Interview Questions

Question: We all have weaknesses. What is John's biggest weakness as a Storyteller? What is Anne's biggest weakness as a player?

Well... when we're in games together, the answer is usually "each other". John and I have been together a long time and know each other well, which means that we sometimes forget the usual rules about interacting at a gaming table. I tend to question John a lot more than I would most Storytellers, since I work with him a lot behind the scenes and am used to a cooperative idea-bouncing model instead of the iron control an ST needs to have during the game itself, which can frustrate him a lot. Conversely, he's harder on me than he would be on most players, which sometimes irritates me when he assumes I know something from background work that I might not or snaps at me for not paying enough attention when he'd have let the same behavior go in another player. We've pretty much given up on both being players in the same game unless we're allied; we're not good at convincingly lying to or manipulating each other and neither of us will stop shy of murdering the other person in the pursuit of in-character goals, so it's usually better to avoid the heartbreak and play people who at least vaguely get along with one another. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, at least patterns and expectations that aren't always quite in line with good RPG practice, so we sometimes ping off each other but try our best not to let things get weird for everyone else.

When not talking about the two of us bothering each other, though, we do still have our weaknesses. John has an infallible memory when it comes to game stuff and makes leaps of intuition very easily, so he occasionally forgets that players may not remember that plot point from six months ago or be surprised that they haven't yet unraveled a puzzle that he didn't provide any clues to. He also tells me he sometimes has trouble reining in a player that has gone off the rails for too long; he doesn't mind letting players do their own thing or drive the story somewhere surprising, but when one player dives off to do something insane and eats up four other peoples' time for too many hours, he sometimes finds it challenging to get everyone back on track. As for me as a player, I spectate too much sometimes, getting so caught up in what others are doing that when it comes around to my turn to take an action I haven't prepared as well as I could have. I also sometimes let character motivations overrun game sense when they're especially strong, and have been known to refuse to do things that my character wouldn't do even when I know it would speed the scene up or help other characters that are struggling.

I'm sure our players will jump in and find other things to complain about us, but those are the ones that stick out as the biggest ones to us. We like to think we don't overdo any of them, but like everyone else, we could always be better.