Day 16 - Dramatic
One of the things that is difficult to do in any roleplaying game session is drama. However, the word prompt for today is "dramatic," not "drama"...
Being dramatic means that one is acting out one's reactions or emotions. If one is overly dramatic, one is reacting over the top. Emoting. To a certain degree, I think that most gamers tend to do this with their player characters, being as crazy and over-the-top as possible at times, pushing the limits, taking things to the furthest extreme. Yes, there are a lot of gamers who don't take that route, and more power to them imo. I don't mind a little bit of emoting during game play, but there's a time to not do it.
The problem with being dramatic is two-fold. First of all, it can make the player character seem one-dimensional and perhaps stereotypical of the type of character being played. Sure, players can change this over time through character growth and development, but for some players this tends to be an almost "standard" way to play any game, regardless o the genre. The second problem is the more important one: it's hard to sustain. When you start off with that emoting craziness, there's nowhere left to go but down, no...emotional beats are left. Not only can this be exhausting, it can also get boring real fast.
Readers of this blog may have noticed that most stories (novels, films, tv series, comic books, etc.) aren't set up and structured that way. The reason for this is that tension is required. Tension needs to start small and build up to an (sometimes ridiculous) extreme. The pace of whatever is going on has to shift, slowing down at times, but most importantly, dramatic doesn't have to be bombastic... Sometimes, being dramatic works best when it's relatively quiet and small. That's when it's most effective, and that's when taking it to the extreme leaves a bigger impression than if one emotes all the time.
And there you have this sixteenth post for this #RPGaDay for August, 2020. Comments, thoughts, questions, etc. are all welcome, of course. :)
