I’ve been stalled early in the story to the point of missing most of a day’s actions, because I’m struggling with the choice to do something that feels out of character for my PC (working for the tax inspector instead of investigating what’s up with the rats) or skipping a significant portion of the story.
I know it’s probably not that important in the long term. But by playing in character I’ve missed out on big segments of some Exceptional Stories before (I’m thinking here of the 12:15 from Moloch Street, which landed much more poorly for me than it seems to for most because I skipped an important bit in the middle), and it never sits well. If it were a case of two paths to choose - like ‘pick between more tax content or more rat content’ - I’d be fine with it. Or ‘do the tax content first, or do the rat content first.’ But in this case it’s ‘get all the content, or miss out on some of the content for no reward.’ There’s a ‘right’ choice, and it’s the one I wouldn’t naturally take. So I feel like I’m being told I’m wrong for having an image for my character that doesn’t match the story.
I’ll probably make my decision soon (probably by finding a way to justify doing the out-of-character thing), and the story has been fun with the little I’ve gone through so far. But it feels like I’m playing wrong either way, either by denying myself content or denying my picture of my character, and I just wanted to get that off my chest.
