Yeah, I'm guilty of doing a couple of these. . . .

(It's D&D centric, but you can identify with what the writer is saying, even if the specifics are not pertinent to our system)

Love it. Four especially, I hear that so often in the games I am in.

That's been a staple

Also... You are not your bloody character

Great article, there was some stuff there I'm going to remember the next time I'm on the other side of the screen.

Another way of being a better role player is STOP PLAYING D&D. Go try other games not centered on developing the powers of your PC. Specially, try games centered on telling a story instead of in gathering XPs, gear and gold.

I think Six needs to be posted in this forum in 90s webpage style banner with flashing colors.

Also Seven is abused by way too many people.

That's been a staple

Also... You are not your bloody character

Whenever I start a game with a new group of players, we talk a little about how very often it seems people identify heavily with their RPG characters, to where they want the hero to succeed all the time and never fail.

The adventure stories we love are *nothing like this*! In Star Wars, the heroes fail all the time! They get captured in every movie! James Bond gets conked on the head and captured by the bad guy in almost every single film!

That way it's exciting when they break free, overcome massive odds ...

Ten. Embrace Failure.

One of the things I loved about World of Darkness games (especially Mage) versus Dungeons and Dragons was the storytelling of success and failure. I am very good at being streaky on both ends of the spectrum. When adding a lot of dice and adding something that will be epic in scope but you don't know if it will be good or bad? Awesome. I have single-handedly saved everyone with one amazing roll. I have also prolonged a simple [s.n.a.t.c.h.] and grab (well, as simple as things can be removing shielding devices in Pelucidar) with a catastrophically epic failure. I'm generally not an average dice roller... win it or lose it, but do it big! There is nothing like the feeling of describing an awesome attempt at achieving something with potentially bad consequences and pulling out the dice - all eyes are on you and because of past rolls everyone is holding their breath and hoping for the best outcome. Odds are most of the players in our group remember my epic failures better than the successes. Playing with dice superstitions can make it even better. No one... I mean NO ONE in our gaming group will let me touch their dice. Not on the table, not in a bag. It's awesome! I love it!

Coming to Star Wars, I love the built in storytelling aspect of the dice. Not only does it encourage you to begin with making cinematic actions, but the dice will help skew your story in ways you didn't think of before you rolled. I have not had an epic failure in this system yet, but I know that it is coming and I can't wait! I think others that know me are worried about this... heh heh

EDIT: Language Police Correction

I wouldn't completely dismiss this article but a good GM mitigates most if not all of this. I do GM so that's fair in my eyes. A solid session 0, clear houserules laid out, making an effort to put on a good show every session, and running a tight ship prevents most, if not all player issues in my experience. This tends to vary obviously based on relative player knowledge of the game and plain ol civility/maturity, the latter really having nothing to do with gaming though. Still, it's good basic advice.

2P, unfortunately if your game is via a virtual tabletop like Roll20, you have to heavily emphasize most of these. A Good GM can mitigate most of them for an in-person offline game, but people treat virtual games like the wild west where a GM has to corral the Players like cattle sometimes.

Very good info. I actually terminated an adventure over a 4 incident. It was extra sad since the situation and effect in question was a non-combat hallucination, and the point of the event was for the character to shake it off and realize everything was fine (well everything except the fact they were hallucinating of course).

That's been a staple

Also... You are not your bloody character

Whenever I start a game with a new group of players, we talk a little about how very often it seems people identify heavily with their RPG characters, to where they want the hero to succeed all the time and never fail.

The adventure stories we love are *nothing like this*! In Star Wars, the heroes fail all the time! They get captured in every movie! James Bond gets conked on the head and captured by the bad guy in almost every single film!

That way it's exciting when they break free, overcome massive odds ...

When I play with people, I try to encourage not being too risk-averse. To me, that creates dull stories. Sure, plan - but just layout the basics and go for it. If you have faith that when you fail, it will be fun, you will no longer worry about averting risk. You may, in fact, start to WANT to fail!

I love interesting failure/complications. I hate mundane failure. And that's actually why I occasionally have a love/hate relationship with this game lol

Admittedly I did a five in my mid-teens as a player, but my consience made me put it back

...and EotE has the possibilty of ten in spades... especially with my dice luck

and 'wanky' in the other link about not being your character LOL that has totally different connotations in the UK

Be careful as a GM to not simply trigger over-method-acting behavior from players. For example, if the scenario is provided as: "A whole planet is on the line - If you screw up the rebel alliance will disappear", they might tend toward more seriousness and calculation in their roleplay approach.

If rather "Our job is to cover the Y-wings as they fly down the trench to put a torpedo down the exhaust port" then you can get to the same place in the end, but without freaking out the players into over cautiousness or full on failure-avoidance mode before things get exciting.