Storytelling Tools in the Narrator's Guide
Decipher's Narrator's Guide is one of the most amazing RPG books I've ever seen in how it lays out so many helpful tools for Narrators/GMs. It teaches how to plot an adventure, the specifics on scenes, goals, cut-scenes, flashbacks, the basic three-act model with pinches and plot twists, and a whole lot more.
I would suppose that most Narrators/GMs already have a great deal of experience with running a story, so many of those sections are just fine-tuning skills that are already being used regularly. Still, there's a great amount of new and informative lessons, advice, and pointers contained within the pages of the NG that can be a good aid to just about every GM.
So how much of this have you used? Do you lay things out with the 3-act model when you GM? Do you layout your scenes (or most of them) ahead of time? Do you award Experience Points using the system (scene bonuses and the like) that are included?
Doug Taylor
Member of Decipher's Hall of Fame
Currently running The One Ring RPG. I also occasionally run Villains & Vigilantes (our campaign is in year 25) and WEG d6 Star Wars (both games are mostly on hiatus) and an annual game based on The X-Files (using Conspiracy X).