Are Good GM's good writers/storytellers?

[Breakdaddy]

My players from various play groups over the years have complimented me on my DMing skills. I consider myself an above average DM. Having said that, I know my strengths and weaknesses and play to my strengths. Im a good writer, and imaginative with on-the-fly gaming, but I am poor with description and "five-senses" stuff. I always put a few little sidebars in my synopsis for an adventure that give small snippets of description to offset this weakness.

 

[BSF]

Not necessarily. The skills are complementary, but not required. I have seen good storytellers that are less than stellar DM's. I have seen good DM's that are not good storytellers.

 

[dren]

I plot, but I tend to plot loose. I hate hate HATE when the DM comes up with once special way the group has to approach a problem, and nothing else will work. Most times I'll make up a situation with no predetermined way for them to deal with it. Just a situation and see how they deal with it. Sure, I have my main plot that I'm wanting to do, but you have to add in the actions of the PCs and their various subplots to the gaming soup.

ditto, for the most part. I tell my players there are always at least three ways to deal with any given problem.
1. Force (so yes, if you can get an army of nights or a horde of barbarians to work with you, force will always work.)
2. Money (throw enough money at any problem, and it'll go away.)
3. Special

Obviously, I prefer #3. Yes, sometimes there are instant solutions, but they are never exclusive. That's the funny thing about magic, sometimes even the gods aren't sure what will happen when you roll the dice!

I don't really worry about plot anymore. As long as the players have a good time when we play...I've done my job. Sure, for some players, there is an intricately woven meta-plot which helps them manipulate the inner workings of the campaign world. But for others, it means bigger swords and bigger creatures to kill. If you worry too heavily about one, the other will fail. And that, I believe, is the difference between writing or story-telling and DMing.

 

[Henry]

Good Storytelling skills assist Good DM'ing skills, but the two skills are not interdependent. The ultimate extension of storytelling is railroading; the ultimate extension of DMing makes for a lousy play-by-play story.

 

[Umbran]

IFor example, he states that you should almost always never "plot" but rather have characters in situations and let them react to the situation. What does everyone think?

Hm. A few thoughts...

A writer and a storyteller are not quite the same thing. Writing fiction is telling a story in one particular format, with it's own peculiarities. Being able to write a good tale does not equate to being able to tell a good tale, face to face.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Mr. King finds that, for him, plotting isnt the way to go. That's cool. For other folks, plotting may work just fine. Since the reader isn't involved in the process of creating the work, how you get to the end point is irrelevant, so long as it works for you.

RPGs are not written fiction, in that the audience is not only privy to the process of creating the story, but they are involved in the process. Much of what goes on in the story never gets spoken by anyone at the table - it goes on inside the heads of the players individually.

Which brings us to GMs as writers/storytellers. GMs are, like authors, telling a story in a very specific medium, with it's own quirks. A good GM makes shameless use of those quirks. But being good at using them doesn't make him good at telling stories in other formats.

F'rex - a GM doesn't have to do nearly the amount of colorful descriptive work that a writer does. While he does some description, most of the blanks get filled in silently by the player's own imaginations. A good GM does the minimum description required to fire the player's imagination, but no more. A writer who does the same will find his reader has much less grasp of the physical world in which the story takes place.

F'rex - an author has to decide the result of every conflict in the story by fiat. The GM generally doesn't decide any of the results - he allows player action and the dice to do that work for him.

 

[FireLance]

The way I see it, if you have 5 ranks in Perform (Storytelling), you get a +2 synergy bonus to Profession (Dungeon Mastering) .

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Hm. A few thoughts...

A writer and a storyteller are not quite the same thing. Writing fiction is telling a story in one particular format, with it's own peculiarities. Being able to write a good tale does not equate to being able to tell a good tale, face to face.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Mr. King finds that, for him, plotting isnt the way to go. That's cool. For other folks, plotting may work just fine. Since the reader isn't involved in the process of creating the work, how you get to the end point is irrelevant, so long as it works for you.

RPGs are not written fiction, in that the audience is not only privy to the process of creating the story, but they are involved in the process. Much of what goes on in the story never gets spoken by anyone at the table - it goes on inside the heads of the players individually.

Which brings us to GMs as writers/storytellers. GMs are, like authors, telling a story in a very specific medium, with it's own quirks. A good GM makes shameless use of those quirks. But being good at using them doesn't make him good at telling stories in other formats.

F'rex - a GM doesn't have to do nearly the amount of colorful descriptive work that a writer does. While he does some description, most of the blanks get filled in silently by the player's own imaginations. A good GM does the minimum description required to fire the player's imagination, but no more. A writer who does the same will find his reader has much less grasp of the physical world in which the story takes place.

F'rex - an author has to decide the result of every conflict in the story by fiat. The GM generally doesn't decide any of the results - he allows player action and the dice to do that work for him.

Great comments so far! I agree that the skills don't go hand in hand per say. But what stuck out when i was reading the book was that even though an author does "decide" what the outcome of a given situation is, the decision is made for him by the characters and their motivations rather than a pre determined conclusion ( no railroading ). Like stated elsewhere, this does not apply to all authors, but it seemed in many ways to parallel what a good GM should be.

 

[ghettognome]

Most of the DM's I know are writers, but then again they are all in the industry one way or another. I have had a few that weren't, 2 of the 3 were great DM's while the other was.... well all I can say about that one is, I almost quit role playing because of it. I think both can be great DM's but I have to agree that writers who also know the system well have a bit of an advantage.

 

[adriayna]

I think it depends on the DM. The DM needs some of the same skills of a writer--creativity, knowing how to tell a story--but being a good writer doesn't necessarily mean you are a good DM and vice versa.

It would be interesting to find out how many DMs write, or at least consider themselves a good writer.

 

[Kalendraf]

Both DM'ing and storytelling draw upon creativity. But being good at one of those two skills doesn't imply you'll be good at the other. Good storytelling can be useful to a DM, as you can often describe characters or environments more vividly with good use of the language. But being good at DM'ing may not help your storytelling very much.

Another aspect is quick-thinking. I believe a good DM needs to be quick-thinking and able to react swiftly to everchanging situations in the game. But such a trait is not really needed for good storytelling. It may help when the author encounters writer's block, but it's not something likely to help day-in/day-out when they write.

Finally, writing adventures vs. storytelling can be two very different things. A good storyteller knows the end and can properly foreshadow things in the book, leading to a great tale. Adventures by nature are unpredictable, and the conclusion is unknown up until the end. It's possible to rail-road to cause a desired outcome, but then it's no longer a game, and the players become spectators. A good DM knows when to let the storytelling take a back-seat, no matter how cool that particular story might be.