From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 27 Aug 92 19:39:25 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

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.

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.  I had never done
that before, and they had no clue when they "woke up" and proceeded with their
plan...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.   It was my intention to make the
next segment of the game deadly dangerous and the teleporting was going to
make for big trouble.  But I _was_ surprised at how they took it.

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...

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.  In fact, I strictly enforce the rule that what the players
says is what the character says, unless specifically prefixed with the word
"aside" - any my players use that word maybe two or three times in a session
that might stretch a dozen hours.

Details of plot and plan for a given adventure come from the deep unconscious-
ness.  Sometimes I'm adapting a movie or a novel, though you'd be hard put to
prove it by the time I was finished, but the movie or novel would provide a
great deal of "color" and "scenery" for descriptions.  For games not based on
movies or novels, the color must come from my notes.  Like I say, the "look and
feel" come before, these I must prep.  But the details of the players choices,
the actions they must or must not take - don't care.  It just happens.  And I
early noticed that that happened with my prep games, too.  The color, the
flavor, the look and the feel, those I could create before, but the details
of the actual adventure, no control. And I found that no control was necessary.
Mind you, sometimes the look and feel came not _long_ before.  I remember the
basic details of windwhales were invented just minutes before the game started,
during the opening narration, in fact, but they were pretty well on the mark.
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.

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.  People would
be able to fall into character so easily, and the characters were so distinct.
Bruce and Julie's characters, brother and sister, would bicker and fight like
they were really brother and sister, though Bruce was an only child and Julie
had no brothers.  Was it acting?  Not really, it sounded too real, almost
practiced.  I believe they, and my other players, truly felt the roles, and
would react differently with different characters.  They, too, could enter into
the game, and become unaware of outside concerns.

That unawareness of the outside enhances my power as GM.  In an earlier post,
I had mentioned being able to thoroughly scare my players.  Just as a person
suspends belief while reading a novel, giving over their perception of reality
to the book, at least to some degree, so my players and other GM's players too
must, give over their reality to the GM.  What greater power could a person
have?  For those hours, I had more control over their minds than Jim Jones did
his victims, I could control their perceptions, often their very thoughts,
certainly their world.  It ceases to matter that the room is bright with warm
sunlight, if I tell them they are miles underground, surrounded by silence so
utter that all they could still hear was the sound of their own raspy breath-
ing, and they would imagine it, and enter into it, with such detail, that
they _were_ there.  The details they imagine may not exactly jibe with mine -
in a game, more than "real world", we each occupy our own subjective reality.
But, because improv reacts to, and incorporates, their mental pictures as they
reveal them through questions or actions, that different though they may be
from one another, or even from the GM's, they are getting continual, positive
feedback.  Jarring inconsistancies don't arise, and minor ones are bridged.
They thus become more and more receptive to my words.  I wouldn't call it
hyposis, but I suspect some similar mechanisms are involved.  What could get
more godlike?

But I am a benign god, I sought to entertain, and succeeded in no small
measure, and it is from that that I derive _my_ pleasure as GM.  Other GM's -
I don't know.  My wife is not into gaming, but she has tried my games once or
twice and at least tasted that kind of power.  She believes that much of the
bad press our hobby gets may be due to GM's exercising that kind of power with
too little thought for the consequences, that an incautious GM may, indeed,
have enough power to push unstable people right over the edge...

Perhaps so.  I don't think it is any more than a good book or movie could do.
But it is certainly no _less_ than a good book or movie could do.  There are
certainly enough psychos out there that go berserk after watching movies or TV.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
How about we all do something reasonable?  I bet that'll confuse 'em!