From: magnus@nexto.udac.uu.se (Magnus Ring)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 19 Aug 92 14:39:10 GMT
Organization: UDAC, Uppsala, Sweden

In article <1992Aug19.030145.18318@tronsbox.xei.com>  
dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan) writes:
>> In article <4773@balrog.ctron.com> smith@ctron.com writes:
>> |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!
> 
> 	"Knowing the answer" is not enough.  When you see a magician  
do a
>      trick, you already "know the answer" -- it's a trick.  You  
need to know the
>      why's and how's and such.
> 
>> |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.
> 
> 	Then the players are writing the adventure -- and that's YOUR  
job.
> 

I think the GM job is to respond to the players actions. If the  
players go another
way that you anticipated you have to be able follow that way. In a  
Hack'n'Slash
game it's rather easy to prepare the lines a game will follow but  
when you play
Story Telling or Role Playing you need to respond a lot more to the  
players actions. You can't expect to be able to prepare all the ways  
the players can take 
the adventure.

>> |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.
> 
> 	A properly written mystery has one and only one possible  
solution.  It
>      must be impossible for any other solution to be valid -- the  
facts of the
>      case must be such that only the intended solution is correct.
> 

OK. Say you have your properly written mystery with a lot of clues  
and stuff
for the players to find in proper places. After a while you find that  
your players
never locate any of the main clues. They get into numerous useless  
sidetracks
(some of wich you might not have any prepared material for).
Here you have two choises. You could let the players drift of and  
never get closer
to the solution. Hardly much fun for anybody. Your second choise is  
to start pushing the players in the right direction. That, IMHO,  
would be 'changing reality'. I think this would really offend me as a  
player.


>
> 	If I found out that my GM changed reality so that my "answer"  
was
>      correct, I'd slit his throat and take away his dice.
> 

I think you missed the whole point with improvisation. There is no  
reality for the GM to change until you made your action. The GM  
respond to what you do. There is nothing saying what you do has to be  
the right solution. The GM is still free to think your action was the  
wrong one if he likes to.


/Magnus Ring


-- NewsGrazer, a NeXTstep(tm) news reader, posting --
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