What Makes a Good Player, part 1
(or, Why Yes, I Did Finally Start a Blog So I Could Jump on This Blogwagon)
A Good Player is two things: Thoughtful and Effective
These qualities can be achieved through the following principles:
Know Thyself- a good player thinks about and understands what they want out of the game. They know their own play style and can communicate it to the GM. Without this, someone will have a bad time at the table as play styles clash unexpectedly or people don't get what they are looking for from the experience. (More on this another day)
Know Thy Character- a good player understands their character, on both a narrative and mechanical level. What it does well or poorly, what is unique to it, what it would do in common situations. This is actually crucial to being a good player. If you charge your flimsy wizard into melee, they will get messed up. That's bad on a combat effectiveness level certainly (and can screw over your group, also bad), but it also makes no sense on a roleplay level. Your wizard would avoid that situation. Novice players hinder their groups by attempting to do things their characters would know better than.
Know Thy Rules- it is not essential for a player to know all the rules of the game to be good at the game. They should understand the core mechanics and the subsystems that apply to their character. If you are playing a hacker, you don't need to know the magic system but you do need to the hacking rules. When you don't know the basics, Failing this will slow down the game and frustrate the other players.
Together this makes the Thoughtful and Effective player. But why is Effectiveness important? Surely in a collaborative storytelling experience we don't need to worry about such banal things as DPS or builds, do we?
No, not necessarily, but also yes! More on that later.