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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 2047005" data-attributes="member: 99">I don't know why I didn't think to mention this before but another issue regarding the publication of story oriented material came to mind and that is the varied audience and how you have to know your audience in order to figure out what kinds of stories will work for them.  As my starting point for this concept I point to one of my favorite RPG resources, Robin Laws' Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering.In this book he describes the various different types of players.  These are The Power Gamer, The Butt-Kicker, The Tactician, The Specialist, The Method Actor, The Storyteller and The Casual Gamer.  I won't try to describe these categories beyond what is probably obvious from their titles.  But I feel that my ability to run a good game took a big leap forward when I came to understand what kinds of players are in my regular group and the reasons why they choose to participate in this hobby.Before I understood this, I just put together a campaign and ran things like they seemed they should be run.  I was successful more often than I failed but this was simply because I was acting to fulfill their needs as players on a subconscious level.  And there were plenty of times when I seemed to have a hard time pleasing one or two players in particular and I must confess that some of the ways that I tried to fix those problems only made things dramatically worse.  It wasn't until I consciously chose the designs of my campaign to fit with this particular group of players that I started feeling like I was really firing on all cylinders as a GM.My point is this:  The kinds of setup that will ultimately engender the story for my campaign are suited to the particular group of players that I've got.  If I had a group with a different mix of player types then I would probably try to set things up very differently.In my opinion this will have one of two effects on story oriented material:  It will make it much more difficult to write such that it takes into account different types and mixes of players OR the resulting product will really only be best suited for a limited type or mix of players.To give an example of what might result, you could have a book that suggests moving from one exciting, edge of your seat action scene to another with minimal transition in between because action and excitement really grab players and keep them interested.  This might be true for a group populated with Butt-Kickers, Casual Gamers and certain types of Storytellers and Specialists but it might be a big failure for a group heavy on Tacticians and Method Actors.  Conversely a book that tells you to slowly drop in clues to the plot at hand, not railroading players into pre-set action sequences and letting things unfold at a pace chosen by the players might do great with Method Actors, Tacticians and some kinds of Specialists but the Power Gamers and Butt-Kickers might be pulling their hair out in frustration.A book that tries to write guidelines to account for all of the possibly types and mixes of players will have to almost impossibly long.  Better (IMHO) to identify the types of players, identify the sorts of things that interest players of that type and try to figure out ways to blend those interests together into some kind of coherent story.Does that all make sense?</blockquote>

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