Consider the humble monk. Here's a class that puts in time, discipline, and strenuous martial training to earn his fantasy super power. Ki and stunning strike and elemental disciplines set him apart from common folk, and make him something extraordinary within the fiction of the game world. When the product of your life’s worth of kung-fu montages looks like a cantrip though, it’s awfully easy to get discouraged. In my experience, it takes a group effort to make the world feel as magical as it does in your head.
Others have already covered the "just because you aren't the MOST exceptional, doesn't mean you aren't still exceptional." Like, this is...a bit like looking at
Star Trek and assuming that the Federation is 80% Starfleet officers, simply because those make up 80% of the people we see. We look at a subset of the world that is especially interesting. While I can grant that theme and tone are a cooperative effort, forgetting that you're only looking at a slim, and VERY selectively high-powered, slice of the world's people is the more fundamental error here.
So here's my question to the board. In a world filled with exceptional people -- where you're mostly interacting with other powerful beings -- what can a GM or other players do to help one another remember that their characters actually
are special? How do you maintain that basic power fantasy when it seems the whole world is already in your league?
(
Comic for illustrative purposes.)
Well, firstly? Either don't be rude (and yes, I would call that other player's behavior rude), or accept that people may interrupt you sometimes when you're on a roll and "ruin the moment." If a player had said that to me--instead of, as noted, responding even with an in-character "there's no need to get
upset" or the like--I would have been legitimately angry at them IRL. I can't say that I would necessarily have
said something (I tend to quail in the face of social disapproval) but I would probably complain to the DM privately because, holy crap man, that was
rude.
Secondly, always have a Session 0 (and preferably some chatter
before session 0) where you talk about the kind of tone you're looking for in a game, whether you're the DM or one of the players. Perhaps the person who made that comic is looking for a high-drama or even "melodrama" kind of game, where flowery descriptions accompanying a cantrip are appropriate when it's a high-tension situation, while a low-tension one might not give more than a single sentence even for a powerful spell. Conversely, maybe that other player is looking for a more "serious" sort of thing, where a cantrip is understood to be a pretty minor demonstration of magic and the dramatics are saved for the times when you're bending reality, not for when emotions are riding high per se. Talking these things out can make a world of difference for ensuring everyone is supporting each person in having a good time.
Thirdly, the DM really
should be including a spectrum of situations and encounters. Even in 4e, the edition that gets mocked for having Elder Scrolls-style "the world levels with you" mechanics,
explicitly told DMs to include encounters that are both above and below the party's weight. And it doesn't just stop with encounters, either. Have the occasional "milk run," as Shadowrun puts it. Include NPCs who simply
can't do the kinds of things the PCs do, despite being talented in their own way.* Have the party interface with powerful figures they have to watch their step around, and weaker figures they can oppose or protect (or bully, if that's more their speed, I guess). Take situations the party has mastered, and find ways to expand them, so they can see how they ARE succeeding at the big-picture stuff, but now have NEW concerns on top of the old ones.**
*Just had an example of this last night. Players were talking about whether they'd share certain secrets with an allied wizard NPC. One player said, "Oh, I'm sure she'd figure it all out in a heartbeat [if we just show her part of it]." I reminded them that this NPC, despite being a wizard, is NOT an adventurer, and that she's far too
prudent to go wandering off into the wilderness to find more info on her own without their help.
**E.g.: Dungeon World has a special move,
Undertake a Perilous Journey. These can be consequence-heavy, so early on they were high tension; now, at high level, they're pretty routine. So I added a new,
fourth role (beyond Scout, Trailblazer, and Quartermaster): Intelligencer, concealing the party's route to throw off would-be trackers or tracing efforts. This expanded the move to a higher-level, emergent goal: before, the party only cared about
getting there, but now (with many secrets of their own) they care about
controlling information as well.
