Sometimes it’s incredibly difficult to maintain a healthy perspective on game. From time to time, it’s important for Players and Storytellers to check their level of investment. What we do for fun should never be something that hurts us.
When relations between Players and Storytellers begin to breakdown and become unfriendly, how can the cycle be broken?
There’s a saying that a few LARPers I know always recite, “We pay five bucks to pretend to be nine foot tall fuzzy werewolves at a warehouse every other Friday night. The least we could do is do it like adults.”
No one wants to admit it, but playing role playing games is a dying hobby. The classic days of game stores’ shelves filled with RPG manuals are long past, and even comic book stores (disappearing in their own right) barely stock anything beyond the two main D&D books. Even if the shelf space still existed, there aren’t enough game lines or currently produced books to fill them. The cause of the demise of the industry is debatable. Maybe it was players leaving to play WoW. Maybe it was game developers losing touch with their players. Maybe it was the money lost in pirated pdf’s of their products. Regardless, the number of players is dwindling.
Storytellers fear saying it, Players need to hear it, and games benefit from it. How can these two letters really benefit a game, and how can Storytellers and Players learn to communicate it?
It’s hard to say “no” to people. It’s made even more complicated when a Storyteller worries about losing players because they were told they couldn’t have something they wanted. How do you say “no” and keep your attendance growing? How do you say “no” and keep your game happy?
