This is something I’ve been trying to be more conscious of at cons, where the combination of getting to play rather than GM, getting to play with incredible players, and getting to game non-stop multiple days in a row can conspire to bring out my always-there Star tendencies. (Also, I do accents. A lot 😉 ) At Dexcon this year I tried pretty hard to stay more in the Good end of the spectrum, although I’m not going to judge how well I did. I think I could have done better, because self-assessment is a cruel mistress.

I think at least once I used Star stance in the service of Good: at Bill White’s High Frontiersman playtest at Dramation 2017, the game was going fine but the threads were all kind of…disconnected. So I compelled “The USSR is about to start WWIII” on my moon-based KGB Station Chief, then sat back and let the other players race around trying to decide if stopping it was what they wanted; but it brought all of the plots together for the last hour, and I made darn sure to get agreement from the table when I did it.

I don’t regret some of the star turns I’ve made, especially Brother Armond in Jeffrey Collyer’s Dreamation 2016 Witch, which was really profoundly wrenching for me as a person. I do regret some others, though; they are the reason I’m trying to be better.