In some games I played the part of the storyteller, often in conjunction with one or two others. So, we made up the story, decided on the setting and the plot. We would introduce the story to some players, who helped us to make the setting, playing monsters or characters with a fixed role according to the storyline, whereas the other players wouldn’t know the story, and had to find out what was happening, by interacting with the other characters.
In one adventure we created, the characters were all magicians and sorcerers, and their objective was to build up a tower, a tower of power. The setting was an imaginary country with a kind of Arabian atmosphere, and the participants were all dressed in Arabian costumes, with loose clothes, masks, turbans, and things like that.
Many of our stories are set in different countries of one fantasy world, which is a conglomerate of many different environments. So, we have one country which is like Germany in the Middle Ages, a country like Iceland, some hot, desert countries, and things like that. This story was involved with making the building and fighting against dark powers who wanted to destroy the tower. When I write adventures, I like to put a moral into the story, and this time it was that the source of the magic is a dark source. Not all the magicians recognized this at first, and went on building and gaining power, but in the end, they had to recognize that their power was only a part of a dark power, to recognize that to make magic of this kind is too dangerous and uncontrollable. One sorcerer knew that the source of the magic wasn’t good, and that there was a dark power underneath the tower which would wake up when there was too much magic in it, but the others didn’t believe him, and went on regardless, because they were too lost in the money and politics which was motivating their magic, so they couldn’t stop it. After about two days, the dark power became more visible, so we sent people playing monsters and evil creatures creeping around, and in the end the story didn’t end well, because the power beneath the tower awoke, and all of the characters had to try to escape, and some died. In such a story it is possible for your character to die. Some people’s characters learnt from the events that were taking place around them, but it wasn’t like learning from a book, they just started to feel the moral. When you’re playing a character, you really become him or her, and you feel the consequences of your actions. It’s your adventure.