When your player character looks back at you and rolls their eyes

It is unlikely to have been the first time that I have been in the heart of a mystery mini campaign, enveloped in puzzles, veiled revelations, and sub optimal outcomes, to sink back in my chair and realise that I, the player, don’t really have any insight as to what to do next. Although the fundamentals of our situation are largely unchanged, there hangs an abiding sense that we have been given enough in the preceding illustrative events to have reached a clever solution to the conundrum. Instead, much faffing about, circling on the possibilities and risks to any further delay of inevitable action through yet more information gathering, in a worthy attempt to shorten the odds, optimise the outcome, and keep everyone alive.

The sudden sense of powerlessness has nothing to do with player agency, or even a range of useful actions that can yet be taken, as the adventure is well presented and has depths to be unlocked. It is more a spinning jenny of procrastination, trying to hone a problem down through the weight of hard won knowledge, to only act with the certitude of a best solution path, even if there remains an uncertain ending.

The game’s engaging high fantasy setting is strongly dressed in late Victoriana, a sort of Dickensian eldritch steamspark of new technologies, old magics, and societal disparity. My decision to play a sort of Sherlock Holmes, crusading savant wizard, has accentuated the sense of inadequacy. The dissonance between my character’s cold, yet deep, mind palace with my own derelict ‘lean to’ of forgotten keys and inadvisable life choices, feels suddenly rather stark. Even my wish for inclusive and welcoming play at the table, have undermined the strengths of my sharp character, laid low by my desire to welcome a new player. Sheepishly, I don’t want to look my player character in the eye, the chasm between us perhaps precluding so, and can only mumble barely heard apologies to him, who has doubtless already worked out the solution and is hoping I will allow him the opportunity to carry it out. I get the sense that he isn’t hopeful.

The feeling I have, that I’m not really up to the job of portraying my character in the game, is perhaps more obviously at play with apparently wise and knowledgeable personas, well grounded in the presented setting. It is safe to say that they are increasingly alarmed by experiencing a preponderance of ‘off days’ since I have started to play them. They were fine before then.

My ineffectual play can be evidenced in a much broader range of characters. There is always a risk of under-performing a highly charismatic character, with bumbling speeches and fumbled social nuances, only spared by middle of the road skill checks. Even the good old taciturn fighter archetypes can act with broiling exasperation as you place them in ill conceived tactical cul-de-sacs. I actually got some way to success with my clear spoken sorcerer in a recent Curse of Strahd campaign. I felt a mounting pressure to continue to pull off eloquent speeches in difficult situations. My joy in play was magnified by the pressure. So, there might be something in celebrating those moments when you get closer to the capacity of the person you are playing.

Of course there is every likelihood that all I am attempting to redecorate good old fashioned decision paralysis. Why act when you can spend six sessions in a centrifuge, parting half truths from uncertain possibilities? You might argue that such is the way with mystery adventures, a groping towards the light of revelation and resolution. My perceived capability dissonance could be no more than a mounting frustration that there simply isn’t a very good way out of the situation, and that my character would have realised this seven sessions ago. However, I am enjoying the conceit that I am fundamentally incapable of playing the characters I create in roleplaying games, so I am happy to layer on a sizeable helping of indecisiveness directly on top.

One of the joys I found in acting in scripted plays was the capacity to embody the character thanks to the clever words of the author. When acting in a Wilde play I could be devastatingly witty and effortlessly funny with reproducible certainty. Take the learning of lines, timing, delivery, and artful script away and I have nothing. The delight of role playing in improvisational games, includes thinking on your feet and acting as someone quite different from you. As long as you acknowledge the fallibility of your characters, and accept the limiting veil of the player, through which characterisation takes place, great immersive fun is to be had. Important to remember this as you see your character turn and roll their eyes.

In the mystery game I introduced above, we have now come to a plan to take action to resolve the situation. Hilariously, the plan is the one that we started with, pretty much unchanged despite the swirling events. Having said that, our lengthy prevarication in delayering the mystery has brought a number of valuable benefits. Perhaps now we appreciate that we have, at best, a partial understanding of what we are facing, some important variation of the resolution due to deeper knowledge, and a more realistic limited confidence that our decisions are the right ones. In the end, something needs to be done. I have already mapped out a number of possible deflating outcomes, caused by my welcoming style of play, rather than my character’s incisive ability.

Sharing some of these feelings with a number of my fellow players at the conclusion of the last session, encouraged and grounded my impostor syndrome for a character that, ultimately, comes from me in the first place. Nevertheless, in advance, may I apologise Harlan for any failings that you have already foreseen. It’s not you, it’s me.