch up what I’m playing after about 8-10 sessions so I can explore another character concept, because for me that’s the biggest draw to these games. I like to try on these different faces and see how they interact in the worlds we build at the table.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

As I mentioned before, trying on different characters and exploring the world are my favorite parts of the game, so I like games that really create vivid and diverse characters and worlds like Fate and Powered by the Apocalypse systems. These systems are so open that they create a ton of freedom to play around and discover your character and how they feel about their environment. They’re also systems that beg the players and GM to ask questions every session, and I love that open dialog at a table.

On the other hand, I typically have a hard time with systems that you might call “crunchy”. Games that have a ton of rules and structures for every action that my character may want to do are infuriating to me. I just want to look like a badass taking out villains without having to calculate knock-back based on my strength based on what fighting stance I was in, minus if I’ve slept in the past 12 hours. I totally understand why that would appeal to other people, but for me it takes away from my narrative power and makes me crave a gin and tonic.


Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

My group recently finished up a play of Masks in which I got to play a Nova with a happy façade. I decided from the start that she was going to actively try to be the epitome of a super hero, which I expected to conflict with the Nova’s tendency to destroy everything and the amount of conditions she would end up with. I was right. Throughout the game I got to play a character that was messy and awkward but who truly tried to lead her team in the right direction. I used the rules the game gave me to both incite and resolve conflict between my character and npc’s, and the other player characters as well. In Masks you gain and lose influence over others, and my Nova traded those in and out like baseball cards, which really let me play around with who she was and how she was effected by the environment around her. She ended up being a character who actively drove the story forward and looked out for the team while also creating conflict for the other players to solve. Basically I was never bored while playing her.

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Thanks so much to Kaetlyn for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading her responses.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Alys Humfleet

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Alys Humfleet! Alys provided a little additional background for the interview, as well. Check it and the interview out below.

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From Alys:

The very first tabletop/RPG I ever played was a demo for a small independent game … at GenCon. (I got dragged there by a friend of mine because of a resource book release she thought we’d both enjoy. Which got delayed and wasn’t even published by the time we got there, but we had the tickets, so we went.)

I had never played any CRPGs either, (I tended more towards the adventure games), and I’d never even played any of the board games that have some story or plot; my favorite board game by a wide margin is Clue. I say all this just to illustrate how out of my depth I really was; the most clueless of newbies. (I need how many dice? Why are they all weird shapes? What are we doing again? Why? How?)

But I am a writer, have been since my third grade teacher made us do a daily journal and I realized it was fun, so I sat down at that demo, and listened to our GM talk about the game system, and made myself a character I would like to read or write about.

She fit our setting pretty well, and she managed a couple really great and interesting moves throughout the demo, and I had a really good time. (Even if I still had no idea what I was doing. Never let having no idea what youíre doing stop you.)

Now, this company was doing a series of demos with a serialized plot, and a couple people from each demo were picked to continue onto the next one, and then a few from that one would go on again, and then once more throughout the full four days of the Con. Unsurprisingly to me, I was not one of those picked to continue, but the GM took a moment at the end of the game to chat with me about my character, and he commented on how interesting she was, but how she wasn’t interactive enough. (He sounded actually apologetic about it, which was mind-boggling to me, because it hadn’t occurred to me that this thing my friend had made me do with her might be something I could be good at doing, or would ever attempt to do again.)

But I’d made a character with an interesting interior life and internal conflicts (thus good to read or write about), who made a good enough first impression the GM commented on it to me later, but not one whose motivations displayed well and gave the other players something to, well, play off of. And that is the one thing that has always stuck with me about game characters, tabletop or computer. They inhabit a world, they work with other characters, and it is only in those interactions that the gaming happens. Otherwise you’re just playing solitaire. (Which can be fun too, of course, but is not at all the same thing.)


(BrieCS): What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

(Alys) Learning from this, I realize that the very first thing I have to do when I am creating a character that will enhance both my experience and the rest of the players, is make sure that they are flexible enough to be active and reactive. A good game is never just about you. In character creation terms, this can be influenced by your systemís use of strengths and flaws, classes and skills, the spread of various stats. The mechanics change from game to game, but the point is that you both have something to offer, and some way to screw everything up. (Itís recovering from failure where things get interesting, after all.) You can play a quiet introverted character (though it is more difficult) but you still have to give them a stake in the proceedings, you have to give them a reason to act, and a reason to react to the other charactersí actions and behaviors.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

While I certainly seldom consciously break it down, I am sure the way I play is influenced by the way I write, (itís still about moving the character around, in either case), and the bits of drama class and improv class that I still remember from when I was in school.

The first thing they ask you when trying to write plot, is what is the worst thing you can do to your character. What is the one thing they absolutely do not know how to handle … because that is exactly what should happen to them. (Make your character uncomfortable! Thatís usually the fastest way to make them do something.)

The most important concept they teach you in any beginning improv class is that you can’t say no to whatever the last person did, you can’t ignore it and go on with whatever you were thinking about before, you have to say yes, AND. You have to take what the other players and GM give you and build off that, even if it wasn’t at all what you thought you were going to be doing when you started. That doesn’t mean you should forget your personal goals for your character or the plot, but you have to let everything else happen as well.

It’s also really helpful, especially when you’re first starting a campaign, to make sure you’re familiar with the other characters, so you can help create the situations that will make them uncomfortable, that force them into action. (Also so you have decent party balance in terms of solving problems. Clerics are awesome! Be the lone cleric and save everyone’s lives over and over again! Can we tell I have a type?)

It helps to develop all your characters as a group, if you can, maybe even take a look at the other players’ character sheets (or however much they’re willing to share; sometimes someone has secrets, after all, and finding them out in game is a large part of the fun). Remember that the team dynamic is more important to a successful and entertaining game than anything else. You’re choosing to hang out with these people for hours or days or even years at a time. Make sure your character has a reason to stay, and make sure you, the player, will enjoy it.

That doesn’t mean your team can’t have conflict, but they have to have a reason to keep working together anyways, or your group will splinter apart.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

Ideally, I find a weekly game helps keep momentum, and makes sure you all remember what you were doing and why. Realistically, very few people have consistent weekly schedules so every two weeks or even every month can also work, but I find trying to meet every week means that, even when something goes wrong so you miss a week or two here or there, it’s easier to get back into the game as soon as possible. If you only meet once a month, and one month one person can’t, and the next month someone else can’t, you lose group cohesion and motivation. It becomes a chore you have to try and get back to, rather than a hobby you’re enjoying.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I like all sorts of games. I find it easier to get into games that are more free-form (fewer stats, less well-defined locations, no miniatures/battle maps, etc) just because that’s what I started with, and I have always been the kind of person who writes by making up sh*% as I go along. (I am what, in writer circles, is referred to as a gardener or a pantser. As in I write by the seat of mine, and seldom have much of a plan. Outlines tend to slow me down.) It can be a lot of fun to just BS your way through a gaming session. (As long as the other players are helping out, of course.) Let the voices in your head go free and see what happens. (I am, at the moment, playing a Fate Accelerated game, which is pretty much the epitome of that philosophy. You have a few approaches, and a few aspects, and a couple stunts, and everything else you figure out as you go along.)

That said, a game with a really deep mechanics/lore system is also a lot of fun, because you have so much to work with, so many potential hooks into the world and the other characters to help you make your character deeper and more invested in the surroundings. It can also be helpful if you’re in a difficult situation in game, because you have a list of abilities/skills/tricks/etc. that you have chosen, that fit your character, that you can go through to help you decide what to do next, rather than having to think up something entirely new each time you have an encounter.

(Also, it’s only when you have a variety of skills/abilities to try and apply in unusual ways that you get most of the best stories that show up on something like an outofcontextDnD website. You can’t get that completely unexpected juxtaposition of skill/setting/player if you don’t have a skill-check that gave you an unusual result, or a well-defined trope or setting to subvert.)

So basically, I like them all, (I am no help, sorry!) but it’s important to use the mechanics/setting/style that your group is most interested in as a whole, because that’ll keep you all coming back.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

It’s hard to describe these in detail, because they’re usually so reliant on context. Any time you can defuse the most obvious plan and do something different to resolve it? That’s a win. Anytime you drive another character into doing something they didn’t think they could do? That’s a win. Did you try something new and it failed mightily? Even thay’s a win. Even if your party loses their battle and runs into the woods and has to regroup and everyone ís terrified and yelling at each other, and maybe even someone almost died or got kidnapped or really actually died and now you have to try and heal them or save them or mourn them and everything is TERRIBLE … you made the game change because of something you did. And now you have to fix it! More to do right now!

Specifically? In my very first game, when we’d almost entirely screwed up what was basically a boss-battle encounter, and I was in the worst possible position to attack the giant-evil-mech that had shown up, I tried anyways, and rolled a critical success.

The GM just paused for a moment, and tilted his head. “The gun explodes.” The mech was very annoyed and made terrible mechanical yelling sounds and tried to stomp on people, since it couldn’t shoot them anymore. It was delightful. Part of what makes games so interesting is the randomness introduced by the dice. Sometimes the best moment will be the one moment no one had any control over.

Sometimes, the best moments come from the roleplaying. Near the climax of a campaign, while we were fighting an agent of the final villain, my character got completely side-tracked from the actual quest, and instead commented on the agent herself, because my character was personally offended by her actions. (They were both from the same race of elves, and to have one of her own people screw up so badly was infuriating.) She ignored the fight that was building, the Evil they were hunting, and just basically yelled about what a terrible example of their Clans that the agent had become.
Probably not the smartest thing, especially since she wasn’t charismatic, or good with people, or really very sensible a lot of the time. But she was powerful, and she was mad.

And it worked. With the help of the agentís long-estranged daughter they broke through the Evil Influence, the agent gave them a ring that would help in the final stage of the quest, and then sacrificed herself so she couldnít be used again.

We bypassed an entire potential battle! For which the GM had done quite a bit of preparation, but he was delighted, because weíd done such a good job bringing it back to the characters and the setting. A good GM knows how to improvise when the players go off the rails. Sometimes thatís when the best stuff happens. Sometimes it just makes a big mess and you spend a couple sessions trying to get yourselves back in order again, but that’s fine too. You’re still doing things together as a group.
The basis of tabletop gaming, for me, is that it is collaborative entertainment. Whether it turns into a dense political story, or is a ridiculous dungeon crawl that always seems to end up with someone losing a boot and limping into the next room and you’re looting piles of gold and dripping jewels and blood by the end doesnít matter, as long as itís what your group is trying to make together. Yes, your character may do something that is detrimental to the other characters, your group may devolve into petty arguing and inter-party conflict (or they might be best friends and family, or an endless shifting combination of both) but anything is fine as long as the players are still working together and moving the game along.

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Thank you so muc to Alys for the interview! Hope you all enjoyed reading this week’s What Makes a Good Player? feature!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Danella Georgiev

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Danella Georgiev. Danella talks about genre preference and character relationships.

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

As important as it is to try to progress the story, I’ve always found it’s more fun — for me as well as others — when we hang around between plot points and trade in-character banter. It doesn’t need to be long, but a few quips help pace the scene so it’s not just action-action-action go a long way. This also builds relationships between the characters… which is really what makes a game an RPG and not just a numeric dungeon crawl.

A lot of times it’ll draw out recurring themes and comments from individual characters and develop their personal subplots. It gives us all a sense of accomplishment to look back at the early “episodes” and see the changes.

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I haven’t formally studied creative writing or acting, so I’m not sure, but I do remember (and took to heart) something from my high school improv class: Always Say Yes.

That doesn’t mean your character has to agree with every single plan, but even their protests and complaints should try to highlight an alternative solution or motivation to complete a task. If you spend the whole session bickering about why you shouldn’t do task the NPC assigned, it’s a waste. It’s always more fun and more growth to see a reluctant undertaking. Part of this is on the GM, as well; the best quests are ones that are motivated by more than one reason.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

Most of my group is made of busy adults with a low energy level, so as fun as it is to be in a group of nerds, I find anything over three hours a session to be draining. We’re fairly distractable as it is, so if we go longer than that, we’ll get really wishy-washy. A few years ago, we had one that was 4-5 hours and it was fun but my butt started to hurt.

I’d love to play a second session a week but we’re all really busy. #goals, though.

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

Not sure whether this is a mechanics or genre question, but I like my fantasy and sci-fi very much. It’s where I live. It allows you to dress it up with humor, drama, romance, horror, everything. There’s a lot of settings to choose from or a lot of places to draw inspiration from if you’re going from scratch. Any opportunity to delve into the things original writers/showrunners never did is one I try to seize.

This makes FATE my favorite system to work with because it’s so flexible and adaptable.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game? 

I try to experiment with different roles (in combat and in social interactions), but my favorite was a pissed off elf I played in my very first tabletop. Despite being very contrary, combative, and oppositional, and despite me being new to the experience, I think I nailed the sweet spot between annoying, useful, and thought-provoking. Mechanically, she was great in a fight and did a lot of damage. But I think her presence changed the nature of the game from an adventure to a story about the dynamics of family and upbringing. 
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Thanks to Danella for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Kate Bullock

Today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature is with Kate Bullock. Kate talks about gaming regularly and Powered by the Apocalypse games!

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

I try really hard to find out what people are doing with their characters, what they want in terms of challenges or moments of shining, and I try to give it to them. I try to put my own character out there so that I can help invest in other people’s stories and help them shine. To enhance my own experience, I invest in other players’ characters and so my story is impacted by their story doing well or thriving. I also try to go for what’s good for their characters’ stories over mine, but I find that very satisfying. 

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

I ask very pointed questions, which is a big part of the PbtA systems. I’ll pause to even ask “What do you want out of this?” so I can help facilitate that into happening. I’ll also do some ground work ahead of time by finding points of story where I can push as my character and come to the table prepared to engage the other characters with new problems or ways to bring forward more story. I also use the X-Card at everything because I find it lets me dig deeper and play darker because there’s a safety hatch in play.

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?

I play campaign games anywhere from 2 – 6 times a week. I game regularly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and some Sundays. On Mondays I usually blog or podcast. I love gaming. It’s part of my life blood. The best way for me to maintain good energy is to stay engaged and listen and ask questions. I find emotionally investing myself helps a lot and eating good food and having good snacks and lots of water. I also spend a lot of time talking to people online about what they want to see so I have cool ideas before I get to the table, but I’m not beholden to them. I’m happy to let the fiction do its own thing and follow it where it may lead.


What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

I play for emotionally intense experiences, most often of the sad and dramatic kind. This has lead me down the PbtA road towards Urban Shadows and Monsterhearts a lot. I also really enjoy story games, like Before the Storm, Fall of Magic, Summerland, and a few others. Anything that addresses emotional feedback and payoff. I’m comfortable with almost any game, as I’ve played a lot, but the minute things get very detailed and simulationist, or have a huge expansive world that requires a certain degree of canon knowledge, I’m out. 

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

 Hm. Most of my special experiences are as a GM. But I was playing Monsterhearts a few years ago as the mortal. It was my “job” to make people feel like monsters, but also feel human at the same time and offer salvation and redemption with kindness and love. I had been terrified when all of my friends became their darkest selves, so I made a deal with a fae redcap to let him out of the fae realm if he gave me fairy dust that would remove the monster from my friends. And then I proceeded to find all my monster friends, whom were all guys who had some interest in my mortal character, and blow dust on them, at time when a murderous fae was on the loose (oops). My lover got out of his darkest self, found me, we had sex after saying I love you, and he became the demon darkest self once again. It caused a lot of drama, a lot of issues, and drove story in a great way that included everyone. I dug it.

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Thanks so much to Kate for participating! I hope you all enjoyed reading.

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Kirt Dankmyer


In today’s What Makes a Good Player? feature, we have an interview with Kirt Dankmyer! Check out his interview below.

Note: Content warning for discussion of negative player behavior including the topic of rape in game.

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?
​So, like most avid players, I can be somewhat of an attention hog, so one thing I try do the most often is make a deliberate effort to share spotlight. This isn’t entirely unselfish, as watching other people go is great for sparking creativity, and even the most “conventional” fellow player has all sorts of surprising things in them.​

Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?

​Hmmm. I did improv in college, but I never cross-applied the techniques much, except maybe the principle of saying “yes” to suggestions about what’s going on (yes, we’re brothers… yes, I’m in love with you). That is, avoiding negation when possible, because that slows down the flow of play.​

Rather than having a particular grab-bag of techniques I always use, I try to make use of the narrative potential or opportunities created by a particular ruleset and/or setting to its fullest extent. For example, in 13th Age, you in essence make up your own skill list, which can be as flavorful as you like, while still being useful in a generic way. So, given that opportunity, I make sure to take the skill “Burglar Emeritus of the Drakkenhall Rogue’s Guild” rather than just “Thievery.” Even something like old-school AD&D has areas where you can do something like this, though obviously some games provide more opportunities than others.



How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
​I like to game once a week. I used to like to game more often, but I’m in my 40s now and I get exhausted more easily.

As long as I feel like I can actually affect the action in some way, I can usually maintain pretty decent energy. Obviously, a game that pushes my various genre loves (science fiction, post-apocalyptic, cross-genre, urban fantasy)​ ​or system preferences (highly focused, indie-style games) helps maintain energy. I’m an introvert, but gaming is one of those areas where I’m super comfortable, so using gaming as an opportunity to interact with people I like and even to meet new, interesting people also helps me maintain energy.

The flipside of the latter is I’m not afraid to drop a game if it’s not working for me, particularly if there’s a personality conflict or some other dysfunctionality. I don’t believe that any gaming is better than no gaming. I’m sad to say I’ve been in several games that were way, way worse than no gaming at all, especially in terms of the amount of negative emotional energy that they generated. ​

What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?

​So, I have a big soft spot for cross-genre stuff, but in terms of “pure” genres, as I mentioned before, I’m pretty big on urban fantasy and science fiction, particularly post-apocalyptic stuff and space opera. Being in a genre I’m a fan of and/or comfortable with is a good start.

Setting aside, as a Forge veteran, I know that system matters. I’m most comfortable with a game that has a very specific thing it is trying to do and does it well, ideally in as a tight manner as possible. Even a “generic” game can do this; Fate covers a lot of genres, but it’s very focused on a particular style of cinematic play and the rules encourage a particular sort of narrative arc. As another example, I’m a big fan of the Powered by the Apocalypse games, particularly the subtle way the chosen list of moves influences how the game runs. Even if I think a system is a little too complex for my tastes, like GUMSHOE, I can respect a decent implementation of a game’s focus, such as the way GUMSHOE handles investigative play and clue gathering. ​I’m also a huge fan of games that share more power with the players than the “traditional” D&D paradigm.

So, the sweet spot for me is a game that has a focused rules that allow me to exercise some interesting narrative control, and is in a genre that I like. I could spend an entire page giving examples, but in the urban fantasy genre, Monsterhearts comes to mind, especially as rather than eliminating the sex moves from Apocalypse World like most Powered by the Apocalypse games seem to do, Monsterhearts adapted the idea to add the proper tension to a (supernatural) teenage soap opera.

Talking about sex moves reminds me of another comfort issue. This is less about particular games, though some games have a relevant mechanism built in or discuss the sort of thing I’m talking about in the text, but I’m most comfortable where there’s up-front discussion at the start of a campaign as to what people are okay with, and possibly making use of the X Card or a similar mechanism. I’ve been in too many games where lack of such discussions or lack of a safety net like an X Card has lead to serious problems.

Trigger Warning: Rape. 

As an extreme example of games where lack of discussion or safety valves lead to an issue, and also apropos of games that are worse than no gaming at all, one should never come back to a game after missing a session to find that the other PCs have allied themselves with a gang of rapists. Yes, this actually happened. I don’t want to get too much into it as it could get into even more serious trigger territory, plus talking about that game, and that terrible, terrible gaming group, is probably a multi-page essay that’s best left unwritten.
So, yeah, returning to a more cheerful topic, a tight game with decent narrative control and in a genre I’m a fan of is likely to keep me extremely engaged. 
Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?
​Hmmm. This is a level of “toot my own horn” that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with, but I’ll give it a shot.​ I’m probably going to veer into “let me tell you about my character” territory here, but that seems pretty inevitable, given the question. 😉
​One example that comes to mind is a Castle Falkenstein game I was in back in the 1990s. The GM told us the game was going to focus on three daughters of a British military officer, a very tight focus that would lead to more extreme things in a standard Castle Falkenstein 19th century Steampunk/Pulp “Tales of Adventure” sort of way.

I jumped in with both feet, creating a character that was a faerie interested in romance, but had been disappointed over the centuries in that most of his partners seemed to be more interested in what he was rather than who he was. Therefore, as he became attached to one of the daughters, following a standard romantic trope, he disguised himself as an ordinary human, so that he could tell if she loved him for himself rather than his faerie nature. This actually gave the other player characters a lot of chances to shine, as I needed their help to maintain my secret, and several of them rose heroically to the occasion. I also made sure to repay the favor, by helping out the suitors of the other daughters and generally being willing to stick my neck out to help them with their plots, like a proper gentleman faerie.

Aside: While I went that way because it’s a fun trope in fiction, I want to be clear I think “testing someone’s love” in real life is pretty much a total dick move. Keep it in novels, soap operas, and RPGs.

In any case, as many campaigns often do, the game eventually collapsed, but not before I was able to complete my romantic arc and reveal my true nature to my beloved, confident that she loved me for who I was. It was pretty heart warming and it definitely made the GM happy, as it was exactly the sort of thing he was going for, and by that point all the other players were almost as invested in the plot as I was, so they were pretty happy as well. Sadly, apropos of spotlight sharing, I had been looking forward to fading a little more into the background and cede a bit more spotlight given my arc was largely done, becoming largely a support character, and like I said, the campaign collapsed soon afterward. I still feel a bit guilty about that.

In any case, however, I think it’s a good sign of the job I did is that people who were in that campaign, aside from me, still talk about the game, and that character. It came up as recently as a month or so ago, decades later. Ugh, now I feel old…

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Thanks so much to Kirt for the interview! I hope you enjoyed reading these answers!

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs. Tell your friends!
If you’d like to be interviewed for Thoughty, or have a project featured, email contactbriecs@gmail.com.

What Makes a Good Player? with Mike Wood

Today’s What Makes a Good Player feature is with Mike Wood. Mike had some great responses to my questions! Check them out:

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What do you try to do most often while playing games to enhance your experience and the experience of others?

For me, the best part of gaming is embracing the unexpected. I started playing tabletop RPGs pretty late, I guess – I was 25 or 26 when I had my first D&D session. My RPG experience before that was basically from video games, which I love, but they’re a more passive play experience, and that could be frustrating sometimes. When I’d play some game like that, I’d end up thinking “why didn’t they just do X?” a lot – like in a bad horror movie where you’re wondering why they don’t just call the cops. So when I’m playing D&D or similar, I like to push the boundaries a bit in terms of creative solutions, because I really enjoy the freedom of being able to shape the narrative in unexpected ways, or the incongruity of bringing 21st-century common sense into a fantasy world. When I DM I try to be really open to the unexpected, too, because to me that freedom is the best thing about tabletop games.
Of course, how far you can take that sort of thing really depends on the type of game you’re playing, and the type of group you’re playing with. Sometimes trying to come up with crazy solutions for things works great, if your character has a good dynamic with the rest of the party – in my longest running game, I played a sort of Pollyannaish dwarf whose ridiculous ideas played well against the cautious pessimism of one of the other characters, and there’d be some arguments and conflict that made for a good experience. But I try to keep a lid on it if it looks like it’s starting to dominate the conversation. I’m conscious of my showoff tendencies and try to play against them as much as I can.


Do you use any specific play techniques (narrative tools, improv tools, etc.) in your play sessions?
Nothing formal, but there’s an improv rule that your response to any question has to be “yes, and…” – as in:
“Did your dog swallow the ambassador’s priceless diamond cufflinks?”

“Yes, and she’s been kidnapped by the mafia!”

I always try to keep that approach in mind while playing – always try to keep momentum moving forward, even if things go in an unexpected direction, or not quite how you want them to. That doesn’t mean don’t plan things out – sometimes discussing how to do something can be its own kind of narrative momentum, as well. If you’re DMing, “yes, and” becomes “yes, but” – “yes, you can try to do that, but X might go wrong.”

How often do you like to game, and what is most comfortable for you to maintain good energy in games?
It used to be a weekly thing for me and that was great, then a bit less frequent and that was good too. I think 2-3 times a month is probably about right.
What kind of games do you feel you are most comfortable with and enjoy the most?
I don’t have a lot of experience with different systems, but I like games that can support a consistent and fair but rules-light approach that’s flexible enough to deal with lots of different things. I’m sure there are games where you can turn to page 27 of appendix R to find the table to roll on for swinging on a chandelier, but having a general “athletics” roll works better in my book. I think there’s such a thing as too flexible though, I didn’t like FATE for whatever reason. Maybe I just needed time to get used to it.

One game that I really enjoy is Unknown Armies. It runs on a percentile dice system, which is easy for everyone to understand, and it’s got a really nice sanity system, but the real star for me is the way magic works. Magic in UA is based on either obsession (with drugs, alcohol, TV, stamp collecting, whatever) or conforming to a primal archetype like the Mother or the Warrior or the Fool. The book lists a few examples of each but it’s clear that you can make new obsessions and new archetypes, and it’s all built on the premise of player engagement with building the system, and taking things in unexpected directions according to what the players want to do. For me that’s what gaming is all about.

Can you share a special experience in a game where you felt like you did a good job playing your part in the overall story and game?

It’s tough to pick one. Once, during a long-running 52 Pages campaign, the party was on trial for something and we had the option of either doing trial by combat or arguing our case. We ended up deciding to argue, which I think was unexpected since it’s not the usual murderhobo way, and one of us had to be the defence attorney. So naturally I volunteered because I’m a huge showoff. And it was a lot of fun, a really nice change of pace. I ended up doing the sort of Matlock impression you’d do if you’ve never seen an episode of Matlock.

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Thanks so much to Mike for being a part of the interview series! Hope you all enjoyed reading. 🙂

This post was supported by the community on patreon.com/briecs.