From: swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 15 Aug 92 21:13:34 GMT
Organization: UB


This is a quite long article on the subject of improvisation in GMing.
Skip now if you don't want to read it.



In article <1992Aug14.011554.58147@cc.usu.edu> sl9b4@cc.usu.edu (Deep Six) writes:
>> I found that [back when I did any] most of my preparation got wasted,
>> because players don't work from a script, and are bound to do things
>> in a way that you didn't expect.  
>
>I can deal with the unexpected without having to improvise, I just
>have to prepare carefully.

 I can deal with the unexpected without having to prepare carefully,
I just have to improvise.  :-)

Now, whose method is "better"?  I'd say it's just another matter of
personal preference, wouldn't you?

>Why make it a foregone conclusion that the players will do 
>the unexpected? Why not try to prepare, and if they do pull something 
>you didn't expect, THEN improvise.

Because (1) that method takes more time than I want to spend (i.e. any),
and (2) I don't need to.  :-)

>> I'm sorry you don't buy it, but I really do make everything up on the
>> fly.  I invented an entire Drow socio-political system, complete with
>> descriptions of rebels, dissodents, fanatical cults, political ......
>
>Well, you certainly didn't invent rebels, dissidents, cults, betrayals, 
>or any of that other stuff. 

That's a rather silly flame, don't you think?  I of course don't mean
that I invented -politics- (god forgive me if I did! :-).  I meant
that I invented a "particular" example of such, i.e. I gave names and
descriptions of the people and the cults and the systems, and -who-
got paid off, and -who- got kidnapped, and "why", etc.

>And playing off the cuff that way, you could
>not have created the actual scroll as a prop (like I think I would have).

You mean, you would have created and actual piece of paper with all that
info on it?  I've only done that a couple of times (about enough to
account for the 1% of the time that I'm not "winging it".  :-)

And no, it obviously couldn't have been prepared in advance, because I
didn't even know that there -was- a book on Drow politics in that
wizard's library - I never expected my players to camp out in the
guy's library, and start reading books!  But once they did that, I had
to make up some books on the spot. :-) [this is what I mean by them
never doing what I, or a typical module writer, would have expected.
If I had written up this whole thing in advance, it -still- wouldn't
have occurred to me to outline the contents of the library in detail].

>I would say that in a way, much of what you told the players that day was 
>prepared material. It wasn't written down, but it was already in your head 
>-- power struggles, maneuvering etc. are all basic tenants of socio-politics, 
>and you could have done the same thing if you had to make up a dwarf system, 
>a orc system or anything else.

Well, this is true, but don't you think it's -really- stretching the
point to claim that one's life experience should be counted toward
your percentage of "prep time" for DMing?  :-) When I talk about "prep
time", I'm talking about time spent actually working out plots, NPC's,
maps, scenarios, or whatever, with the intention of using it.  Hearing
on CNN about a military maneuver that may someday unconsciously
influence your decision making during one of your campaign's fantasy
battles, _just shouldn't count_!  :-)

> I have to do things like this too, but I don't 
>consider that making up ingenious plots on the spot. It's just some jumbled 
>parts that were already in my brain put together in unique way. Each detail 
>is like a card, and when you have to come up with something like that, it's 
>just a unique hand of cards.

Isn't the essence of creativity just taking things that already exist,
and combining them in new and interesting ways?  

Besides, the "point" of my AD&D campaign is not to show whether I can
create plots that have never, never existed before - it's for the
players and myself to enjoy role paying the parts of some heroic (or
villainous) characters.  The fact that most of my plots have been
"done before" in some form or another, or are woven out of pieces that
I've picked up from books, movies, watching television, daydreaming,
listening to songs, etc, really doesn't detract from this, in my
mind.  The enthusiasm of my playing group would seem to indicate
that no one else feels particularly gypped by this, either...

>> See, I never bother, because I never have the faintest conception of
>> what my players will decide to do from one minute to the next.  
>
>They must not have very long attention spans. 

That's kind of a cheap shot.  I was only pointing out that I never
know what sub-plot they might elect to pursue, or what "goals" they
might set for a particular playng session.  They often discuss this
stuff among themselves between playing sessions, but I'm not privvy
to it, and I have to be ready to deal with just about anything.
Which means that preparing something is kind ot moot, since I
won't know until they arrive what they will want to do that night.

>do what they want, of course, but they can't do every single thing they
>want to do from one minute to the next, and I always have time to prepare
>what the players want in between sessions.

Do they tell you what they're planning to do next session?  My players
don't tell me.

>How do you know they'll never visit or meet your preparations if they 
>haven't yet? ``Don't bother writing up anything for this part of the world,
>Steve, we'll never visit it or meet the NPCs therein.'' I have plenty of 
>un-used or partially used material, and I'm sure that some time, somewhere 
>it'll be used. 

Maybe if I forced it into the campaign.  But what makes you so sure
they'll ever get there in the "natural course" of events?  There are
places in my world map that they've never been to, and may never
go to.  I'm not about to spend time making up stuff about those parts
of the campaign, I've got better things to do with my time.  :-)

>> I wait for them to tell me where they're
>> going, and I take it from there.  It works fine.  Really.
>
>Maybe the difference is in the players. The players I play with approach
>our games in the same way they would a movie or book. I am not there to
>do their bidding, to react to their every move. I start the tale, and 
>they react. I show them the stage, and they write the script. 

Ah, see, I consider my entire campaign, which mean the main "world
map" and all of the alternate planes of existence and such to be the
stage.  That's too big to write up in detail.  :-) And I consider it
all as if it were running itself - the NPC's are all "doing things",
even when they're out of the character's sight.  If the players happen
to cross paths with them, then their actions might be affected.  But I
almost never "deliberately" set up an adventure for them.  Adventures
just sort of "happen", as they travel, meet people, and get invloved
in the things that those people are doing.

>They want 
>to see three-color maps, props, pictures, drawings and overlays for the 
>miniature map (if you tell me you can come up with stuff like props or
>visual aids on the fly, I'll eat my keyboard). 

I can.  :-)

Sorry - little white lie, there.  I just wanted to see you chow down
on that keyboard. :-)  My players Just Have To Make Do with my 
*wonderful* descriptions.  :-)

>If the world was real, there might be some point to wandering around 
>spontaneously, because there would be something already sitting at every
>turn, waiting to be discovered or experienced. But all your players are 
>getting in your games are endless variations on the same ideas right?

Uh, if we play for long enough, I may indeed end up having to recycle
some stuff.  But frankly it's the nuances that make everything different.
The unique personalities involved.  The strange twists that make this
case different from all the others.

> You just shuffle your reams of possibilities and spew out a new variation.

That's all anyone can ever do, unless you're claiming that you can
invent something totally new, and never before seen in this world...?

>See, the players aren't 
>freebooting around the world spontaneously, discovering what is here and 
>then seeing what is there, they are just seeing your extemporous 
>descriptions in an order you choose. The next card shuffle might be 
>City C, which you extemporize as being very just, with a fair government, 
>prosperity, etc. But that could have easily been City A or City B, 
>depending on where the players went first. I hope that makes sense.

I think the problem is that you're categorizing this stuff as if it
were played from a great distance - like moving chip counters around
on a board game.  Those descriptions you gave above, of CityA which is
rife with corruption and backstabbing and CityB which is honorable and
just and all that, are just too carboard to be a fair description of
what goes on in my campaign.  What's far more important than the
"2-line overview" description of the city is who they meet there,
whether they become friends or enemies with them, whether they find
some interesting plotline to follow, or whether this city or its
inhabitants catch the interest of the players. 

For example, more likely than either of the descriptions you gave
above would be something like this: the players arrive at a heretofore
unknown town, on the outskirts of "the wilds".  They intend to take a
room at an inn for the night because its getting close to winter, and
the nights are very cold.  After talking and bribing their way past
the surly gate guards, they pound on the door of the town's only inn.
The innkeeper seems a greasy, disreputable sort, but he has decent
looking lodgings, so the party grouchily coughs up the fee.  They
take rooms, with 2 characters per room, as a "usual" precaution.

What they don't know yet is that the alderman of this town (actually
of the whole immediate disctrict) is a noble and upstanding fellow,
appointed by the king to try to bring some stability to this region,
which has been plagued by (human) bandits, disputes and skirmishes
with the elves in the region, and raids and harrassment by small bands
of humanoids, as yet unidentified (bugbears).  The problem is that (1)
the troops and supplies that he was promised to help him deal with the
problem haven't arrived yet (after 18 months of waiting, he's
practically in despair, and his pleas to the capital have gone
unanswered), and (2) although he doesn't know it, he's surrounded by
the very bandits that he's supposed to help deal with, they're his
advisors, errand runners, and personal guards.  The innkeeper is the
chief malefactor in the operation: he watches for wealthy looking
patrons, and tips off the actual thugs who will attempt to waylay the
travellers when they wander away from the town.

At the same time as this is going on, the local (wood) Elf lord is
getting ready to take some action of his own.  His people have been
waylaid several times by the bandits, and yesterday one of his subjects
was raped, and her throat cut.  She didn't die, though, and managed to
crawl almost back to one of the Elfin gauard posts, when she was found
by a hunting party.  The Elf lord is not evil or unduly violent, but
he is impetuous, and very, -very- angry.  Within a couple of days, he will
march on the town and demand retribution.  He will have with him a
hundred archers, and contigent of spearmen and "cavalry" (actually
elvish hunters, equipped with light mail and boar-hunting spears).
If it comes to battle, he will have the archers shower the town with
flaming arrows (which will play hell with the thatched roofs and
wooden buildings), while his cavalry and footmen take care of any
sorties against the archers.

The elves also have an anomaly on their side as well - a 5th level
human mage, who married the elf lord's neice, and is now living as a
member of the elf commnity.  He has retired from adventuring, but will
accompany the elvish force, and use his magic to aid them if it comes
to fighting - probably by trying to breach the gates.

The bandits don't know that some of their number have "stepped over
the line" - the innkeeper, their "boss", doesn't want trouble with the
elves.  But when trouble comes, he'll probably try, with the aid of
his thugs and cohorts, to implicate the Alderman, and maybe the
newcomers (the party) as well.

It's a nasty tangle, but the party has a couple of potential friends -
one of the bandits is young and "new", and feels sick and guilty over
the rape and "murder" that took place the day before.  He works as
the stableboy at the Inn, and may well be coaxed into spilling the
beans on the whole bandit setup.  He knows who all the key players
are, except that he doesn't know that the innkeeper himself is the
ringleader.  The alderman is a good man, although finding that out
may not be easy - he's very frustrated, will be very "short" with
people.  But any fighters in the party might note that he has the
bearing of an ex-soldier (4th level fighter), and if they can
draw him out, and convince him that they can help, they may have
a valuable ally.

So, that should be enough to start the ball rolling.  The way the
characters typically operate in my campaign, it would probably get
very messy, with all kinds of things happening at once.  I would just
let them muddle about and get involved in things, until they were so
deep in the situation that they felt they had to see it through to its
conclusion (whatever that might be.  Another thing I don't do is have
"planned endings" to adventures).

Ok, so that's an example of one of my extemporaneous situations (I
just made it up as I was typing it).  In fact, I sort of like this
one, and I may well use it at some point, so I guess if I do, then it
coul be said that I had "prepared" that adventure in advance.  :-) 
If it seems too much like you've seen it before, and you feel like
"oh, that ol' thing -again-?"  then you probably wouldn't have much
fun in my campaign.  :-)

-- 
Steve Swann                 |    Speak to me in many voices; make
swann@acsu.buffalo.edu      |      them all sound like one...  -BOC
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc