I’ve officially run my first raiding party in Final Fantasy 14. Technically twice. The first time, I was mostly quiet and just the nominal party leader, letting people figure things out and act according to their own wills just avoid being too controlling. The second time, though, it quickly became clear that we needed someone to pay attention to the mechanics that were happening and make calls about what to do. I asked if anyone wanted to do it, fully prepared to do it myself, and someone immediately cracked the joke that it sounded like I volunteered, so I started doing it. It wasn’t that bad. Took a bit of practice to be able to split my attention between my role’s needs in the battle and the mechanics everyone else needed to be warned about, but most of them were for everyone, so it wasn’t splitting my attention too much more than usual. Especially because I’m almost always looking for this stuff anyway, even when someone else is calling the shots, so I don’t become dependent on that specific person/voice. My goal is to figure out fight mechanics and find the balance necessary to perform them perfectly while also keeping my rotation going as much as possible, not just get through the fire enough times to never go back, so it’s a pretty natural fit. Except, of course, for the fact that I have mild aphasia as a side effect of my antidepressants, so sometimes I have a difficult time producing a noun I need in a moment and that’s a bad thing to run into when trying to call shots in a raid. Thankfully, I managed to avoid the problem during my shot-calling debut, but I’m going to continue to be the shotcaller as this group carries on and I feel like it’s only a matter of time until I can’t produce the word I need and everyone dies as a result.