RPGaDay 2026 13&14

Almost halfway through the month, and most of my posts that have been due every second day have generally been on time. Let's keep going...

 

13. Composure

The state of being calm, self-contained and in control of your feelings, especially during stressful, difficult or unexpected situations.

I like maintaining a facade of composure when running games, I also like seeing the breaking point when composure starts to crumble in the situations where the players find their characters. When the players and characters find themselves at the point where they can't maintain composure, we start to see their true motives and agendas revealed. When the GM starts to lose composure, the game has a tendency to lose focus (which can make for positive or negative experiences, depending on numerous other factors).

When characters too composed, we see the way they want to present themselves to the world, and when they aren't composed at all they don't have a chance to control their own narrative. Getting a good holistic view of the characters often requires both... so where possible, I apply situations for each. 

14. Intensity

Here's the opposite side of that (which makes for a nice pair of prompts today). 

I've touched on this a couple of times in this series, especially in the posts about Mercy and Loss. The whole things ties in pretty well with the vector theory and the three-way tension model that I've been discussing. Intensity is a fun tool to play with in a game session, it can be used to add drama to a scene, or offer players (and characters) a chance to catch their breath. Allowing various members of the group to change their ability to influence the story mean they get to adjust intensity accordingly, sometimes being in control of how dramatically events are unfolding, and sometimes feeling out of their element.

There's something in education research called the "Zone of Proximal Development" where people need to be pushed out of their comfort zone slightly for the maximum opportunity to improve themselves. If a person remains in the comfort zone and there isn't a degree of intensity pulling on them in some way, there isn't a motivator for them to improve or make decisions for themselves. Conversely, if the intensity gets too high or the person feels like they are unable to resist the effects around them, they simply give up. There's a balance point of the intensity where optimum ability to grow and create change occurs. That balance point changes all the time, so the degree of intensity to keep things interesting also needs to keep changing. 

When I'm running a game, I like to keep players a bit off-balance, but not too off-balance... enough intensity to keep pulling them in a certain direction, but not so much that they feel railroaded. If I see a player step-up and start pulling the game session for themselves, I'll try to gauge the impact this is having on the rest of the group and decide accordingly whether or not to start mounting an opposition to them to bring the group back into balance.