The Scop: Improvising Like a Pro

[Melba Toast]

The article is full of good advice, though nothing an experienced GM should not already know. But you can't improvize everything.

The more challenging aspect of Improv is consistency, especially with regard to description. If you need to describe a person, a forest, a palace, a dungeon, etc. it's often hard to remember features which you made up off the cuff. THis is why flavour text is so important. Players will jump on a GM if he forgets a name, or if the coniferous forest suddenly becomes a deciduous forest. Or if he forgets to include a door on the west wall. From the player's perspective, this is cheating. It's the DM's equivolent to a player saying he has a full compliment of rations when no rations are listed on his character sheet.

More importantly, players like to feel they are moving through a concrete world, rather than one that is in perpetual flux. Having a little bit of text reminds them that some things are static.

The problem with flavour text is that it is too often used to describe activities. Text should be limited to physical descriptions that can be assessed in a quick visual, aural, olfactory scan (about 10 seconds). Never, ever, ever write dialogue into flavour text.

For instance, good flavour text:
The grey stone masonry hallway smells of refuse. A faint light can be seen eminating from the bottom of the closed door. (DM rolls die) You hear grunting coming from within.

Bad Flavour text:
You approach the door in the west wall, light eminates from beneath the door. You listen closely and hear the familiar grunting of orcish language. Your dwarf interprets the orc's words, they are arguing over some meat. Then suddenly they fall silent. The light beneath the door dims. You hear them approaching.

The first example allows room for the players to interact freely with their environment, and their inquiries will help refine it. Randomness can and should be used when a player does something unexpected.

I find the second example is used far too often in published games, and, in my opinion, it's the worst kind of railroading. It's particularly egregious when the flavour text includes an extensive monologue from an NPC.

NPC: "Now that I have the mask of the anc..."

Player: "I stab him".

DM: Can I at least finish!

This situation is very common with prepared text, and invariably, the magnanimous DM always thinks he's right. But he isn't. Technically, the Player is in the right. The DM and player should immediately roll initiative, and, provided the NPC goes first, he is free to continue his monologue in leiu of defending himself. Which, in effect, gives the PC a free attack.

 

[Obryn]

I find the second example is used far too often in published games, and, in my opinion, it's the worst kind of railroading. It's particularly egregious when the flavour text includes an extensive monologue from an NPC.

NPC: "Now that I have the mask of the anc..."

Player: "I stab him".

DM: Can I at least finish!

This situation is very common with prepared text, and invariably, the magnanimous DM always thinks he's right. But he isn't. Technically, the Player is in the right. The DM and player should immediately roll initiative, and, provided the NPC goes first, he is free to continue his monologue in leiu of defending himself. Which, in effect, gives the PC a free attack.

Gosh, I don't think that's a big problem at all. If it doesn't mechanically screw anyone, I find it tough to see a problem with it.

As long as the enemy isn't getting a mechanical advantage, or the PCs need to wait for his monologue while minions pelt them with arrows, it's just one part of a fun and entertaining gaming session, in my book. At least, it is for more cinematic games like I tend to run. What would James Bond movies be without some snappy dialogue before & during the action?

I suppose if your playing style is anti-cinematic it might be a drag, but I think this is about the most minimalist, non-intrusive micro-railroad imaginable.

And it's not like it's limited to enemies. The PCs could do it too, if they wanted to.

-O

 

[Hella_Tellah]

It's particularly egregious when the flavour text includes an extensive monologue from an NPC.

NPC: "Now that I have the mask of the anc..."

Player: "I stab him".

DM: Can I at least finish!

This situation is very common with prepared text, and invariably, the magnanimous DM always thinks he's right. But he isn't. Technically, the Player is in the right. The DM and player should immediately roll initiative, and, provided the NPC goes first, he is free to continue his monologue in leiu of defending himself. Which, in effect, gives the PC a free attack.

Maybe in your games, but not in everyone's. Certainly that's not how I would play Spirit of the Century, for instance.

I like having villain monologues in silly games, and most of my players do, to. I had one player in my last campaign interrupt the BBEG's cackling monologue and shout, "I want to kill him before he can keep talking!" I responded, "No. You'll get your chance, but right now, play nice and let everyone enjoy a cheeseball villain moment." He pouted about it, but everyone else agreed and enjoyed the game more, because that's the kind of tone we had set for the game.

Part of being a good player in a narrativist game is playing along with the tone and genre of the game. If you go about interrupting villain monologues in James Bond-ish games, or killing the villain in a 4-color superheroes game, or trying to build a nuclear reactor in a grim n' gritty R.E. Howard fantasy game, you're disrupting the tone the group has set. It's doing whatever you want without regard to how much fun other people are having, and that's not what it means to be a good gamer and friend. That's just being rude, and that transcends game rules (IMO).

 

[Phaezen]

I find the second example is used far too often in published games, and, in my opinion, it's the worst kind of railroading. It's particularly egregious when the flavour text includes an extensive monologue from an NPC.

NPC: "Now that I have the mask of the anc..."

Player: "I stab him".

DM: Can I at least finish!

This situation is very common with prepared text, and invariably, the magnanimous DM always thinks he's right. But he isn't. Technically, the Player is in the right. The DM and player should immediately roll initiative, and, provided the NPC goes first, he is free to continue his monologue in leiu of defending himself. Which, in effect, gives the PC a free attack.

This reminded me of this:

Darths & Droids

Phaezen

 

[Oni]

Gosh, I don't think that's a big problem at all. If it doesn't mechanically screw anyone, I find it tough to see a problem with it.

As long as the enemy isn't getting a mechanical advantage, or the PCs need to wait for his monologue while minions pelt them with arrows, it's just one part of a fun and entertaining gaming session, in my book. At least, it is for more cinematic games like I tend to run. What would James Bond movies be without some snappy dialogue before & during the action?

I suppose if your playing style is anti-cinematic it might be a drag, but I think this is about the most minimalist, non-intrusive micro-railroad imaginable.

And it's not like it's limited to enemies. The PCs could do it too, if they wanted to.

-O

I can't be the only person who gets a kick out of the villian being slugged mid-sentence.

There aren't a lot of things that really annoy me, but if the DM has the villian monologuing while my character is standing there unrestrained and then tells me I can't do anthing til he's said his piece that would do it. It should be up to the player to decide if he's playing the sort of character that would stand there and listen or not, not the DM.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Whoah, dude. I'm not attacking anybody. I know people, IRL, who can do this. I'm also pretty sure there are many DM's on EnWorld who can do this, also. I was simply saying I'm not such a person. That's it. Full stop. Nothing between the lines.

Sorry if I sounded a bit piqued. I guess I just don't think 4e's monster creation guidelines live up to their often-vaunted purpose for my games. There are....a lot of issues with them that I think get overlooked a lot. But if they do the job for you, more power to 'em.

You have an amazing treasure trove of creatures that you have built up with years of experience that I don't have.

Well, I just had monster books. Some of the best 3e books were monster books. Even if I just had the MM and the Tome of Horrors (and maybe Denizens of Avadnu, 'cuz I can't not give that book love), I had all the monsters I needed.

Now, this also resulted in me using more "evil mutant masterminds" than humanoid masterminds a lot of the time...which is kind of a mixed bag. I always did want a "monster manual of humanoids" that would give me a lot of classed elves, humans, and the like, in statblock format...the book Exemplars of Evil got the closest to this, and it is one of my favorite 3e books, despite the fact that it was one of the last ones.

EDIT: It also seems (to me) you had a far deeper understanding of 3E's world-model mechanics that I ever did. Your understanding gives you the intuition to make accurate estimations of things like DC's, etc., without constant reference. This is one of the areas where I struggled (and ultimately failed) as a DM in 3.x.

I really like the 3e DMG's treatment of NPC's, and I kind of paid a lot of attention to the relatively obscure parts where it talked about what the "D&D world baseline" was. It really could've been called out more, because I think it would've really avoided a lot of the common issues that 3e DMs tended to have.

 

[El Mahdi]

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.

I would say, in a poorly improv'd game, this would be true.

In a well executed improv'd game, you should never even notice a difference between a completely prepared adventure and an improv'd one.

This is why, IMO, good improvisational skills are an art that requires practice and experience. I'm not nearly as good as I want to be (or hope I can be), but my players seem to like my games so I guess I'm doing it with at least a modicum of success.