The Scop: Improvising Like a Pro

[Hella_Tellah]

Ugh. As a player I really dislike this.

I enjoy actually solving puzzles and mysteries, so I prefer to play with referees who invest the time and effort to come up with a genuine challenge.

In my experience improv'd games tend to be transparently obvious that the referee is just making stuff up as s/he goes, and are usually pretty boring as a result. I think this 'technique' tends to be overused, not underused.

It's probably not a good technique to use on players who want what you want, then. My players care more about how interesting the story is than the problem-solving aspects of RPGs, so it doesn't much matter to them whether they succeed or fail, as long as it was a fun story and everyone got to contribute.

EDIT: This is not to say your style of play is bad--I and my players just don't value problem solving all that highly.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

Man that should be one of the basic tools in the DMs bag I think.

I agree completely. IMHO 4 people brainstorming ideas are better and will come up with a more ingenious idea than one person doing it the majority of the time. Besides, sometimes it fun to take the wild speculation that they write off as "too-far fetched" and make that true, but with just enough of a twist that makes it plausible.

 

[Thanee]

Ugh. As a player I really dislike this.

I enjoy actually solving puzzles and mysteries, so I prefer to play with referees who invest the time and effort to come up with a genuine challenge.

In my experience improv'd games tend to be transparently obvious that the referee is just making stuff up as s/he goes, and are usually pretty boring as a result. I think this 'technique' tends to be overused, not underused.

Of course, improvising does not mean 100% improvising. At least for me, I usually do have a general plan, just not a detailed path to move along.

Improvising also means, for example, that the environment reacts to the party and does not remain static. The world is more living and more believable that way.

You could very well have both in a game.

Also, while you probably have at least one solution in mind, when you propose a challenge to the players, sometimes one of the players comes up with a better solution, so why not work with that, if it makes sense?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Khairn]

Great article, and pretty much what I've cobbled together after many years of trial and error. I wish I had read this 20 years ago. It would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.

 

[timbannock]

Nobody tell my players, but this is exactly how my "mysteries" go down. If the player's speculation is reasonable, or at least reasonably fun, he's right--unless another player gets it in his head that it must be a red herring! Many an adventure has been generated simply through the players' belief that other players' ideas were planted by villains trying to misdirect the party.

Definitely. I've rewritten entire campaign backstories from the ground up to incorporate the wild musings of my players. Partly because their ideas actually made more sense (a convoluted DM's story can only be understood by that DM, which can harm the story itself), and partly because it empowered them, making them feel like they really "got it" with the storyline.

Other times, I make their wild musings so wrong though...keeps them on their toes!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Just out of curiosity, what makes 4e harder? Is it an issue of rules familiarity or something else altogether?

So much curiosity...

What makes 4e harder for me to improvise is, ultimately, the lack of structure that it has.

3e, we could easily say, had an overabundance of structure. What that did was effectively fill in the "preparation" part of the advice for me. I didn't need to prepare anything. I didn't need to decide what things were before I used them.

4e has a lot of holes.

For instance, 4e monsters have no habitat/terrain entry. If you're doing pre-prep, this is an okay thing because now you don't feel the need to justify why the remorhaz is in the desert. If you're doing it spontaneously, though, this is a gaping hole, because if your PC's are in the desert somewhere, you have no suggestions for what might make sense as a monster encounter. You have to do the thought yourself.

4e NPC's don't have stats until you enter combat. If you're doing pre-prep, this is okay because then you don't stat up an NPC you don't intend to have the PC's fight. If you're doing it spontaneously, though, this is another gaping hole because you don't know if your PC's are going to fight this NPC or try to buy his gear or invite him to tea. You have to create it before you use it.

4e combats are designed to be more interesting with more terrain. If you're doing pre-prep, this is okay because you can sprinkle interesting and exciting terrain all over on your prepared battle map. If you're doing it spontaneously, though, this is a major hassle because why do you care about the density of trees in a typical forest?

3e gave me environmental suggetions. 3e gave me stats that were equally useful for combat or tea parties. 3e gave me terrain combat notes on tree density. 3e was better for me to spontaneously go from.

 

[The Shaman]

Improvising also means, for example, that the environment reacts to the party and does not remain static. The world is more living and more believable that way.

Of course. I was referring specifically to the idea of making up a puzzle or a mystery that isn't really a puzzle or mystery for the players and their characters to solve.

Also, while you probably have at least one solution in mind, when you propose a challenge to the players, sometimes one of the players comes up with a better solution, so why not work with that, if it makes sense?

What makes a solution "better?"

I'm not in this to "tell cool stories" - I'm in this to play a game, and part of the game, at least traditionally, is problem-solving. If the referee is just using what the players put forth, then the problem-solving goes away, and it's just storytelling. I don't find that to be as interesting or enjoyable.

 

[The Little Raven]

For instance, 4e monsters have no habitat/terrain entry.

You can often find that information in the description, Lore entry, name or origin of the creature. For example, you can figure out where you might find a "cavern choker" without a habitat entry or it outright spelling it out in the description of the monster. It's true that some have no description of where they might be found in any part of the writeup, but that could be because creatures like that have no pre-defined habitat, such as a number of undead creatures, who can be from pretty much anywhere.

If you're doing it spontaneously, though, this is another gaping hole because you don't know if your PC's are going to fight this NPC or try to buy his gear or invite him to tea. You have to create it before you use it.

I improv monsters all the time now, simply using the two charts on page 184 and 185. I can come up with the NPC hit points, based on the role I want to give him at that moment, defenses, attack bonuses, damage values, and then sprinkle on a unique ability in about 30 seconds.

If you're doing it spontaneously, though, this is a major hassle because why do you care about the density of trees in a typical forest?

I spontaneously draw up every battle map I use, since I always have ever-changing ideas on how I want things to go, and this is never a problem for me. Do you use your books much at the table? If so, do you have key pages and sections tabbed for easy reference? I do that, so I flip to pages 64-69 to quickly throw in terrain when I need it. Spontaneous doesn't mean you don't use tools available to you.

3e gave me stats that were equally useful for combat or tea parties.

4e stats are equally good for a tea party. You have the NPC's Will defense, Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence scores. You will know if its trained in Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate or any other skill it may need for the situation. You will know if it has a socially useful power (such as a dominate ability).

My last session consisted of 4 encounters, 1 of which was combat that they fled, 1 of which was a social scene with Madame Eva, who was using , and 2 of which were physical skill challenges to cross the Tser Falls and to climb down to enter the tomb of Barov in order to find the Tome of Strahd before the sun had set. None of these encountered were planned (as I had no time to do any prep with the holidays), but they were the most memorable encounters we've done in the Ravenloft campaign so far, and it was really easy with just the DMG in front of me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

You can often find that information in the description, Lore entry, name or origin of the creature

Ah, yes, because searching through individual monster entries is exactly what I have time to do in the middle of a game.

Checking a page on the DMG with a list of monsters by terrain and habitat (with CR ratings!) and dungeon level was better for this.

I improv monsters all the time now, simply using the two charts on page 184 and 185. I can come up with the NPC hit points, based on the role I want to give him at that moment, defenses, attack bonuses, damage values, and then sprinkle on a unique ability in about 30 seconds.

I hate generating monsters spontaneously because there's no context for them. It just feels like I'm creating a pretext for draining healing surges. It should be feeling like I'm battling a fearsome beast (which is easier to do for me with 3e's pre-defined fearsome-beast fluff).

Spontaneous doesn't mean you don't use tools available to you.

I never said that it did. I don't know where you're getting the idea that I said this. I didn't say this.

Do you use your books much at the table? If so, do you have key pages and sections tabbed for easy reference? I do that, so I flip to pages 64-69 to quickly throw in terrain when I need it.

Pgs. 64-69 aren't the same thing as 3e telling me that 10% of the battlefield is filled with trees (and giving me the exact mechanical effect of these trees, including how easy they are to knock over) in a forest with light density. The latter is much more useful when I'm whipping up a forest combat on the fly.

4e stats are equally good for a tea party. You have the NPC's Will defense, Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence scores. You will know if its trained in Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight, Intimidate or any other skill it may need for the situation. You will know if it has a socially useful power (such as a dominate ability).

I don't know of any 4e dominate ability that is actually useful "socially" in any capacity, but that aside, I certainly won't know if the monster has Skill Focus (Tea Party Hosting) as a feat, and so I won't be told if the monster has any particular interest in hosting a tea party or not.

And, of course, if I think my NPC is going to be used as a tea party host, that's context-less combat stats I need to materialize out of nothing if the PC's decide to kick them in the shins instead.

But basically:
Context, context, context.
Warhammer, as the OP's article uses, has the virtue of having a world with a very strong flavor and very deep context -- it's very setting-specific. The article says that you should know things like how certain races and creatures behave, so that it's easier to react as they would react.

4e is too aetherous for me to run as spontaneously as I ran 3e. I have to prepare too much. 3e was much more detailed, and this detail gave me a solid grounding that I could launch from -- it prepared everything for me, so all I had to do was plug it in and let it run. 4e, in trying to give the DM broader power to change things more easily, doesn't give me nearly enough context.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

I'm not in this to "tell cool stories" - I'm in this to play a game, and part of the game, at least traditionally, is problem-solving. If the referee is just using what the players put forth, then the problem-solving goes away, and it's just storytelling. I don't find that to be as interesting or enjoyable.

I and my players are in it to tell cool stories, so we run our games differently. I think it's a lot easier to improvise when the goal is to tell a cool story, and problem-solving of the kind you're describing calls for a certain level of DM preparedness. Certainly in the past when I ran games with problem-solving in mind, I did more preparation. Now that my only goal is to tell a fun story, it's pretty easy for me to decide what goes in and what stays out: I just ask, "Will my players laugh, cheer, and/or sit forward in their seats in rapt attention? Is this awesome Y/N?"

It's not a strictly better way to game--in fact, it's probably strictly worse for gamers like yourself--but it does amuse me and the people I game with!