The man stands on the table, rough leather boots leaving crumbly mud prints where the bar’s patrons are supposed to lay down their food and drink. Swaying, cheeks flushed, he brandishes an axe, crude but sharp, in each hand.
On behalf of my friend—who desperately tends bar while trying to hold this party together—I politely ask the barbarian to step off the rickety wooden table. Blinking, he turns his attention from his friends to me, bleary eyes focusing with effort.
Slowly, like a dense toddler realizing he has trapped a bug under a glass, the man grins, his hairy lips pulling back from browning teeth. He squeezes the axe handles and opens his mouth.
“Make me,” he says.
I freeze.
My DM, and the rest of my adventuring party, nibble on the remains of vegan sandwiches and sweet potato fries, waiting patiently for me to make a move.
I play Huk Dirt-Dweller—an aarakocra Blood Hunter sworn to the service of Loviatar, Maiden of Pain. I know exactly what he would like to do in this situation
Standing in this loud, dark room, with an NPC’s whiskey spit in his feathers, Huk would like to throw Dyrrn’s Tentacle Whip—the poisonous living weapon embedded in the flesh of his forearm—at the arrogant man making a scene during his friend’s big night.
Like a Lovecraftian Indiana Jones, Huk wants to snare this man’s ankles, yank him off the table, and kick his prone body a few times to encourage future good behavior. This would be a great way to Yes, And the DM’s choices. It would be badass. Huk, the character, would enjoy it.
Myles, the player, can’t say the words that will make it happen.
Collaborative storytelling activities—like improv, Dungeons and Dragons, or other roleplaying games—will reveal your psychological hangups like nothing else.
In the example above (which, by the way, I’m still kicking myself over more than a month after it happened), I knew intellectually exactly what our group’s evolving story called for. I knew that the move would be in keeping with what we had established about Huk’s character. More importantly, I knew that it would be fun to start a barroom brawl in this fantasy world my friends and I have been building together for more than a year.
Huk wanted it. I wanted it. But when the time came to speak up, I was tongue-tied. Why?
In a word: risk.
Huk, I can admit after so many sessions, is a Mary Sue—a self-insert character basically indistinguishable from his creator (wings aside). Like me, Huk has a love of martial arts, a fascination with shibari, and profound social anxiety. My hangups are his hangups—and so he misses out on opportunities that I would struggle to take advantage of in my own life.
If a fun potential character moment requires anger or assertiveness—like the tavern fight that never happened—there’s a good chance it will pass Huk by, as I struggle to imbue him with the qualities I have hard time accessing in myself. Afraid to lose a character I love so much, I sometimes hold him back from the choices that would make him shine.
I don’t have a ready answer for this problem. It’s something I struggle with in every Dungeons and Dragons session and during many improv shows.
Based on experience, however, I do know that pushing through to perform characters as they demand to be played is absolutely worth it.
My favorite moments with Huk have been those times when I did manage to Yes, And whatever the character was asking for, no matter how absurd/stupid/dangerous it seemed to me, the player, at the time. (See, for instance episode wherein Huk pretended to be a willing food offering to the party’s druid, basting himself and sprinkling his body with oregano to really sell it).
By the same token, some of the best moments in improv class or on stage happen when a player manages to go “against type”—when the shy librarian owns the stage as a loud-mouthed football player, or the confident salesperson embodies a mad scientist’s cringing little lab assistant.
These moments are delightful for the audience because they are charged with energy. Even people who don’t know the improviser can sense that something new is happening, and they are eager to witness it. Such moments are even more wonderful for the improviser’s teammates, who experience the thrill of seeing a whole new side of their friend’s soul.
Most of all, these moments can be transformative for the improviser themselves. They remind us that we are never as shallow as our habitual reactions to situations—that we all go much deeper than we realize.