One of the problems of running in an established universe is that players have this desire to change history. So when the players dovetail into a famous personage or event, I have to be careful to give them some freedom but not enough to alter the universe just because they're in the mood. It always seemed to me that my players would run roughshod over the genre, thereby imbalancing the situation.

It's partly my fault, as I never did sit down and talk about the whole genre that I was working under. I tried to use the news reports and the rules to enforce and guide the players. But I should have been more explicit. This doesn't mean that the campaign was a failure, on the contrary, the players had a blast playing in it. But it wasn't quite how I envisioned it when I was first setting it up two and a half years ago.

Another phenomenon that I've noticed in my group: when the challenge seems really easy, we'll get careless and do things to make it more challenging. It's hard to remain focused -- to have that killer instinct. Some characters will start to do silly things or stop helping. There are some nice role-playing opportunities at such times, as we try to make it more challenging so that we're not bored with an easy situation.

Conversely, when things are tough, we tend to fold. There is this tendency to make obstacles greater than they are, especially when we only have limited information. Especially true with Eric, as you never know if this *is* supposed to be an obstacle we can't beat at this time. I don't do that. For the most part if the characters persevere, they'll win. They just have to convince themselves that they can win.

Here's something I don't do well: make decisions. When there are two or more relatively equally good choices, I tend to vacillate way too much. I love to have my options limited. Even if it's a non-optimal solution, if someone else makes the decision then that's we way we do it.

This has come up in my current project at work. There are two ways of doing this, both having their good and bad points. And I've been rather hesitant to abandon either one, hence I've not gotten anywhere as much work as I should. But this week I've been doing a lot of work on an ancilliary task. And I've gotten to the first couple of check- points on time. Simple objective, one way to do it. I can get to work and do it.

Now I have a roadplan of what I need to get done for the next couple of weeks and what I need to do. A bunch of infrastructure items that need to work for my main project to work. All of it is easy and I will do it. Once I'm done with that, I hope that the higher ups make my decision for me as to which specific design to implement.

Actually, the problem is probably deeper than that. I'm afraid to commit. I don't want to back something and have that turn out to be the wrong choice. Every choice has some disadvantages, every project runs into obstacles no matter what option is taken. But if I make the decision as to the option, then I feel that I'm failing. If the project lead makes the decision, then I'll work hard to make sure that that decision works. So if it's my decision, obstacles demoralize me. If it's someone else's decision, obstacles are challenges that must be overcome because I don't want to let someone else down.