RPGaDay 2019 Day #17 Scary

Today’s theme is “Scary.”

I’m not a fan of horror media, so I haven’t delved deeply into horror RPGs. So maybe I’ll talk about the things that scare me about gaming.

I have gotten over my fear of killing characters. After a couple of Total Party Kills and myriad other deaths in my megadungeon game, I’m becoming pro-character death. That doesn’t mean that I am advocating adversarial or “killer” GMing. Just that I am not upset when a character dies under my watch. The story of the campaign just took a turn, just as it does when any other kind of action is attempted, or some other die roll succeeds or fails. That player can build another character to rejoin the story in the next session.

It’s still hard to present myself as a game designer. When it was still a new achievement, I had a lot of imposter syndrome. Sure, I had published something, but it was easy. As a self-publisher, I didn’t need to go through an approvals process (other than my own). The flip side of that is that I didn’t have any sort of stamp of approval on my work (other than my own).

Now that it’s been so long since publication, I’m scared that whatever cred I had is nearing its expiration date. And I’m also struggling to find my feet in a new city, so my anxiety level is already at an all-time high.

I don’t need to fear boogeymen. Real life is scary enough.