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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7820486" data-attributes="member: 29398">And right there you've just obliged the DM to have some story going on - a world can hardly be described as "living" if there's nothing happening in it.Yes, and a part of both of those involves presenting whatever ongoing stories the game-world might have going in within it (which be extension means the DM has to first come up with said stories).  And every time the DM refers to these stories, even just as background material (e.g. "On returning to town you hear news that the West Marches have fallen; Duke Tway's forces routed King Yorik's troops all the way back to the Jasper Mountains, where they regrouped and held a line.") she becomes - that's right - a storyteller.Here's where you're messing this up.If the DM's expected to provide a living breathing world then there very much IS a story for her to tell.  What you're mixing up is the difference between a) DM telling a story and b) the PCs being expected to (or forced to) engage with said story.So, in the above example this difference manifests as the DM expecting (or forcing) the PCs to go and help King Yorik's army vs. just neutrally relating the news and letting the players/PCs choose what they do next even if their choice ends up having nothing to do with the war in the west.The right conclusion from the wrong premise.RPG groups engage in story-writing, whether intentionally-at-the-time or just seen in hindsight.Ah...this tells me another difference in viewpoint: you're talking about the specific story of the PCs where I'm talking about the story of the game-world as a whole.  Both are stories: the DM tells one and the table as a whole (possibly incorporating elements of the DM's story as told) crafts the other.(edited for typos)</blockquote>

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