My Guide to RPG Storytelling

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Highlights

The key is to remember that role-playing is a team sport. Everyone takes part and everyone contributes. (Location 132)
Better to take a breather than paint yourself into a corner with rushed improvisation. (Location 204)
If you’ve decided to Storytell, then tell your story. The players collaborate and weave their (Location 239)
characters into your creation, not the other way around. Make things happen to the players, don’t wait for them to do everything. They don’t know your plot and they can’t guide the story alone. People should come to them for help, villains should menace them, danger should court them. Shit needs to go down and the players’ role is to react to it. You take their reactions and make it a part of the game, but the Storyteller needs to be an active force, not a passive one. (Location 240)
When I plan out my games beforehand, I don’t have to devote much energy to moving the story along once the campaign begins. I know where it’s going and I know what will happen to the characters. So the rest of my energy can be devoted to running with their ideas, taking their tangents and making them work for the story. Players can enjoy their exploration and experimentation and I can use it to add to the plot instead of taking us away from it. (Location 256)
I can easily cannibalize all of those notes to make up the new scene. I either use the one that I planned in whole, or else raid it for parts. (Location 265)
The game should be challenging enough that players have to think and work, but they’re supposed to be the heroes of the story and I want (Location 321)
them to feel heroic. Instead of putting my players into situations where a single bad die roll might cost them a character, I prefer to let them escape with a scar of some kind. Something that’s game-affecting in a small but noticeable way: a limp that costs them a little movement, the loss of an eye that raises alertness difficulties, and so on. (Location 322)
But don’t throw away those weaker villains you used back in the beginning! We’re not done with them quite yet. Every once in a while, send some of those low-level baddies up against the characters – probably in larger numbers. They’re a measuring stick now and the players get to compare themselves against their earlier performance. The orc that used to take five hits now goes down in just one, and your players are piling up the bodies. It shows them how far they’ve come and how much their characters have grown in power. (Location 346)
I have a formula that I use to build almost every game. I call it Map, Dragon, Treasure. It’s a simple formula. The map is a way to find out what’s happening and how to get there. The dragon is a danger that prevents your protagonists from doing so or which threatens the peace, and the treasure is the reward for success. It’s a guide, a guardian and a goal. (Location 413)
bad guys don’t think they’re bad. Everyone is the hero of their own story. They may do bad things and they may (Location 433)
even know that what they’re doing is bad. But in the end, they think it will accomplish something good. (Location 434)
If you don’t let the players face their enemy until the end of the whole campaign, you risk your antagonist fading away or being forgotten. (Location 474)
The villain has to interact with them in other ways. If they do face the player characters in combat, then you have to decide if the bad guy is going to kick their asses, or if the heroes will win. If you defeat the players, then you have to justify why the villain lets the characters live, or provide some deus ex machina to save them. (Location 475)
It’s usually better to have your antagonist interact with the characters verbally, preferably in situations where a social or physical barrier prevents them from going right for each other’s throats. Maybe they meet in a temple where it’s forbidden to carry weapons, or across an impassable canyon from each other – close enough to talk and trade banter, but not close enough to fight. (Location 482)
Authors say to kill your darlings. If everyone really likes an NPC, then killing them will have a big impact. (Location 496)
They say to leave ‘em wanting more, and I have to agree. (Location 529)
our gaming group likes to do a sort of short epilogue for each character, showing or even just hinting at all the future adventures they will have. (Location 535)
You’ve got two basic ways to do it: the carrot and the stick. The stick is often called the Storyteller Hammer because it’s a brute force tool. You know the stick: “A bajillion bad guys surround you. They are heavily armed and hold your pet bunny hostage. If you try to fight, they will slaughter you without breaking a sweat! Guess you better surrender, hmm?” (Location 557)
Sometimes you have to use the stick. It can be a vital and necessary tool, but it should be used sparingly and only as a last resort. (Location 565)
Find out what your players want out of game, know what their characters want in game, and then dangle that in the direction you want them to go… Or just make it look like it’s dangling out there. (Location 568)
If my characters need to break into a fortress and I really want to run the sewer infiltration, then all I have to do is stack the deck a little. When they case the fortress, I let them notice that the guards stay away from the smelly sewer drains. (Location 573)
You can’t always offer the carrot and then yank it away, but you don’t have to give your players their carrot every time, either. (Location 582)
we found out the spirit had certain information we were looking for and we raced off to talk to it like we were supposed to in the first place. We just needed clear motivation, and no distractions. (Location 596)
But capturing the characters doesn’t have to be like that. Instead of forcing them to give up, making them feel helpless and resorting to insults to retain their pride, you can get the characters to work with you and participate in their own capture. Use the carrot. Make them feel noble and heroic for giving themselves up. (Location 671)
Even if you can’t make their capture heroic, allow the characters to notice the guard patrol patterns or the locations of security measures so they feel like they can plan an escape. Basically, let the players resist, but give them an outlet for it that serves your story instead of just trading insults. (Location 677)
I just gave them something extra and then took that. (Location 690)
I use a digital mapping program called RP Maptools, but even a piece of paper or whiteboard can do the job. (Location 759)
PCs naturally single themselves out for attention, so make sure the antagonist pays attention. Sending hit squads after the characters, kidnapping their favorite allies, and attacking them all make your players feel important. (Location 784)
At the end of the chapter, I provide an extra reward to all of my players to advance their characters. Usually, it’s a bonus to health or damage or perhaps the opportunity to select a new power from a short list. But everyone gets these rewards. (Location 846)
My advice is to start slow. You can always award more experience later on, but if you give it out too fast, you can’t take it back and may find your game ramping up to a power level that you didn’t intend. (Location 872)
a player who is creating a dramatic arc is telling the story of their own character. As far as their personal story is concerned, your player is the Storyteller. You can help by working with them to offer opportunities to advance their arc. If the character is looking for revenge, make sure the object of that revenge occasionally rears its head to spur them on. (Location 933)
“Right now we’re doing it this way. We can discuss it later and maybe make some changes. But for now, let’s keep playing.” (Location 1046)
When something happens in the game world, that world can’t just sit there not reacting. If there’s no reaction, the story happens in a weird vacuum and the players start to suffocate. So if an army is building up somewhere, people need to notice and comment on all those mercenaries heading out west, or the townsfolk should talk about how much iron is being bought up by the guy who’s girding for war. (Location 1520)
The world is a place for the story to happen, not a substitute for the story itself. (Location 1555)
One of the first things you should consider is the scope of your game. What’s at stake in the story? The whole world? The entire universe? Or maybe just the fate of a single person? How big a world do you need to detail? Sometimes you only require a single city, which will be the setting for the entire story. (Location 1556)
Make free use of story archetypes: the gruff lawman, the town drunk, the slick thief. There’s a reason that certain personalities are archetypal and they’ll stand out in your players’ memories. (Location 1598)
but sometimes you need the characters to just loathe someone. Usually that’s the villain, but on occasion it is a more neutral character – you don’t ever really want them to hate an ally – that the players sometimes have to deal with. Forcing them to go to an NPC they don’t like can make for a great “last resort” feel. (Location 1610)
The important thing is that you want the characters to hate the NPC more than the players do. If the players don’t want to deal with someone because they’re annoying or the wrong kind of creepy, then they’re not going to have fun. Disliking a sleazy little weasel of an NPC should be its own kind of fun. (Location 1613)
For NPCs that will be in contact with the players frequently or for a long time, I add a one-line motivation or goal. (Location 1617)
It’s a good idea to make sure that the characters aren’t stuck with the comic relief. If they don’t turn out to be as funny as you hoped, or if the players actively dislike them, then it will be unpleasant if the PCs can’t get rid of them. (Location 1630)
Each NPC only gets a fraction of the development time that a PC does, so keep it simple and consistent. (Location 1637)
If they’re in a position where an NPC is giving them orders, try to allow the players a lot of leeway on how to carry out those orders. The (Location 1642)
Most of my authority figures tend toward antagonistic. If the authority is friendly to the PCs, it removes much of the challenge. (Location 1654)
My chief piece of advice is not to make any combat rolls for NPCs in a fight. (Location 1707)
Use them to shake up the combat scenes or introduce new elements. Maybe one of the NPCs gets wounded during the fight. It then becomes the job of a player character to administer emergency medical attention (Location 1717)
For instance, Simon Stone the gunslinger provides covering fire for his friends, allowing one character extra movement each round. Jaden the assassin strikes the enemies’ pressure points, crippling them and penalizing their attack rolls each round. (Location 1728)
Never get so attached to your non-player characters – especially the villains – that you can’t get rid of them the very instant they no longer serve a purpose, get in the way, or when dramatic tension calls for their blood. (Location 1737)
Do not make an NPC for you to play. I’ve done it, and regretted it every single time. (Location 1748)
An exception to this rule is mentors and other authority figures. They may be a necessary component to a story, and it can be appropriate for them to help the PCs. (Location 1760)