Your principles

These principles are your guidelines, your best practices, your rules of behavior for running Stonetop. Strive to follow them. They are the surest way to achieve your agenda.

• Follow the rules
• Begin and end with the fiction
• Address the characters, not the players
• Ask questions and build on the answers
• Be a fan of the player characters
• Embrace the fantastic and the mundane
• Exploit the setting guide
• Respect your prep
• Give your characters life
• Think offscreen, too
• Bring it home
• Let things breathe
• Let things burn

Following your principles isn't always easy. Sometimes it's unclear what a given principle looks like in the moment. Sometimes, the principles will conflict. A big part of your job is to interpret these principles and apply them as you think best. You'll often do this instinctively, and how exactly you follow your principles is a big part of your own personal style of GMing.