From: swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 19 Aug 92 19:27:08 GMT
Organization: UB

In article <1992Aug18.033715.9902@tronsbox.xei.com> dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) writes:
I wrote:
>|the room.  Maybe I didn't even "create" the room until they started
>|sneaking around inside the manor house of an NPC who hadn't existed
>|until 20 minutes after we started playing.  :-)  You say that your
>|way has more rewards, (at a psychological level, maybe?).
>
>	I would quit instantly if I found out that a GM was putting clues in
>front of me as I was searching.  It means that he doesn't know the answer to
>the whatever mystery we're investigating, and that completely destroys any
>possible sense of accomplishment you could feel from solving it.  I've had
>this happen to me in the past, and I HATE it.

Scenario:

A party of adventurers has a random encounter on the road leading to
Novorest, the capitol city of the Kingdom of North Tamaria (Tamaria
split during a civil war; Novorest was the original capitol of the
whole).  The adventurers have made their way northwards for a week
along this once busy highway, and have seen little sign of life.  The
region was reduced by warfare, and never rebuilt.  It is now the
habitat of monsters and brigands who fortunately (or unfortunately, if
the adventureres are spoiling for a fight) haven't troubled their
journey so far.  The characters are but two days from their
destination, and in fact will be in "inhabited" territory by nightfall
today.

The GM rolls the encounter, and consults his encounter tables.  Men.
Brigands.  Oh, big surprize.  So, he then determines that these
particular brigands are not just freebooters, they're in the employ of
Count Arthemer of Drisbane.  He's expecting his wife (a "foreign"
woman, daughter of a wealthy family) to be coming north within a
couple of days, along this very highway, having journeyed to the south
to visit her family.  He wants her waylaid, and kidnapped, and her
guards killed, except a for couple, that must be sent north to her
husband (i.e. him) and south to her family with ransom messages.  The
husband will weep and wail and pretend to pay his part of the ransom,
knowing that it is his own men who have his wife captive.  This whole
scheme is a plot to extract the wealth of her family, which he could
otherwise have not laid hands on.  Once he has the money in his hands,
he will have her murdered.

Now, the brigand chief can't be one of the Count's retainers, because
his wife would recognise any of them.  So, these are ruffians that he
has hired to do the deed, and they aren't entirely trustworthy.  :-)
In fact, they have decided to supplement their income by ambushing
this small, weak-looking group (the adventurers) while they're waiting
for the Count's wife to show.

Ok, what's the plot here?  And what exactly is it that the adventurers
are "supposed" to figure out?  This isn't like a book, where you're
ushering them towards some pre-determined destination, via a series
of carefully planned critical occurances.  This is liable to get
messy, and there's no saying for sure that the characters should (or
will) get involved in it at all.  Maybe they'll run from the brigands.
Maybe they'll fight them, and capture one, and find out about the
Count's plot (most of the brigands don't know the whole story - only
the brigand chief knows that the person who hired them to do this was
one of the Count's most trusted vassals).  Maybe the adventurers will
find out and not give a hot damn, because they've got other things on
their mind.  Maybe they'll find out, and drag the bandit chief back to
the capitol, and leave the whole matter up to the King's justice.
Maybe they'll take it upon themselves to try and foil the Count
personally.  Maybe they'll get run off into the wilds without their
horses, and will be more worried about living to reach civilization
than about who those bandits were.

>	Improvisation is a necessary evil

In gaming, it's the spice of life.

>, as far as I'm concerned.  I've had
>to do it, of course; the players have to be given their head and that means
>they're not going to stick to your prepared material all the time.  But I
>never start a scenario without having answered all of the questions I've
>raised *and* being certain that the clues to those answers are all in place.

What if they attack your "prepared material" in ways you had never
thought of?  Like magically tunneling under a manor house instead of
going in through the gate?  Did you remember to write in your notes
what kind of earth (clay, rock, soil?) the place is built on?  What
if, in order to follow the the adventure the way you wrote it, they
have to talk to the gate guard to get a particular hint - and they
just kill him instead?  Or that the tunnel that leads to the "real
adventure" is under the stables, and they set fire to the stables and
burn it down?  In my scenario, I don't care what they do, because
there's nothing that the players are "supposed" to do.  They're
"supposed" to do whatever they think is appropriate under the
circumstances, and the storyline isn't "supposed" to follow a certain
pattern.

To return to your original argument:

>	I would quit instantly if I found out that a GM was putting clues in
>front of me as I was searching.  It means that he doesn't know the answer to
>the whatever mystery we're investigating, and that completely destroys any
>possible sense of accomplishment you could feel from solving it.

The way my group plays it, there -is- no mystery to be solved, just
a world full of events that you can partake in, struggle against, 
observe, or ignore, whatever strikes your fancy.

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