Again, the virtual environment made it harder to work together and off of each other’s energy, something important to RPGs, and boardgames in general. Unfortunately, it was also cut short by the end of class. Lasers and Feelings has a nice balance in character creation that was made even more evident by our choices in characters. We went with the given characteristics and spent time delving into our backstories before starting which definitely helped bridge the disconnect between our characters.  

RPGs completely depend on the GM and the willingness of the players to get as invested as possible. Something that I believe that was done extremely well for a group with less than two hours over a zoom call. We really did get into character and have fun figuring out how to interact with each other and the npcs. Most RPGs are cooperative and that is something that I personally really enjoy. Working together to figure out what was going on while working out our character’s personalities was really fun. 

Leadership in RPGs can be both obvious and not. As a player to be willing to trust a GM to put you in a situation where you, and the other players, have to figure out what to do in new situations, be in the shoes of a new character, and to find a balance between characters and players. A GM has to know when to let the players explore and how to feed them a trail. Lasers and Feelings had us create an outline of a crew and a ship and we had to work together to fill in all the actual characterization, and that’s I think is the idea behind RPGs, cooperative creativity.