From: cscott+@CS.CMU.EDU (Curtis Scott)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 16:30:23 GMT

In article <1992Aug17.144247.58212@cc.usu.edu>, sl9b4@cc.usu.edu (Deep Six) writes:
|> In article <Bt3Dt6.BEL@acsu.buffalo.edu>, 
|>  swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann) writes:

[in re whether to prepare or improvise a scenario]

|> > 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.
|> 
|> No, it's more than just time, it's the impact the players are having on
|> the game. Let's use another example -- the characters are searching 
|> another room. There is nothing in the room, but the characters search it
|> anyway. In the prep game, there is not going to be anything there no 
|> matter what (cuz the room was created before the game was played). In
|> a improv game, the characters might find something in the room just 
|> because they search (not because it was hidden). In that way, the players
|> are making up the game to an extent.

As a long-time improvisational referee, I have a point to make here. 
You are implying that the players' participation in creating the story
is somehow a bad thing (although I will grant that you have not said that
explicitly). I happen to think that it's a very good thing, and in fact
a specific advantage of the improvisational style of refereeing.

I'll give an example. In my early days of refereeing (nearly 15 years ago
now), I was a very preparation-oriented GM. I was cured of this by several
things, but the most striking was a real miserable experience involving a
labyrinth. My players were wandering in a classical "dungeon" environment,
and wandered into a small maze. It took an hour of play time for them to
find their way through, with me giving them which way they could go, and
them constantly making wrong turns. It was depressing.

I recognized the problem early, but I had the mindset that as GM I could
not affect things except by placing them in advance. So the players had a
bad time.

I will freely grant that this was not so much a failure in preparation,
as inflexibility on my part. I was relatively inexperienced, and should
not have put that maze in (but it looked SO easy when it was on a map).
As an improvisational referee, I have handled mazes of much more complexity
(and many other "limited-perception" situations, by making them go on
just long enough for the players to feel the difficulty, but not so long
that the players were bored.

For years, I improvised every session I ran. I would attend conventions,
running GURPS games and allowing the players to pick the genre on the fly.
It was a blast. Recently, though, I attempted a campaign of Call of Cthulhu.
I was not familiar with the horror genre, so I fell back on prepared
published adventures. While the adventures were good, and I put in my
time adapting them to my group, they just weren't as much fun for my
players, because I had decided too much in advance. If they "went the
wrong way" (metaphorically speaking) I felt bound to the facts as stated,
instead of improvising a new solution.

I will do my best to avoid that mistake again. I agree that not all
referees will enjoy improvisation, but there is no better way for me.

Re props: I game in my office at home. It is literally filled with boxes
and goofy stuff of all types---much like Ray Bradbury's office from
Ray Bradbury Theater. Thus, I can always assemble props quickly.
Scrolls, etc. with specific writing are a little tough, but if my
players find a little lead statue of Ptah (for example), I just whip
it down from the shelf.

Curtis

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