The job of the Storyteller is, primarily, to plan, direct and adjudicate the �intended events� of a roleplay game. I use this term rather loosely because it is extremely rare that things go exactly to plan, and hence we STs must always be ready to deal with the unexpected. Such as stealing Concords or visiting the NSPCC. Storytellers are also responsible for creating the world in which the Player Characters exist, and for portraying the vast assortment of NPCs they interact with.
My role is a little more intense than the other STs, since I am responsible for continuity and relevance; it is my task to make sure (or at least try) that everything in our world meshes together. I like to think of myself as the proverbial Joss Whedon (my personal hero); I have an extremely talented writing staff who come up with much of the nuts and bolts of the games, but the big, world-encompassing stuff that I call the chronicle�s metaplot is down to me to keep in check. If any of that makes any sense at all.
Constructing the plots, subplots and metaplot gives me a great opportunity for creative output. If I want to send the PCs to Hell, I can. If I want to try making them lose their memories, I can. As STs, we can do these things; if they work, great, we have made some good entertainment. If they don�t work, we learn from our mistakes, eat the players and clone some new ones. Wait, no, that was just in my head�
Storytelling and writing the plots require walking a fine line, however. All the time, I must be aware that this is not my personal world, in which the players participate to just please me. Live roleplay is a group exercise; if one of the players is bored or unhappy with the way things are going, then we as STs are not doing our jobs properly. It is essential to maintain fairness, to not show favouritism or equally to not carry out personal vendettas in the false guise of fictional roleplay. As far as I can, I try to involve everyone, and I try to bring in personal plotlines for each individual PC � though obviously some are more difficult to write for than others. Character Backgrounds � brief (or lengthy) accounts of a character�s experiences prior to joining the game � are an invaluable tool to the Storytellers, because they give us some direction and inspiration when creating mini subplots that are personally relevant to a PC, and which have been partly created by both the player and the Storyteller. It is this two-way interaction � when and where possible � that can make the Vampire games so enjoyable. A game in which the PCs only react to the things the STs throw at them is not a game, it�s little more than a scripted play with a bit of ad-libbing.
Personal plotlines, then, are what allows the STs to broaden the game to allow for players� own creativity to affect what is happening. But obviously, there must be something that holds all this together, and this is what I call the metaplot. Let me go back to my Buffy analogy; each season there is an ongoing story-line that covers the whole year, but not every episode is relevant to that story-line, or even has anything to do with it at all. This is the difference between subplots and metaplots.
In addition to the metaplots there must be the subplots, as referred to above. If everything that happened concerned the metaplot, the game would soon become boring. Subplots allow us to go off on unexpected, often random tangents, just for the Hell of it. They also have the added appeal of allowing for lighter events, such as facing off against demonic Teletubbies, or meeting highly intelligent answering machines. The comedy element is, I think, essential to the balance of the game�s overall mood, and also serves to make the serious plot elements more convincing and effective.
The final, yet no less important, aspect of the Storytelling craft is constructing and delivering NPCs. A good villain should never be a cardboard cut-out, it should have flaws, motives, and believability. The best villains, in my opinion, are also those who you don�t realise are an enemy until it is almost (or actually) too late. �Extras�, or those NPCs who are designed for cannon fodder or simply as a means of pointing the PCs in the right direction (plotwise), should present a minor challenge, but be reasonably easy to beat, so as to make way for the real action. Then there are the NPCs that lie in-between, those that serve as plot devices or catalysts, but are otherwise relatively insignificant to the grand scheme of things.
I take the most recent (at the time of writing this) game, �Mortal Coil�, into consideration to illustrate this. Cornelius as a villain is designed to be very hard to beat in a straight encounter, as the Pack of the White Van discovered (to Bishop Jemma�s detriment). The reason for this is that Cornelius is part of the metaplot, and so if he was killed on his first �outing�, he would not serve well at all for the chronicle. Cornelius, however, is not a clear-cut villain. He has justifiable reasons for his actions, and is actually not a �villain� in the traditional sense at all. Moving on, the Pack of the Sane met up with the Prophets � who can be classed as Extras. They were there solely to provide an obstacle in rescuing the baby Hope, and although they put up a good fight, they were beaten in the end � after all, they were merely lackeys. Finally comes the character of Mog, who is neither villain nor Extra, and has no real part in the metaplot. But he is � and will continue to be � a source of (rather cryptic) information from time to time, for the PCs.
Well, I think I have ranted for long enough now. I hope this has maybe provided an insight into what the Storytellers do, and how the game works. Thanks for your time.
