All Good Things

 I finished a book for the first time in four-and-a-half years last night.

Not counting books I read my kids out loud, this was the first book I read cover-to-cover just for myself. I'm pretty happy about that.

With all these books coming in that I've had in some way, shape, or form before, I chose to read a new book - The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide by James D'amato.

Obviously, I'm into games, and, obviously, I'm into running games. Recently, I've felt that I've been lacking in the GM department - not from a lack of material or enthusiasm, but more of a lacking in confidence.

I've been running games for three decades now, and my gamemastering technique has evolved plenty in that time. There are things I do well, and things I don't do well. For example, I've never considered myself good at running NPCs or uncomfortable situations with player characters. It's not what I'm interested in when I'm running a game. I can tie together a story from other loose threads, so, in recent years, I often end up running pre-made adventures and tying them together in a kind of loose narrative.

I'd take something pre-packaged and modify it to suit my needs. It's worked well for me in the past, but I've found that as years have gone on, I've been using it as a kind of crutch. I don't think there's anything wrong with it, but a kind of doubt managed to seep into my brain that maybe I wasn't that good a GM and that I was just fooling everyone.

That's a common train of thought to those who deal with things like depression and anxiety, like many of us do. In an effort to try and do better, I got this book and have now read it.

While not everything in the book is for me, there are some things in there that most certainly made me think and make me willing to try different things.

There are really two schools of thought when it comes to running games. You can either be prepared, or you can wing-it. I've done it both ways to mixed results, and the times that I've ben "on" as a GM, I think it's genuinely been a fun experience for all of us involved. None of us can be perfect 100% of the time, however, and I know I've run some dismal games in the past, and will most certainly run more in the future.

I get hung up on whether or not the games I run are interesting to my players. It's a kind of paranoia that I've dealt with both personally and professionally - especially in a workplace. Some time will go by and I'll get paranoid about my performance, much like I get paranoid about my performance as a GM. I begin to doubt myself and doubt whether or not the players really care about the game, about the story, about getting together to roll dice. I then kind of spiral down a rabbit-hole where I wallow in self-doubt and I can't really hear the words of my friends who keep telling me they're having a good time. They say those words and I just think they're trying to be nice - trying not to hurt my feelings.

Something happened at my job earlier this year. I got promoted to a supervisor. For the first time in 20 years I am in charge of others in a non-volunteer environment where I'm getting paid to manage people who aren't my friends. The first time this happened, things didn't turn out too well - it was one of those, "I was supervisor in name only" and other employees didn't take me seriously.

I guess I didn't know how much that impacted me until now, 20 years later, when I'm now in a leadership role at a job I enjoy. It was a surreal transition for me. I knew I wanted the job, and I knew my bosses were confident in my abilities. I knew because they told me so, but the same thing happened when it came to my gamemastering - I thought they were just humoring me, just being nice.

Then I realized something. These people aren't my friends - not to say they don't like me, or I don't like them, not at all. What I mean, is that my bosses aren't invested in me like people who've known me for 20-plus years. They wouldn't put me in a leadership position and ask my opinion on things if they didn't actually value me in some way.

So I thought about this and had to jump a hurdle being in a management position - I had to be confident in my decisions because I knew others were confident in me. I can't have room for self-doubt that is paralyzing to the point where I can't make a choice, can't second-guess myself, or avoid conflict altogether. I need to be at least as confident in myself as these other people are confident in me.

I have found myself often telling my wife in years past that I wished she saw me with my eyes instead of hers. She's dealt with self-doubt and hardships all her life, and it's taken her ten years to finally feel at ease with me and not think I'm going to up and abandon her one day. I realize that I need to practice what I preach. My wife is incredibly supportive of me, and often tries to boost my self-esteem with words of encouragement. Hell, my family has been doing this my entire life, and my oppressive self-doubt often mutes these words of support and I slump into a funk of depression and denial.

So part of this endeavor - this writing and reading that I'm doing - is to be confident in my choices and my creativity, to once again flex those muscles where I try to be what others say I am.

This may be coming off as a big ego trip, but it's really not. I recognize my shortcomings, especially as a GM. I want to work on those to make them better, or at least not as handicapping. I'm going to read and write and try things to make me happy, and something that makes me happy is running games for my friends. I want to tell a story that is entertaining and maybe a little compelling, and some of what I got from reading this book may be a method I can at the very least try to use to make things different.

I don't want to say, "Make things better," because that's not really what I'm going for. I don't want to invalidate my friends' feedback in any way - in fact I want to embrace it and as it turns out, I may need my players' help to make some of these things happen. Reading this book has given me a few ideas as to what I want to try moving forward.

I'm excited and I hope my players are still invested in telling this story.