AverageCitizen
Explorer
Story games are more rewarding, period.
The Caveat:
I understand that different player group/DM combinations will find different styles of gaming satisfying. Personally, I prefer rich stories so much that I avoid groups who just want to screw around. Some people are the opposite. We don't game together, and that's ok. My point here is I think they are missing out.
The Why:
We need to remember that the Players are the only audience that matters. We are assisting them in writing a story that they enjoy, through a medium of limited collaboration that makes such cooperation both more difficult and more satisfying.
We as DMs have only one job, and everything we do is periphery to it. Our job is to validate our players wildest daydreams and make every single one of them come true. Nobody wants to admit to lame empowerment fantasies, but everybody has them whether they know it or not. If the game "coincidentally" lets players live out those fantasies, they'll have an unbelievably great time. Every DM has probably run a game that struck a particularly harmonious chord and illicited a general "that was awesome" response. I would suggest that this is why.
Not only do we have to make their dreams come true, we have to do it quickly. We only have a few hours at the table a week, so we can't afford to waste time. Every encounter should either
The only real way to accomplish those three tasks in the time allotted is with an engaging story. Themes, morals, conflicts and other artistic touches usually reserved for Russian tragedies are satisfying for me to share with the players and serve a double purpose: to illuminate and later validate their secret ambitions. It makes them feel like everything was planned to make some grand point or pose a deep question and that their actions as characters advanced that higher goal. Its like a music lover who's only sung in the shower taking the stage at a karaoke and getting a standing ovation. I build the world and set the story so they can live out their secret fantasies center stage and not feel ashamed. And at the end, if your good at Russian tragedy, everybody feels like they've learned something. That's why it's the greatest game ever played.
The Caveat:
I understand that different player group/DM combinations will find different styles of gaming satisfying. Personally, I prefer rich stories so much that I avoid groups who just want to screw around. Some people are the opposite. We don't game together, and that's ok. My point here is I think they are missing out.
The Why:
We need to remember that the Players are the only audience that matters. We are assisting them in writing a story that they enjoy, through a medium of limited collaboration that makes such cooperation both more difficult and more satisfying.
We as DMs have only one job, and everything we do is periphery to it. Our job is to validate our players wildest daydreams and make every single one of them come true. Nobody wants to admit to lame empowerment fantasies, but everybody has them whether they know it or not. If the game "coincidentally" lets players live out those fantasies, they'll have an unbelievably great time. Every DM has probably run a game that struck a particularly harmonious chord and illicited a general "that was awesome" response. I would suggest that this is why.
Not only do we have to make their dreams come true, we have to do it quickly. We only have a few hours at the table a week, so we can't afford to waste time. Every encounter should either
1. Uncover what their dreams are
2. create a scenario in which those dreams will make the player a hero (or anti-hero, if that's what they're in to) or
3. allow one or more PCs to realize or come closer to realizing those desires.
Pull that off, and they'll love you for it. As DMs we have to power to make people feel good about themselves, and I don't think they even realize it as it happens. They just have a good time, and they don't know exactly why. I don't even know why, I just know it works. We could probably ask Freud.
The only real way to accomplish those three tasks in the time allotted is with an engaging story. Themes, morals, conflicts and other artistic touches usually reserved for Russian tragedies are satisfying for me to share with the players and serve a double purpose: to illuminate and later validate their secret ambitions. It makes them feel like everything was planned to make some grand point or pose a deep question and that their actions as characters advanced that higher goal. Its like a music lover who's only sung in the shower taking the stage at a karaoke and getting a standing ovation. I build the world and set the story so they can live out their secret fantasies center stage and not feel ashamed. And at the end, if your good at Russian tragedy, everybody feels like they've learned something. That's why it's the greatest game ever played.
My Hunter group consists of an underage prostitute, a racist hillbilly, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and the 'third shooter' at Columbine.* Their first vampire they had tracked down to a cellar, and had a moral argument about whether they should kill it or not - one character argued vehemently that the vampire, as far as they knew, was hypnotizing people and feeding, then leaving them out somewhere. But they weren't killing anyone!
