From: Rannou@info.polymtl.ca (Patrick Rannou)
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
	<1992Aug16.030758.58183@cc.usu.edu> <Bt3Dt6.BEL@acsu.buffalo.edu>
	<1992Aug17.144247.58212@cc.usu.edu> <Bt6tur.34D.1@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 12:46:09 GMT

In article <Bt6tur.34D.1@cs.cmu.edu> cscott+@CS.CMU.EDU (Curtis Scott) writes:



   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).

Yup. I did mazes, too. NIGHTMARISH! When seen from a map it's all so
SIMPLE. But for the PCs it's dull dull dull. The only good mazes are ones
where each turn looks different, or aren't too big. Things like "OKay,
here's yet ANOTHER intyeresction. You go right or left?" Get booooring
reaaaaal fast, I can assure you!

What you SHOULD have done at that time was rrealize that you made a mistake
and THEN wing it! Or simply give them the map, and say "every second of
real time that pass is one minute of game time!" and let them scramble to
find the way out...

Me, Whenever I got "dull" labyrinths, I make a second "player's" map, one
with ONLY the uninteresting parts, and let the players choose their way in
it... 

Once I did a real good scenario, a stupendous BIG maze, *3* quad pages big!
They had 4 hours real time to do it, and NO access to the map. The 4 hours
limit was there to be sure that the players acted like their PC:
Time-pressed. But I had my maze splitted up in over *12* different
sections, each with special interesting features, and I constantly drew on
battlemat the part of the maze they were in. Puttting in a few fights can
help too. Puttting many special features everywhere did the job great. They
had a great time in that maze. Because every "You go left or right?" was
intercaled with some other thing...



   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.

Oooooh, cute. I can do that too without a cinch. As soon as the party
starts to get lest interested, I simply say "Okay, you passs X hours in the
maze" and am done with it. And how can you even handle complex mazes
relying solely on improvisation? This means that wether the players turn
left or right doesn't affect what's going to happen next at all. Duh. I'm
all hear for impro, but prep as it's place too! I like impro more because I
really have a bad poker face. For plots, impro works often better with only
a skeleton prep. For NPCs personnality/stats/goals/desacriptions, for item
powers/dewscriptions, for locales and constant data, preps work FAR better.

Think about this:

GM: (impro) "The book you`ve found talk about the Zyrnion Empire..."

Either you just keep it short like that, which IMHO is bad, or you start
improvising things... describing the history of the Empire, it's Kings
names, etc...

Then a player ask: Could you repeat the history part again?"

Since I don't have photographic memory, I'm stuck. I don't like giving too
general a description, and I donT like constantly forgetting about many
details that in themselves are not vital, but still important...

I think a good GM *MUST* be good at prep AND impro.


   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.


So that's an excuse to throw out all preps altogether? I think not. You
just have to be conscious enough to start inrpvising as soon as it`s really
NEEDED. Me, whenever I do a plot prep, I do it like this:
I try to think of all the reactions NPCs could have to PCs actions, and
make the plot go like a fishing net, each knot a branching point where the
NPCs do something and I write "If the PCs do that, then NPC will do that
(another knot), but if PCs do that instead, then NPC will do other that,
etc...". The net is diamond shaped: it starts at a single knot, and after
going through many knots it comes back again to one knot, or a FEW knots.
Some mighjt say it's railroading, but remember that this takes into account
only the MOST probable things the PC do, and also since I have full preps
on the NPCs themselves, I can always determine without too much of a hassle
what they will do in case of "uinexpected" PC actions (and it happens
often). The trick is to impro everywhere the preps didn't dewscribe
something or badly apply to the game, but to BASE thos impros on these
preps, not on the whim of the moment.

When I 100% impro, I try to think about first the full layout of the place
where the PCs are. Maps are important. Then the NPCs and items, THEN some
events, and plot ideas and plot hooks, for at least the next 10 minutes.
Then I STICK to it as best I can. When a PC say he "searches the floorboard
for a treasure (GEM)", I them decide using this method:

Instead of deciding on ythe spur of the moment, saying "hey, that makes
sense, ok you find a loose board", I instead decides based on the mindset I
had 10 or 20 minutes ago WHEN I WAS CREATING THE PLACE AND EVENTS UP, and
ask myself if that fits with the reasons why I created that the way it is
now. Also I try to remember these players ideas for NEXT time I prepare a
scenario, so that even though their ideas may often not work the first
time, they still might enrich the game for another game session because
they provide fresh new ideas and insights to the gasme. I.E. In short, I
try to separate the two roles of the GM as much as possible: One is the
actual GM-module creation part, where "GM is absolute GOD or CREATION", and
the other is the GM-module running part, where "GM is impartial (well,
mostly impartial) ARBITER of EVENTS".

I think impro and prep complement each other quite nicely and a GM who
thinks he MUST not affect things prepared in advance except by placing them
the players in advance is forgetting how to use impro to help the prep
side, just like a GM who don't prepare is forgetting to use prep to better
the impro side.

   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.

Good. Whatever makes you happy, after all. My players just find it
disgusting when they learn that the whole adventure they wnet through was
monstly imporovised onyl minutes "in advance" or the actual events. They
say that they get the feeling that their actions don't count at all, and
that whatever they do it won't change what I the GM want the PCs to do/go
thorugh with. I'd say that's a very good definition of railroading, don`t
you? That's why i try to not do to much impro without some good prep to
back it up.


   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


I don't use many props, mostly because I'm a very bad artist... But if by
props you mean: maps, battlemat (you know, you draw the map and put the
figurines on it), and pictures of stranges runes or other things the party
finds on the walls, then yes I use props. I've even prepared a scroll,
fully sleaed with real wax. The only problem is I never got to use it in
the first place, and now I don't remember what WAS in it!!! I could open it
and reseal it, but since I had so much trouble sealing it in the first
place, I don't want to. Haaa, maybe I'll just let the party find it and
they'll just know it`s a real powerful scroll until they open it and I
decide what's in it (the party's mage as a magical alphabet for runes,
which I use OFTEN, and that scroll contains words in that "ancient
language").


Often, for impro to really work good, the GM must give the impression that
the gaming session was NOT improvised upon. That should tell that prep is a
good thing, no? A minimal prep involves maps, general room contents, and
fully fleshed out NPCs. By "fully" I mean not than just stats, but
motives... enough to make the GM feel that he "knows" the NPC enough to
really start "improvising" with it. Links between NPCs is also important,
because it`s really the weak point in the module structure: An NPC,
reacting to PCs, might just go and TELL another "boss" NPC of the PCs
actions, thus changing completely what the GM had in store for that more
important NPC.

I rarely do fully fleshed "plot" preps. I mean, this is were impro should
complement preprs after all. In one scenario I made, I had put troglodytes
in a dungeon, which looked like a maze filled with rooms and traps. A
minotaur and an evil illusionnist were also in the dungeon. What do you
think happened when the troglos got they butt kicked by the PCs? I didn't
prepare at all for a troglodyte to escape, and thus I thought the party
would kill off each troglos group one by one... but the one who escaped I
had to IMPRO his reaction. Based on the preps I had, I KNEW that the troglo
would simply go to his boss. The chase that insued was memorable. If I was
in gming a 100% impro module, how would I even KNOW the number of troglos
in the dungeon. Just chalk it up to whatever I feel most appropriate at the
moment? That's quite the same as the diceless thread.

I mean, sometimes doing always what you as a GM feel is the best thing
leads to, well.... UNIFORMITY. Of course it can be a great rush, but that's
not the point at all. These great rush where a PC live through a memorable
experience can also (and will) happen in a prep/impro game. The point is
that at all times (well, mostly all times), the "dangers" the party will
face will be unformly distributed against what kind of actions they do.
When they do something foolish, like letting a troglo escape, then the
decsion, although it's the same (the trolglo go tell his boss, boss gather
up ALL troglos to attack party), will have different results in a preprared
game because the total number of troglos wasn't decided on the spur of the
moment thinking "how many troglos are there in this dungeon? How many
troglos should I make go chasing the party to "punish" them for a foolish
action like letting one escape?", but this number was decided upon entirely
different reasons, and thus may be far different than what the GM maight
deem "appropriate", thus providing a greater diversity of results and
actions in the ensuing scenario actions. And remember: Life isn't at all
always what the power that be would deeem "appropriate".

I know that most GMs I know who like to "control" players are more impro
than prep. I know that when I feel the urge to control players I'm more
impro than prep. I assume it`s the same for everybody. And don't tell me
you don;t have much more control being "all impro". An example: those
troglos chasing the party, how many rounds does the PCs have to prepare
before the troglos catch up to them? Since you didn't even make a map, you
can only make a rough estimate, an improvisated guess, say 10 to 20
minutes. The fact is that whenver a similar situation crops up in an
ulterior module, the same 10-20 minutes will come about. That's a loss of
precision and diversity. When I have to impro, I try to base it on preps. I
looks at my maps, and estimate the time the troglos need to regroup. I had
TWO situations like this come up in my games. Once it was only 5 minutes,
the other about 30 minutes. Far more diversity than the "guess" I thoguht
at first. The GM should be surprised also by things, and fixing CONSTANT
things in preps is the best way to do it. And by CONSTANT things, I mean
things that aren't likely to change, like how many hit dice the main
villain got, what powers, what are his motivations, etc?

Sure, I don't set everything in stone. But whatever I come up with to
better enrich an NPC or whatever, it just comes up in the game as impro
tranforming itself into more preps, or even sometimes pure impro when it's
mostly obvious the item under impro isn't goi8ng to crop up in anymore
gaming session. Otherwise the need to write it down is there, or at least
the need  for a very good memeory.

I don't say it isn't possible to have a super good game with 100% impro.
With a good GM it's surely possible, just like with a good GM a prep game
miguht also work out good after all. But a good mix of both, is, IMHO, the
ticket to success.


Sorry for the waste of bandwidth...

Pat.





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/---------------------------\
| Patrick "Paradak" Rannou. |
| Rannou@info.polymtl.ca    |
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