Storyteller is the title used for the person running a game. It doesn’t have to be a single person, though it probably most often will be.
That term was chosen because the emphasis is on telling a story, rather than being “master” of the world, game or dungeon. The structure of the game supports this by using Story Points to allow anyone to take part in the direction of the narrative, as well as alleviating a lot of the work that goes into prepping for battles.
This of course reflects my personal needs for an RPG. There should be a low amount of effort to get into a game session, which is easy when you make simple mechanics to allows systematic story progression. This isn’t original, it was all I could do to not call them Fate Points. The key here is to balance the mechanic so it supports different kinds of players somewhat equally.
That is where the Storyteller comes in. Many tabletop games have entire chapters or books just for the game administrator. My goal is to shorten that to a page or two, most of which is to explain how easy it is to be the ST, and how they are essentially just playing multiple characters at once (but still one at a time). I also look forward to experimenting with different setups with multiple stroytellers, since it adds a social dynamic that can be pretty interesting if your friends are into it.
Why does that one kobold keep running to the back? Its like their not even allied with the other monsters here!
Hilarity, in ensuing form.
Of course that isn’t to say you won’t have the common scenario where one person crafts a story for their friends to play through. It will be even easier to do that, since the game itself is relatively simple, they can focus on where the adventure is going, and over the top performances (again, my personal needs are met).
I hope to post about Story Points in more detail, I have really just made a note that they are there. Time to hack at the Traits, Skills and Abilities some more!