From: Elizabeth.Mccoy@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Elizabeth Mccoy)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 18:35:19 GMT

In article <4884@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com writes:
>In article <1992Aug25.215313.19534@samba.oit.unc.edu>, Elizabeth.Mccoy@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Elizabeth Mccoy) writes:
>>smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)  writes:
>
>>>What is the GM?  Is he God, or is he ILM? 
>>[In response to a much longer thread, of course....]
>>Unfortunately, it gets me to thinking... :-)
>
>>I was God -- with a slight inferiority complex, thinking, "Who am I to
>>be visiting such turmoil upon the characters, and somewhat from out of
>>left field, too!"
>
>Hee, hee, hee!  You know, I forget sometimes exactly how much power I _do_
>have.  In a sense, I guess, I sort of consider _myself_ to be ILM, weaving
>an illusion, a shared fantasy that I and my gamers can explore and interact
>with. Usually I'm so wrapped up with keeping the universe ticking along that
>I seldom consider that I have only to narrate whatever I want to happen.  There
>is really only one limit: what can I get away with without_breaking_their_will-
>ing_suspension_of_disbelief?  Within those limits, I am God, and those limits
>are, in fact, much wider than I usually credit.

<grin> Well, with luck I'll manage to get to that stage someday...
(Already the memory of the terror is dying down, a notion of a new plot
thread grows... Learning is incorperated... Hm. Is this addictive or
something?) 

>I recall one game where the players had worshiped their god and then settled
>down for a nap, and their god sent them a prescient dream.
[snip] 
>...well, I slaughtered the whole party.  Murdered 'em out, no saves, no
>running away, bad things teleporting all over the place, cherished characters
>torn limb from limb without hope.  It was a massacre.
>
>And they let me get away with it!  No screaming, no "you killed my favorite
>character", no whining.  Despite the collective realtime years invested in
>some of the characters I'd just offed, they were simply chagrined and ready
>to roll up new ones!  They were most startled when they awoke to see the glow
>fading from the idol and everyone still alive.
>
>And no, I didn't let them go in and get slaughtered and then retroactively
>invent the dream to get them out of it. [snip]
>[snip]  But I _was_ surprised at how they took it.

Trust. Major league trust. (The sort of trust that probably really helps
games go right.) I didn't do anything THAT awful, but... At one point I
said something that happened, one player (character?) said, "What?!" in
a shocked voice, and I restated what I'd said (cheerfully), and he took
it. I've seen him (and me, and others) get rather grouchy at the
(former) "Main GM" for warping reality. I got trust (possibly benefit of
the doubt :-) ) and repaid it with something reasonable. That... That
was worth the terror. 

>The GM _is_ God, in the game, but he must be an impersonal God.  God just
>worries about the universe, not the characters.  Yet, every GM must also
>be a split personality.  On the one hand is the impersonal, universe-running
>Almighty, and on the other the small, local, deity worshiped by the characters,
>who is, in fact, concerned for their welfare.  Then there are the NPC's with
>their own concerns, their own problems.  And so on, and so on...

Yeek. :-) Hmmmmm... That's easier to do as improv, isn't it? I ran into
one flaw in my/baddie-NPC's plan (the inability to pry one character off
her starship), and had some fits there. The rest, where I was just
handling the universe/NPCs/etc. was *much* easier. Hm. I suppose that
it's because I didn't really have any vested interest in what was going
to happen with most of the universe, but a bit more of the entertainment
depended on getting that character out of her protection.

In a universe where you know what's going on, who's doing what, etc.,
having a plan like that fail isn't so bad -- the PCs will wander into
other trouble, you can re-use a baddie.
>
>I find running improv to be almost an altered state of consciousness, I seldom
>think about the details of a description, I only "channel" it from "universe
>control", and then narrate the results of other, sometimes offstage actions
>of other entities.  I seldom think, "they're on the wrong track, better do
>something" or "maybe I can do that to them".  I listen to their conversation,
>and it can sometimes provoke actions from "universe control", but the inter-
>action of the game comes from the characters, not from any meta-conversation
>about the game. [snip]

Yeah, I touched that once or twice in retrospect... Those were the fun
times. 

>Very occasionally, (perhaps two or three times in my GM'ing career) I will
>decide I made a basic mistake somewhere, and will issue a "reality adjustment"
>to my players at the beginning of a gaming session, but that's one of the
>penalties of true improv, and my players are quite understanding, so long as
>it does not take them by surprise - or cost their characters lives or something
>like that.

Makes sense. Heck, *any* Gm should be willing/able to make a "reality
adjustment" if something is "off" somewhere. I'd gladly sacrifice a bit
of gaming-consistancy in the past for more universal consistancy in the
present/future. 
>
>As I noted before, every game picks up where some previous game left off,
>except for new campaigns.  This gives each character a continuous history,
>and I think that adds to the reality and feel of the character. [snip]

That's another good thing for improv over prep, in my book -- in the
game that we're (SO, me, unknown number of others except NOT the former
main GM) revamping/leaving, most stuff was planned out the kazoo and the
campaign had a sort of episodic feel to it. (I keep wanting to say
"sitcom feel," but that's not entirely accurate.) We had maybe one "To
Be Continued" game. There wasn't really a feel of a living, breathing
world out there. It breathed when we came near, or when the GM wanted
something to happen off-camera, but continuety was pfft. With luck, this
will not be the case with the revamped game.

[Rest of eloquent post deleted... Hm. I wonder if being able to post
eloquently contributes to GMing well? Or only for PBEMs?]

--EM
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