How much can you endure before you finally break? How much punishment and trauma can you withstand? These are difficult things to answer in our own lives, other than by looking backwards and seeing what we’ve gone through, but for characters of ours, it’s a little different.

Some games like Call of Cthulhu provide us with a sanity rating or some other measurement of our ability to withstand repeated trauma and insult. Maybe another stat tells us how long we can function before we collapse, or at least do everything at a penalty. Like all resources, these eventually run out. If only life had a little counter like that so we could know how we were doing and when we needed to back off.

Sometimes it’s easy to disassociate from your character entirely and move them around like a pawn on a board. They don’t give up because it’s just a game. They’re not really you, right? What does it matter how exhausted a real person would be? Who cares how emotionally broken a human being would be in their circumstances? They’re just a sheet of paper with numbers, aren’t they?

It’s my preference to live inside their heads and try to assume their role and personality and personhood as much as possible. For me, it makes it a much more engaging experience. One of the benefits or drawbacks of this, depending on how you look at it, is that sometimes you realize enough is enough and they need to call it quits for a while. Some things can’t be endured any longer, and when you don’t make that connection, sometimes the GM will smile and say “it’s all just… too much”.