From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 18 Aug 92 20:24:54 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1992Aug18.033715.9902@tronsbox.xei.com>, dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) writes:
>In article <Bt3Dt6.BEL@acsu.buffalo.edu> swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann) writes:
>|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"?

>	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.

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.

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.

>	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.

Improv _depends_ on highly interactive players.  Players that just sit back
and expect the GM to do all the work just are compatible with that style of
play.  You need players who can set their own goals against against the back-
ground of a living, functioning, impersonal world.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com) No, I don't speak for Cabletron.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Daily I'd go over to Congress - that grand old benevolent national asylum - and
report on the inmates there.  Never seen a body of men with tongues more handy,
or information more uncertain.  If one of those men had been present when the
Deity was on the point of saying "Let there be light" we never would've had it.