From: duchon@clipper.ens.fr (Philippe Duchon)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Improvisation!
Keywords: Improvisation, misunderstanding
Date: 23 Aug 92 10:27:14 GMT
Followup-To: rec.games.frp.misc
Organization: Ecole Normale Superieure, PARIS, France


(Steve)
>|"Changing reality" - so what?  This is not any sort of objective reality in
>|the first place.  I made it up and I can change it.  If it's fun and playable,
>
(Dennis)
>	Of course it is.  How would you like to try solving a jigsaw puzzle
>with pieces that keep changing shape?
>
(Steve)
>|As for the "if the players" bit, the players won't get the idea unless they
>|_already_found_proof_.  You may not have meant to leave it there, but there
>
(Dennis)
>	Nonsense!  Players constantly go off in completely stupid directions.
>Anecdote:  three PC's in my Supers campaign witnessed a co-ed getting killed
>by a new drug.  The normal line of investigation here is to go talk to
>friends and family of the girl, right?  Well, one of them went
>street-crawling in a part of town nowhere near the girl's home or college
>(to be fair, it _was_ where she dies), and another went to talk to a
>crimelord he has a friendly-foe relationship with.  The third just tried to
>pick up a cute lab tech.  What's worse is that this isn't the stupidest
>thing any of my players has every done....  (I was ready for the first two
>of 'em, BTW; had to improvise the action with the third. ;-)  The first had
>convinced himself that he was dealing with someone from that part of town.
>The other one decided that the crimelord must have had something to do with
>it.  Both were wrong, and neither one had the slightest bit of evidence.
>They were following (kaff) "instinct".  As a rule, players routinely
>convince themselves that their pet theories are correct in _spite_ of the
>evidence or lack thereof.  It is usually possible to read whatever you want
>to into a situation; I always arrange the clues so that only the
>pre-ordained solution can be correct, but the PC's don't always retrieve all
>the clues, and they don't always believe (or _want_ to believe) what they've
>found when they DO have all of them.  (I've also had players see through my
>scenarios like used nutragena -- so it goes.)
>
(Steve)
>|it is, or they wouldn't have found it.  Now perhaps they are wrong.  Perhaps
>|the proof they have found is purely circumstantial.  But also, perhaps it
>|is right.  Which way leads to the better game?  If it's the way in the notes,
>|they were wrong.  If it wasn't, maybe they were right.
>
(Dennis)
>	The better game is the one wherein the GM plays fair.  Improvising the
>plot, _ESPECIALLY_ in a mystery, is not fair.
>
Dennis, I think what Steve is, the goal of a role-playing game is for the
players to have fun (I'd say it is for the players AND GM to have fun...).
Therefore, the better game is the one in which everybody enjoyed the game
session as much as possible.

As long as the impro is well done, the players won't notice that the GM did
it (except maybe they'll notice he didn't spend so much time reading his 
notes). So as far as the players are concerned, the impro/prep status of the
game doesn't matter; what matters is, was the adventure interesting/challenging
(/rewarding for those munchkins), did it seem "real". The worst thing, IMO,
is inconsistencies.

As for the GM, well, his choice. If you prefer to have things all written down
before playing, fine. If Steve (or I...) prefer to invent (totally or partly)
things on the spot, fine, as long as we are able to do this without 
inconsistencies. Of course, this doesn't mean EVERY clever thing the players
will do will be successful, nor that EVERY stupid thing they do will bring
them to failure. An improvising GM has to judge these things while playing,
whereas a non-improvising GM will try to decide them before.

Whether the players influence the scenario or not is, IMO, irrelevent. I 
personnally think they should: players sometimes have very good dramatic
ideas. Here is an exemple of a situation that appeared while I was GMing:

We were playing Vampire (PCs are Vampires in the modern world; this game
was full of intrigue and interaction with powerful NPCs). One of the PCs 
knew he had met a very misterious and powerful Vampire, but his memory had
been changed and he couldn't remember where and how he had met her. He then
had this weird idea of asking a profesional hipnotizer to make him get those
memories back. Well, in my mind, there was absolutely no way he could have
remembered any of the things this older Vampire wanted him to forget, but 
this idea felt good (and dramatically interesting), so I allowed it to work,
and it happened to be quite a good scene. Of course in this case the player
influenced the scenario quite a little bit, but nobody found this bad, so
why not ?

As Steve said earlier, it is virtually impossible to think of all the good
ideas players will have, so in most cases you'll have to improvise a lot
if you don't want to have a problem with a unique way to the solution. If
you think there should always be only one way of solving the mistery/problem,
well, I played and GMed both ways, and I really find more open games much
more fun to play and Gm.

In the case of a "mystery" game, I admit it is harder to the story consistent
if you improvise it totally, but thinking of a few clues before doesn't mean
these are the only ones that can be found...


---
   Jacob
>|
(Dennis)
>|>	However, when I draw up a mystery, there aren't any holes.  That's what
>|>the 11"x17" flowchart is for. ;-)
>|
(Steve)
>|Maybe you can make that playable and fun, but that sure doesn't sound like
>|the starting point of a shared fantasy to me.
>
(Dennis)
>	Why not?  Because it means that the players (gasp!) might NOT figure it
>all out?  Failure has to be part of the game, or there's no point in
>playing.
>
>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc