Improvisation is definitely a basic skill needed by GMs. It is needed at all aspects of the game from high-level story direction to PC-NPC interaction to tactical combat decisions.
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The complaint everyone has about The Great Pendragon Campaign: if it’s all predestined, if we know how it all ends, what’s the point? There are answers, obviously, but they’re not always convincing ones.
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I’ve used Wild Talents’ red axis for historical inertia as a tool rather than an answer for this.
I’ve not approached Pendragon with it in mind and the almost ritual nature of Pendragon would make it particularly sensitive. Listening to y’all’s Pendragon playthrough it appears to be about how the collection of traits players have assembled on their character sheet rattle through the Morte as opposed to how player decision affects the Morte.
I’ve used it more approaching Star Wars and WW2 play. In terms of GMing skills I think it’s about using that tool (how sticky is history/an established narrative at our table before and after play starts?) to make sure the table isn’t pulled in contradictory directions.
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This is the traditional/old school roleplaying ethos, correct? Most people I’ve played with would be very disappointed by their characters being killed by a party member - but not exactly because there was a win/loss moment between two players (such as in the brutally fatal beating administered by Calico, Princess of Amber) but because they carried narrative expectations into the session that their characters won’t be killed in such a way.
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I think that’s about 80% correct.
My personal experience of it was more through a late 90’s Vampire (WoD) LARP lens.
That particular Amber game was a “throne war” game which is one of the set ups in that rulebook. So we knew going in we were all playing jerks.
Among those two structures, I’ve been part of more PvP play than I’d ever expected and frankly I wouldn’t return to it. That was the most extreme example for which I’ve been present,
My experience of older school dungeon crawling style play has involved nowhere near as much intra-PC strife. I’ve never been present for a “thief picks the wizard’s pocket” type moment presented for comedy in KoDT.
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I hate PvP with a passion. I would not voluntarily play a game in which that was an option and I would walk out of a game where it occurred. I would never initiate an attack (or theft,…) upon another player’s PC and I am incapable of not taking it personally when my PC is attacked. I understand that some players find it fun. I find it to be the opposite of fun.
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I’d hesitate before doing that. In the first place, I take storytelling to be a whole craft, indeed a collection of related crafts, that encompasses many skills. In the second place there are techniques that make up an important part of the craft of directors and writers (even those who are stand are praised above others as good storytellers) but that don’t work well in extemporary and participative forms, or that GMs have no opportunity to use at all. And in the third place I think that the model of RPGs in which the GM is a storyteller and the character-players have the story told to them is a snare, a trap of inexperienced players.
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Inasmuch as RPGs are [collaborative, participative, extemporary, ephemeral] story-telling games¹, everyone who plays in the game participates in telling the story.
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A good many of the standard techniques of other types of storytelling, such as how to make a step-sheet, “don’t sweat the fridge logic”, “write direct dialogue in drafts”, “finish the draft before you start the edit”, and “always resolve conflict by character growth” are useless to GMs.
¹ And that is a characterisation that is subject to argument anyway. 
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I’d still argue that there are core storytelling principles that are universal among all applications of the craft and apply directly to what a GM should do to facilitate a game well.
However, while I immediately think ‘core principles’ - it certainly seems like other people do not think that way when they hear ‘storytelling’. I am fully defeated, and retract my suggestion.
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Games and styles of play constitute a continuum from abstract boardgames through wargames, braunsteins, D&D, narrativist indies, LARPS or freeforms, theatre sports, Tales of the Arabian Nights, and back to boardgames from the other side. It is both difficult and invidious to draw sharp distinctions across such continuums. Nevertheless I would say that when you reach the point that a game is not about storytelling at all and is all about the tactical and intellectual challenges then there are no useful generalisations that cover both it and all typical RPGs.
I thought the OP’s 3 items were good.
And I would agree vocally. I just don’t think it’s accurate or useful to treat those several principles as a single skill and call it “storytelling”. Rather, I would prefer to isolate the elements of storytelling that are applicable to RPG play and distinguish them from the ones that are not.
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Why did you delete your post re: storytelling?? It was interesting!
It wasn’t forthright. I have to be more careful about that sort of thing.
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I think we may both have overreacted and taken things a trifle too personally. My apologies.
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I’ve been slow to comment on this topic because I found myself thinking of multiple essential skills, and it seemed that a full answer would have more than I immediately thought of. On one hand that’s because I was clearly thinking at a lower level of abstraction than other commenters; but on the other, I’m not sure I can endorse any specific list of broad categories without looking at the narrower categories that they encompass.
So here are some skills I think are needed:
- You have to be able to recruit players.
- You have to be able to come up with ideas for campaigns that people will actually want to play in.
- You have to be able to manage scheduling so that players can attend sessions of play.
- You have to be able to read and understand systems of game mechanics.
- You have to be able to choose suitable game mechanics for the campaign you plan to run.
- You have to be able to answer players’ questions about such systems.
- You have to be able to define appropriate character types and verify that players have proposed suitable characters.
- You have to be able to describe a setting, whether real-world or invented (it helps if you can do both).
- You have to come up with situations for characters to deal with, present them to players, and motivate players to involve their characters in those situations.
- You have to be able to judge when to ask for dice rolls (or other resolution mechanics) and decide what mechanics are appropriate to a proposed action or encountered situation.
- You have to be able to figure out actions for non-player characters.
- You have to be able to speak for non-player characters.
- You have to be able to figure out what to do when players come up with unexpected actions for their characters.
- You have to come up with things for every player character to do.
- You have to be able to manage the conversational situation of a group of players, ensuring that every player gets enough chance to speak to affect the course of play (ideally by noticing when a player wants to speak and suppressing other players who would talk over them).
- You have to be able to calm things down when players (rather characters) get into conflicts.
- You have to be able to restrain players from spoiling each other’s enjoyment.
- You have to be able to remove players who persist in spoiling other players’ enjoyment.
I’m not sure if these all fit into WolfeRJ’s three broad topics of
I suppose it depends on how broadly those labels are interpreted. For example, such things as recruiting players and scheduling might be classed under “organization prior to play,” but if so, they suggest a division of that topic into organization of real-world issues and organization of campaign information.
I might suggest a sixfold division based on timing:
- things you do before starting to run a campaign;
- things you do at the start of a campaign, before running any regular sessions;
- things you do during a campaign, before running a regular session;
- things you do at the start of a session, before the actual beginning of play (in my case, inviting players to spend experience points on character development and recapping what happened last time and what the current situation is);
- things you do during a session (which might themselves be subdivided!);
- things you do at the end of a session.
I could add things you do at the end of a campaign, but not every campaign has a formal end; some simply have the players vanish, or have agreement that everyone would rather play a different campaign now, or otherwise come to an end without a “final episode.”
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There are parts of this that are only relevant to some sorts of GMing. For example, if I’m running a one-shot game at a convention, I don’t need to gather a group or build a setting/campaign – but I do need to write an appealing blurb and put together some interesting player characters, and create an adventure that’s satisfyingly complete in itself.
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I suppose that’s true. I’ve run very few one-shots and even fewer with players who just turned up (I haven’t gamed at conventions in decades). They’re not my paradigm for rpgs . . .
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As with my comments about table management, many of these are skills that can (and should) be shared with players. For example, players can recruit other players.
In my last campaign, I explicitly had the players come up with the idea for the campaign for them to play in. The initial seed was, “I want to create a campaign build around the backgrounds and personal goals of the PCs.” Without the players input, it would have died right there.
Players should be able to manage their schedules. The GM is just one among many.
While the GM should read and understand the game system, so should the players. And sometimes the players know the system better and can help the GM navigate it.
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I think there’s a cluster of things (setting up the play environment, scheduling, etc.) which are traditionally part of the GM’s job but could just as well be done by a “host”.
For that matter, I’ve never seen it done, but several versions of GURPS suggested having an “Adversary” player who would run the monsters/villains to the best of their ability.
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As a general point, I’ll agree that the players can contribute to a lot of these. But I think the campaign will have problems if the GM has no skill at the various activities, as opposed to one or more of the players being better than the GM.
However, I don’t think that the players reading and understanding the game system is critical. I’ve had players who hadn’t read the rules books; players who knew, for example, not much more about GURPS than that you have to roll less than or equal to your stat or skill; players who needed to be reminded where to look on their character sheet to find relevant information, or who were vague on the difference between skill level and point cost. They were still able to play, and some of them were excellent players who entertained me and the other players. What mattered was that they came up with narrative and dramatic elements that made sense in the setting and situation and that were interesting or amusing.
I might go so far as to say that a game where players can achieve better results by knowing the minutiae of the rules than by good narration and dialogue is one I would be cautious about.
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