Advice for New Storytellers

I answer quite a few Reddit posts about how to get started in Storytelling in the World of Darkness. Here's some advice that may help new Storytellers in general. This advice is biased towards Vampire, biased towards V5, but is largely version agnostic or even system agnostic. It is a list of 15 things. They could probably each be an article by themselves, but I tried to keep things short and sweet.

1. Have a conversation with your players. You are new to this system. You are doing your best. If they aren't willing to be patient and give you a chance, the Chronicle isn't going to work.
2. Talk about Consent. Use Lines and Veils or an equivalent system to set out what is and is not acceptable in the game. The World of Darkness is a game about terrible things, but don't let that be an excuse to be terrible to each other. People matter more than games.
3. Talk with your Players about the theme. Make sure that they know the sort of story you want to tell and are into it. If you want gritty street gang level conflicts in an Anarch run city and they want glittering Camarilla Courts, there is going to be a disconnect. You don't need to give things away, but talk about the themes and flavours you are looking to invoke.
4. Don't sweat about humour. Players will make jokes that break the tension. You can make jokes. Have the laugh. Then go back to building that atmosphere. We are here to have fun with friends, so don't police the mood. But see point 3 - if you are trying to build a tense environment, make sure your players are in for that and will co-operate.
5. Run a one-shot. The Monsters is a pretty decent start - the official Kickstart for Vampire V5 - don't try to create everything for your first go at the World of Darkness. That's doing things on Hard Mode and you really don't need to do that. There are lots of one-shots on Storyteller's Vault, too, if you don't like The Monsters or you are running a different system.
6. You do need to know how to call for a roll and the basics of the systems. The Monsters One-Shot has a good start, I also have my guides on this site if you are playing V5 - for other systems, see if you can find a good intro guide or a quick start.
7. When you call for a roll, do allow your players to suggest a substitute roll - but you don't have to accept it. For example, if you call for a Persuasion roll, a player might argue for Intimidation if they described their character's dialogue as being particularly threatening. Also - players don't call for rolls, you do. Call for a roll when things would be interesting if things go sideways.
8. Own your Lore. The World of Darkness has decades of Lore. You will not get it all right, even if you've been doing this for decades. If you are new, you have absolutely no chance. And that's fine. Embrace the unreliable narrator. Make it clear to your players that this is YOUR World of Darkness. The Lore in the World of Darkness comes from characters - they all have reasons to lie, be wrong, be deceived, be of unsound mind, be broken. That means that the Lore as printed can be just rumours in your game. If you contradict the written lore, you are right. Especially if you are a newer Storyteller playing with more experienced players, make sure your players understand this.
9. I have been heavily influenced by Jason Carl and Alexander Ward in my Storytelling of the Vampire world - consider checking out their work, but don't feel you have to copy it. Be your own version of a Storyteller. That said, here are some things that work for me - in Vampire, be the Beast - your players' characters are inhabited by an inhuman thing, a seething mess of survival and Hunger that seeks to drive them to abandon who they were and give in to simply being the instinctive predator. In Werewolf - be the wolf, be the Rage that boils in the character. In Hunter, be the fear and Despair and paranoia that drips through those stories. I love giving asides like "Do you really believe that?" when players are talking and asserting their character's humanity. "You could just kill him. Drink him dry. Nobody will miss them and you'll feel so much better." "They are corrupting things, tear them apart." "Is it worthwhile? Everyone dies sometime."  Remind your players how different yet eerily familiar the World of Darkness is. Their characters are inhabiting a world where things seem the same as our world but where things actually do go bump in the night.
10. You don't have to run every feeding scene. You don't have to even roll for every feeding scene. Sometimes you can just gloss over it and get to the meat of the session. But still - feeding is part of Vampire. Give it attention when you get the opportunity to and remind your players of the otherness of using a person as a food source.
11. Minimize combat - combat often reduces tension. The fear of it, the potential for violence ratchets up tension, and that means it always needs to be an option, something that can happen or the threats around the players start to fall flat. But once we're focussed on mechanics and dice and all the machinery of combat, you can lose hard-won fear and paranoia. Don't let combat linger too long, either - three rounds and out is a common idea. Base what happens next on those three rounds. I'll sometimes extend it a round or two if it looks like that will wrap things up appropriately, but combat in WoD isn't sufficiently tactical to be worth lingering on. That said, learn how combat works - there's a great guide on the V5 Homebrew site which I really like.
12. Don't feel you have to stat out every character. Consider using the Quick SPCs system from the Storyteller's Toolkit Screens (a product I otherwise don't really endorse) for improvised characters or for characters you weren't expecting to have to roll dice for. To summarize that system - choose 4, 6, or 8 dice for a weak, medium, or strong characters. Use that many dice for most things they do. Pick a few things they are good at - use 2 more dice for those things. Choose a few things they are not very good at - use 2 fewer dice for those things. Feel free to tweak dice pools up or down a dice or so if it feels right. And then add that dice pool on your character notes just to keep things consistent between sessions. Use SPC stat blocks when you do stat out a character, not a full character sheet. Steal SPC stat blocks from published material. You don't have to do all this yourself.
13. Take really good notes (or record your sessions and take notes after). Keep track of the relationships and the plots that develop. I use three main documents - Kumu for a relationship map / character info, a plot document, and session notes. I've got an article on the tools I use for Storytelling on this site.
14. Use Stars and Wishes or a similar system to learn what is working for your players (and you) and what isn't. Feedback is so helpful and Storytellers often feel like they have no idea if people are enjoying what they are doing. Ask.
15. Relax and remember this is supposed to be fun for everyone, including you. This is a game. Nobody will die if you mess up a rule or forget a character or miss a story beat. Pause. Reflect. Fix things the best you can. And carry on. Or start over. Or whatever you need to do. This is a game. Have fun with it.

Hope this is helpful! Go run an awesome game!