From: Rannou@info.polymtl.ca (Patrick Rannou)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
	<Bt3Dt6.BEL@acsu.buffalo.edu> <1992Aug18.033715.9902@tronsbox.xei.com>
	<4773@balrog.ctron.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 13:51:27 GMT

In article <4773@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith) writes:

...

   I can see someone not liking this style of play, but I must object to this
   conclusion.  I invariably game master in Stephen's style. Sometimes I know
   the answer to the mystery.  Sometimes I don't.  And, most importantly, some-
   times I'm wrong!

   If I know the answer, the game is semantically identical to your preparation
   cycle weeks in advance.  So long as my game notes allow me to be consistant
   with past history, it's all just made up.

   If I don't know that answer, it may be that there isn't one, or that I haven't
   made one up and need more feedback about what the players are planning.  The
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   solution may not be all that useful.

Yuck! That's exaclty what the previous poster said: You're completlely
destroying the sense of accomplishement!


All of youse "improvising" GM out there, try this on for size:

Next time you`re doing a scenario, say a murder mystery, play as normal for
say one and a half full hour, then stop and tell your players that you've
been improvising since the start of the game, and that you really don't
know how it will all turn up to (to prove it, tell them what you
"pseudo-prepared" for the next events). Then ask them what they think about
this. 

I'm sure all those GMs who GM for players who think these "notes" aren't
memos on new things but actual comments on the "prepared" module (for XPs
prupose, perhaps) will find that most players will be DISGUSTED to learn
that. I know mine do, amnd I knoe that every single player I've ever met or
played with, even if I wasn't their GM, would too. The only times when they
wouldn't would be when the game is played for laughs, not in a regular
campaign.

To me, it's just the SAME thing/feeling as if suddenly, after one month of
classes, your teacher suddnely told you that he improvised his class and
that he has a general idea on how to teach the next week's classes but he
has no idea what he'll teach the class in the last month of the semester.
Yuch!


   If I'm wrong it's even more entertaining - for me, as well as everyone else.
   I remember one game vividly where my players carefully analyzed the situation
   and, with unerring and flawless logic, thoroughly nailed a character I had
   thought was completely blameless.  I reviewed the facts, thinking maybe he'd
   been framed, but it turned out the NPC I thought was responsible for the mess
   was, in fact, a front for the real culprit.  Sometimes your players really are
   smarter than you, and they deserve recogition of that fact.  If I'd simply
   invented the scenario beforehand, and stuck to the NPC "culprit" the game
   would not have been as much fun or as successful.

Gack! Flawless logic indeed... What's so wrong about PC's "flawless" logic
turning out to be wrong after all? I'm all in for winging it, but what
you're saying is that the players are writing the module! YES! Writing the
module! Because the PCs used "flawless logic", the real culprit became
someone else! It's just like if you had Shroedinger's box, and heard the
cat meow inside, then opened the box to find nothing inside! Or if there
was a tree falling in a forest, but since nobody was there to hear it it
didn't make a sound and thus didn't fall at all. Gack and regack. Maybe you
have fun with that, but I'd NEVER be able to make a viable campaign out of
pure impro like that. And I DON'T call it roleplaying, I call it
interactive storytelling.


   >	Improvisation is a necessary evil, 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.

   That is not necessarily incompatible with improv.  I usually have a very high
   level view of an upcoming game session.  I know that background characters and
   major NPC's like the back of my own hand [avoid cliches like the plague - Ed]
   and I know the culture even better.  The exact layout of the town is simply
   not relevant, and the flow of play is largely up to the players.

That seems more reasonnable, and matches the mostly-impro I've gmed. But
the enjoyment and ideas I get from my impro is nothing compared to a fully
preprared game. When I have a preprared game, instead of using my brain to
impro the obvious things, this is already done so I'm free to use it for
other more interesting things, like sub-sub-plots, hooks, rushes,
descritive storytelling, and better roleplaying for NPCs. Roleplaying an
NPC is never really good for me when I have to thing about his motives and
personnality at the same time.

   Improv _depends_ on highly interactive players.  Players that just sit
                              ^^^^^^^^^^^

That's what I mean by "interactive storytelling".

back

   and expect the GM to do all the work just are compatible with that style of
   play.

So? Don't compare apples with oranges, here. Players who don't sit back and
expect the GM do not do all the work work even better in prepared games, too.

   You need players who can set their own goals against against the back-
   ground of a living, functioning, impersonal world.

How can it be impersonnal when everything the Players say and the PCs do
gives the GMs new ideas to decide upon the next "set of events" that's
going to happen?

From PERSONNAL experience only, I'd say that it takes a far better
imagination to make prep/impro games than impro games only. With impro
games only, you only have to have quick wits, and let the players provide
all the subplots and plot hooks you need, without htem evewn realizing it!
(just like your example where their "flawless logic" made you decide that
another NPC was the main bad dude instead).

I'm not saying at ALL that perpared games should make everything in it SET
IN STONE. not at all. Fact is, EVERYTHING you have in a pure impro game,
like chaging on a whim the real culprit, you can ALSO have on a prepared
game. But the reverse is NOT true. So I guess prep/impro games really are
"superior". All IMHO, of course.


It's true than "pure" off-the-hook impro often lead to our greatest moments
in roleplaying. But I don't see why that precludes preparation in games. 



Pat.


--
/---------------------------\
| Patrick "Paradak" Rannou. |
| Rannou@info.polymtl.ca    |
\---------------------------/