You have almost certainly, at some point, turned an ordinary evening into something else by proposing that the two of you were different people. Not as an elaborate production. Just a suggestion, taken up, that changed what the next hour was allowed to be.
LMTS is Lead, Mind, Tender, Spontaneous. You steer, you do it through imagination rather than force, it is warm rather than severe, and it is different every time.
You lead by inventing
The distinguishing feature of this type is that you need almost nothing. No equipment, no protocol, no preparation. What you need is a premise, and you generate those faster than most people can act on them.
It is worth understanding what the premise actually does, because it is not really about pretending. A scenario gives both people permission to behave in ways their ordinary selves would find awkward to initiate. Someone who could not say “I want you to look at me for a while” can absolutely say it as a person who is not quite them, in a situation that is not quite this one. The story is a licence.
Which is why your version works better than most elaborate role play. Elaborate role play asks people to perform. Yours asks them to be slightly someone else for a bit, which is a much smaller and much more achievable request.
On an ordinary evening it looks like a single sentence that reframes the room. “You have never met me before.” “You are not supposed to be in here.” “We have half an hour and then I have to go.” None of these is a plot. Each is a door.
The warmth matters too. This type is not severe, and the invention tends to run towards intimacy rather than power — a version of the two of you where something is different, rather than a scene in which one of you is in charge. That is a real distinction and it makes this one of the easiest types to play with for someone nervous about the whole territory.
And the spontaneity is genuine. You do not want to plan this, and you are right not to: a premise decided on Tuesday for Friday has usually died by Friday. The whole appeal is that it arrived.
When the invention runs out
Every Storyteller hits the same wall eventually, and it arrives without warning. The premises stop coming. What used to be effortless becomes a search, and the search is visible, and the visibility is what ruins it.
Two things cause this and they are worth separating.
The first is simple depletion. Invention is work, even when it does not feel like it, and if you are always the one supplying the frame then you are always working while the other person is always receiving. That is sustainable for months and not for years.
The second is subtler: you have been performing rather than participating. Storytellers can spend an entire evening generating an experience for someone else and never actually be in it. Nobody notices, including you, because it looks identical from the outside — right up until the point where you cannot think of anything and discover you have not wanted anything in particular for some time.
The correction for both is the same and it is uncomfortable for this type: ask your partner to supply the premise. Not as a test, not as a hint. Directly. “Tonight you decide who we are.” Most partners of Storytellers have never been asked, assume they would be bad at it, and are considerably better than they expect.
The other correction is to reuse. This type resists repetition on principle, because the appeal is novelty — but a premise that worked and gets returned to three months later has something a new one does not, which is that both of you already know how to be those people. The second visit to a good premise is usually better than the first, and Storytellers almost never find that out.
There is a third failure worth naming because it is easy to miss. Because your register is warm rather than severe, you can end up inventing scenarios that are comfortable rather than charged — pleasant fictions in which nothing is really at stake. That is not a fault in the warmth; it is what happens when invention becomes a habit rather than a response to something you actually want. The test is simple. If the last four premises could be swapped with each other without anyone noticing, they were furniture rather than ideas.
What to say
Openers are your whole craft, so these are the shapes rather than the lines:
- “You have never met me before. Go and sit over there and try again.”
- “We have an hour. After that this did not happen.”
- “Do not tell me anything true about yourself.”
- “You are not supposed to be doing this, and neither am I.”
- “Tonight you decide who we are. I will follow.”
Two practical notes. Use the role, not the name — the real name is what breaks the frame faster than anything else. And agree, once, in an ordinary voice, that either of you can step out of it at any point without it being a failure. Improvised play needs that more than planned play does, precisely because neither of you knows where it is going.
Who you play well with
YMTS, The Dreamer is the natural fit — they want to be invented at, they want it warm, and they do not want a plan. It is close to frictionless. The risk is that neither of you provides structure, so evenings can dissolve pleasantly without ever going anywhere in particular.
YBTS, The Melter works better than the axes suggest. They do not want a scenario as such, but a premise you supply is a form of structure they never have to build — and you are warm and unhurried enough not to overwhelm them.
YMIS, The Instigator gives you something to write against. They will resist the premise, which for a Storyteller is not an obstacle but material — the story that includes someone refusing to cooperate is usually better than the one where everybody plays along.
Hardest: YBIR, The Stoic. They want a fixed structure and a physical register, and your gift is neither. Not impossible, but you will be doing something quite unlike your natural mode, and it is worth being honest about whether that is interesting or simply effortful.
If a Storyteller sent you this: the most useful thing you can do is occasionally take a turn. They will not ask, they will assume you would rather not, and being on the receiving end of someone else’s invention is the thing this type almost never gets.
Where to go next
The role-play collection is the obvious starting point, and read it as raw material rather than as instructions — you will want to rewrite most of it, which is the correct response.
The scenarios piece goes further into setup and escalation for the scenes that need more than a sentence, and what to actually say covers the moment where the premise has landed and someone has to speak first.
When the invention has run dry, the piece on raising this out loud is the one that helps — because the fix is usually not a better premise, it is asking someone else for theirs. If the premises you keep reaching for involve being watched or watching, voyeurism between partners covers the structures that make it work, and the one rule it cannot be done without.