Storytelling for Vampire By Wassail Introduction For experienced table-top storytellers, running a game in Redemption involves re-learning a lot of skills that don't follow naturally from one medium to another.  For gamers new the Vampire system, being the storyteller can be a bewildering experience.  The goal of this series of articles is to help new players interested in being the storyteller in Redemption to learn the techniques of, and tools to facilitate, storytelling in Redemption.  Hopefully, it will also give some advice to experienced storytellers and allow their transition from pen and paper to the electronic medium to be as painless as possible. A note for experienced storytellers - the multiplayer engine in Redemption represents a first effort in a project to allow internet-based, graphical group roleplaying.  It's not perfect.  You shouldn't walk into this with huge expectations, because the game just isn't capable of performing.  The transition of our ideas from our imagination to computer images and sounds is a tremendous effort, and there is only so much that Nihilistic can package up front.  They did, however, do a great service to gamers - they made it modular, so that the basic package can be modified and expanded based on the imaginations of talented artists and programmers.  That said, it's still possible to get a really fun experience out of the engine as is.  You just have to learn to tailor your expectations to the limits of the game, and have a moderate amount of patience. For new storytellers, I won't get into the philosophy of being the storyteller too much, only to say that you take a large responsibility on to your shoulders.  While the players are responsible only for determining how their characters interact with the world around them, you are responsible for determining how the world interacts with the characters.  The players are trusting you to do this in a way that is both entertaining and fair, according to a vision which everyone involved shares (more or less).  Thankfully, you don’t have to create the entire world - the game designers have provided some scenery for us to use, some people for the characters to talk to and some things for them to play with.  To quote someone off the Nihilistic message forums, “Nihilistic didn’t package the game with an imagination - you either have one or you don’t.” Not only are you responsible for determining the appearance, smell, taste, feel and sound of the world around the characters, you are responsible for managing the events which occur in the character’s lives (or unlives, as the case may be).  It’s all fine and good for the players to generate interesting characters and walk around a beautifully detailed city, but if nothing happens, then it gets tired very quickly.  As a storyteller, you have to make some choices about how those events happen. During the course of these articles, I’m going to stress three things about storytelling, that in my opinion, will make your games more rewarding. 1. You and your players will enjoy a story that pertains exclusively to the characters involved. To attain this, you need to develop a backstory for the world you are going to be managing, and your players will need to develop similar backgrounds for the characters they will be portraying.  At its most basic level, players need to figure out goals specific to their character that provide a theme for the action they are involved in - a reason for being.  They need to answer the question “why” - why do they do the things they do?  Once they figure this out, you can provide them will challenges that they actually give a damn about completing.  Too often, the reason for taking part in a game is “the Prince would like you (insert task for the characters here).”  But if the characters don’t like the Prince and don’t want to help her, then the game falls apart.  Good players and storytellers will get past these pitfalls, but if they never exist in the first place, and players are actually pursuing goals they care about, then they will have a much more enjoyable experience. 2. Non-linear chronicles are more interesting than linear chronicles. The single player game of Redemption is, essentially, a collection of linear chronicles.  The multiplayer chronicles shipped with Redemption are also linear - the scenes are pre-scripted, the players have their goals handed to them, and they proceed neatly from one event to the next until they arrive at a conclusion.  The players have little control over the direction of the story other than to succeed or fail at the objectives presented to them.  The minute they say “I don’t want to do this, I want to go Tahiti,” and they do it, you have a non-linear chronicle.  As a storyteller, you have to think outside the constraints of the program and find a way to represent it.  Instead of the illusion of choice, your players have real choices to make, and they feel like they are participating in the game.  More importantly, they are making choices that matter to them, that have consequences that pertain specifically to them. 3. Being a good storyteller requires knowledge, familiarity, authority and patience. The knowledge required is that of the game background - how the game works, how characters in the Vampire game world interact with each other, how to conduct a game, and how to make it interesting for the players.  The familiarity required is that of the game’s mechanics - how to get the most out of the Redemption engine.  Authority is required because someone has to be the guide in the game; while players can help you with the tools and give you advice about the environment of the game, you ultimately have to be the person that makes the final call.  For all of these, patience is an obvious factor.  It’s not going to be perfect the first time.  You’re going to make mistakes and weird things are going to happen.  Don’t hesitate to use the pause button and take a moment to regroup.  If I haven’t scared you away already, let’s take a step back and do a little thinking about what you’re up against. Go to Storytelling Vampire Part 2