Going along the lines of my recent Shadowrun 4 review, I thought I would go into my personal progression into roleplaying. It has been a year now since I began roleplaying on a nearly weekly basis. Most of the rest of the group has been there week in and week out as well. Some more than others obviously. I actually think that of the group, I have been the most consistent in actually being there.
With that being said, my progression in becoming a better roleplayer I feel has been rather slow, and this has been rather frustrating for me as a person. This has been my chance to really break out of who I am a little bit, to stop being shy and stuck in how I act. But I don’t really feel like I am progressing as much as I want.
To start, I played an elf who was really introverted and didn’t have much to say most of the time, was kind of snarky. This is essentially who I am and I think it worked well to help me become acquainted with how everything worked and to get to know everyone. It was a way for me to ease myself in.
About four or five months ago, I changed the character I was playing. This was done for a number of reasons. One, the GM we are working with didn’t really feel like the character meshed in quite as well. She was a gunner and didn’t do or care about much else and we just weren’t getting into many fights because as a group we have been in the mode of avoid conflict and figure out alternate routes.
The second reason was really my own that I did truly want to break out, that I wanted to become more involved with the group and I felt, like my GM, that changing to a more involving class would help me along that route.
So in hopes of being a little better part of the group, I changed my character to a Technomancer Rigger. The character was a challenge to me and that is how I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be a character that wasn’t like others, most people wouldn’t chose to do this archetype and it was a very hard one to build. The other thing it has granted me is the ability to work in many different situations. As a rigger, I can scout and fight if needed. As a Technomancer, I have a good ability to aid the hacker if he needs. Both of these have proven to be fairly true. I have been far more involved in the group.
However, my quietness is still there. I’ve had moments where I have gone out, talked more, planned more, and even surprised my GM in what I did in that I was more active. But I still feel like I have slacked back.
I think part of my issue is the planning itself. This group is very much not a go in and do something group and I think I am a go in and do something. I think there does need to be a plan, but I really feel the depth of planning that goes on (sometimes taking over an hour) is more than I can take, and I generally lose interest and sometimes fall asleep.
In fact, in the last couple of weeks I feel like I have regressed a bit, perhaps it is because over the summer we have been less active of a group and I feel like I have been needing to re-acquaint myself with them. Perhaps I am getting bored. Perhaps I just don’t know how to roleplay. One thing is for sure, I get the feeling that I let the rest of the group down in how I roleplay and I feel that if they started another group and another game I might not get invited again.
That makes me quite sad because I really do feel like this was an opportunity for me to break out of my normal routine. I really wanted to use it as a chance to make new friends and do new things. Even outside of playing Shadowrun.
I do feel like it is happening a little. Short two guys from the group, we just sort of sat around and chatted. It was a great opportunity to get more comfortable with one of them in a smaller group setting. And the week before that I got an invitation to go and watch the Scott Pilgrim vs the World movie as part of the group. Sadly, I could not go to the movie, as I had my daughter that week and I just couldn’t. It was a great opportunity though, I wish I could have gone.
Hopefully it is just a slump and I can get back to moving forward full force again, but I don’t know if it is just something that I am incapable of or not.