Should the DMG suggest improv and acting classes?

[Geeknamese]

No, because it's unnecessary and intimidating. Roleplaying is not acting, it is putting yourself in the shoes of your character in the gameworld and making decisions. Interacting with NPCs does not require a performance, a player can quite adequately describe what their character does in the third person:

"My character takes offense at those words and grumbles about the rudeness"

It's great if the players want to animate their characters through performance, but it is absolutely not essential to playing the game.

I think you may be missing the point of what improv classes are. It's not about perfecting your performance or playing a character, etc. That's what regular acting classes are for. Improv classes are for learning how to think on the fly, flow with the scene, riff off what is happening at the present moment and letting go and taking chances. Improv classes would help any player or DM improve with D&D.

I agree with most that improv classes shouldn't be mentioned as a requirement or suggestion to better DMing but there should be improv tips, as iserith, suggested which could enhance play.


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[Tony Vargas]

Yes, and it's those sorts of questions that I think can be made in the form of an action declaration that drives the scene forward and tells a story, rather than stop the scene moving forward while the DM and player hash it out with a 20 Questions minigame. A DM faced with such questions might ask "What do you do or draw upon to assess your odds of success here?" to get the player out of the habit of asking questions and and into the habit of establishing actions.

I'm not sure I see a lot of obvious value in trying to habituate players to re-state their questions in the form of actions, but not a lot of harm, either.

Worst case, they declare a lot of 'thinking about' this and 'trying to remember' that actions.

Yes, and it's often those sorts of players that are using leading questions to get the DM to agree on auto-success. It's a little game where they keep their ultimate goal and approach fairly obscure until all the complicating factors are eliminated. Then BAM, they act, as you say. It's clever, but unnecessary.

Maybe I'm prejudiced but I don't feel it deserves to be credited with 'clever' and I can see how a player would feel it's 'necessary' in the absence of sufficiently solid & system-mastery-amenable rules to hang his character's abilities on.

I don't see this often in my games - been a very long time really. I attribute it to trust in addition to Table Rules curbing questions.

I know from other discussions that you're amenable to narrating success and feel that should be the player's goal, rather than 'merely' angling for a favorable roll, let alone declaring a roll rather than an action. (Declaring or just making rolls out of the blue being the topic in those discussions, IIRC - or maybe it was optimizing checks...?)

Improv classes are for learning how to think on the fly, flow with the scene, riff off what is happening at the present moment and letting go and taking chances. ...

Heh. Sounds like D&D would be good tool for teaching improv, then.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

One of the core tenets of Improv, the "Yes, and…" technique, is not always applicable to GMing. Improv practitioners can lose sight of the fact that sometimes the GM should be saying "No".

What the DMG should have is an expanded section on the fundamentals of how RPGs work: (1) Player describes a goal and approach. (2) GM decides success or failure or maybe, as well as the costs for the attempt. If "maybe" then random choice is used. (3) GM and Players narrate the outcome.

Skills from improv theatre and creative writing will help with step 3, and a little with step 1, but won't do much to help GMs get better at step 2.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One of the core tenets of Improv, the "Yes, and…" technique, is not always applicable to GMing. Improv practitioners can lose sight of the fact that sometimes the GM should be saying "No".

You don't have to say no to narrate failure.

 

[iserith]

I'm not sure I see a lot of obvious value in trying to habituate players to re-state their questions in the form of actions, but not a lot of harm, either.

Worst case, they declare a lot of 'thinking about' this and 'trying to remember' that actions.

At the very least it just improves the narrative flow of the game and to some extent the pacing and it reinforces the basic conversation of the game (the three-step loop, I mean). It plays out a bit more like a story might be written which I suppose is a pretty good fit for a game about storytelling.

Maybe I'm prejudiced but I don't feel it deserves to be credited with 'clever' and I can see how a player would feel it's 'necessary' in the absence of sufficiently solid & system-mastery-amenable rules to hang his character's abilities on.

Well, a clever solution to the challenge presented in that sort of game, I mean.

The challenge in my view being a DM who is more apt to saying "No" than "Yes, and..." The clever player tricks the DM into saying "Yes" or, as you say, destroys the grounds on which the DM could possibly say "No." I bet most of us have been the "No" DM at some point. As I recall, back on the old WotC DM forums, the whole "Yes, and..." thing was pretty controversial... though of course my posting style at that time likely didn't help matters!

I know from other discussions that you're amenable to narrating success and feel that should be the player's goal, rather than 'merely' angling for a favorable roll, let alone declaring a roll rather than an action. (Declaring or just making rolls out of the blue being the topic in those discussions, IIRC - or maybe it was optimizing checks...?)

Yep, that might help too.

 

[LotusApe]

Improv is useful for a lot of reasons, but also D&D does make you better at improv.

In D&D if PCs make motivated characters and DMs make plots based on those motivations then you learn a lot about how to structure a story or make dramatic scenes.

Improv classes would definitely help certain kinds of DMs and players. Some people don't play too well with others. Improv has a lot of exercises that build up team-working skills as well as different ways to approach problems.

But I don't know if it would fit in the DMG. Maybe some improv books as recommendations in an appendix.

 

[ccs]

You don't have to say no to narrate failure.

"Yes and.... ______ doesn't work."

 

[mflayermonk]

A DM with a double major in Improv and World Languages, hell thats the perfect weapon.

 

[Satyrn]

A couple of 2nd Edition's blue soft covers gave good advice on improv and running the game, handling players, handling characters, making NPCs interesting, etc etc.

The first half of the Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide is so very helpful.

And somewhere in those books was probably a suggestion to try an improv course if it interested you.

 

[Ganymede81]

I definitely suggest the web show Harmonquest to new players. It combines D&Desque adventure with lots of fun and comedic improvisational comedy. I feel like seeing someone ad-lib in a D&D setting can be very valuable.

A lot of times, new players can be flummoxed when put on the spot regarding how their character talks, acts, or otherwise interacts with the world. I remember one session where a kinda new, kinda veteran player was inserted into a preexisting group; she was practically paralyzed when it came to describing why she had stumbled upon the party after I had previously told her "literally make up anything and I'll roll with it."

I can't help but feel seeing other people stretch their improv muscles can help players run their own characters. 4:29 in this episode is a great improv moment https://vrv.co/watch/GYX084D3R/HarmonQuest:The-Quest-Begins