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Dice and Mutterings #3: Engaging With The Plot

Posted on by in Other TTRPG's, Real Life, tabletop

Needless to say, it has been a while.

Writing is still a bit more a struggle for me, which is something I have been trying to remedy and get back into the flow of doing – even if the world is trying its darndest to stop me! I took part in National Novel Writing Month and succeeded, so hopefully the creative writing I did there will transition over here somewhat!

Anyways, I had a few thoughts about plots and how I as a GM go about making them and engaging with them, both to see how my players react and to become a better RP’er myself. So I thought I’d talk about it.

Listen here!

Or search Dice and Suffering on any Podcasting platform 🙂

Have a good week!

CaitlinRC.

The Fall Of The First Sword #8 – A Terrible Fate

Posted on by in Blades In The Dark
Next in our little solo series for each of the characters is the dear Professor.
When seeking out information on The Pyre, the vampire known as Skerlock offers Blake a deal – information on the one who lead the attack on Blake’s university, in exchange for his help “clearing out the vermin”.
How far will Blake go in the name of his revenge?
—
Based in my city of Osalas, the gang of criminals must navigate the criminal underworld to the best of their abilities and discover what keeps the city trucking along, regardless of the cost…
(The wonderful art for this season done by Kerry @shirobeans)
Featured:
Matt (@themattattackuk) as Professor Blake Marshall, the Whisper.
Follow the podcast on all platforms including spotify, soundcloud & stitcher, and follow the site @OurMindGames or www.themindgame.org
Music used in this episode:
BITD Main Theme – Dark Days by Kabbalistic Village | @kabbalisticvillage
Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0)
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
Rest of the music taken from tabletopaudio.com

Every Day Is A Challenge

Posted on by in Real Life

Mental health is an infinitely complex thing. With a variety of conditions that can affect someone and no-one’s experience being the same, it’s no wonder that so much about it remains a complete mystery to most of the population. What I talk about on this site and during any podcast episodes that I record, is a droplet in the ocean of what there is to know and understand within the scope of mental health conditions and their impact on an individual. Something that I don’t think people realise when mental health conditions are discussed, is how they interact with one another. These conditions often come in groups, much like the unwanted +1 you didn’t realise your friend had dragged along to your party.

Between anxiety, depression and PTS, a bad mental health day for me can vary dramatically depending on which condition has decided to kick down the door and make my life a misery. The PTS can raise my anxiety levels, which leads to me cancelling plans, which results in a healthy dose of self-loathing for letting others down. It’s a negative feedback loop and it sucks, to be completely honest. However, I can’t avoid every potential trigger that could begin the loop again, otherwise I’d never be able to live my life. There are a variety of factors that can lead you to a bad day and often it’s simply a minor inconvenience that sets it all in motion once again.

I’m aware that the root of my problems is mostly to do with my own self-esteem and self-image, something that goes back to my childhood. However, it was only around the time I started this site that I recognised the core of my issues, and I was surprised to recognise that it wasn’t my social anxiety. When I started university, my anxiety attacks were at a point where I sought out medical assistance to help quell them, since I could barely leave the flat for an event without the need to vomit profusely afterwards (and not for the usual alcohol related reasons you’d expect of a university student!). Yet once I was on anti-anxiety medication, I stopped having panic attacks and instead fell into a deep depression, functioning only out of necessity. I’d treated a symptom, not the cause.

The last three weeks have been odd for me. Those that follow my YouTube would have read the description of my most recent video and would know that I’ve been in a depressive slump recently, but that slump has transitioned into a more bizarre phenomenon. I’ve spoken about dissociation on the site before, the out of body experiences and sensations that my actions aren’t entirely my own to control, but this feels… more than that. I feel disconnected from myself almost entirely, like I’ve become an actor in a play, going through the motions and acting out what the audience expects to see. I do my work, both from home and onsite, I play D&D with the gang and enjoy myself, I play and cuddle with the cats and I study the required material for my master’s degree. To an outside observer, I seem perfectly fine. Heck, to those close to me, it still looks normal. However, something about it feels off to those who would look more closely.

The best metaphor for it that I can think of would be if you went to an art gallery to see a famous painting, but someone had switched the original for a near perfect replica without letting anyone know. Sure, those keener on the artist’s work may notice something amiss or just have an inkling of confusion, but unless it was pointed out, chances are nobody would notice for a long time. I feel like that replica. Like someone had walked off with the original Caitlin and left me in place, forcing me to smile and converse with Caitlin’s family and friends, referencing conversations that I wasn’t a part of and events that are mere facts to me rather than the emotional milestones they supposedly were for others.

Theatre has always been a big part of my life, especially the backstage roles that go into a production. Show week is a fascinatingly complex thing, with dozens of moving parts mixing to make a show run smoothly. Knowing the cues, lighting changes, sound effects and props needed for every scene becomes almost instinctual as the week goes on. This dissociation feels like that. It feels like we’re on the third show of the week, having moved beyond opening night jitters and the first few live mistakes that you must compensate for. Everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing and it becomes another piece of choreography that every member of the company can perform flawlessly. Although perfect in the moment, in that specific scenario, to carry it over to the rest of the world and your daily life, it becomes paralysing in a way that you wouldn’t comprehend from the outside.

You know how they say some animals can sense things coming before we can? Like how cows sit down before the rain or how dogs can be trained to sense when a seizure is approaching, or someone’s blood sugar is dangerously low. I don’t know how common it is but some folks, me included, can sense when a panic attack is approaching or when a depressive episode will strike. Part of my experience with predicting these changes comes from my sensitivity to the world around me. I am hyperaware of changes around me, be that noise, visuals, or scents. On my more audio sensitive days, I can make out a dozen different conversations going on around me. I guess it means nobody can sneak up on me but it’s a bloody nightmare for my anxiety levels. I can predict when the days where it takes hours to claw myself out of bed are and know what level of physical contact I can tolerate during a particularly bad timeframe.

Part of me wants to remain in this state for the foreseeable future, something that the rest of me is too terrified to even consider. In this state I am productive, I am functional, I’m still socialising and interacting with those around me. It’s like looking in a slightly distorted mirror of what I am like on my good days, an almost perfect reflection that sets the alarm bells ringing in the back of your mind. I know that when this performance ends, I will have several very dark days. That fact is as certain to me as the rotation of the earth and the endless motion of the tides. It’s a foreboding feeling, to be staring darkness in the face as it barrels towards you, with only a wall of glass between you and the danger. Yet, I have to take down that wall or I will never be who I am, who I could be, who I want to be.

Life is hard. It requires surviving the bad days and thriving during the good ones. It’s terrifyingly isolating and a battle that you will never truly win – you merely survive from skirmish to skirmish until you are ready to meet defeat with open arms. It’s hard, back breaking work that you get no real reward for, no grand prize other than more time on the earth. Every second counts and sometimes you have to spend a month clawing your way out of the pit of despair to get an hour of joy. Yet, if you can forgive yourself when you fail, can pick yourself up when you fall down, and are willing to accept the smallest victories as a triumph over that lurking darkness, then it will all be worth it.

Still here,

CaitlinRC.

The Fall Of The First Sword #7 – The Cost Of Freedom

Posted on by in Blades In The Dark
Listen in!

After the dramatic rescue of Crowley during the last heist, the gang has a few days to attend to their own objectives.

We start this little solo arc with Marielle, The Red Queen, as she investigates a series of disappearing servants happening in the city.

—
Based in my city of Osalas, the gang of criminals must navigate the criminal underworld to the best of their abilities and discover what keeps the city trucking along, regardless of the cost…

(The wonderful art for this season done by Kerry @shirobeans)

Featured:

Kerry(@shirobeans) as Marielle Ruby, the Spider.

Follow the podcast on all platforms including spotify, soundcloud & stitcher, and follow the site @OurMindGames or www.themindgame.org

Music used in this episode:

BITD Main Theme – Dark Days by Kabbalistic Village | @kabbalisticvillage
Music promoted by www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-ND 3.0)
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/

Rest of the music taken from tabletopaudio.com

Motivation – Where Do I Get Some?

Posted on by in Real Life

The past two years have been something of a wake-up call for me regarding how I view my own work. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the links, discussions and representation of mental health in games, be they virtual, tabletop or imaginary, are more and more impactful as mental health conditions become less demonised in the public media. With video games continuing to dominate the entertainment industry, there are great opportunities to educate the masses using the gaming medium but not many developers grab hold of this chance, partly due to fear of misrepresentation and partly due to it not being a popular topic when it comes to sales figures.

However, my own motivation has been the biggest obstacle in producing the work that raises awareness of these issues and shines a light on the hidden facets of some of our favourite games. This lack of motivation has had an impact on all aspects of Mind Games – both in article and podcast format. So, I ask you – what is motivation? The English Dictionary defines motivation as:

“The willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness.”

It’s a decent summary but a very holistic one. To understand better, you must look at the contributing factors that make up motivation itself. To me, it is:

“A combination of; excitement towards the task, general energy levels, your own ranking/opinion of your skillset in relation to the task at hand, and, if applicable, deadlines/time constraints.”

Energy levels are easy to mitigate for. You can manage them by planning around your deadlines, social engagements, family events, romantic opportunities, childcare, sickness and self-care breaks. By ensuring these cross over as little as possible, you can allow yourself a moment to breathe amidst the madness that is daily life. An example of somewhat bad management of energy levels, can be seen in my own life. Recently, I had a very busy eight days of ten to twelve hours of continuous meetings and strict deadlines to complete within these sessions. Shortly after completing this long stretch, I immediately fell ill and have spent the last few days building up my energy again, mostly by sleeping, switching off my brain and demanding cuddles from my cats (they don’t pay rent after all).

Some folks try to boost their energy levels using various stimulants, like the endless amounts of Monster Energy that my friend drinks, or the obscene amount of coffee that I drank to get myself through my A Levels. Seriously, I drank so much coffee that looking back at it, I can pinpoint where coffee stopped having a serious impact on my energy levels. I passed my exams though, so… worth it? It does remind me of people who eat so much of something, they develop an intolerance to it.

However, all the caffeine in the universe cannot counter the low-energy and low-mood that depression can randomly decide to bestow upon you. Popular media displays these “dark days” as some cinematic timelapse of a depressed young woman, locked away for weeks on end (Looking at you Twilight). It’s waking up exhausted after ten hours of sleep, struggling with simple self-care like brushing your hair, and often, plastering on a fake smile to avoid enquiries from well-meaning coworkers and friends. You put on a mask because you cannot explain to everyone who asks that no, it’s not physical exhaustion, I don’t just need to sleep earlier in the evenings, it’s an exhaustion in my very soul that I do battle with every single day, an ongoing war of attrition that is whittling away at the core of your being until eventually, you break.

Deadlines and time constraints are something of a double-edged sword when it comes to motivation. Knowing that you have a finite timeframe to complete your task, can encourage (or force) productivity, heck, we all felt a little glee about finishing an exam earlier than others and just getting to stroll on out the exam hall into the sunshine. However, the involvement of others and their own deadlines into the process, can be a nasty train of thought to travel down. In the workplace, you are a cog in the machine. I don’t mean that as an insult, I mean that literally. Chances are, that important task you are struggling to complete, was originally reliant on someone else completing their task. And someone else’s task will be reliant on you completing your task. If one cog is delayed or fails to deliver, it has a ripple effect that ends up impacting more people than you’d dare to imagine.

When you extrapolate that thought out from just your team in particular, to the organisation as a whole, it becomes almost paralyzing to comprehend. Suddenly, your work goes from a lone brick in a pile, to a load-bearing wall holding up the towering skyscraper that is your organisation’s architecture. For example, 5,000 people are hired by my workplace. From that, many of them have families of their own, friends, pets, all that rely on them for support. On a darker day in my head, the idea of missing a deadline, or taking an extra week to really polish a project, snowballs further and further until suddenly, I am responsible for every sin committed by mankind since the beginning of time.

My mind is convinced of this, despite the fact that I am a twenty four year-old introvert whose greatest claim to fame is making compilations and being sarcastic on the internet. Then again, my year-group in school did vote me “Most Likely To Conquer The World”, so maybe they knew something that I didn’t.

Mind Games started as, and will most likely remain, a solo project. The TTRPG content that I’ve expanded into with Dice and Suffering, does feature my friends in their wonderful roles as players with whacky, well written characters (even if they’re a dragonborn in assless chaps), but literally everything else that makes up Mind Games is done by me. To give you an idea, here’s a list of things that I’m in charge of, that I can think of, although I’m sure there’s more I’ve forgotten:

Website maintenance, claiming the URL, website security, social media, article writing, search engine optimisation, podcast recording, editing, publishing, descriptions, supporting image sourcing, comment moderation, liasing with game developers, liasing with mental health charities and designing new sections to the site – including adjusting the source code itself where needed.

I do all of this, for free. I do this as a labour of love, because video games are such an integral part of my life and my mental health conditions are here to stay, and I never want someone to feel alone when I can make a difference in their life. I do this, despite my full-time job, part-time masters degree study, TTRPG/creative writing ideas, the aforementioned compilations/sarcasm and myriad of other hobbies/social obligations. Even if my motivation levels were through the roof, I wouldn’t always have the time to act on them. I think accepting this fact, is something that’s taken the last two years to really sink in.

I’m not giving up. That’s not what I am trying to get across here.

Throughout the history of Mind Games, I’ve been setting myself unrealistic goals in terms of the content that I produce. Although in the short-term they are reasonable, in the long-term they are not sustainable unless I somehow never need to sleep ever again. I keep making choices as if I am a cog in a machine, with others to contribute and pick up the slack when I fall down, but it’s just me and I can’t do everything – a fact that I’ve always struggled to accept. When I’ve failed in the past, my self-esteem and love for what I do on Mind Games tends to take a big hit. This leads to a negative spiral of failure and my work suffers for it.

So, I hope going forward I can make better goals, nourish that spark of joy and excitement that has kept Mind Games going all this time, and hopefully, start producing stuff that I’m proud of again.

The aim from now on, is going to be:

  • At least one article per month
  • At least one Dice and Suffering episode per month (as long as I have an active campaign ongoing!)

Anything in addition to these is a bonus, not a requirement or a demand that I’m making of myself.

I hope you’ll stick around for it, as I pick myself up off the ground again and keep trucking on.

Be kind to yourselves,

CaitlinRC.