Help! My Dungeons & Dragons friends keep choosing me as party boss

I have a Dungeons & Dragons curse. You won’t find it in the Player’s Handbook or on a list of spells, and yet it is demonstrably real. Gather around, listeners, and hear my sad story. (I have a lute now. I pluck it. It’s too late; the tavern door is locked behind you.)

I want to play the dumbest character in my D&D party, but no matter what I do, I end up being the boss of the party.

Ignorance is bliss

There is a sublime joy in playing a complete fool and I want to experience it. Perhaps the best I’ve ever seen is Zac Oyama from Dimension 20, whose character roster is a sampling of various goofballs, including a teenage barbarian hangout sniffed his insight checks; a dedicated firefighter more abdominal muscles than brain cells; and still a space parasite Finding out how the human mouth works.

That’s not to say Oyama never plays a Smartie – his Puss in Boots might be my favorite Dimension 20 performance Never after Season. But Oyama’s characters are defined by his comedic strengths and his background as an improviser. He’s never the talkative guy in any given series, but any Dropout fan knows that Oyama’s silence only serves when he breaks it, inevitably to say the funniest thing at the best possible moment. The density of his characters reveals how clever you have to be to turn intentional stupidity into entertainment.

I look at Oyama’s characters and think: God, I wish that was me.

I want to play a huge woman. Someone with an impractically large weapon. Someone who says funny things without realizing it is making bad decisions and trying to survive the consequences. And that’s very important: I want to be stupid as a stone. When my character approaches a situation that requires even a modicum of mental acuity – be it intelligence, wisdom, or charisma – I want the rest of the players to whisper, “Oh no.” But somehow joyful.

Let me try to accomplish what I’m trying to do in a different way: You know that one henchman whose job it is to scream, “It’s da Bat!” when Batman bursts through a skylight? Yelling that as if Batman’s successful goal wasn’t to crash through a skylight and alert everyone to his presence? To scream it as if there was some other person who just loudly smashed several panes of glass while dressed as a bat? Yelling that in utter surprise, as if that wasn’t something that happens five times every night in Gotham City, despite all evidence to the contrary? Nevertheless, he remained stubborn. He shouted, “It’s there Bat!”

I want to play this, but for the good guys.

And yet I am forever denied

Throughout the history of my tabletop life, due to one cause or another, I have become the person who simply must Always stay on the ball.

In my personal D&D history, I’m something of a unicorn: my very first session turned into a four-year campaign that earned me a rank of level 24 back in 3rd edition. When we last met, I was a knightly armored paladin hero, renowned for the justice of my berserker wrath, astride my best friend the Unicorn, himself clad in glowing, magical armor. I was a leader of legends, a position I earned through loyalty, compassion and openness, and I loved it.

It took me years after college to find a new gaming group that really stuck. My first time out, I tried playing a bard and found that my high Charisma once again made me the character that everyone in the room turned to while roleplaying. Looking for some variety, the next time I was invited to join an ongoing campaign, I decided to try out the exact opposite of my Chaotic Good Half-Elf Crusader.

Building a true neutral Githzerai Monk, I felt prepared and ready to play the quiet newcomer to an already tight-knit group of adventurers. Not the character who actually talked to the NPCs, not the one who called us so often when we went from talking to fighting.

However, this was to be my first encounter with a “herding cats” gaming group. I enjoyed it a lot, but as all of their quirks in personality and playstyle emerged, I was still often at the forefront of grappling with the mystery of our adventure.

When we finished that campaign and started a new one, I realized I didn’t want to play a face character anymore. I built a dwarf barbarian and deliberately foregone her charisma and intelligence. This time we were doing post-apocalyptic fantasy homebrew, and I just wanted to get angry, kill zombies with axes, and not make “thinking about the consequences” part of my performance.

Then, in our first session, I was just like that happened touch the artifact like this happened to make me the chosen one who just is happens to be the only person who can somehow eradicate the zombie plague. If I remember correctly, the climax of the campaign was like negotiating for vital information with a centuries-old Dracolich who knew the secret of how the world ended. With an 8 Charisma. I wanted to be stupid! But I didn’t want to End of the world.

The next time I was invited to a new game, I admitted defeat. We would be playing mercenaries in the world of BioWare’s Dragon Age series, and since the tabletop gods were determined that I would always be the de facto boss, I volunteered to be as literal as possible do. I built an extremely charming and extremely clever villain whose sole goal in life was to build a respected and financially successful mercenary group of like-minded people.

fuck it allI thought. Let’s lean in. It’s a brand new group; It will probably take three sessions anyway. And the monkey’s paw curled.

The campaign turned out to be the greatest, most emotionally devastating, and most fulfilling tabletop experience I’ve ever had. It took nine years and counting. Nine years and more as party leader.

It’s me, hello, I’m the problem, it’s me

I know why this happens! Don’t think it’s a surprise! The secret of Dungeons & Dragons is that you can never really make a “character choice” because you are never not yourself.

I’m drawn to puzzles of the exploratory variety, whether they occur in the Myst franchise or in the carefully crafted homebrew world of a college D&D group. Put one in front of me and I will automatically go for it. I’m also the person who, due to a lack of planning from others and a lack of consent, just stands up and says, “We’ll meet HERE for the bookstore tour, THIS TIME I have a TICKET, we will.” Get ICE CREAM between THOSE stops and visit THIS and THIS stationery store between these others to browse for CUTE SHIT.”

I’ve even been a real boss before – I ran an entire website! But here’s the thing: tabletop gaming is supposed to be a fantasy.

All my TTRPG friends are up to date: we’re playing someone in the next campaign different gotta call the shots because I’ll be busy.

I’m busy playing the gods’ biggest idiot. Head empty, no thoughts. Just “huge fucking sword.”

If they make me their fantasy boss again, I’ll make them fantasy fired.