Do you ever find yourself in a dungeon where you suspect everything, especially chests, of being mimics?
When we launched the Limitless Heroics Kickstarter, I got a lot of furious emails, to the point that the “new mail” chime on my phone made me nauseous. The rejection sensitivity that accompanies my ADHD made it worse.
Meanwhile, several TTRPG podcasts that cover Kickstarters mentioned us, and I had a search that notified me when the title appeared in a podcast’s show notes. I was shoveling heavy snow as I skimmed through them for mentions, and as I skipped to about the spot where I estimated the coverage would be, I heard the hosts criticizing the product, and I couldn’t bear it. I deleted it.
Recently, one of the hosts expressed open support for our work on social media, which surprised me, so I went back and listened to the episode. It turned out that what I heard wasn’t about us, and when I found the coverage of Limitless Heroics, their only response was, “That’s cool!” So for a year and a half, I had negative feelings that had no basis, at least not in that corner of reality.
I left a treasure chest closed for fear that it was a mimic.
While you may not have had a similar experience, everyone experiences fear and dread. And that fear can drive you to avoid new experiences and opportunities.
You could open 100 doors in a dungeon, but the first one that’s trapped will leave you wary of every door after. I let those dozens of negative messages influence the hundreds of positive ones.
But when I live in hope instead of fear, my perspective changes, I’m happier, and the negative isn’t as bad. So I encourage you to fight fear with hope.
But Eldritch Blast only works on creatures, so if you’re worried the chest is a mimic, that’s how you test for it—it won't affect actual chests. |