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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 5080761" data-attributes="member: 177">I've had the pleasure of being in sessions P-cat has run, and I think I understand what you're getting at.In the various factional head-buttings, much has been made of how "storytelling" is bad, focusing on how the GM is railroading a particular plot.  And while there are some GMs who do that, by and large, that's not what storytelling in RPGs is about - as you've seen.A storytelling GM is one who gives the needs of story high priority.  And by needs of story, I mean things like evocative description, theme, and dramatic timing.  There are in the world still a few people around who tell stories professionally.  They do it well enough to get paid, and they have techniques to keep the audience engaged - tricks of body posture and vocal control, for example.  A GM can use some of those same techniques at the table, without predetermining the plot.Many GM's go by the "if everyone seems entertained, I'll let them keep going" philosophy.  This GM will allow you to spend a half-hour of your game debating how to do down the mineshaft, so long as nobody's there twiddling their thumbs.  The Storytelling GM knows that if you wrote this half-hour down as a story, it'd be pretty boring.  Even if everyone is engaged and interested in the debate at the time, afterward nobody's going to care - when they tell the war story of the session, it'll be summarized as, "We spent a half-hour debating how we'd go down the mine, and then we...."  The Storytelling GM sees that half-hour as flaccid dramatic timing.  Unless something else cool is going on between the party members such that the players will remember it, the Storytelling GM is going to try to urge the players on to some action.</blockquote>

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