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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Loonook" data-source="post: 4219764" data-attributes="member: 1861">Apologies... sleep is a killer of men and all of that, and I need to die earlier next time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />.Okay... 'opening' the session all about immersion... you get yourself ready, almost as if you were going to go in front of someone and hawk your wares.  You get your patter down, you get the little bits ready, and you try to really get into the heads of the people or locales you're going to be in.  This DM was huge about noticing the little things . . . how someone's appearance reflects what you think of them, how little slips of the tongue could make huge differences.  He was so good at knowing his body language, how to manipulate all the little tics to really milk out every drop from those NPC and PC interactions that made it worth being there.  Closing... ahh, that's the tricky part.  It's basic establishment narrative.  You have to get the pacing right in the beginning and middle, but so few people remember to get that end-session pacing set.  One of my first session with him he ended up describing this amazing scene... each individual detail that was necessary (and some that weren't) . . . we were all amped to get this scene through, knowing we were mere feet away from the Big Payoff.And then he closed his book and walked off.  That book had everything he needed in it to run the session, all the little hardscrabble bits that some people would forget either written down or photocopied and pasted.And when that book closed, we just stared at each other.  We got nervous, we got anxious... but we ground out the days until we could find out what was to occur.  Some sessions ended like that; some were just sort of petered out, others were at what felt like the right breaks and still others ended (to our ideas) far too soon or too late.  But the energy of each session was just bottled and set, and each line connected between the sessions so well that they blended together.  That linking, no matter how he did it, made it worth showing up; you became emotionally invested (as much as you can in a game) in finding out what came next.I hope that explains it.Slainte,-Loonook.</blockquote>

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