Storytelling Tools in the Narrator's Guide

[Doug Taylor]

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?

[Fugazi Grrl]

Our Narrator does use the system laid out in the NG for setting up stories, and running episodes. She's been GMing a lot longer than I've known her and says the same thing you do - that the NG's section on setting up and running the game is some of the best advice to GMs she's ever seen.

We also use the basic formats they have in the NG for listing, at a glance, a series base-of-operations, or the basics on the series itself. And they're really helpful for getting the feel of a setting.

[Doug Taylor]

I'm glad to hear that, Fugazi Grrl, as I know your group has a lot of fun with the game, too.

Lately I've been wondering if I'm the only one meticulously mapping out my various scenes and sticking to the formulas (like, for Experience Points) recommended in the NG. They do seem to work quite well, and the advice and recommendations they give I think really enhance the overall quality of one's storytelling.

[Tomcat]

I think that the Narrator's Guide (Star Trek) and the Narrator's section (Lord of the Rings) was amazingly clarifying.

I have always run games that were continuous - player characters were started and were played until they perished, or retired. My Chroicles of the North story for LotR is an example of what I mean - 10 years later, my players are still enjoying the PC's that rode out of Tharbad in quest of a cure from Elrond, for the plague. Some of the PC's perished along the way, but I use continuity of time in the story which creates really dramatic scenes - especially when a long-lived PC falls.

Anyway, even though I have always prepared for games, I never had a neat structure to base it on - to be honest, if felt kind of chaotic as to what I was going to bring in next. But when I read these sections, it clarified in my mind an ordered manner to producing new material, which was amazingly helpful. It also aided in writing the adventures when we started the Hall of Fire. To create a three scene outline skeleton of an adventure, and then put 'meat on the bone' by filling in each scene was so easy. It made for easy balancing of Risk and Reward, too.

I also use the CODA adventure model in my Star Wars game.

[Doug Taylor]

I too have used the CODA structure for other RPGs, and Tomcat's story sounds similar to mine. I've always prepared for sessions, and try to do as much of the "looking stuff up" as I can beforehand (to speed up the actual play at the table). The Decipher books (both ST and LotR) have done an excellent job of spelling out how to do a really well made outline, and I really appreciate the approach of starting at the end and working backwards (towards the beginning), too.