From: swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 16 Aug 92 19:51:06 GMT
Organization: UB

Another -long- article on the merits of improvisation in DMing.  You
were warned.  :-)



In article <1992Aug16.030758.58183@cc.usu.edu> sl9b4@cc.usu.edu (Deep Six) writes:
I wrote:
>> Now, whose method is "better"?  I'd say it's just another matter of
>> personal preference, wouldn't you?
>
>I figured we would get around to this sometime. If you want to call 
>off this thread on account of personal preference, that's okay, but
>I've always thought that was sort of a cop out. 

Well, I thought I was just being logical about this.  I've been DMing in
"my" style for more than 12 years, and I'm not about to change.  You've
clearly been doing it in "your" style for about that length of time, and
I doubt that you're going to change, either.  We're both exceedingly 
happy with the results we get, and the responses from our players, so
why *should* either of us change?  However, if you just want to discuss
this for fun or whatever, I'll be happy to continue.  :-)

>Nice and polite, easy to follow, but not very enlightening, I'd say.
>I've really enjoyed this thread, and have learned a lot about the 
>merits of ``winging it.''

Well, ok, given that you feel this discussion is interesting and (maybe :-)
valuable, I'll be happy to continue it.  Before we go any further, though,
I'd like to point out that the fact that I don't prepare for anything in
my campaign isn't because I think that prep work is "useless", it's
because I don't have time to do extensive preparations, and I have had
great success at winging it (my players aren't aware that I'm winging
it, by the way - I've never told them.  They are convinced that I do
about an 80/20 mix of prep/winging it.  Fortunately, none of them read
the net :-).

>>>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.  :-)
>
>Ah, but by your own admission there are things you can't do by just
>improvising, so you are limiting yourself. Other GMs (like me) have  
>the benefit of using both ways (using prep as their front line and improv
>as a back up, or vice versa). 

You're correct, but due to time limitations, I have my choice of
either putting in my effort "during gaming" (time already allocated),
or spending extra time outside the gaming session, which I usually
don't have, because of numerous other interests and time commitments.
So winging it makes it tougher to DM, but I enjoy the challenge, and
who knows, maybe it's sharpening my wits, too.  ;-)

>>>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?
>
>Well, when you quote just that one line, I guess it could be considered
>a flame, but it wasn't intended as such, and I apologize if you took it
>as one. The point of that statement was that political science and 
>sociology are already there, and if a person knows enough about them
>(like you), he/she can use basic principles as cards. The different
>combinations are your plots.

Ok, then I agree with you.  When I say that I "invented an entire Drow 
political system", all I meant was that I had drawn on my incidental
knowledge of politics, religion, economics, sociology, etc, and created
a (hopefully) "realistic" picture of the current state of affairs in
the Vault.  That seems a perfectly reasonable approach, given:
  (1) I never expected the players to acquire a book on the subject
  (2) Even if I had expected that, I never expected that they would sit
    down immediately, and read the damn book on the spot.  :-)

>Well, I think I would have made a scroll on weathered paper that is
>ready to fall apart. The players could have a lot of fun looking at it and 
>opening it. Even in a game that is founded on imagination, an occasional 
>visual aid can be very stimulating. 

You're probably right.  But I have essentially no artistic ability
whatsoever, and yet I have a hyper-creative imagination.  So I would
instead describe the scroll in detail, making sure to give them the
proper inpression of it's age and delicacy.  I would talk about the
nature of the wax seal on it - whether they recognized the seal, even
stuff like whether the kind of wax was something they had never seen
before (or whether they -had- for that matter).  I would talk about
the writing, describing something about the nature of the script (if
they could read it), etc.  In this -particular- case, the scroll was
actually very new, it having been just commissioned from a spy in the
Vault of the Drow, and was written in Westlon, a common language in my
campaign, so they had not trouble reading it.  And the seal was
already broken, and thus only a fragment of it was readable, and the
players failed to regnize it from the tiny piece remaining.

>mage or thief or whoever. That would be on a type-written page, so they 
>could refer to it. Maybe it would have some clues buried in the text. 
>Wing that.

Obviously I can't "wing" a physical object :-) but I can certainly
match your "real object" with my "description of a real object".  And
as for winging the clues buried in the text, I wing that stuff all the
time, that's practically the idiom of my campaign.  :-) Anyway, I told
you (in a previous post) what the contents of that scroll were - it
had -tons- of possible leads to pursue, some of them useful, some of
them false, some of them downright dangerous.  That scroll, which was
really just an "incidental" discovery, became the pivotal point of the
next year of game-time, as my players decided that the Vault of the
Drow sounded interesting and important enough to take a closer look
at.  Which then lead to them becoming embroiled in the ongoing power
struggle within Drow society.

>Well that's why I said ``in a way'' that counts as preparation. The 
>point was that, if you can take random scraps from your forebrain and
>put together good plots, advance prep can work wonders.

Maybe so.  But as I've already pointed out, my prep work has almost
always come to naught, because my players always skip over the stuff
I spent time working on, and start pursuing things that I had either
only outlined, or that I had frankly only alluded to, in the vaguest
way.  :-)

>> Isn't the essence of creativity just taking things that already exist,
>> and combining them in new and interesting ways?  
>
>Yes, but the difference is that you're just making it up here and there,
>while in a prepared scenario, the characters are discovering things set
>there for them to discover. Example -- the players are searching a room.
>In an improv game, there might be something there, maybe not. It depends 
>on if you just make something up to be there. In a prepared scenario, 
>there is a definite reward system. If the players are clever, they might
>decide to look under the floorboards (where there is ALREADY a key, gem
>gun, whatever). If they do, they are rewarded by finding the prize. Now,
>in improv games, the players are just searching in a room that wasn't 
>there 5 seconds ago, and there may not be anything there unless you come
>up with it. If they do find something, it's not a reward, it's just some
>thing you thought into existance seconds (or even minutes before). See
>the difference?

As near as I can tell, the difference is entirely temporal.  This is
almost a matter of metaphysics.  You decided 27 hours before the
characters entered the room, that there was a key under the
floorboards.  I decided it 30 seconds before they started searching
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 say
it all depends on your perspective.  Suppose you didn't know (or
better yet, didn't care) that I was making this up at the moment,
instead of days in advance?  Either way, it's "just something that
Steve made up", why is it more rewarding that I made it up days
ago instead of right now?  Why are you any "smarter" for looking under
the floorboards when the room was made up "in advance"?

A player in either one of our campaigns should know to ask for details,
or to take note of the details that are provided to him.  If he finds
out that the "office/workshop" of this NPC has unpolished floorboards,
it would probably be worth seeing if any of them are loose.  That's
true whether the DM prepared this scenario in advance, or whether he's
winging it.  If the DM is good at what he does, the players can't tell
which he's currently doing.  At any rate, regardless of which method
he's using, you should probably check those floorboards.  :-)

>Now there you go again, taking that one line and making it into a flame.
>I do apologize (again) for my snottiness, but hey, look at your statement.
>You sound like you are completely out of touch with your players, and they
>are completely clueless as to what they are going to do in the next five
>minutes. I have NEVER played with a group that changed direction from 
>minute to minute, how did your players stay interested long enough to 
>learn the history of that Drow civilization?

Well, they were engaged in trying to track down someone who had been
smuggling mind-controlling drugs into the kingdom, and using them to
zombie-ize people.  The players were doing this as a "favor" to the
King, who had asked for their assistance (with them being the most
"effective" adventuring party currently active, and also being of
unquestionable loyalty to him).  It took them weeks of adventuring and
spying, on the borders of the eastern desert, to track down the source
of the drug trade, and the method by which it was transported into the
kingdom.  They finally tracked it all the way back to the capitol,
where it turned out that the malefactor was a wizard in the employ of
a "fallen" noble (disgraced and impoverished by gambling and
womanizing).  The wizard was using his "zombies" to infiltrate the
houses of other, wealthier nobles (as servants, mostly), and to gather
blackmail on them, so that his employer could force them to
re-establish him as one of the "great houses".  And the wizard, of
course, would earn a hefty fee and a prominent position as the advisor
to a great noble house.

Once the party knew who the wizard was, they lured him out of the city
on a bogus premise, then broke into his study while he was away, and
found the incriminating evidence.  Mission complete, except for
returning the evidence to the palace, at which point it was in the
hands of Royal justice, and no longer their concern.  But once in the
study, they found a whole lot of other interesting books, and sat down
to damn well read them all!  That was how they got embroiled in Drow
politics - the wizard had commissioned that paper from a spy in the
Vault of the Drow, and was planning on using his soon-anticipated
position and wealth to get himself a foothold with one of the Drow
noble families, which would give him access to a lot of otherwise
outrageously expensive arcanery that the Drow (especially nobility)
can concoct or obtain fairly easily.  So, that's how my players
suddenly, and without warning, got interested in the Drow.  See?
Simple.  :-)

>Well of course they tell me. I hear this sort of thing all the time --
>``Hey I think one of these times we should probe hill on the perimeter,
>it's an infiltration waiting to happen.'' I don't have to prepare the 
>hill right then, I just make a note and start thinking about it. I'll 
>prepare it later. And what is to keep you from asking your players what
>they might be doing next session?

Mainly a matter of personal pride, I would suspect.  :-)  I'd be lying
if I said that I never know what they're going to do.  Occasionally
one of them will tell me something like, "you might want to think
about the that ruined city in Shalamarr.  We're thinking of taking
a closer look at that one building whose dome is still standing."
In which case, I do indeed do *some* thinking about it.  Like, maybe
while I'm cutting the grass or something.  :-)

>> Maybe if I forced it into the campaign.  
>
>Well, they're forcing you to improv everything (according to you), so 
>why not force them to play some prepared material? You don't seem to 
>mind being forced into a style of play, why would they?

Eye for an eye, huh?  :-) The premise of RPGing *the way my group
plays it* (and I guess that's a fairly critical point, here) is that
the DM has the job of creating a scenario, and of giving an
appropriate and reasonable response to anything that the characters do
within that scenario.  I'm more like a "judge" than a "game master", I
don't think of myself as "directing" events, but rather as simply
"judging" how they would most likely transpire, based on what I know
of the NPC's I have created, and the situations they are faced with.
i.e. it's as close as possible to being "out of my hands", and just
transpiring without my intervention.  Obviously that's a somewhat
utopian view of it, because obviously I *have to* create things and
direct events somewhat, but I try to do it as impartially as possible.

>It's also too big for your players to play in all at once, so you'll 
>never have to worry about writing it all up in detail. However, if 
>they do decide to globe hop to a portion of the ``stage'' that I 
>didn't expect, I can wing it, or ask for some time to prepare. While
>improving, other GMs (like me) can do everything you can. With the prep
>time, other GMs (like me) can do things you can't.

Like what?  If you're referring to the physical props you use, you're
quite right.  But if you're talking about events within the campaign,
I don't think prepared stuff is fundamentally different from stuff
invented on-demand.  I mean, from the player's point of view, how can
he tell the difference?  You've already seen the detail I lavish on
everything that I create, so it's not like it won't seem vivid or
anything.  Or would you like a testimonial from one of my players on
how he got clautrophobic, and begged everyone to turn back, during my
description of his party's descent into the Vault of the Drow?  :-)

>> My players Just Have To Make Do with my *wonderful* descriptions. :-)
>
>Well, I rest my case then. If your discriptions are wonderful, think of
>what kind of visual aids you could come up with. Got ya.

But my descriptive ability is -far- superior to my artistic ability.  ;-)
Also, see my case (far below) against the use of props (excepting maps,
which are obviously necessary). 

>>> 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...?
>
>Okay, you have a point, but there's still a difference.

Which is?  I mean, from the perspective of the players, (whose view of
this is all that really matters anyway)?

>[Cool, and improvised, plot deleted.]
>
>Very good. And no, I didn't hear that old one before. Maybe you ARE 
>in the wrong business. But plots are only part of the game. There is 
>no WAY you can improvise mechanics as fast as a prepared GM can. I mean, 
>you're running AD&D, right? You have to at least write up hit points
>and you probably have to write up more (like weapons, special skills
>or whatever). Unless you are using ``cookie cutter'' enemies (boring)
>you have to write up your encounters on the spot. 

I told you, that's why when I was a beginning GM, I used to prepare.
I've been playing AD&D (or rather, my heavily modified version) for
so long now that I can make up a character of X level, of any of the
primary character classes, in a flash.  By the time I get done telling
the players that they see someone, I already know all the vital stats
on him, plus his name, origin, and personality, and any characteristic
quirks or special data, and I make up anything else as needed.  I
can't do that with any other gaming system, because I'm not proficient
enough in them.  But in AD&D I can wing it perfectly well, and have
been doing so for many years.  My players -remember- my NPC's, even
the ones that they've talked to once, for 5 minutes.  (Of course,
they've been playing so long now, that obviously some get lost in
the sheer volume of people they've met, but they always recall the
"important" ones.  And that doesn't necessarily mean the "high level"
or "powerful" ones, either).

>In a big encounter or a mass battle, that could be pretty time consuming.

Most of the personalities in such a thing won't be exceptional.  You 
don't need individual ability scores on 0 level soldiers or orcs,
you just need to know their general characteristics.

>A prepared GM has it all written up. He just pulls out a nice, neat
>sheet from his note book and he's ready to roll.

I rely a lot more in those situations on my general knowledge of
warfare, and military tactics, along with what I know about the the
quality and experience of the troops and their commanders.  I don't
roll individual "to hit" and "damage" rolls when I'm dealing with
hundreds of troops, I just guage the layout of the terrain, the
formations of the troops, and start rolling "general outcomes" of the
clashes.  The guidelines from a wargame like Empires and Arms or
Imperium Romanum are pretty useful in situations like this.  The only
things I do via normal AD&D-style combat are the outcomes of clashes
between exceptional individuals or monsters, etc...  And I have that
affect the morale of the opposing sides in some manner which I deem
appropriate.

>>Another thing I don't do is have "planned endings" to adventures).
>                 ^^^^^^^^
>That should read ``can't do.'' Of course there are no planned endings
>in your games. There's no planned anything. You have no idea what the 
>players are going to do and neither do you. There's no reward system
>there's nothing for the players to ``figure out.''

The reward system is the enjoyment of playing.  My adventuring/battle
sessions are very kinetic and exciting, and my roleplaying sessions
are very atmospheric and often just as enjoyable.  And I invent the
mysteries that they have to figure out, as I go along.  You've read 
two of my scenarios (one in the last post, and one in this one).  Can
you honestly tell me that there's nothing in them to figure out,
and no reward for playing intelligently?

> [ cool jungle warfare plot deleted ]

>So there you go, a great plot (no better than your improvised one), but
>carried out in a way that it couldn't have been done in a ``winging it''
>game -- with prepared maps, clues, and props. There's no way you can 
>plant stuff like that in extemporaneous story lines. 

I thought I'd already demonstrated that I do that stuff all the time.
No physical props, but I give descriptions that include all the
relevant clues/leads to get the party thinking "just WHAT exactly is
REALLY going on here?"

>Besides not having 
>the actual props, it's hard to plant subtle clues like the Rosary. 

No, it's exceptionally easy, and I do it all the time.  See below:

>In an improv game, you'd say, ``Oh, and by the way, there's a necklace
>in the bag'' and try to make it sound harmless.

I most definitely would not.  The key here is to think like a player.
You have to be able to think what this is going to sound like from a
player's point of view, and describe it in detail, but in such a
manner that they will (or won't) take notice of the clues, depending
on how alert they are.

GM:  There's a black bag there, too.  Pretty standard looking medical
   issue type thing.
p1:  I open it.
GM:  There's some bandages, a set of surgical implements, some bottles -
  probably for injection, they've got holes through the stoppers - a
  stethescope, a black case about 8" by 2" by 4", a necklace with
  some beads [and a little cross], a couple of rolls of surgical tape.

I put the [and a little cross] in brackets, because I would roll to
see if that was visible on glancing into the bag.  Since I am rolling
dice all the time, there's no way for the players to know what I'm
determining (random encounter roll?  Perception roll?  Setting off
trap roll? etc...), or whether it's significant at the moment.  

If they looked very carefully, or better yet, if they took each of the
objects out and examined them, I would definitely say the bracketed
part of the sentence.  Odds are that they will look in the black case,
which happens to contain a set of hypodermic syringes and some spare
needles.  While shifting through the bag fishing that out, they may
again notice more details about the objects within the bag, in which
case I would give them a whole bunch of new info, most of it useless:
like, that one of the bottles was labeled, and that the necklace had a
little cross on it, and that the stethoscope looked like one of the
"wires" had been cut with a knife blade.  Red herrings are my stock
and trade, and besides obfuscation, they serve the additional purpose
of adding "atmosphere and realism".  :-)

>And if you didn't mention the
>Rosary, no one is going to say, ``is there anything wierd in the bag? Like
>a Rosary?'' With the physical props, the clue was buried under bandages 
>and stuff, plus there were other things to distract us (the maps, a flurry 
>of discussion, and plus the game was going ahead).

Also, with the physical props, you know that any clues that are buried
in the game are going to be in the stuff that the GM hands you.  Like,
you know you can't expect that one of the dead guys will have a U.S.
navy tattoo on his shoulder, because you weren't handed a corpse as a
prop.  :-) And you know that none of the dead guys has a secret set of
microfiche orders rolled up really tight, and loaded into the magazine
of his automatic pistol, because you weren't given a pistol as a prop.
In my "winging it" scenarios, anything you overlook is a potential clue
lost, and it's a tradeoff between how much time have you got to go
over everything with a fine-tooth comb, vs. are you in a big hurry to
complete the task at hand?

Now, don't take the above as actually being a serious argument against
the use of props.  Really, I'm playing Devil's Advocate in some sense,
because I do think props are kind of cool.  And they'd be even more
cool if I was any good at inventing them.  :-) But I'm just trying to
point out that you -can- make a case for props being "limiting",
just as you can make a case for them being a good thing.

>Now, I am not trying to convert you here, and I know you aren't trying
>to convert me. I see this as a learning thing, where you show me the 
>strong points of your preferences, and I do the same. It's not really a
>contest to see who has better ideas or who can argue better, but it is 
>stimulating to debate and counter-debate, even if it is just about
>gaming.

Ok, I agree.  I'm actually starting to get this urge to do some 
preparation for some adventures, even though I know I could wing
them if I wanted.  ;-)  I doubt that I'll ever be ambitious
enough to do any really nice props, though.  I'm a really crappy
graphical artist.  :-)

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