Story-Teller
- Steve Cothard
- Jan 13, 2016
- 2 min read

People ask me why I use that title for what I do. It’s hardly the only one in the industry, not even the most popular. Storyteller (ST) is hardly as ubiquitous as Dungeonmaster (DM) and both pale in comparison to Gamemaster (GM). DM was always the champ back when Dungeons and Dragons was the biggest kid on the playground. D&D’s still a heavy-hitter, possibly still on top, but the wide proliferation of a great variety of other games as led GM to take the stop slot. In my experience anyway.
So why ST? Part of it probably has to do with my gamer roots. I cut my teeth on White Wolf’s World of Darkness, brought to you by the Storyteller System. WW, may they rest in peace (though did you hear their IP just got bought?), has had some pretty lengthy things to say on the subject of why they chose that word. Just a sampler for you:
“Like a movie director or an author, the stories you create and tell reflect your references and personality. When we see a Martin Scorsese movie, we know that death, sex and food will be involved. When we read Alice in Wonderland, we expect to see a macabre twist to the whimsy. So it is with the stories you tell. Whether your games portray a series of modern action-adventures or complex intrigues, the story is yours.” – Vampire Storyteller’s Handbook, 2000
Most of all, I stick with ST because I feel it offers the clearest and most technically accurate description of what it is I like to think that I do. I am not a Dungeonmaster as my games rarely take place in dungeons. I suppose I’m technically a Gamemaster, even if I don’t like to think of them as games in the football/craps/monopoly sense that reminds me of. And the word “master” throws me off, because I’m not so self-absorbed as to think I’m really in charge.
I’m telling a story. The story of how a group of people got from point A to point B, what they each wanted, and whether they got it. Live action roleplay, like theater, is a collaborative art form; we are all working together. With no audience (usually) we are really only out to entertain each other, and that’s my job most of all, to entertain. Each character functions as part of the whole, but like a group of dancers their focus must be on their own steps rather than the entire company. The analogy loses its grip when I’m in there, though, because I’m not the director, the featured dancer, or the audience.
I breathe life into what they’re building. A pretty heavy-handed way of putting it, I admit, for someone who thinks the word “raconteur” is pretentious. So I’m forced to work with Storyteller. And if at some point in this article I have caused you to picture an anthropomorphized D&D standing on a playground, or your local gaming group as ballet dancers, or any variation thereof, I will smugly claim those bona fides.
コメント