The Performance Paradox

Why we need to stop acting and start playing

Disclaimer

Before we start, I want to offer a small but important reminder: this essay is purely a collection of my own observations and opinions. It is not a judgment on how you or your friends choose to spend your Friday nights. The beauty of TTRPGs is their flexibility; if your table thrives on high drama, elaborate character builds, and the “Rule of Cool”—and everyone is smiling at the end of the session—then you are playing the game exactly right. Fun is the only metric that matters.

TL;DR

Tabletop RPG culture has shifted from an external focus on exploration (“How cool is that?”) to an internal focus on performance and character curation (“Look how cool I am”). This shift often clashes with complex rule systems, leading us to hand-wave mechanics in favor of cinematic moments, which lowers the stakes of the game. Furthermore, the pressure to emulate the production value of professional “Actual Play” shows is causing unnecessary GM burnout. To sustain the hobby, we should consider returning to a “gaming” mindset: respecting the dice, exploring the world with curiosity rather than pre-written scripts, and playing to be surprised rather than to perform.

The Shift — From “What Is It?” to “Who Am I?”

There are two phrases that, I think, perfectly encapsulate the quiet but seismic shift that has taken place in our hobby.

The first belongs to the days of graph paper and ten-foot poles. A player leans over the table, eyes wide, listening to the Game Master describe a crumbling statue or a strange, glowing moss on the dungeon wall. They ask, simply: “How cool is that?”

The second belongs to the modern era of elaborate backstories and character builds. A player leans back, describing their hero doing a triple-backflip off a chandelier while delivering a witty one-liner. They look around the table, waiting for the reaction. They are essentially saying: “Look how cool I am.”

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It’s not that one approach is inherently “wrong.” But if we sit with this for a moment, we can see that tabletop roleplaying games have drifted away from being simulationist games of exploration and toward becoming improvisational theater. We have traded the lantern for the spotlight. And this shift from “What is it?” to “Who am I?” is changing the very soul of the game.

To understand this, we have to look at the death of the Explorer.

In the older traditions of the hobby, the world was dangerous, indifferent, and concrete. Characters were often fragile sketches—a few numbers and a name—because the game wasn’t about them. It was about where they were. The joy came from poking at the world with a stick to see what happened. The setting was the protagonist, and the players were guests (or intruders). You didn’t come to the table with a pre-written character arc; you came to find out if you’d survive long enough to have one.

Today, the dynamic is often inverted. The “Game” often begins weeks before the first session, alone, in a digital character builder. Players arrive at session one with a “Build”—a complex mechanical chassis designed to execute a specific fantasy—and a multi-page backstory.

When you bring that much investment to the table, the setting naturally recedes into the background. The dungeon, the city, or the space station stops being a dangerous, living place to be navigated and starts becoming a “green screen.” It becomes merely the backdrop against which the character can project their personality. The gameplay shifts from reactive (responding to the world) to proactive (asserting the self upon the world).

This leads to a sort of accidental solipsism at the table. We’ve all seen it, or perhaps done it ourselves. Instead of listening intently to the GM’s description to find clues or advantages, a player might be mentally rehearsing their next monologue or waiting for the specific trigger that allows them to use their signature ability. The game stops being a conversation between the players and the environment, and becomes a series of disconnected cutscenes where each player waits for their turn to shine.

We have moved from immersion—the feeling of truly being inside a fictional space—to dramatization—the act of curating a scene for aesthetic effect.

Even in our private home games, with no cameras and no microphones, a strange “audience mentality” has crept in. We play as if we are being watched. We make decisions not based on what a person in that situation would logically do to survive, but on what would make for the most “cinematic” moment for an invisible viewer. We prioritize the “beat” over the logic of the world.

There is a beauty in performance, certainly. But when we prioritize “Look how cool I am” over the wonder of discovery, we unwittingly place a massive burden on the game’s mechanics and the Game Master—a burden the system was never really designed to hold. But to understand that friction, we have to look at the rules themselves.

The Mechanical Dissonance — Complexity vs. The Rule of Cool

There sits a fascinating contradiction in the middle of our tables, usually in the form of a stack of hardback books.

If we look at the most popular roleplaying systems today, we see games that are undeniably heavy. They are “crunchy.” They are filled with hundreds of pages of rules detailing exactly how far you can move in six seconds, how cover impacts archery, how specific spells interact with specific materials, and the precise economy of actions available in a turn. We spend hundreds of dollars on these manuals. We spend hours poring over them to optimize our characters, selecting feats and abilities that interact with that mathematical framework just so.

But then, the dice hit the table, and a strange thing happens: we wave our hands and make it all go away.

This is the mechanical dissonance of the modern era. We equip ourselves for a tactical war game, but we play an improv session. We buy a system designed for granular resource management, but the moment that management gets in the way of a “cool scene,” we discard it.

You’ve likely seen this play out. A player wants to attempt something daring—perhaps leaping from a balcony to tackle a fleeing villain. The rules might say they don’t have enough movement speed, or that the fall damage would knock them unconscious, or that the grapple mechanics don’t quite work that way. In a game committed to its own reality, the answer would be, “You can try, but the physics of this world say you’ll probably break your legs.”

But in the era of “Look how cool I am,” the answer is often different. We invoke the “Rule of Cool.” The GM, not wanting to stifle the player’s creativity or ruin the cinematic pacing, says, “Sure, just roll for it.” The complex rules are suspended. The tactical board state is ignored. The constraints vanish.

On the surface, this feels like good hosting. It keeps the energy up. It makes the players smile. But there is a hidden cost to the Rule of Cool: the consequence of no consequences.

When we bend the reality of the game world to ensure the heroes look competent and stylish, we inadvertently lower the stakes. If a player knows that a persuasive description or a plea to the “narrative flow” can override the rules of the game, the tension evaporates. Success stops being a result of clever tactics, resource management, or luck; instead, it becomes a negotiation of social skills.

We have to ask ourselves: Why are we playing a “game” at all? A game, by definition, requires constraints. It requires the possibility of failure—not just “failing forward” where complications arise, but actual, frustrating failure. The ball goes out of bounds. The pawn is captured. The character misjudges the jump and falls flat on their face.

When we constantly hand-wave the complex rules we agreed to play by, we devalue the game part of the RPG. It begins to feel like collaborative fan-fiction where the authors are too in love with their protagonists to let them look foolish.

And this leads to a hollow sort of victory. When a player defeats the dragon not because they utilized their wit, the environment, their character sheet effectively, and not because the dice were kind, but because the table decided it would be a “great story beat” for them to win right now, the triumph feels unearned. It’s a sugar rush—sweet in the moment, but lacking the sustenance of a victory snatched from the jaws of a rigid, uncaring set of rules.

We are left trying to balance a heavy simulation on one hand and a desire for effortless cinema on the other. And unfortunately, the person left holding the weight of that contradiction is usually the Game Master.

The Performative Burden — The “Actual Play” Effect and GM Burnout

If Part I was about the players and Part II was about the rules, we need to spend a moment talking about the person sitting behind the screen. Because if you listen closely to the online discourse, you can hear a low, steady hum of exhaustion coming from Game Masters everywhere.

We can’t really discuss this without nodding toward the “Matt Mercer Effect”—and I say that with no disrespect to him or the incredible cast of Critical Role. The explosion of high-production “Actual Play” shows on YouTube and Twitch has done wonders for the hobby’s visibility. But it has also created a peculiar optical illusion.

We watch these shows, featuring professional voice actors, professional comedians, and professional editors, and we subconsciously begin to treat them as the standard for what a “good” game looks like. But these aren’t just games; they are entertainment products. They are performances designed for an audience.

When we bring those expectations to our kitchen tables—where we are tired from work, eating messy snacks, and definitely not professional thespians—it invites a thief into the room. And as the saying goes, comparison is the thief of joy. Players and GMs alike start feeling that their awkward pauses, their rules confusion, or their lack of emotional crying scenes mean they are “doing it wrong.”

This pressure has fundamentally changed the job description of the Game Master.

In the older philosophy of the hobby, the GM was a Referee. Their job was to simulate the world impartially. If the dice said it rained, it rained. If the dice said the monster was hostile, it attacked. The world was indifferent to the heroes, and the GM was merely the interface for that indifference.

Today, however, the GM is expected to be a Director and a Head Writer. The modern expectation is that the GM must curate the experience to ensure everyone has a “cool moment.” They are expected to weave intricate backstories into the main plot, manage the pacing like a TV showrunner, and ensure emotional payoffs for every character arc.

This is an incredible amount of work. It is emotional labor. When you combine the cognitive load of running a complex rules system (as we discussed in Part II) with the pressure to improvise distinct voices and facilitate a dramatic narrative arc, it is no wonder GMs are burning out. They aren’t just playing a game anymore; they are carrying the weight of a production. GM burnout isn’t a failure of stamina; it’s a rejection of the unfair demand that one person be responsible for the “cinematography” of the group’s imagination.

There is a subtle trap here, often hidden inside the phrase “collaborative storytelling.” It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It sounds like the ultimate goal of the hobby.

But I would argue that TTRPGs shouldn’t actually be about telling a story. When the GM and the players sit down with the intent to “tell a story,” they are essentially writing a script in real-time. They begin to protect the narrative. The GM fudges dice to save a favorite NPC; the players make illogical decisions because it fits a dramatic trope.

The “story” shouldn’t be the goal. The story should be the ash—the thing that is left over after the fire of gameplay has burned out. The story is what we tell our friends after the session is over. “Can you believe the dice did that? Can you believe we survived?”

When we focus on “the narrative” rather than “the situation,” the GM loses the fun of being a player, too. A GM should be just as surprised by the outcome of a battle as the players are. But if they are too busy being a Director, trying to ensure the scene looks “cool” for the audience that isn’t there, they lose that spark of surprise. They stop playing a game and start performing a job.

So, if the performance is exhausting us, and the rules are fighting us, where do we go from here? I think the answer lies in looking backward.

The Prescription — Regaining the “Children’s Eyes”

So, where do we go from here? If the performance is exhausting us and the dissonance is frustrating us, how do we find our way back to the fun? I don’t think the answer lies in burning our rulebooks or banning character backstories. I think the answer is actually quite gentle. We just need to stop acting, and start playing.

We need to return to “Gaming.”

To do that, we have to reclaim the idea of agency—but not the agency to rewrite the world, the agency to overcome it. We need to re-establish the game world as a concrete place with objective reality. A wall should be hard; a pit should be deep; a guard should be suspicious. The world should not bend just because it would make for a cooler scene if the wall crumbled, the pit was shallow, or the guard was easily charmed.

This requires a certain bravery: we have to treat the dice as oracles again. We have to respect the plastic math rocks. When the dice demand a failure, or a plan goes sideways, or even when a beloved character dies an un-cinematic death, we should let it happen. It stings, certainly. But by removing the safety net of the “narrative fudge,” we restore tension to the table. The triumphs start to matter again because we know, deep down, that they weren’t guaranteed. We didn’t win because the script said we would; we won because we played well and luck was on our side.

But beyond the rules, there is a mindset shift we need to embrace. We need to try to see these worlds with “children’s eyes” again.

If you watch children play pretend, there is very little ego involved. They aren’t trying to impress an audience with their acting range. They are driven by a hunger for discovery. They play to find out what happens, whereas adults often perform to show what they can do.

We need to trade invention for discovery. instead of coming to the table thinking, “Here is the scene I want to create for my character,” we should arrive thinking, “I wonder what is behind that door?”

We need to encourage each other to look outward, not inward. Instead of staring at our character sheets, looking for a button to press or a distinct ability that defines us, we should look at the GM’s world. Ask questions about the lore. Poke the moss. Investigate the statue. We need to fall in love with the environment again. We need to get back to asking, “How cool is that?”

Finally, I think we need to be kinder to ourselves and our tables by lowering the bar. We need to normalize the “boring” session. Not every night needs to be a season finale. Not every combat needs to be a breathless, high-stakes set piece. Sometimes, you just buy supplies. Sometimes, you fail a negotiation and get kicked out of the tavern. Sometimes, the session is just okay. And that is fine.

We have to stop performing for an imaginary camera. There is no YouTube audience judging your pacing. There are just your friends, sitting around a table (or a screen), waiting to see what happens next.

So, let the setting be dangerous. Let the rules be rigid. Let the dice be cruel. And let us go back to being small explorers in a big, wide world, playing a game not to be validated, but simply to be surprised.