I had to be swallowed by an MRI machine and lie perfectly still for about 40 minutes while it produced black and white pictures of my brain recently. I was not allowed to bring anything with me. Not even my belt. This should be the easiest thing you could spend an afternoon doing: nothing.

“Here’s your emergency button, push that and I’ll stop the scan and we’ll get you out” the MRI Tech said.

“Ha, I won’t need that.” I thought.

As the machine began swallowing me it was immediately obvious that I wouldn’t be able to spend that 40 minutes doing nothing. I was already struggling to stave off the rising panic of being trapped in a confined space. This wasn’t new or strange, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been in a situation that triggered it.

I asked to be regurgitated for a little reassurance from the MRI Tech, which wasn’t very reassuring. If this MRI was going to happen I needed to find a solution.

Funny where your mind goes.

Which got me lying there, thinking about tabletop role playing, as one does.

One of the things I love about role playing is “trying on” characters. Exploring people who are unlike me. What is it like to pretend to be a smartass, carefree halfling monk who is fascinated by the world around him? What is it like to be a dwarf paladin with a chip on her shoulder because her family have always been priests and she wants to go out and do something about the evil in the world? What is it like to be a shopkeeper turned rogue and smuggler dealing in rare magical creatures after being run out of town by the merchant guild?

Weaknesses like claustrophobia, Indiana Jones’ ophidiophobia, Ron Weasley’s arachnophobia are an interesting dimension to people and to characters. Many rulesets try to encourage their use. The Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition Player’s Handbook devotes all of 72 words to Flaws—which hardly qualifies as encouraging their use—and I find weaknesses to be undervalued and underplayed in most games.

Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist

The other way that rulesets try to handle weaknesses is by confining them and pre-supposing survival of the fittest. Claustrophobic people don’t become dungeon crawlers. Dwarves especially don’t get claustrophobic. Yuan-Ti are not ophidiophobic. Druids, presumably, are not dendrophobic. Fears are challenging to create rules for so this makes sense as an approach to skirting the difficulty. What would saving versus claustrophobia entail? Or even mean? When is it triggered?

My claustrophobia had me sitting—beltless—on the bed of an MRI machine thinking seriously about “rescheduling” the appointment and never coming back.

Yes, my doctors did want these black and white pictures of my brain and our ability to capture them is a sort of minor miracle but I didn’t need them. At least in the sense that getting the MRI was more of a precaution and that the odds were drastically in favor of my life going on just as it had whether I got these pictures or not.

I don’t need to play a claustrophobic character. I don’t want to trigger a panic attack at the table imagining squeezing through a long, tight tunnel in a cave for one thing (hang…hang on a minute…I’m…doing some breathing exercises…) and for another, being myself in these games isn’t fun for me.

Successful Save

Oddly, what did work to keep the panic at bay was a technique that I often bemoan in stories and tabletop role playing settings: keeping my eyes closed. The idea that one could simply hide one’s eyes from the transfixing gaze of an ancient dragon or that Perseus could avoid looking into the face of Medusa with a shield always stuck me as a little contrived. But lying on the table, closing my eyes and keeping them closed while the machine swallowed me, took black and white pictures of my brain, and regurgitated me actually worked. I could have been anywhere during that time—like imaging how incorporating fears into TTRPGs could work.

Trying on someone else’s fears and weakness in a character is very interesting to me. A claustrophobic dwarf sounds like a lot of fun to play. A thalassophobic character who must find a way to cross the wine dark sea to achieve their goal? A necrophobic necromancer seems a bit over the top, but what about a necrophobic life domain cleric? An acrophobic pilot who is fine in space but terrified in atmosphere? Fun!

Playing great fears and weaknesses that stand in the way of achieving a goal probably isn’t something that a ruleset can do anything more than suggest. The struggles are internal, so rules won’t help. The player has to decide if it is possible to push the character past their fears, whether the circumstance is sufficient to do so, and if the character resolves their fear or just manages it. And if doing so has emotional and mental consequences.

But facing challenges (including fears and flaws) in pursuit of a goal, sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding, is what humans do. It is what we tell stories about. It should be part of the games that we play.

Unfortunately in my case managing my fear for 40 long minutes only won me back my belt and some black and white pictures of my brain. Not a dragon’s hoard.