D&D General Could Improv (and maybe Theatre) save your Roleplaying???

[Paul Farquhar]

It's one of the reasons I dislike VTT's so much, because I have to have planned set encounters.

Indeed, I find it cramps my style too. I fall back on a) preparing a whole lot of stuff that never gets used; and b) having some generic encounter maps based on terrain. I would much rather play face to face, but circumstances still make that not possible.

 

[Helldritch]

Most of my DMing is heavily improvised. I know a general who's who, factions and motivations. I'll potentially go into detail for some aspects depending on the situation. I figure out appropriate NPCs and monsters that the group could come into conflict with and I usually have 2-3 more than I expect them to encounter so I can grab the appropriate one. Most of my game? Ad-libbed based on the above. It's one of the reasons I dislike VTT's so much, because I have to have planned set encounters.

I'm not sure I care whether that qualifies as "improv" or not.

In my book? This is the best way to do it. It more than qualifies. Free form is one type of improvisation. You can absolutely improvise withing parameters you set.

Role playing games are basically improvisations with rules. You can have more or less rules depending on tastes, skills and interests. The dice are just there so that no one can say "I win" all the time.

Indeed, I find it cramps my style too. I fall back on a) preparing a whole lot of stuff that never gets used; and b) having some generic encounter maps based on terrain. I would much rather play face to face, but circumstances still make that not possible.

And I the same. But we found a solution.
We play over discord for voice over and to see each others.
We use the Avrae Bot for dice (a dice bot for Discord by the way).
We go full theater of the mind (TotM).
We use messenger to send pictures over our D&D group of maps, creatures and so on.
We miss a bit on the minis, but who cares with TotM?

At first, rolling with Avrae was a bit slow. But soon everyone was quite fast. Almost as fast as with dice! And in some cases, even faster as we found ways to accelerate things. We went to side initiative. We go from high dex to low dex in order. Same with monsters and we are now implementing it in our game (we are now seeing each others). It works very fine.

 

[Ovinomancer]

So for you, improvising within parameters is not improvisation?
Nothing can be further from the truth.
As soon as you improvise in a game, any game system, you already have some parameters, the game system. Whether you play Vampire, Palladium, Role Master, Black Eye, Cthulhu, Pace (no dice), Theatrix (no dice) or any games that will come to mind means that you already have parameters!
So by your own claims, you never have improvised in your games. Ever...

Sigh. I say that you've managed to make "improv" just mean "make stuff up" and therefore not terribly useful for discussion because all RPGs have making stuff up, and you respond to this by telling me I've never made things up. Because parameters, I guess, which someone make improv into just making up? Not sure. I don't see any value whatsoever in discussion how making things up improves RPGs -- this seems entirely banal and obvious. Further, I'm don't see value in pointing out that when you play and RPG, there are constraints on what you make up. Again, this seems banal and obvious.

Discussion ways you might make things up has some more value, but only if we actually discuss them as separate things -- if we're just going to smear any given approach into all approaches, there's no real value anymore. Likewise discussing how constraints apply -- discussing specific constraints has value but just saying there's constraints doesn't do much.

 

[Helldritch]

Sigh. I say that you've managed to make "improv" just mean "make stuff up" and therefore not terribly useful for discussion because all RPGs have making stuff up, and you respond to this by telling me I've never made things up. Because parameters, I guess, which someone make improv into just making up? Not sure. I don't see any value whatsoever in discussion how making things up improves RPGs -- this seems entirely banal and obvious. Further, I'm don't see value in pointing out that when you play and RPG, there are constraints on what you make up. Again, this seems banal and obvious.

Discussion ways you might make things up has some more value, but only if we actually discuss them as separate things -- if we're just going to smear any given approach into all approaches, there's no real value anymore. Likewise discussing how constraints apply -- discussing specific constraints has value but just saying there's constraints doesn't do much.

Improvisation isn't just making stuff up as you say.
It requires to listen to the players and for the players to listen to the DM.
I'm not telling you that making stuff up is the only way to improvise. Improvisation requires both sides to listen and act on what the other is trying to build. In a Role Playing Game, there are parameters that will restricts the direction improvisations might take. But in essence, with or without restrictions improvisation is an important skill in a DM's box.

As for constrain. The only real constrain in improvisation in a D&D is the campaign world. Other than that, everything is fair game. I would not allow a character to suddenly have a blood link with the king of a country because that player decided that it was good for him. There are limits on what a DM will allow. Just like I would not allow a player to suddenly be the secret lover of a powerful NPC so that the player would have a safety net if push came to shove.

Improvisation, especially from the players part, must be monitored carefully; especially if the players is not a regular one or an early addition. Some player will start with dubious backgrounds in search of a possible exploit to give them an advantage. I have seen that happen quite often when I used to have open games at our hobby store (before our Friday Night Dungeon became more of a show to let people see what RPGs are about). For 20 years now, I have not encountered such a player simply because all characters are made with my approval and/or guidance.

Also
Improvisation is not always right here and now. It can be long term, short term or even episodic and might happen over the course of a campaign. It does not always imply discussions with NPCs, sometimes, it is only events. A discussion with an NPC can be a total improvisation not following any guidance or preset parameters. Or it can be scripted to the very colon and semi-colon you can imagine.

A sandbox style game can be improvisation galore just as much as the sandbox itself will be scripted without the knowledge of the players. Where do you go? Left? Fine, my prepared adventure that was on the right is now on the left. The best DMs will make prepared stuff appear completely improvised and fully tailored to the characters at hand. This is the reason that improvisation is such a big part of RPG and even with preps, a DM needs to have some skills in improvisations.