From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 25 Aug 92 19:51:51 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <RANNOU.92Aug22093702@zuse.info.polymtl.ca>, Rannou@info.polymtl.ca (Patrick Rannou) writes:

>OK, so why don't you ask them? Tell them that you changed the "reality"
>according to their guesses in order to make the game seem more enjoyable.

Getting obnoxious around here.  You think my players don't know I improv?
They understand and accept that style of gaming, and they've gamed both ways.
I remember what they did one poor over-prepared sot who tried to take them on.

I do _not_ change reality "according to their guesses".  My group would be
started into laughter by such a remark.  Until you understand the basic
point here, there is just no point in continuing.

>    You do what is best for the game, to make it hard
>   and fun and leave your players with a sense of accomplishment with pride
>   in those who died well and plans for those who did not, and always, _always_
>   leave them looking forward to the next game.

>Yes. It's just that I find this hard to accept a game based on a lie. The

Mindset, Pat, mindset.  I no more lie to my players than you do.  It's _all_
made up out of whole fabric.

>lie being: You find this all great and fun because you DON'T know that I'm
>just making this all up as it goes. If you knew, you'd hate me for that...
>but you'll never know! Bwahahahahah!". This I find unaceptable both as a GM
>and player.

This is silly.  I started out life as a religious prepper.  My players early
discovered it was more fun when I winged it, and would try to set up situations
where that was the case.  Even to the extent of deliberately heading for the
edge of the map...

>A GameMaster _accepts_ the responsibility that he or she is there specifically
>and for no other purpose than to _entertain_ the others.

>*sigh*, yes oh too much very true. How I wish for once that my players
>would think like that too! Notice, I add "and himself, too, of course" in
>your sentence. There really is NO point in Gming to a group of players and
>being quite successful at making all the players have great fun if you
>yourself DON'T have fun.

In a way I agree - and I have seldom had trouble having fun as GM, but in
another way, I must disagree.  In a sense, the GM is the host of the game,
and like the host of a party, it may be fun but it is a different sort of
fun than that which the guests have, and a good host, and a good GM, will
accept the fact that his or her fun is secondary to that of the players.
In this sense, gaming is a form of entertaining, it's a bad host who ignores
a guest who is not having fun, and it's a poor GM who ignores a hapless
player not having fun.

Now, a GM doesn't have to address that problem by giving the hapless player
the game on a silver plate any more than a party host _must_ address an
unhappy guest by pouring more alcohol in them.

>Bravo, Elizabeth, well-spoken.  Remember that from the players point of view,
>these considerations were never present.  They worked hard to solve the
>mystery, and succeeded, and their proofs were unanswerable.  We should have
>such proof in modern courtrooms.  True, I lost some options in acknowledging
>their cleverness.  It totally blew my plans for the game after next.  What
>the heck, I don't plan these things in such detail that that cost me much,
>no more than a few pages of notes and less than an hour of time.  That is one
>of the biggest advantages of improv.

>This I agree less, tough.

Let's keep less of an attitude, shall we?  We have all already agreed in
principle that it all comes down to a matter of taste here.  The whole point
of continuing the thread is to try to understand all points of view in hopes
of everyone improving their GM'ing abilities.  Let's keep this out of the
swamps...

>                           You say they worked so hard to solve the mystery,
>and 'succeeded'? Only because you decided to let them.

Hmmmmmmm.  In a sense, yes.  In a sense, no.  In most improv games with which
I am familiar, even the GM does not know at the start what the final result
will be.  I may not even know this is going to be a "mystery" scenario, these
types of labels come at the end of a session, not at the begining.  Generally,
characters have their own agenda, and players issue directives for there
characters without much prompting from me about what "I" want to do as
architect of the scenario.  In return, I run "the world", its background,
autonomous functions and its reactions to the players.  Occasionally, I
throw in details that are, at least at the start, meaningless to me.  To me,
they are just detail in a description.  To the players, they are part of a
puzzle they are working on.  I sometimes do not know what they are making out
of what they are given, sometimes I do know, and can guide it to some extent.
As the game progresses, these details firm up into the actual scenario.  When
it is "finished", it is usually obvious to everyone what we had, what we did,
and so on.  If it turns out to be a mystery, the culprit, whether caught or
not, can be inescapably identified, by me and the players.  I may or may not
have "decided" to "let them" win.  In the most successful games, the issue
never even comes up.

>                                                        They would have
>worked just as much hard to succeed at solving the mystery YOU had put for
>them. What I feel happened is "They worked so hard to solve the mystery,
>and failed, but since that would have ruined the game I changed a few
>thinghs to make it look like if they succeeded, and thus they did, and the
>result was an incredibly fun game, far better than would have been normally
>possible given the real solution to the mystery".

See previous paragraph.

>At least you realize the loss of options.

To the contrary, I believe I have far more options than you ever will.

>                                          That's what's I find important in
>prepared games: they add diversity of events. Remember that if they managed
>to make you change the culprit,

They _don't_ _make_ me do anything, that's the bloody point, blast it all.
There may not even _be_ a culprit - there may not even _be_ a mystery, for
crying out loud.

Look, this point needs to be addressed or this argument will never _ever_
come to rest.  This is a shared fantasy, one person operates the basic
machinery of the universe, the others control characters within.  Of course
they interact, but this is not a boardgame, first you move HERE, then you
move THERE, pick up THIS, put down THAT.  This is not Zork.

>                                 it's only because when they were working
>hard to solve the mystery, they were making wrong assumptions and instead

The assumptions were not necessarily wrong.  As GM I have the power to
_decide_ they are wrong, but I may not choose to exercise that.  The
assumptions _are_ the theme of the adventure, they _are_ the thrust of
the game.

>of proving those wrong a soon as the opportunity presented itself, thus

There is no proof where reality is not yet fixed.

>making them realize they had been following a wrong track, you instead

If they are following the wrong track the logic of the game will eventually
make it manifest.

>rolled with it in an "interactive" way, and went along with their ideas,

It is _their_ ideas, combined with my own, that make it a shared fantasy.
In a sense, everyone has some degree of GM-like abilities, though it all
remains subordinate to my own, for someone must coordinate.

>until they were so convinced that what they came up with was "THE" truth
>that telling them otherwise would have ruined the game. In short, you gmed
>it so that it was GOUNG to be changed anyway.

Closer.  Until they were so convinced that what they came up with was "THE"
truth that telling them otherwise would have compromised the history as
established in the game.

>                                               You LET them make you change
>it, and whatever they would have come up with, as long as it was "good",
>good enough to make you "go along with it", would eventually have become
>"the" truth.

So long as you are not forgetting my input, and so long as you realize that
incorporation of player material is by no means guaranteed or unaltered,
yes.

>I prefer to separate good roleplaying from the events in the story. If two
>PCs do the same actions, one unsing good roleplaying and the other bad
>roleplaying, the next set of events should, IMHO, be the same. The only

Here, we differ.  Poor role-playing causes inconsistancies in the game, and
what comes next should reflect that.  "Beware the stranger, Haltrimar, with
his babble of hit points and other such meaningless stuff..."  Since this
is the point where taste inevitably rules, we should keep this thread on
the subject of strategy and use within certain criteria.

>difference should be in the amount of XPs. Of course, that's impossible. A
>GM always prefer good roleplayers and thus tend to favor them
>instinctively. Having good preparations is no garantees against that, but
>it can help a little.

>   >I mean, if you've got 3-6 people in front of you, who took one little
>   >slip you made and turned it into the linchpin of the whole caper, and it
>   >*makes sense* more than what you thought you were doing... Well, it's
>   >going to make the players do a reality-check if you don't make your
>   >decision at least as sensible as theirs, and prefer'bly more-so.

>   Precisely.

>Why? Life is seldom sensible. [...]

RPG's, no less than any other form of entertainment, require a willing
suspension of disbelief.  One reason I dislike games with too-complex
mechanics is because they slow me down and take extra time, and the
pacing is critical to maintaining that suspension.  _Anything_ that
causes players to think "it's just a game" or something of the sort
will damage that suspension, and without it you just don't get really
good games.  I've run horror scenarios that scared the pee out of my
players - no easy task in a well-lit living room filled with bright
sunshine, coke bottles and bowls of potato chips.  I can do that
consistantly, and I find that improv style makes it much easier than
designing a scenario one way and winging it to try to file off the
edges where it doesn't fit.  This is why I keep harping on the type
and quality of the player interaction.  Questions like "but shouldn't
there be money in this desk?" are loud and clear indications that the
suspension of belief has broken.  When well-done, the issue never, ever
comes up.

>anyway, you catch my drift: I feel that choosing the "solution" that's
>always the most logical cuts on a lot of diversity.

Not always the most logical, but logical enough.

>                                                    Choosing the solution
>that's the most fun to play cuts on diversity too, and is not necesseraly

That sounds like an oxymoron to me.

>so desirable. Think about how weird the players will think they are
>paranoid when they discover that their "flawless logic" about their
>arch-enemy being linked to the murder were not founded at all!

>"It was such a perfect plan, dammit!"

I've done this.  Prep or improv, you _must_ keep them guessing.  When it's
just a matter of making the right moves you might as well play Parcheesi.

[...]

>Correct. Giving the players what they want is a key to make the games more
>interesting. The problem is that players don't realize that this should go
>both ways. And "giving the players what they want" can be done just as
>easily in a prepared game. It's very different to gving IN to everything
>the players want! (or think). Very very different.

I never said it couldn't be done in a prepared game.  I said _I_ found it 
more difficult.  Not impossible, merely more difficult.  Remember the
purpose of this thread.

>   The players should never get the feeling the universe revolves around
>them.

>Then why are you changing the universe according to their "flawless logic"
>THOUGHTS?!?!? Of course, if you mean "simply don't tell them", I refer you
>to my previous comments on "game based on a lie".

If you haven't got some clue to this question by this post, then please
spare any kind of followup.  I can't continue to spend this much time
trying to communicate a whole style if it all comes down to "you do it
your way and I'll do it mine."  This is supposed to benefit all of us
with insights into other ways of gaming.

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!
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc