The One Time A Storyteller Played Chicken With The Venue

When you show up to a game, you expect the person running it to have a story ready for you. Or, failing that, to at least be willing to follow the players if they take initiative to try to accomplish goals and tie-off existing plots. What you don't expect to happen is for your storyteller to put down roadblocks, warnings, and to get involved in a game of chicken with you when you try to play the game.

But that's exactly what happened at one of the first Werewolf: The Apocalypse games I ever attended. And since I feel there's a good lesson in here (and a lot of readers seemed to enjoy the previous tale Game Masters Shouldn't Leave Players Twisting in The Breeze), I thought I'd tell this tale today.

Our Plan? Get 'Em!

To set the scene, the game in question was a fairly long-running Werewolf LARP that I had just joined a couple of weeks ago. There was a mid-sized player base (ranging from 12-20 some odd people at any given game), and the current chronicle had been running for a while. There was a full staff of storytellers and assistant storytellers, and they had been introducing threats one after another for the past few games. I was still a relatively new player at the time, and I had a brand-new cliath sheet for a Get of Fenris ahroun who felt he had to start racking up some notable victories if he was going to make his ancestors proud of him.

So, with half a dozen werewolves all present and sitting around, he asked the pertinent question that nobody else seemed to be. "Why are we just sitting here? Let's load up and ride!"

At the time I suggested this there were about 7 other players present, and we'd been sitting around for about an hour and change. More than half of them were ahrouns (the warrior sign, for those not familiar with the game), and all but one of those present were from the Get of Fenris tribe. The odd-wolf out was a Glass Walker Wise Guy who was no slouch when it came time for a fight. My character was also the only cliath present, with most of the rest being at least 2 ranks above him.

Short version, we had a lot of Rage and a lot of ass-kicking potential in one place, and we wanted to put that to good use.

Where? Well, we weren't all that picky. Stamp out the corrupt spirits that had been an issue last game? Track down the Black Spiral Dancers who'd been sniffing around? Make it a point that the Pentex-developed factory in the region was not welcome and burn the thing to the ground? We had options!

Or so we thought, at least.

Storyteller Chicken, or a Chicken Storyteller?

After we all took about 15 minutes or so of soft RP, prepping powers, checking that we had all the necessary war gear to go after real threats, we approached the Storyteller. For the past hour or so he'd just been sitting at a picnic table doing not much of anything, so we all figured he was waiting for us to take the initiative.

His response to us going to look for trouble made it pretty clear that wasn't the case, though.

Being a Storyteller is a tough gig, and most of us would have been understanding if he'd just leveled with us. If he'd said, "I appreciate you guys are taking initiative, but I've got something else planned, so could you wait just a bit longer for me to get it rolling?" or perhaps, "I think we've got a few more players coming, can we give them another half hour or so to see if they want to get in on this scene?" we would have been reasonable about it. Even something like, "I don't have the encounters/notes for those threats on me, and I'm not confident I could make them up on the fly, so can we table this for later?"

But instead the Storyteller in question tried to play chicken with us.

The first statement was, "You won't be able to find those threats." This struck me as kind of odd, as at least one of the threats in question had a home base that was public knowledge. When other players pointed out the skills and gifts they had which they could use to track down any difficult-to-find enemies, the Storyteller changed course.

"All right, you can find them, but they're too powerful for you to take on." That one really confused us. I had the least powerful character there, but even with my relatively small sheet I could still deal out some harshness. The biggest sheet we had belonged to a character who had gone toe-to-toe with named Black Spiral Dancers, huge bane spirits, and small armies of henchmen, and while he'd lost an arm, the others had all lost their lives. Acting as a pack, we had an absurd amount of muscle, firepower, and magic to bring to bear. Group consensus was that, while we appreciated the ST's warning that this would be a very difficult or dangerous task, we would all like to proceed.

That was when he pulled out what he thought was his trump card. "If you all go forward you're going to die, and lose your characters." What he was not expecting was for literally every player to just nod (including those whose characters had been in-game for something like 3+ years at that point) and say they were all right with that as long as it meant they could pursue this goal and actually do something other than sitting around twiddling their thumbs.

In The End, Nobody Won

Now, had this been just a home game this Storyteller was doing for their own amusement, it's entirely possible he might have just ripped up every sheet there to save face, and to "teach players a lesson" about questioning the ST. However, this game was part of an organization, and certain protocols had to be followed regarding things like PC deaths... especially if there was an objection over how it was handled.

So when all was said and done, the ST just threw up his hands and walked away shaking his head. Nothing happened, and it was not mentioned again.

While a few other players did arrive about an hour after this, it turned out the ST had nothing prepared for the day. There was no forthcoming plot he'd been focused on, no enemies that were going to show up, and generally speaking nothing on the docket despite all of the threats that had been introduced and not dealt with.

That was not the last time a situation like this happened, but it was the last time I was personally present for it. Even though I'd been enjoying the game, and I kept in contact with the few folks I'd become friends with during my brief stint, that kind of attitude and lack of communication from a Storyteller was a huge red flag for me. And while my original plan had been to come back to the game once a new Storyteller had taken over, that didn't happen for more than a year. By then I'd found new venues, and my schedule was sort of full.

Anyway, the moral of the story here is that if you aren't prepped for something, or you aren't sure you can handle your players' initiative, just tell them that. Work with them, and be honest, instead of trying to browbeat them into doing what you want, because that's just going to lead to resentment. Or, worse, an arms race as they try to bulldoze the issues you're providing that aren't the real reason you want them to stop trying to go in this direction.

Tune In Next Time on Table Talk!

As I said a while back in my previous Table Talk installments, I'm trying something a little different with my recent updates on my group's run through the Hell's Rebels adventure path. Rather than going through a roll-by-roll break down of each session, I'll be putting together snacky, pulpy stories that bring readers on the adventure with me. This week's post is something of a break from that campaign, but you should take a moment to check it out:

- Part One: Devil's Night

- Part Two: From The Ashes

- Part Three: The Raven's Nest

- Part Four: Circles in Salt

If you want to see more, make sure you share these stories on your social media feeds so I can keep the campaign going! And if you're looking for some additional reading in the mean time don't forget to check out my full Vocal archive!

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