Can MBTI Personality Preferences Help Gaming?

Let’s start with a statement of fact – for the longest time I have been a vociferous critic of the Myers Briggs personality phenomenon and its application across so many areas. From its origins to its ‘theory first, proof second’ nature and the sheer edifice of confirmation bias it sometimes creates, I have mocked it relentlessly. At work, we have embarked on some management development based heavily on MBTI and I let the trainers know, in full transparency, that I thought they may as well ask us to talk about our horoscopes for the good it would do. With full credit to them (and I’ll say now that they have been amazing) they engaged me as a sceptic, shared masses of empirical data and discussed the methodology behind the framing – enough to make me engage in good faith, and I am so glad I did because it has made me realise a few things about myself and people around me which I think I can use to enhance my gaming (and work too, obviously…)

For those that don’t know what it is, there are better sources on the internet to let you know the details, but essentially a survey measures your preference within four pairs of personality traits, and these combine to create 16 different personality types and then nuance happens. The four pairings are (and I’m going to butcher them in a summary here):

Extrovert (E) (recharges energy from people) vs Introvert (I) (recharges energy in isolation)
Sensing (S) (facts and figures, detailed people) vs Intuition (N) (big picture idea connectors)
Thinking (T) (concentrates on solutions and data) vs Feelings (F) (concentrates on people’s feelings)
Judging (J) (likes structure and process) vs Perceiving (P) (revels in change and chaos)

(I’ll say again, I know these are puddle deep summaries. Keep those ‘well ack-shully’ comments to yourselves)

What am I? I came out of the process as ENFJ, which the internet tells me is ‘the protagonist’ – someone who is a devoted altruist, who stands up for what they think is right. Me? In my job? Who knew? Previously, I had been ENTP – ‘the debater’ when I was a lecturer. Again, no shocker. In a more detailed reading of ‘me’ I was very high on the E and N and very borderline between T and F – more on that later.

Applying this to gaming, I don’t think any of this is a massive shocker to anyone who knows me. I love GMing because I am always ‘on’ during the sessions, and I can run multiple sessions across cons with relative ease because I don’t really lose energy as I am in constant top-up mode. I used to teach 9 hours a day, three days in a row and only crashed back down to Earth on the fourth day. The Extrovert has always been strong in this one.

I am pretty much turned off by games and systems that require a lot of detailed understanding and knowledge – be it system or backgrounds – and much prefer the wider sweeping ‘principles of play’ style systems and games which build their background as you go. In fact, I will usually try to take complex systems and backgrounds and reduce them to this to make them work for me. That high Intuition sits nicely.

The borderline Thinking and Feeling is fascinating for me because it was shown in some exercises we did during the training that I ‘code switch’ in crisis. I’m all lovely and inclusive until there is an emergency and something needs to be done NOW and then I tend to change, take control, tell people what to do, brook very little argument but then, bizarrely, when the crisis is over, insist it was a total team effort and I had very little to do with the success of the exercise (and predictably, everything to do with a failure). It was quite shocking to see people call me out on this – not in a nasty way, but more like ‘uh, yeah, we all know that version of Neil….’ and I was the last to find out.

What’s this got to do with gaming? Well, I code-switch in gaming too. Long-time friends of mine will have experienced Neil-as-GM, an infuriatingly rules-avoidant, loosey goosey, vibes first GM who just doesn’t care about the little modifier you are using at all. Conversely most have seen Neil-as-Player, who spends hours modelling optimum builds, has spreadsheets for damage output, researches spell combos and all manner of other heinous play that I would absolutely eye-roll at when I am GMing! I simply cannot engage that T-preference switch when GMing.

And finally, my slide from Perceiving to Judging over the years has been replicated, I think, in my increasing dissatisfaction with one-shot GMing. I’ve delivered some pretty shit games recently – well below the calibre of games I like to run, and for the first time in a long time I didn’t have a good time running them. They were perfunctory, transactional and really, I had no connection to them at all. I have done a lot of reflection on those games and the one common denominator is that they were one-shots. I have no emotional connection to one-shots (and inevitably the random groups of people I run them for, in a variety of circumstances) and that doesn’t allow me the structures that I love to use when running games. Give me some continuity, some callbacks, some cross-sessional storylines, and I am like the proverbial pig in shit. Running one shots? It just doesn’t thrill me. Playing them? Absolutely – and in many ways, they deliver a concentration of chaos and throw-away goodness that I like a lot. 

Judging is about procedure and structure, Perceiving is about change and chaos (again, I’m massively paraphrasing. Fingers. Off. Glasses!) The campaign game gives me the structure I am comfortable with, whereas the one shot doesn’t. 

This is nice, Neil, but so what?

Well, thanks for asking, imaginary reader. You see, I wrote a similar piece prior to the training session lambasting my lack of preparation for these shit games, the disappointing execution of the system and my failure to deliver a good experience from my position as the GM-player. It was really harsh and left me with a very sour taste in my mouth. I was even questioning whether that GMing imposter syndrome that bubbles under many of our psyches was telling the truth and I was, in fact, shite. 

After the MBTI training session however, I took some time to look at things from a different angle. Was I fighting against something deeper in myself? Am I fighting against games that don’t suit me? And game situations that don’t deliver me? As I get older, am I still trying to be the drop-of-a-hat GM I was years ago, when now I need something more connected? A bit like a cricketer who retires from one-day cricket to concentrate on test matches?

Maybe? There seems to be a suggestion of it. I know that over the years I have done a lot of ‘work’ to be more people oriented and less solution orientated, and that has seen me drift away from wanting to organise everything and volunteer to be coordinator of anything I could lay my hands upon. I still do, sometimes, especially if things are stalling with something, but nowhere near as much as I used to. Maybe the next step is realising that rather than fighting against preferences, I should lean into them more and see where that takes me? Who knows…?

The takeaway from this, I suspect, is to take any chance to have some good quality reflection on your gaming life and make sure it is still working for you. As a wise old owl said to me recently, it’s not a job and you can just walk away from it if it isn’t working for you. Or in my eyes, change it to something that does work for you.

And whether that reflection is triggered by a Myers Briggs session, a chat down the pub or a horoscope in the nether regions of a tabloid (I suspect there will be an app nowadays, right?) it doesn’t matter. The reflection is the important thing.