Monday, August 13, 2012

A Name Up in Lights

Question: I feel useless. My storyteller gives me scenes where I should be able to shine, but everything I can do someone else in the group can also do and probably better. Sure, I can kill things in combat, but only two at a time with my weapon. Other characters can kill groups of enemies with boons, and the social characters make all the decisions. What should I do?

It's not necessarily a bad thing to be doing things others can do! There are some powers that never go out of style no matter how many people in the band have them, like Guardian or Health; of our until-recently-two different god-level bands, each was violently jealous of the other's ability to respectively drop three heals on the same person in the same round, or have an Unseen Shield three layers deep to ward off those pesky enemies. If you're still killing enemies, that means there are some that need killing and that's awesome and helpful - imagine if you weren't how hard-pressed your band would be to pick up the slack. Even if you feel kind of stuck in the land of the medicore doing mediocre things, the vacuum if you stopped would probably be very noticeable to your band. And remember that stunting makes a huge difference; even if you and your friend are both attacking and he's doing more damage, if you did it in a totally different and cool way, you're adding to the game just by being awesome.

But! It sounds like your problem is more that you want to really shine as an individual once in a while, and it feels like you're matched or exceeded by the others in your band, which is a tough way to feel. In this case, the best thing you can probably do is look at what you can do that none of them can, and make that thing the best it can possibly be. Shore up that Epic Intelligence, enhance those dots of rare Larceny, or whatever else it is you do that you know they can't compete with; it'll set you up to have an awesome moment in the sun later when you're the only one who can pull that particular thing off. And if there's absolutely nothing you can do that someone else isn't already doing, then maybe it's time to invent something through the magic of XP. Look at what your band doesn't have - are they big on murdering people with Fire and Water, but lack a Death-god for ghostly shenanigans? You probably already have a healer, but do you have a dedicated psychopomp? What about the less popular specialty purviews, like Darkness or Illusion? Do you have a prophet dropping the mad buffs on everyone? Do you have someone who's great at tracking with Perception? Dig around, because I guarantee no Scion band has one of everything. (Well, I guess you could if it was monstrous in size, but I'm assuming you're probably not over about six players, since most games aren't.)

Now, buying new things up from zero can be kind of depressing, because it'll take a little while before you're on a level playing field with your buddies who already have their favorite powers maxed, but if you're really unhappy with your current setup and feel like you can't compete, the best way to change that is to change the setup. Your current character's skills aren't working for you to have a good time, so you need to find some that will. I would also suggest trying to come up with a reason for your character's newfound interest in whatever you decide to take on as his or her special awesome role, but don't sweat it if nothing great comes to mind yet; you need to have fun as a player no matter what your character feels about the situation, so if you can't come up with a good in-character reason yet, trust that you'll find a way to grow into it. Enjoy your band's reactions to your new idea along the way - they may be confused or excited about it, or if they don't notice you'll get to stage a grand reveal when it's your moment to shine. And hey, you won't get the top-level powers right away, but there's a joy to getting to pick up a bunch of new fun powers, even if they're low-level, while everybody else is saving up for the high-level ones.

If you're totally uninterested in reinventing your character's role or you just can't see how you could do it to make it work, try going to your Storyteller. You mentioned that they're trying to help you out with scenes to showcase you, so they're probably going to be sympathetic; explain your problem and see if they have any suggestions for what to do with the character (they might be able to give you more specific help than I can, since they'll know all the details of your game). And if all else fails, suggest to the Storyteller that this character isn't working for you and see if you can build a new one; that might entail killing the old one off, taking an XP hit or anything else the ST deems appropriate for doing a full character reset, but if you're not having fun in your game right now, something's got to change until you are.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out!

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