From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Date: 19 Aug 92 18:19:56 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <Bt6tur.34D.1@cs.cmu.edu>, cscott+@CS.CMU.EDU (Curtis Scott) writes:
>In article <1992Aug17.144247.58212@cc.usu.edu>, sl9b4@cc.usu.edu (Deep Six) writes:
>|> In article <Bt3Dt6.BEL@acsu.buffalo.edu>, 
>|>  swann@acsu.buffalo.edu (Stephen Swann) writes:

>[in re whether to prepare or improvise a scenario]

>|> > 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.

>|> No, it's more than just time, it's the impact the players are having on
>|> the game. Let's use another example -- the characters are searching 
>|> another room. There is nothing in the room, but the characters search it
>|> anyway. In the prep game, there is not going to be anything there no 
>|> matter what (cuz the room was created before the game was played). In
>|> a improv game, the characters might find something in the room just 
>|> because they search (not because it was hidden). In that way, the players
>|> are making up the game to an extent.

>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'd like to add to that.  First of all, the players may well look in some
place it never occurred to you to place something, but which the logic of
the situation admits that that might have been a hiding place.  Second of
all, while the place they look may be clever and I might not have thought
of at and what all, it may _still_ not be used.  Most improv GM's simply
admit of the _possibility_, the fact of it is usually, at least in my
case, left to the dice.

In the quoted scenario, I'd assign some probability of any given hiding place
actually being used, depending on who did the hiding.  Then the game boils
down to, how many places can we think of where something might be hid?  In
a prep game, my own imagination is the limit, if _I_ didn't think of it, it
didn't happen.  In an improv game, it might happen whether I thought of it or
not.  Maybe I didn't think of the floorboard.  If the owner is paranoid and
had a 4 in 6 chance of using any hiding place he knew of, then a 1-4 will
place something there.  Yes, the longer and more thoroughly they look the
better they will make out.  But that is true in the prep game, too, unless
they know the GM so well they just look in all the usual places.  With improv,
there _are_ no "usual" places...

I grant you this is a Schroedinger's Cat universe we're running here.  If you
don't look there's nothing there.  If you do there is, or you know there's
nothing.  In either case, the end result is the same _as_far_as_the_players_
know_or_care.  Players who are hyperactive do better in such a world than do
the one who wait around for something to happen _to_ them, but that's true of
any well-structured game, and more active players _should be_ rewarded.

>Re props: I game in my office at home. It is literally filled with boxes...

Props don't make the game.  I've never used them - at all - in my 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