There’s been a surge of interest in GMing by improvisation rather than preparation, as in the “old days.” What are the ramifications?
Picture courtesy of Pixabay.
Things have shifted considerably since. Over time, we’ve seen a vast number of adventure modules published, both commercial and free, and I suspect most GM’s now use this published material most of the time.
Improvisation occurs partly when the game rules don’t provide an answer for a situation. The more explicit the game rules are (which tends to mean, the longer), the less room is left for improvisation of rules. But the main thrust of improvisation instead of preparation is in the occurrences of the adventure.
Despite improv seeming like a very flexible and collaborative approach, improv can be challenging. Many people aren't good at it. For example, even someone who was a famous orator, Winston Churchill, had to plan and memorize his speeches to make good. He was an infamously poor extemporaneous (“improv”) speaker. Yes, I’ve watched “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” and marveled at the skillful comedy improvisations of Colin Mochrie and others. But could most professional comedians manage to do that well, let alone anyone else?
The ultimate improvisation is to make up everything on the fly. A friend of mine can run entire adventures on the fly, though he usually doesn’t, but he’s a generally creative fellow who writes haiku every day, among other things. And he’s GMed RPGs for more than 35 years. Most people don’t have that experience.
In the next article we’ll discuss the implications of how having to make things up from whole cloth can be a game master’s greatest strength … or turn them off to game mastering entirely.
Your Turn: How much do you improvise, as a percentage, when you GM? In the above poll, I’m in the 0-20% category.
Picture courtesy of Pixabay.
A Different Way to Play
I previously discussed improvisation in game mastering; this piece looks at it from a different angle. In a way, this is like the contrasted extremes in how players play games: classical/romantic, planner/improviser, active/passive. I believe everyone is in these spectra somewhere; some at one extreme or the other, most somewhere closer to the middle. In this article, we're focusing on game masters, not players.The Random Old Days
Original Dungeons & Dragons (before Advanced Dungeons & Dragons) consisted of a fairly short set of rules, even with supplements added. GMs necessarily had to interpret/interpolate a lot. AD&D provided a lot more rules, and lots of tables for rolling random encounters. There was even a table for rolling a random dungeon layout, which my brother actually used in creating the first level of his dungeon adventure. Keep in mind that at that time, there were originally no published prepackaged adventures to buy and the GMs had to make up everything themselves. So it made sense to provide random tables to make the GM task easier.Things have shifted considerably since. Over time, we’ve seen a vast number of adventure modules published, both commercial and free, and I suspect most GM’s now use this published material most of the time.
The Return of the Random Table
Recently there’s been a surge of interest in improvisation in GMing: deliberately not planning ahead and letting the dice take you where they may. Some raise this to a virtue, as though it was somehow better or more proper for the game. A touted advantage of this is that the GM and players together create more of the game world via improvisation, and that this will engage the players more than if the GM creates it all or if a commercial module is used.Improvisation occurs partly when the game rules don’t provide an answer for a situation. The more explicit the game rules are (which tends to mean, the longer), the less room is left for improvisation of rules. But the main thrust of improvisation instead of preparation is in the occurrences of the adventure.
It’s Not for Everybody
In the long run, improvisation in most things in life is not efficient. If it was, there’d be more of it in (successful) business, in the military, in government. Planning (followed by adaptation and replanning) is what works, not improvisation. The same is true in individual lives, though people rely more on habit than on planning. Moreover, the ubiquity of smartphones has led to less planning and more improvisation in personal lives—people don’t have to plan nearly as much because their smartphones can bail them out.Despite improv seeming like a very flexible and collaborative approach, improv can be challenging. Many people aren't good at it. For example, even someone who was a famous orator, Winston Churchill, had to plan and memorize his speeches to make good. He was an infamously poor extemporaneous (“improv”) speaker. Yes, I’ve watched “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” and marveled at the skillful comedy improvisations of Colin Mochrie and others. But could most professional comedians manage to do that well, let alone anyone else?
The ultimate improvisation is to make up everything on the fly. A friend of mine can run entire adventures on the fly, though he usually doesn’t, but he’s a generally creative fellow who writes haiku every day, among other things. And he’s GMed RPGs for more than 35 years. Most people don’t have that experience.
In the next article we’ll discuss the implications of how having to make things up from whole cloth can be a game master’s greatest strength … or turn them off to game mastering entirely.
Your Turn: How much do you improvise, as a percentage, when you GM? In the above poll, I’m in the 0-20% category.
