[Chronicles of Darkness] More on Storytelling

Some more good tips and guidance on by elevating your Storytelling game with your ever collaborative players and friends.  This type of thing is what largely separates a Storytelling system from a Dungeon or Game Master system. What is below is in addition to the advice provided in my first collection of missives On Storytelling located HERE. The below is burrowed from Werewolf: The Forsaken 2nd Edition, my comments/changes in blue:

TEN MORE STORYTELLING COMMANDMENTS

There are at least a hundred thousand stories to tell in the Chronicles of Darkness (CoD), and for each, a thousand ways to tell them. What follows are not the only things Storytellers need to keep in mind when they’re running games at their tables. Nor are they the only techniques players should encourage from other players in the group. These are just a few places to start. These principles will help to keep you on track. When you’re struggling, return to these guidelines for advice.

1. ENJOY THE EXPERIENCE

This is maybe obvious: a roleplaying game has the word “game” in it, and games bring to mind the idea of fun. Fun is a great goal for any game, and players and Storytellers are welcome to it. Of course, some of the themes of the CoD are dark enough it may be hard to associate them with “fun.” It’s hard to have fun when the game has become sad, stressful, or dire.  But, so long as players are invested and have a good emotional distance from those feelings, players can enjoy the experience of being stressed, sad, or scared. It’s only pretend, and so these harder emotional experiences play out like riding a roller coaster. It’s probably totally safe, but the pit in a rider’s stomach, and the screams that fly out of her mouth happen in spite of all the safety regulations. The rider enjoys the thrill for thrill’s sake, without really endangering her own life in the process.

Storytellers and players should keep in touch with each other when the game hits hard and heavy with themes and storylines. It’s okay to discuss these things out of character and make sure players are still enjoying the intensity. If some aren’t, negotiate ways for them to back out of the scenes gracefully, or for the Storyteller to cool things off and go in a different direction. Storytellers and players should never punish each other for not enjoying the same things out of a game. They should find compromise.

2. PAY ATTENTION TO EVERYONE

It happens at every table. An enthusiastic, well-informed, or aggressive player can dominate the table. There’s no reason to not let a spotlight-craving player grab at it from time to time. How else can you hope for him to enjoy himself? But players and Storytellers alike should keep an eye out for players whose voices are lost in the shuffle. Some players prefer to stay quiet, observe, and intervene infrequently. These players should never be forced to engage, but check in with them frequently to be completely sure they’re getting what they want out of the scene. For players who want more screen time but don’t know how to get it, it should fall to the Storyteller and their fellow players to give them moments to shine. Move the spotlight around. Set characters up for important solo scenes. Set them up for successes and failures. Set them up to make a difference in the story, even if they don’t do it with a grandstanding in-character speech or an amazing dice roll.

3. CONTRAST DARK WITH LIGHT

It can’t rain all the time.

Getting caught up in the misery and struggle of the CoD can be fun, to an extent. Without touches of light, hope, and success, the character’s moments of desperation seem bland and without purpose. Misery tourism is not the end goal of a chronicle, and while it’s great if the Storytellers and players can enjoy moments of heartache and sadness along with their characters, or watch it from a safe distance, characters who are always down and always losing rarely hold interest for very long. Not all struggles need to be fruitless. Players invest effort, emotion, and energy when stories give both positive and negative notes. Good things happen to even the most Forsaken.

4. DON’T SAY NO

Just that, literally.

No is the single most boring answer a Storyteller can ever give. It’s the most boring answer a player can ever give. Gaming, in a lot of ways, is about improvisation, and saying “no” means shutting down the scene. Improvisation is all about taking the threads your partners leave, and building on them. “No” ends the thread, and denies an opportunity to build. It means limiting what can go on next. It means cutting off choice. Frankly, choices are best when they’re hard, not when they’re limited.

As a player, when another player or the Storyteller offers you a background tie, a character quirk, or a connection that’s wasn’t what you had in mind, find a way to make it true.

As the Storyteller, when players say something, do something, or make a choice that’s “wrong” in your notes or in your head, find a way to make it right. By default, assume the choice your characters make is the right choice. Even if the end result of the “right” choice is tragedy, always treat that choice with respect.

Of course, sometimes “no” is essential. Sometimes, physical laws will stop something from occurring. In those cases, clarity will usually help, since it means the players and Storyteller aren’t on the same page. If a player thinks something could happen which you think couldn’t, that’s because there’s a difference in understanding.

As a player, if it’s clear that your choice is wrong, your idea is wrong, embrace the wrong and run with it. Invest in making a mistake in character, and enjoy the fallout. Never let the phrase “but my character would never do that” get in the way of having a good time.

5. USE SENSORY CUES

In novel writing, if an entire page passes without any sensory detail, the writer is probably doing something wrong. Roleplaying isn’t exactly novel writing, it sits somewhere between theatre of the mind, short stories, and all sorts of other media, but we tend to push toward visual depiction of things because, as humans, we’re visual creatures.

Of course, CoD is not usually about playing humans. It’s about creatures or people with preternatural powers whose other senses are as strong and as important. Spiritual senses in particular don’t fit mundane explanation, since we don’t possess spiritual senses as humans in the real world. Your descriptions should reflect a character’s senses.

Use short, you can contrast this by using simple details for mundane senses. Be factual. Be as scientific as makes sense. This is one of the few times you’ll want to be a bit dull, to contrast the vivid imagery offered by their other senses. Describe a scene in wolf senses using abstract terms. Give imagery aside from what a character might see in the immediate. Focus heavily on smells and sounds, and the stories those senses tell the character.

To reflect that, try this:  Any time as a player or Storyteller you would use the phrase “you see” replace it with any other sensory detail. Don’t talk about the blood on the walls, talk about the buzzing of flies feasting on the walls. Don’t describe the verdant canopy, talk about the smell of fresh water and ozone in the air. Especially when describing other supernatural beings, rely heavily on the other senses to describe the surreal and primordial or resonate nature of these creatures.

6. USE SYMBOLISM

While you’re using sensory details, whether it’s to solidify the strangeness of spirits or to express mage-specific concepts, remember that symbolism can go a long way to make game sessions memorable and powerful.

Symbolism becomes a shortcut to bringing everyone to moments of understanding. You don’t have to keep describing the incredible anger and heat rolling off of a threatening antagonist if you’ve tied those ideas to his glinting yellow eyes. When you cue those yellow eyes in your description, you put players in the right place. This also helps you to portray Storyteller characters consistently, since these symbols give anchors to fall back on.

Furthermore, symbolism is a great tool for a player to get across subtle truths about his character, whatever she might be thinking for feeling. Saying “the character is sad” is all well and good, but using symbols for sadness such as teardrops, graffiti of broken hearts, dark clouds, abandoned houses, or tombstones in the scene brings sophistication to character descriptions.

7. USE CALLBACKS

Bring it back.

If you need a witness to paradox, don’t use a random passerby, use a reporter the characters gave the brush-off to earlier in the chronicle. If the characters are looking for a spirit in the area, create consistency in your cosmology by using the same spirit they have confronted before. Build up relationships whenever possible instead of creating new ones. This makes the world the characters live in feel more alive and more real.  You can do this the other way too. Foreshadow threats characters could run into, but don’t present them right away.

“You’re just lucky Tick Tick Clock isn’t here. If he was, you couldn’t push me around.” Seed suggestions as to who might be around next time, so that when you call back to that foreshadowing, it has more impact. Players should use callbacks whenever possible as well. Never shake down a drug dealer when you can shake down Fast Dee with the glass eye.

8. USE ASIDES

Sometimes, important things happen that have nothing to do with the player characters. Sometimes Storyteller characters do things that shake the story. You can run this in several ways. Naturally, you can just choose to let the ripples affect the story and leave it at that; but if your group is adventurous, use asides.

Take a moment to pull the curtain back and show the players what the antagonists are planning. You don’t need to spill all the juicy details, but let them know that war is in the air, a betrayal is bound to happen, or someone is dead who shouldn’t be. This will add tension and create an air of cinema to the drama. Getting players and Storytellers to think cinematically can encourage players to take more risks with their characters and view the game not just as something to win, but as something to cheer for. Players and Storytellers aren’t just participants in the story, they’re the story’s main audience and biggest fans.

9. SHOWCASE THE STRUGGLES

Being a mage is hard. It’s deadly. It’s gruesome. That’s a thing that characters should angst over. But it shouldn’t have to be something that player’s angst over.

Give attention to how hard it is in a way that celebrates the struggle instead of dumping in on dice and failure. Paint failure as heroic as often as you paint it as hollow. Paint success as success sometimes, not just pride before the fall.

10. CELEBRATE THE AWESOME

Being a mage is fucking awesome. Don’t be ashamed to kick back and embrace the awesome sometimes. Narrate a knock-down, drag-out fight where the members of the cabal brutalize their enemies instead of leaning on dice. Break out the dice and let the players roll huge dice pools with almost perfect chances of success. Give the characters chances to do the things they’re good at.

As a player, set up fellow players for moments of extreme success. You’re a cabal in-character, work together out of character to tackle obstacles like a pack would. Enjoy your buddy’s exceptional success the same way you would your own. Embrace the awesome that happens when your cohort accepts a dramatic failure because she’s just fed fire into the story, instead of looking at it like another obstacle to your “winning” the game. Above all, it’s the job of everyone at the table to be fans of the game and fans of each other.

Remember: 

(As seen in Mage: The Awakened 2nd Edition)

The Storyteller is responsible for…

1. Bringing the setting to life through description.

2. Deciding where scenes start and what’s going on.

3. Portraying characters who don’t belong to other players.

4. Involving each player and her character in the ongoing story.

5. Putting players’ characters in tough spots, encouraging interesting decisions.

6. Facilitating the actions players’ characters take, while making sure there are always complications.

7. Making sure that poor dice rolls affect but don’t stop the story.


The players are responsible for…

1. Creating their own individual characters as members of the cast.

2. Deciding what actions their characters take.

3. Making decisions that create drama and help keep the story moving.

4. Highlighting their characters’ strengths and weaknesses.


5. Confronting the problems the Storyteller introduces

6. Developing their characters’ personalities and abilities over time, telling personal stories within the overall story of the game.


Everyone is responsible for…

1. Giving other players chances to highlight their characters’ abilities and personal stories, whether that’s by showing them at their strongest or weakest.

2. Making suggestions about the story and action, while keeping in mind the authority of players over their characters and the responsibility of the Storyteller to occasionally make trouble.