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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4577203" data-attributes="member: 54707">I personally think a lot of people have made good points.Many elements contribute to being a good DM, and many elements contribute to being a good writer. Sometimes those elements are the same in nature, correspond, or are corollaries of one other. Sometimes they are separate or even disparate elements.To me the true differences are not so much in kind, in many respects the job of a DM (especially as the Devising stage of adventure/scenario creation) is an analogue of the technique(s) applied by a good author. For instance if your book wanders and meanders without purpose then it will be a fruitless exercise, and will not sell well either.If your story and plotlines in D&D or any other game for that matter, wander about aimlessly and without purpose then the chances of undertaking a successful and coherent campaign, not to mention a truly interesting and stimulating one, are practically nil. (I am of course speaking here about on-going storylines, not disconnected series of one-shot adventures, which may be the aim and point of some groups, but as for me and mine, they are usually mere diversions, not ordinary or intentional endeavors.) So in devising campaigns, or even just adventures, the DM moist impose a useful order, beneficial to all parties. For the sake of coherence and to assure meaningful goals and objectives for the players to pursue throughout the course of the campaign(s).The difference is he (the DM) is not sole arbiter of that order, nor is the order and story developed through such processes stagnant or calcified. I'd liked very much the allusion earlier to interactive. I would even call a game, or even more so, a good campaign, an imaginary exercise in non-technologically oriented Virtual Reality. And since it is a form of early, human-based, interactive, Virtual Reality it cannot be directed in content in the same way that a book can be. In a sense the characters (acting as an analogy to characters in a book) in a game are Virtually Alive, through the medium and agency of the player. That is the characters in a book are limited to the experiences, knowledge, capabilities, and imagination of the Author. In a game the DM or GM sets the parameters and to some sense the paradigm and order of the action and events and order of progression and play, but unlike a book, his characters are alive through the players. Each characters is "Virtually Alive" via the player and has his or her own set of experiences, capabilities, knowledge and breadth and depth of imagination. Making Role Play Games both interactive and virtual in a way that books cannot be while they are being scripted.  Anyway I found a lot of the comments very interesting, even the ones I didn't agree with, but I gotta go.Late for an appointment.</blockquote>

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