Oct 10, 2017, 4:40 PM

@arkandel The self-awareness thing is why I tabled RP and any dev for the foreseeable future. I know I'm not in the headspace for it, and would rather take knocks for being a flake or 'ha ha idiot can't do it' than pursue something I give a shit about, only to see it get completely scragged due to a period of particularly bitchy depression on my part.

This is actually not as hard as it sounds. We all have our strengths, our weaknesses, and our limits. We do tend to know what they are, deep down, under whatever levels of denial or insecurity or whatever else is going on at the same time. (Ex: All the people who fret over being shitty writers who are actually brilliant; the folks who will literally type 'alts are allowed' and then 'alts are discouraged' and refuse to see why they might be confusing someone as to the game's feeling about whether alts are actually welcome, etc. I'm sure everybody's seen stuff like this and there are other plentiful examples.)

Functioning within them is important. You don't have to do it all; this does not make you a failure. You're a great storyteller and a shit administrator? Team up with a good administrator who is a shit storyteller. And so on. This ability -- to work within your strengths and with the strengths of others -- is not to be underestimated, ever.

^ That's what I think @Thenomain successfully addresses, actually; while it may be semantic, I wouldn't call it passion, exactly. Some 'toxic' people with passion are great at this and can produce a good game as a result. Some awesome people with passion suck at it and will produce a dumpster fire of a game.

You need passion, too, because it's all a lot of work. Passion is what gets you to do the work when there are no rewards to be had from it•, be that 'yet' in terms of dev, or 'during' when all the things are going sideways at once (because they will; Murphy's Law and all that).

• Even if the only reward someone wants is 'make a space for people to have fun in, ideally but not necessarily including themselves', this counts as a 'reward' that I'd dub morally neutral or best-intentioned and not in the same category as things like 'praise' or 'power' or 'new besties' or 'popularity', etc. that are oft-cited.