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⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-04)
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My wife and I joined a a tabletop role-playing game based on Final Fantasy XIV. I have not played FFXIV recently, and when I was more active in it, I focused on things like platforming side quests rather than lore or stat building. I have done some creating writing before, though, and recently I've been looking for inspiration to do some more. I'm hoping this game will allow me to explore a storytelling side of games that I don't usually pay attention to.
We have already created characters, and we held our first actual gaming session a few weeks ago. To my disappointment, I quickly discovered that my goal of crafting an engaging story through roleplay is not at all shared by some of my fellow players.
I am relatively inexperienced with tabletop RPGs, since my gaming interests largely lie elsewhere. I also tend to be shy and unwilling to admit ignorance when interacting with people in-person, even among my friends. Other players who have joined the game are, in contrast, highly experienced--and when it comes to fulfilling our game objectives, some of them express the view of "get in, get out, get paid" quite vocally and steamroll over all other aspects of the game.
As a result, during our first session I often pulled back and didn't have my character do much. I was unable to get the other players to slow down and actually play out roles, instead of simply moving from point A to point B and slaying the assigned monsters as quickly as possible. I didn't have much of a chance to let my character build connections with the others--before I knew it, we had blown through half a dozen objective markers, and I still didn't know everyone's names. The experience was not very fun.
Our next session is tomorrow night. I mentioned my concerns to our gamemaster, and I hope he is able to craft future scenarios in such a way that the other players have to let up on the pace a little bit. I know I also need to be a little more assertive in playing the game the way I want to play it. If those don't happen, I'm not sure I want to keep playing with this group of players.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]