I have imposter syndrome – both at work and when gaming.

I have imposter syndrome – both at work and when gaming.

I have imposter syndrome – both at work and when gaming. When gaming I generally feel like I am the least talented person at the table and I am just hoping no one notices. This is the case when I am running a game as well. I always feel like I didn’t prepare as well as I should (but I hate prepping – I don’t really get the “lonely fun” feeling) and beat myself up about it. Then I tend to feel like I am fumbling around when I am actually running the game. Finally when the game is over I am kind of relieved but just keep thinking about what I should have done better. Afterwards people say lots of nice things but usually I am thinking in my head “yeah, but you didn’t notice how I fucked up this or that.” I generally am in a not great headspace after running a game…

Last night though I ran Bluebeard’s Bride for the first time… I was running it for The Gauntlet (https://plus.google.com/communities/116329047011220562548) for a bunch of folks who had never played, some of whom had listened to / watched APs, but all of whom were super excited to play and had very high expectations. (One person was explicitly spending part of their birthday day-off playing and one had a cold but still wasn’t going to give up the chance to play.) So you know… No pressure…

It was fucking awesome. Hands down the best session of a game I have ever run and I had zero nerves before/during/after the game. Everyone absolutely raved about it – and somehow I really actually accepted and felt I earned the praise. (This is something I basically can’t do: accept and feel I earned praise.) Everyone had high expectations and they were all met, and then some. I felt like a million bucks afterwards (and especially after the raves in the debrief). Hell, I still feel amazing.

Sarah Richardson Whitney Beltrán +Marissa Kelly thank you so so much for designing this game. It is magical and it has helped me feel confident about myself – something I have rarely ever felt. The text is succinct and perfectly voiced. I felt absolutely supported by it. (Extra thanks to Sarah for all the APs and for running it at Dreamation – all of which just reinforced what the text so clearly teaches.)

I look forward to regularly performing the duties of Groundskeeper for a long time to come…

Thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-gApvvVjCY

14 thoughts on “I have imposter syndrome – both at work and when gaming.”

  4. Adam McConnaughey It really is. I can gush about it endlessly. I have some personal thoughts about why I think I personally connect so much to it, but I won’t go into those here. (But if people I already have in my circles are interested, let me know – and that includes the authors.)

  6. Whitney Beltrán And thank you for making such an amazing game! (And tangentially related – believe it or not, the Aarne-Thompson tale type index has come up more times in discussion in the last month for me than in the last two decades.)

  10. It really was a wonderful session. Thank you for running it, Shane. It is also one of the very best written games I’ve ever seen. The rules exceptionally clear, the writer’s voice compelling, and visually stunning. A true masterpiece of game design!

  14. Had an additional insight about why I think I was able to feel like I did a good job: my players were regularly shivering with fear. That happened throughout the game. I think the combination of the regularity and the fact that you can’t really fake it gave me regular feedback that I could trust that said: you’re doing it right.

    Normally I’d notice throughout a game I was running that I had messed up this thing, should have done that differently, and then at the end of the session I’d already have this internal body of evidence saying I sucked. No matter how much praise people gave me I had too much evidence to the contrary to believe it.

Comments are closed.