engine:
Telsij:
Yikes, did I ever feel the pressure! I was genuinely nervous about my crew's safety being entrusted to my PC, haha, and have only in my last few posts felt more like a genuine "commander."
I'd like to understand this a bit, in the context of this post.
My main question is: What do you think might happen if you make a mistake, either as a GM or a player? It seems like knowing this is key to forging a solution.
Oh, it was a desire not to disappoint. And though the recent example I cited was for me as a player, that same worry certainly crept up when I was GMing more frequently in the past. In my current game example, I was worried that I and my PC might make some ruinous decision that would bring harm to the party, worried that my own RL strategic abilities and leadership skills would not come through with the right choice or game-plan for my character and for the party when the time came.
Though ideally one should be able to play a character with different strengths and weaknesses from oneself without such metagame worries, the notion of potentially having to fall back on generous GM fiat after some IC miscue was also concerning. And the nervousness and/or preoccupation about all this sometimes bothered me outside of the game, at work, etc. That and, being super into my character, I didn't want to do my PC an injustice either.
Fortunately, I've since managed to allay many of these fears, and as per my previous post, I feel as though I and my character have now both risen to the occasion, etc. That said, the game born anxiety, while minor compared to, say, the opposite direction where bouts brought on by events in RL affect the game, still had an effect.