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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Drammattex" data-source="post: 5768190" data-attributes="member: 55363">Ah, yes! Thanks, Jools. Dave passed me some great questions. The most important one, imo, is the one about describing the action from the perspective of each character you're addressing. In a way that's where I was going with the "Siege" character write-ups, but it's a DM tool I find invaluable (when I remember to do it!). Oh yeah, the "3 things happen" bit too. I still live by that (again, when I can remember to do it). 3 is the magic number.I learned the character narrative thing from Mike Kuciak, who used to write articles for Dragon/Dungeon. We used to wait tables together at Ed Debevic's. His success writing articles for the magazines inspired me to give it another shot myself. I'm not sure how much conscious thought Mike put into his DMing style. He certainly never addressed the fact that he DMed this way; I just noticed, after a time, that he always tried to point things out that only my character would notice, or tried to narrate from my perspective. The other thing he was good at was huge, cinematic action set pieces. No surprise that he moved to Los Angeles to pursue screenwriting. Mike was as phenomenal a player as he was a DM. He (again without actually addressing it) showed me how to successfully play a Neutral Evil character in a game. Silas Kray was Mike's sociopathic rogue. He cared for no one but himself, and assassinated (or commanded the assassination of) anyone who stood in his way _except the other PCs_. Had those PCs been NPCs, they would have died swiftly and without mercy. But Mike made a conscious choice to set his role-playing parameters so that he never contradicted or fought with the other players/PCs. In this way, the other players were able to sort of appreciate and admire his horrible, horrible character without making the game about inter-party conflict. Anyway, Mike doesn't get much into RPGs lately (<a href="http://www.meetup.com/DnDMelt/members/27851952/" target="_blank">except for a rare stint with Satine Phoenix last fall</a>), but he's a great storyteller on both sides of the screen and I learned a lot from him.</blockquote>

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