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<blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1303953" data-attributes="member: 812">The Gamemastering sections of Monte Cook's d20 Call of Cthulhu contain some of the best words ever written on the subject of creating good game sessions. Two ideas that ring very, very true:&quot;Promise A Story&quot;&quot;Deliver A Threat&quot;The first one is important because of what it DOESN'T say -- it doesn't say &quot;Tell A Story&quot;. Promise. DM's are not storytellers -- they are story facilitators. It's not your job (or rather, it's not your job alone) to make the game session exciting -- the players have to chip in, too. What the DM has to do is provide the promise of a story -- a notion of a possibility, be it the old man with a bag of gold in a tavern or something a little more sophisticated.Likewise with &quot;Deliver A Threat&quot; -- I know that I can get pretty caught up in making sure all the monsters are appropriate ELs and everything, without ever thinking of the idea of making the players feel threatened. Any good story carries with it a sense of urgency. Imagine if Beowulf arrived at Heorot and the folks said, &quot;Yeah, there's this monster Grendel who's eaten some folks, but she won't be back for another six years. Could you take care of that sometime for us?&quot;No.This is a point where most published modules fall down, because it's so hard for them to integrate into a campaign enough to be able to deliver a threat to the PCs.If the old man with the bag of gold gets torn apart by shadow mastiffs in the tavern, who then turn on the party as the night outside fills with haunted baying -- THAT'S a threat getting delivered.Even better are those long-term threats that the party cannot easily rid themselves of -- cults and conspiracies are good for these sorts of things.But anyway, both those ideas can help DMs manage their plots and pacing -- at least, they've helped me a lot.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="barsoomcore, post: 1303953, member: 812"] The Gamemastering sections of Monte Cook's d20 Call of Cthulhu contain some of the best words ever written on the subject of creating good game sessions. Two ideas that ring very, very true: "Promise A Story" "Deliver A Threat" The first one is important because of what it DOESN'T say -- it doesn't say "Tell A Story". [i]Promise[/i]. DM's are not storytellers -- they are story [i]facilitators[/i]. It's not your job (or rather, it's not your job alone) to make the game session exciting -- the players have to chip in, too. What the DM has to do is provide the promise of a story -- a notion of a possibility, be it the old man with a bag of gold in a tavern or something a little more sophisticated. Likewise with "Deliver A Threat" -- I know that I can get pretty caught up in making sure all the monsters are appropriate ELs and everything, without ever thinking of the idea of making the players [i]feel[/i] threatened. Any good story carries with it a sense of urgency. Imagine if Beowulf arrived at Heorot and the folks said, "Yeah, there's this monster Grendel who's eaten some folks, but she won't be back for another six years. Could you take care of that sometime for us?" No. This is a point where most published modules fall down, because it's so hard for them to integrate into a campaign enough to be able to deliver a threat to the PCs. If the old man with the bag of gold gets torn apart by shadow mastiffs in the tavern, who then turn on the party as the night outside fills with haunted baying -- THAT'S a threat getting delivered. Even better are those long-term threats that the party cannot easily rid themselves of -- cults and conspiracies are good for these sorts of things. But anyway, both those ideas can help DMs manage their plots and pacing -- at least, they've helped me a lot. [/QUOTE]

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