Weaving the Story

A roleplaying game is a dialogue between the session master (SM) and the players, with dice rolls to adjudicate points of uncertainty, to tell a story. Let’s look at what this dialogue looks like.

The SM describes the scene in which the player is in, presenting them with the options available to them, or an opening for responses. Then the player describes what they want to do and how, and the SM determines how that action(s) is resolved. Sometimes, the task is easy; it just happens, and the SM narrates the results. Other times, there’s uncertainty about whether a given task succeeds; this is where dice are rolled, and the SM describes what happens based on their results.

The narration continues until the player reaches another decision point. In this way, the dialogue proceeds, telling the story of the session by weaving together strings of three elements: narration (SM), response (player), and resolutions (dice).