So over the weekend I thought we were starting a new 5e game. We actually ended up playing another episode of the one I've become disillusioned with, under a GM I consider to be... not good.
I rolled with it, even though I said I was quitting that game. I just shrugged and figured I haven't physically seen these friends in over a month and, with the holidays and the pandemic, it'll likely be another month til we're together again, let's just play.
I won't bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say the DM was still... challenging to work with. One of the new things that came up though - he maintains as always that he's the BEST DM, and one of the skills he touts is his ability to "tap dance" or his improvisational skills.
A situation came up where, in game, an evil cult is being set up as the major villain, with the cult trying to gather several McGuffins to summon their god and destroy the world. An order our characters have been drafted into is dedicated to stopping this from happening.
I asked several questions in character about the cult. Turns out that the DM hadn't prepped anything on them other than their name and the name of their god, and his improv skills were not employed, so I have yet to see where they are "the best."
I'm using this thread to discuss and explore the age old questions of how much improvisation should be expected of a DM/GM when running TTRPGs, is this a skill or innate talent, if its a skill, how do you improve at it, and so on. Also, let's face it, I'm kind of venting about this DM again.
Venting:
I mean, if you KNOW you're going to have an evil deity who might be summoned to destroy the world, and you have a month between sessions wherein you decide that this deity is going to have McGuffins that summon it, a cult that worships it, and an order that the primary NPCs belong to dedicated to stopping that cult and the McGuffins being assembled, don't you think you'd give at least a LITTLE thought to being able to answer questions like:
- what's the deity's profane symbol?
- what are their services like, and where do they typically hold them?
- do they favor one type of weapon or clothing?
- is there an animal or creature favored by the deity and it's clergy?
- how has the order defeated them in the past?
- what do the McGuffins LOOK like?
- have the 7 minor artifact McGuffins ever been used in the past? What do they do?
- what's the history of the cult?
- is there a region on the map they hail from originally, or is there a biome such as forests, caves or urban locales they prefer?
- do they have recruiting practices?
- what other intel does the order have on their "ancient enemies?"
Anyway, I'll start. I really enjoy ad-libbing stuff on the fly in my games and I employ some improv techniques so often that they've become second nature to me when I run. My games are usually a rough, bullet-pointed outline deliberately light on details. I tend to run a lot of sandbox settings and non-linear plots; players can pick up a plot hook and run with it, start to finish, and I'll try to manufacture a way to relate this back to the main outline, so there's no singular "straight line" of plot that completes the campaign, start to finish.
I figured early on in running games that no matter the system, no plot ever fully survives first contact with my players. Inevitably they don't want to follow one or more of my carefully constructed plot points. If I make linear games, this means that any time my players want to deviate from the main thread I either have to "railroad" them to keep the game running smoothly or I end up having to change my own game's final outcomes to have things make linear sense.
So long story boring, I improvise a lot. I have practiced this skill over the years by joining Toastmasters and giving impromptu speeches, playing improv acting or storytelling games with friends, and of course by running games and then getting feedback from my players. I also PREPARE to improvise.
I have a lot of random tables that I use in my games. Many of these are from outside sources, such as old game books, Dragon or Dungeon magazines, 3pp content creators, or websites such as Donjon. I have also customized some tables for specific games I'm running.
Random tables are SUPER helpful, in my experience, for ad-libbing. If you're running a Pathfinder 1e game and a bunch of low-level PCs have to retreat into a dense forest to flee from a tribe of kobolds, it might not be so fun for the players to just say "Make a Survival roll. Ok, you get away and find a cave to sleep in."
Random tables can tell you what the weather's like, what that cave looks like, and if you roll a wandering monster but don't want the characters to encounter it you still know what kind of monster tracks or signs to leave in the area. Suddenly, even though the characters managed a great Survival check and managed to flee from the kobolds without leaving much of a trace to follow, the characters now realize that night is drawing in, the temperature is dropping like a stone, tiny flakes of snow are starting to fall, and the hard mud shows the heavy paws of worgs passing through the area. Are they SURE they want to check out that dark, limestone cleft with a stream bubbling out of it as a possible shelter for the night?
I think another thing it boils down to is confidence. You have to trust that you can make something up spontaneously that won't throw off the rest of your setting or plot. Random, small details are one thing but as GM when you're called upon to randomly make up a society of evil super villains or a dark, alien race or something with regional or global impact, you want to be able to throw these creations out there with little fear it'll come back to bite you later.
1 I'd say that improvisation is a skill built on innate ability, so a bad ability will be hard to build the skill around, but a good ability will make picking up the skill easy.
2 Improvisation is in my opinion one of the most important skills to be a good gm. Even when using modules/APs, the gm must work with what the players do, and saying "that's not in the book so you aren't allowed to intimidate the merchant" is completely unacceptable.
3 for those learning the skill or that have only moderate ability/skill, random tables can be useful tools, but they are also a tempting crutch to rely on instead of building the skill of improve further.
How'd you get tricked into another session? Was the bad GM going to give up the chair and let someone else run a 5E game?
It's high time you stop listening to your bad GM when he toots his own horn. He clearly sees things in his own perspective and you should know what to expect by now.
There is a difference between improvising role playing and improvising game mechanics. Sounds like you have both sides covered from your posting. Sounds like your GM likes to pull things out of his butt. Sometimes GMs do this to keep the game fast and loose. Other times, they just think so awesomely in their head that there is no way it cant be as awesome when it comes out their mouth.
It sounds like you put a good deal of thought into your planning so improv is natural and easy. Others, think just making things up on the fly is just as good. I have seen a couple GMs that can just spin out of nothing a fun session, though that is very rare. A GM who doesnt have a firm grip on the system mechanics ought to put together tools like random tables, setting bullet points, and read the rule books.
As for role play improv, I find consuming a lot of media helps. Watch how actors work with one another. Pay attention to characters you dont find all that interesting, because role playing is all about perspectives. A good GM needs to be able to play any number of characters so dont over look them.
I've always been a very improvisational GM. To be honest, I kind of prefer it when my players zig when I expect them to zag, as it keeps the game interesting and challenging for me.
I have a few techniques that I use...
1) Random tables. It's rare for me to actually roll on them: I'll look them over and just pick something that seems appropriate in the moment.
2) "Paint the scene". This is a technique from story-gaming where the GM asks the players a leading question and lets them fill in the details. Basically, you tell them the conclusion and let them tell you how they got there. Be sure to use the what they tell you. Examples: "As you cross the boulevard, you find yourself in a different ward of the city. What here tells you that it's the rich section of town?" Or, "Ranger, this area of the forest is part of an owlbear's territory. How do you know that?" Or, "You scan the derelict starship and get some very unusual readings... What is anomalous about this ship?"
3) When building on the above, use standard improv techniques of "Yes, and..." and "No, but..." to incorporate what the players tell you into the scene and/or greater plot.
4) Be cognizant of what the players are interested in doing. If they're having fun exploring, let them explore. If they want to get right to their goal, let them find the path that leads there. And if they aren't interested in the goal you've put before them, change focus and present something else.
5) If you have a collection of published adventures, mine those liberally for plot seeds, NPCs, maps, traps, etc.
Finally, I would recommend a very good book on this subject: Improv For Gamers by Karen Twelves, published by Evil Hat Productions.
I've always been a very improvisational GM. To be honest, I kind of prefer it when my players zig when I expect them to zag, as it keeps the game interesting and challenging for me.
I have a few techniques that I use...
1) Random tables. It's rare for me to actually roll on them: I'll look them over and just pick something that seems appropriate in the moment.
2) "Paint the scene". This is a technique from story-gaming where the GM asks the players a leading question and lets them fill in the details. Basically, you tell them the conclusion and let them tell you how they got there. Be sure to use the what they tell you. Examples: "As you cross the boulevard, you find yourself in a different ward of the city. What here tells you that it's the rich section of town?" Or, "Ranger, this area of the forest is part of an owlbear's territory. How do you know that?" Or, "You scan the derelict starship and get some very unusual readings... What is anomalous about this ship?"
3) When building on the above, use standard improv techniques of "Yes, and..." and "No, but..." to incorporate what the players tell you into the scene and/or greater plot.
4) Be cognizant of what the players are interested in doing. If they're having fun exploring, let them explore. If they want to get right to their goal, let them find the path that leads there. And if they aren't interested in the goal you've put before them, change focus and present something else.
5) If you have a collection of published adventures, mine those liberally for plot seeds, NPCs, maps, traps, etc.
Finally, I would recommend a very good book on this subject: Improv For Gamers by Karen Twelves, published by Evil Hat Productions.
Also be careful with some of these techniques and make sure they work for your players.
As a player, I like at least the illusion that I'm exploring in an existing world. When I'm pushed into making up significant parts of it, that breaks the illusion. If it's just details, like the owlbear and maybe the rich part of the city, that's not so bad, but me deciding what's anomalous about the derelict seems like it would lead more directly into the adventure part of exploring it. Then I'd feel like I'd made up what happened rather than figuring it out.
I've always been a very improvisational GM. To be honest, I kind of prefer it when my players zig when I expect them to zag, as it keeps the game interesting and challenging for me.
I have a few techniques that I use...
1) Random tables. It's rare for me to actually roll on them: I'll look them over and just pick something that seems appropriate in the moment.
2) "Paint the scene". This is a technique from story-gaming where the GM asks the players a leading question and lets them fill in the details. Basically, you tell them the conclusion and let them tell you how they got there. Be sure to use the what they tell you. Examples: "As you cross the boulevard, you find yourself in a different ward of the city. What here tells you that it's the rich section of town?" Or, "Ranger, this area of the forest is part of an owlbear's territory. How do you know that?" Or, "You scan the derelict starship and get some very unusual readings... What is anomalous about this ship?"
3) When building on the above, use standard improv techniques of "Yes, and..." and "No, but..." to incorporate what the players tell you into the scene and/or greater plot.
4) Be cognizant of what the players are interested in doing. If they're having fun exploring, let them explore. If they want to get right to their goal, let them find the path that leads there. And if they aren't interested in the goal you've put before them, change focus and present something else.
5) If you have a collection of published adventures, mine those liberally for plot seeds, NPCs, maps, traps, etc.
Finally, I would recommend a very good book on this subject: Improv For Gamers by Karen Twelves, published by Evil Hat Productions.
Also be careful with some of these techniques and make sure they work for your players.
As a player, I like at least the illusion that I'm exploring in an existing world. When I'm pushed into making up significant parts...
This. Please note that Haladir's #2 is a valid way of play, but one that is not universally accepted. I like the idea that it requests the players to also be a bit improvisational, but I also think it steals the adventure away from the players and can kill immersion.
I was in a cyberpunk one shot once with a GM that was a solid #2 from Haladir's list. He tells us the characters enter the lobby of a corp building. He points at a player and says, "what do you see?" The player awkwardly sits for a moment and says, "...potted plants?" Killed it for everyone dead right there and then. Not a style that folks expected or were used to.
Which brings up another part of improvisation skill, know your audience. Dont drop things on them they are not ready for. Especially, dont sneak things in that were iffy during session zero. Improvisation doesnt mean anything is fair game. Get to know the boundaries and it actually makes improv even easier.
Planny-P, you bring up a good point. What I'm speaking of specifically is the ability to improvise plot or setting details or perhaps mechanical "house rules" to keep the game running smoothly. As for role-playing improv, I have no issues if the GM narrates everything in 3rd person or acts out roles and the acting improv that goes with that.
No, I'm more focusing in on things like ad-libbing minor details in a dungeon room, or spontaneously adding a wrinkle to the plot or those kinds of things. This DM SAYS that he's good at pulling things from his rear, but when the time comes he waves me off and says he's not prepared.
I feel strongly that DM's/GM's should be able to answer players' questions. Sure, every single one of us, myself included, has been caught completely unprepared and had to say "I didn't come up with anything for that, so I'll get back to you" but over the years the frequency with which this happens to me has gotten much lower.
Here are some examples, from previous games with this DM, that illustrate what skillset I'm talking about:
1. Players ask if there's a church/temple in town, since both PCs are either a Cleric or a Paladin at the time
2. Players ask what deities are cannon in your homebrew setting
3. PCs want to explore a nearby woodland rather than heading straight to a "dungeon"
4. PCs are trying to parlay with monsters you'd otherwise planned to have the characters fight
5. Players ask for a description of an "eldritch symbol" they spot on a weathered standing stone
6. Players want intel on a 300 year old evil cult their order has been fighting for centuries
7. Players ask for an overview of the region their characters come from
8. PCs seek out a local tavern in which to gather info, and the players ask what taverns or inns are in the town
9. During info gathering at the tavern, players ask for an expert on the "dungeon" up the road
10. Being able to illustrate the passage of time during lengthy travel and using this travel to reveal setting details
Spoiler:
Famously in this DM's game I've become the annoying one at the table with all my questions. Sessions 1 and 2 I asked a TON of setting related details and was basically ignored in session. However, between sessions 2 and 3 this DM spontaneously created a long, rambling history and a regional map.
Sessions 3 and 4 saw me asking even more questions and not getting answers. That's when I decided to quit. This weekend we were supposed to start something new with another DM but events conspired against us so this DM offered to run a 5th session.
Some of my religion questions were answered from sessions 3 and 4 this game. He still hasn't answered a lot of smaller questions but some of the big setting-related stuff is getting handled, just slowly. I'm guessing, b/c he's not very good at ad-libbing, that when I hit this DM with questions he's not prepped for he ignores them and then comes up with answers later.
Not that I would know; this session was the first time ever he's admitted he wasn't prepared. Usually he boasts he has this rich setting, or that he's got an amazing plot, or that he's the "best" at improv, and then just fails to deliver. This past session was the first time he'd ever said "I'll have to get back to you."
In every instance above my DM has not been able to resolve these in games with much more than a handwave. Even between games, only some of these have been addressed. I think that, while we can't anticipate EVERY weird twist the players take we should know enough of our own games to intelligently fake or ad-lib some answers when the players want to engage.
I've played with Haladir and I very much appreciate his improv skills. #2 definitely works in a story-game type game but yes, definitely use this sparingly unless your players are also on board AND this is the expected style of play for the game you're running.
However I think H-bomb and Panthro said the same thing in 2 different ways - play to the players. Part of the skillset I'm talking about is definitely knowing the people at your table, knowing how they like to play and what experience they're looking for, then giving it to them.
Now I'm not advocating for GM's to be mind readers, nor am I saying that you fully give up control of the narrative to your players. Rather, half of being able to improv is knowing what your players want to hear and delivering.
I have a megadungeon game. In said game, players were grousing about how boring it is to just 1. go to the dungeon, 2. get loot, 3. go back to town and have downtime, and 4. repeat. They were looking for some kind of thru-line that made them WANT to come back to the dungeon.
One of the players was really interested in how there was this ghoul in the first chamber. When I ran that scene, I knew that much deeper in the dungeon there's a whole culture of intelligent ghouls and ghasts, so I gave the ghoul in room 1 some trappings from the undead "kingdom" below.
The guy running the paladin was grousing about the repetitiveness of the dungeon but also bringing up the cool "noble" marks on the ghoul. Spontaneously I had the PCs encounter a band of ghouls in the wilds with more of the kingdom's symbol. The player had his character take a rank of Knowledge: Nobility when he leveled so he could research the symbol. They now suspect an undead society lives somewhere in the dungeon so they have a reason now to keep exploring.
Now, that example was a tad cut-and-dry but it gets at my point: hear your players and use those improv skills to modify for your players. I didn't fundamentally change the fabric of my game, but I added some connective tissue that didn't exist in the setting.
The ghoul kingdom below doesn't have a symbol - I made that up. I have gone on to give that symbol a noble meaning for the paladin to recognize. The ghoul in room 1 was specifically called out as something that just wandered in here, not affiliated with the larger dungeon in the original material - I altered that for my own desires, but it ended up paying off later.
Why do you think improv acting games have the actors calling out to the audience for suggestions? The act of making stuff up for your audience, or with them in mind is what brings THEM into the fiction you're making.
I've got no problems with GMs improvising plots like you describe. As long as it's done well enough that I don't realize it. Once I see it happening a lot of the interest goes away.
The cool underground kingdom of ghouls and ghasts can be a great plot hook. If I realize it's only there because I mentioned some interest in the first ghoul - and that's a pattern with other things I show interest in, then it breaks the illusion. I'm not exploring a cool world, it's shaping itself for me.
Some of that is fine. Especially if it's more a matter of stuff we look into getting more filled out, rather than plots wrapping themselves around our suggestions.
I've got no problems with GMs improvising plots like you describe. As long as it's done well enough that I don't realize it. Once I see it happening a lot of the interest goes away.
The cool underground kingdom of ghouls and ghasts can be a great plot hook. If I realize it's only there because I mentioned some interest in the first ghoul - and that's a pattern with other things I show interest in, then it breaks the illusion. I'm not exploring a cool world, it's shaping itself for me.
Some of that is fine. Especially if it's more a matter of stuff we look into getting more filled out, rather than plots wrapping themselves around our suggestions.
So with you Jeffe, I'd just have to be sneaky.
I run my games like this all the time. I begin with a rough outline:
1. PCs begin in the City of Inderwick, a fey-tolerant city
2. A portion of the city was violently overgrown by a preternatural event called The Wylding
3. The massive, primeval forest is called The Gnarl
4. PCs initially become members of the Lantern Watch; go on missions
5. Eventually PCs discover The Sword of Legacy
6. Later, villains come after the Sword of Legacy
7. Lantern Watch can no longer protect the sword; PCs tapped for a road trip
8. Sword of Legacy eventually delivered to the League of Omens in Dunspar
9. Late game, League of Omens calls upon PCs once more; a member has gone rogue with the sword
10. PCs must stop the Sword of Legacy from being used to cleave between dimensions, unraveling the entire Veil between the First World and the Prime; campaign ends
Obviously there are huge gaps there. These are filled with one off adventures and plot patches I create to foreshadow the future outline points. Along the way, my players will hopefully express interest in resolving things left over from their backstories, their character's goals or just stuff going on in the setting. I'll take what the players hint at and make filler points on these.
So, if point 4 is Join the Lantern Watch and point 5 is Find the Sword of Legacy, between these 2 I need to foreshadow that the sword is a thing. If the PCs are a former woodcutter turned fighter looking for his lost sister, a half-elf gypsy wizard, a halfling warpriest with a wolf for a divine mount and a skill monkey-type grippli ranger whose village was destroyed by mites, well...
The first adventure likely sees the PCs becoming a team through a mission from the Lantern Watch. This mission will likely involve a mysterious figure that turns out to be the fighter's sister. The objective of the mission would have something to do with a mite redoubt.
In the course of this adventure, I'd allude to the Sword of Legacy. There might be images of it on a bunch of ruins, some writings of it in the treasure the PCs find, or perhaps the Fey are looking for it for some reason. After this, I'd take what the players liked about the first mission and spin up a follow up mission that plays off of these - filler to get them another level. Finally, their third mission is a return to the site the PCs defeated the mites; this time the Watch is pretty sure they'll find the Sword of Legacy nearby.
This means that there are broad strokes of the campaign that are all mine as the GM. However, there are other plot beats that are directly or indirectly the result of player feedback. As the campaign progresses, eventually a thru-line emerges, that the Sword of Legacy is too powerful to be kept in Inderwick and that a group called the League of Omens is not only capable of containing the device but also understands something of the weapon's true nature.
Is it bad that I leave so much open? I hope not. I not only do that so I can incorporate the players' own ideas into the game but I do it so that I don't get bored with the campaign.
Doing improv with people you don't know at all is incredibly hard. Some actors can do it, I can't. With people who you know well, whose thresholds of disbelief on various things are data you know reflexively you can get a reputation for being great at improvisation.
Of course you can work from one to the other. You can develop the skills with your closest friends, you can mix improv with preparation (usually a good idea anyway), you can add one unknown to a group who you do know and hope to carry them along until you get a read on them. Just try not to let your friends' praise go to your head.
To some extent, any RPG involves improv. At least if it's not strictly by the book combat encounters - and often even then.
Players are certainly improvising all the time. In most not entirely scripted adventures, the GMs are doing so as well. Players always find ways to surprise, to not do the expected thing.
The campaigns I most enjoy have some kind of an overall plot. Generally some antagonists have set things in motions that are going to come to a head and must be dealt with. By the PCs, because of whatever hooks draw them into the plot. The best will have multiple, preferably sympathetic antagonists, with conflicting plans and the PCs caught in the middle.
PCs get drawn into the schemes and start finding out what's going on and have lots of options for how to find out and how to deal with it. Much of the improvisation there comes in figuring out what the NPCs do in response to PC actions - how their plans change and adapt. Since the NPCs and their motives are prepared in advance, that kind of improv is more like player role playing than like inventing new things.
Much of the thrill for me as a player here is in putting together the clues to figure out what's actually going on, who's behind it and how to get to some favorable conclusion. This is why I say it falls apart if I realize there's nothing solid behind the curtain, that I'm not actually figuring anything out, but it's being conjured into existence by things I'm making up.
I think there's a difference here between improvisation, which is a necessary skill for any player and even more so for GMs, and "improv" , in something more like the improv comedy sense, where new things are being thrown out with the expectation they'll now be the way the world is or what's really going on with the plot.
Like the "You scan the derelict starship and get some very unusual readings... What is anomalous about this ship?" prompt Haladir used above. Perfectly valid in story games, but it immediately pulls me from the mindset I want to be in of my character in the world figuring out what happened to the derelict to an authorial mindset.
I think I'm getting your distinction TJ, but let me just make sure. You're saying:
1. Improvisation = the necessary ability to create a fiction in place of specific direction from the adventure source material or game system
2. Improv = the permanent modification of the setting or plot around the input of one or more participants in the game, sometimes from obvious or direct prompting
If I have that right, then improvisation is when a GM makes something up on the spot to put in an empty room in a dungeon. Improv, on the other hand, would be like if the players were like "wouldn't it be cool if there was a full grown Bengal tiger in the next room?" and sure enough, there IS one, for no explainable reason.
And AVR, I agree with you that improv or ad-libbing or improvisation or whatever is more difficult with new folks, but not impossible. Improv on game 1 of a group of completely new players, if handled well, can look like prepared material, but its really hard due to nerves and such.
Another tool I use in my own GMing is call backs. Taking something from earlier in the game and tying back to it later. PCs fight some goblins in adventure 1; 5 levels later the PCs are heading underground and you can't think of anything to throw at them; use the goblins from that first adventure. Sure, the PCs might defeat some of them easily but 1. you can add templates to some to make them tougher and 2. this helps the players see that there's consistency in your setting.
Also be careful with some of these techniques and make sure they work for your players.
Absolutely true. These are pretty common techniques that come out of the story-game tradition. I would absolutely go over expectations in that regard during Session Zero. The choice of game that we'd be playing would also influence that... I wouldn't use that technique if I were running an OSR game, for example.
I know I'm on the forum for a company that makes traditional RPGs, but I've very much become a story-gamer. In the circles I tend to play with, ceding narrative control to the players is very much a big part of play culture. These days, when I'm a player, I'm finding that the traditional approach of only experiencing the world through my PC's eyes feels constraining.
I'm also starting to play some GM-less games, such as RPGs built on the "Belonging Outside Belonging" game engine. (Also called "No Dice, No Masters".) Examples are Dream Askew, Wanderhome, and Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars. Lovecraftesque is another GM-less game that uses a different system. In GM-less games, everyone is weaving the story together, pretty much making up the whole thing as we go along. It's a very, very different play experience that exercises a different part of your creativity.
Another tool I use in my own GMing is call backs. Taking something from earlier in the game and tying back to it later. PCs fight some goblins in adventure 1; 5 levels later the PCs are heading underground and you can't think of anything to throw at them; use the goblins from that first adventure. Sure, the PCs might defeat some of them easily but 1. you can add templates to some to make them tougher and 2. this helps the players see that there's consistency in your setting.
This is more about adventure design for RPGs that are level-based (e.g. Pathfinder)... Call-backs are great to underscore how the PCs are advancing. For example, when the party is 3rd level, an encounter with a single ogre is a very challenging fight that could well end with one or more dead PCs. When the party is 8th level, they can curb-stomp a party of 4 ogres. This shows how much more badass the party has become!
Also be careful with some of these techniques and make sure they work for your players.
Absolutely true. These are pretty common techniques that come out of the story-game tradition. I would absolutely go over expectations in that regard during Session Zero. The choice of game that we'd be playing would also influence that... I wouldn't use that technique if I were running an OSR game, for example.
I know I'm on the forum for a company that makes traditional RPGs, but I've very much become a story-gamer. In the circles I tend to play with, ceding narrative control to the players is very much a big part of play culture. These days, when I'm a player, I'm finding that the traditional approach of only experiencing the world through my PC's eyes feels constraining.
I'm also starting to play some GM-less games, such as RPGs built on the "Belonging Outside Belonging" game engine. (Also called "No Dice, No Masters".) Examples are Dream Askew, Wanderhome, and Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars. Lovecraftesque is another GM-less game that uses a different system. In GM-less games, everyone is weaving the story together, pretty much making up the whole thing as we go along. It's a very, very different play experience that exercises a different part of your creativity.
I do enjoy the story teller approach to one shot games. I participated in a Masks game and I had a lot of fun, despite not liking the supers genre at all. I much prefer the the traditional approach when it comes to campaigns. I want to explore the mystery nd enjoy the adventure and I lose all sense of that once I have a direct hand in how its formed.
I like to think I'm a pretty good improvisational GM. We've always had a running joke that if I give players Options A, B, or C they will invariably choose Q. The trick is to not react like you're surprised or disappointed somehow. Since they don't know what you had planned for the first three choices anyway (or they at least shouldn't) just move this or that over to Q and roll with it. And if it's somehow vital they do something in A, B, or C just sort of gently herd them back in that direction. 90% of the time my guys never catch on.
The drawback to this is I have never successfully run a published module in my 35 years of dice-chuckin'. My players are often so unpredictable that the great bulk of what a module contains might not ever see any use. For my own games, I do my best to come up with the most important details and have them written out in my notebook (I still hand-write all of my adventures). But sometimes I get lazy and just lay down the bare bones of the most important aspects of encounters or NPCs and improv the rest of the details on the fly. I'll place whatever encounters or obstacles I expect (or hope) they'll come across where I think they'll be the most dramatic or fun for the group but I still try to remain flexible enough to move them over in the direction the players are going, especially if they're somehow important or essential to the adventure.
We don't use miniatures, either. From the very beginning of my gaming history theater of the mind was the primary method of play. If necessary we'd put a die down on the table to indicate our position for combat or whatever, but the huge bulk of the time I just honed my skills at describing the action rather than show it on a playing surface. In those early days, the only thing we really kept track of was mapping. I learned most of my tricks as a GM from my original dungeonmaster. He had a way of describing things so well you could almost smell the bread baking in a tavern's oven. I've done my best over the years to emulate his skill at that.
When we played at an FLGS where we had tables and space for them we started out using minis but found taking the time to move them every round just added more time to the already sometimes sluggish way combat happens in Pathfinder, especially at higher levels. Now that we play at my house exclusively there's not a table for all of us to sit around. I have three couches and a chair (that's where I sit). I have one table that I keep my laptop, notebooks, and dice on and another small one where snacks are piled for communal consumption.
Our style obviously has become "the way we do things" and the rare times I've had new players come in they sometimes struggled with the lack of battle mats and minis. In a few instances, they just decided our method of gaming wasn't to their taste and we'd part on friendly terms. And the reverse is true; we're so used to visualizing things without props that if we play with "outsiders" who depend on or even require them that it's us who struggle.
I do enjoy the story teller approach to one shot games. I participated in a Masks game and I had a lot of fun, despite not liking the supers genre at all.
I've played a fair amount of Masks. The thing about Masks is that it isn't so much a supers game, as a game about coming-of-age teen drama where the teens happen to also have superpowers.
I do enjoy the story teller approach to one shot games. I participated in a Masks game and I had a lot of fun, despite not liking the supers genre at all.
I've played a fair amount of Masks. The thing about Masks is that it isn't so much a supers game, as a game about coming-of-age teen drama where the teens happen to also have superpowers.
I get that, but I dislike anything even supers related. Fiasco got me into enjoying the storyteller approach. I am always game for trying something out on a limited basis. I still vastly prefer the traditional approach to the campaign RPG experience though.
I like to think I'm a pretty good improvisational GM. We've always had a running joke that if I give players Options A, B, or C they will invariably choose Q. The trick is to not react like you're surprised or disappointed somehow. Since they don't know what you had planned for the first three choices anyway (or they at least shouldn't) just move this or that over to Q and roll with it. And if it's somehow vital they do something in A, B, or C just sort of gently herd them back in that direction. 90% of the time my guys never catch on.
Yes, 100% agree! Especially the parts where good improv means rolling with option Q as if that was just one more thing you'd planned all along. And DmC, I still use pen and paper too!
I feel like another aspect of this skillset I'm talking about is the idea that your players are part of the storytelling process. Regardless of the mechanics or the AMOUNT of their involvement, I feel like part of improvising is giving at least SOME bit of narrative freedom to the players. Sometimes I do what Cal suggests here, moving option "A" stuff to the path option "Q" takes, but other times I just completely make stuff up on the spot.
Improvising individual scenes are kind of easy for me. I make a point to understand the mechanics and basic numbers of all the PCs, keeping my own notes on these things that I review before a game session. These aren't TOO detailed; avg DPR of the martial types, usual attacks from the casters, whether or not their magic items include special movement types or other utilities. Then I just keep the SRD open on my phone to the Bestiary section and if need be pluck some monsters that are either an easy fight or a challenge, depending on what I want to present.
On a bigger scale, improvising plot points is more nuanced but this goes back to what Cal's hinting at here - let the players lead once in while. Present them with options, see which ones they like/take, and go from there. This is where cliché's or fan service moments happen in my games.
If I know my players are really into 80's movies, I might steal plot elements from The Rats of NYMH or Footloose (both things I've done in my PF games). I might also take characters from media my players will recognize. Finally, I call back to parts of my games that stand out in discussions with my players. In one of my 3 games, even though they're now APL 10, kobolds are STILL a thing once in a while b/c the players really like interacting with them.
I try to do all of this sparingly, so it doesn't get overused, but one comment I get often from 2 players in particular is that they feel like they're moving the game forward as much as I am. I take this as a compliment to my improv skills, since the players can see their own comments and suggestions reflected in the game and thus they feel more engaged in the campaign.
I when I was running almost always did my own campaign but used the game world. Now for most things I had what I needed from the web or books detailing an area. But some you had to create yourself. In some cases the PCs didn't care about some stuff. Bar one two and three are pretty much that. Inns were the same. But sometimes it did become important. In more then one case I'd ask my players help name the place. We all got a kick out of that.
One perfect example of improvisation was in a 3.5 game. The GM had introduced us to this very lawful dwarf king. The king welcomed us then asked if we needed or wanted anything. Our resident Paladin asked. "Do you have any hookers in the city?" Now as bad as that was what he said next was shocking. "Is your daughter for sale?" Needless to say every party member took twenty steps back saying what? The GM should have had him killed the king would have normally. Fortunately for the paladin the GM made him work for the city until he felt satisfied since we didn't want a player without a character and the character had been part of the group since first and we were something like 7th. But how would you as a GM react to that question.
As far as this GM. Does the rest of the group like him? It sounds like they probably don't. A month to prepare and he isn't speaks of laziness.
Have you ever noticed how your players perk up if you've given them a detail, or word, or NPC that YOU seem to put emphasis on? Like, there's a difference in player reaction if you say "You enter an empty, 10 x 20 room" and "You enter a room, roughly 10' wide, with about 20' between you and the wall across from where you're entering, which is CONSPICUOUSLY empty."
Both are an empty, featureless room but one might pique the players' attention b/c of the word "conspicuously" that you hinged on. They might think you're tricking them and it's really NOT empty. Or, maybe its a double bluff and it is empty, but you want them to THINK its not empty.
Whatever the case, you as the GM decide when a detail is noteworthy and demands the players' investigation. In this way, if you WANT bar 1, 2 or 3 to matter, it's on you to provide that emphasis, that reason for it to matter.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: my players are mechanics. They play the system, not the story most of the time. To them a "tavern" is a spot on a town map where they can roll a Diplomacy check for Gather Info, a Perform check to earn a daily wage, or it is a Business they own and provides them with GP or Capital.
If I want the tavern to matter, I have to provide some game-impacting detail, or even the ILLUSION of said detail, and then use my own narrative techniques to make that detail important enough to my players.
"You enter the bar; there are..." rolls dice, "13 patrons. Give me a Diplomacy check to gather info..."
"You enter the Tipsy Troglodyte. Upon entering you see..." rolls dice, "13 patrons, some human, some very obviously NOT! To manage a Diplomacy check to gather info here, you get the sense from the sudden lull in conversation accompanying the glares and stares of the customers, you'll need to find some common ground with this motley crew."
Both are scenes for Diplomacy: Gather Info. The second one really plays up the fact that there's a pretty diverse crowd here and they may not all be receptive to the PCs. Then again, the DC to Gather Info here is still a base 10, modified by the stat block of the town to 12 since the place is fairly insular and the players are outsiders, but one pays off that description from the town's stat block, the other doesn't.
Another important skill in improvisation is randomly embellishing or emphasizing some detail, or just making one up TO embellish, to encourage your players to interact with it and give you something to play off of. This is something I find myself doing a lot when I adapt pre-written material into my home games.
Read the Alexandrian creations articles. Seriously. I have seen few other sources that are as good. For example, he has an excellent article on putting the magic in magic items, which basically applies to everything like Mark mentions above.
It is the gm's job to make the world feel real. While a few players will stick to mechanical play like a dwarf stuck to a keg, when a gm fails to do the job well of immersing players in the world, then all the players have nothing left but mechanics and antics.
If you're looking to really stretch your GM improvisational muscles, run a lightweight story-game where you use tables to generate the outline of a plot at the beginning of play. My favorite example is John Harper's one-page RPG Lasers & Feelings.
So, if I were just starting the game, the situation would be...
roll 4 six-siders:4d6 ⇒ (1, 1, 3, 3) = 8
...Zorgon the Conquorer wants to corrupt the Star Dreadnought which will enslave a planet.
I'd then use leading questions to ask the players what we know about Zorgon, the Star Dredadnought, the planet in peril. I'd pretty much make up the questions on the spot and use the players' answers to flesh out the details of the adventure.
e.g. "In 3371, Zorgon's forces captured three planets on the edge of Consortium space. What war crimes did Zorgon commit during that conquest?"
"The Star Dreadnought is a mysterious alien warship beholden to no known faction that has never been defeated in battle. How did it defeat a Confederation fleet the last time they tangled?"
My Traveller Campaign Pirates of Drinax has me coming up with interesting scenarios for the PCs. Traveller does not have levels, combat seems very lethal (certainly can be), and PCs can be made with no real appreciable combat skills.
Given the above, some of the PCs kind of dread getting into an actual fight. So I have been focusing on their skills and giving them cool opportunities to do things more suited to their character's skill during "roll initiative" situations.
For example, we recently had the PCs chasing down a target that stole incriminating data from their employer. The target had hired a handful of goons to sneak him off a starport. The PCs chased them into the cargo loading section of the station.
The two ex-military guys went fisticuffs with the hired goons, the electronics guy went to work on disabling security and erasing footage (PCs in a restricted area big trouble if caught), the engineer started working on a loading skiff so the PCs had an exit plan, and the noble came up with a negotiation plan with the target.
Obviously, the stakes for the fighters is knock out or be knocked out. Though, I am constantly coming up with boons and banes for the other PCs. The electronics guy is working security, does he disable, or does he trip the alarm? Can the noble get the hostile targets to come to an agreeable position?
It's been a lot of fun coming up with multiple paths for the PCs. I often have to improvise, because I never know what they're going to try or do. The noble character explained to the target that the incriminating evidence was bad for their former employer, however, if they give up that edge now and join his crew, he could get back at them 10 fold in the future. I should probably expect this by now, the PCs are always try to recruit new crew lol!
D&D/PF have crunchy combat that has a lot of granularity, which keeps it interesting. Not all games have that though, so sometimes you need to improvise to make things interesting. This was just one of the examples of mixing mechanics and roleplay at the table that hit me recently.
A number of the RPGs I'm playing at the moment don't have combat systems at all. It's possible to get into a fight in the fiction, but resolution is through non-combat rules (often via a generic "do something dangerous" mechanic). These games aren't about fighting, so not having specific rules for fighting is appropriate for them.
I really do enjoy running a good fight scene in games without robust combat mechanics. It puts the fiction first and allows both players and GMs with freedom and flexibility to do cool stuff in the game.
That said, I may have a sampling bias with the sorts of gamers I play with these days: I'm mostly kicking in story-game circles, where the norm is to decide what you're doing in the fiction and then figure out what (if any) mechanics are triggered by those actions.
That style of play really keeps everyone on their toes and regularly throws the story into strange and wonderful directions that I would never have considered on my own!
1, I think it is important to note that some types of games do poorly with letting players decide elements of the world, namely, the sense of exploration and discovery. When the players decide things, it massively undercuts that feeling of learning about a world. Creating is a very different feeling. Similar things can happen on the gm's side, such as when the gm creates then the players discover and utilize what the gm created, especially when they could have easily missed it.
2, When it comes to combat mechanics, it is rather odd. You can actually play a rules crunchy system like dnd 3.x and still have combat be heavily narratively driven, the rules do not preclude it, but for some reason, many players have trouble looking beyond the rules. I'm not entirely sure why this, so I haven't figured out any truly reliable ways to get players focused on the narrative drive in combat despite the rules, but the most success I've had in this regard is by leading the way as gm and never letting them with purely mechanical descriptions (i.e. I attack that guy! GM: How are you attacking? What are you doing>
I dont want a heavy narrative in a crunchy system like 3E/PF. There is plenty of time consumed through the combat system alone. I like that mechanical part of the system. Though, honestly I only want to know why the party has encountered goblins, and what they hope to accomplish before, during, and after the encounter. How the party attacks the goblins round by round isnt all that interesting to me.
My Traveller description wasnt so much about having narratively driven combat, as much as it was about having characters with no combat training and/or ability in combat. In D&D/PF all characters have at least a baseline of combat ability. Though in Traveller you can be a scientist that specializes in botany, an investigative journalist, or a laze-about debutante of some rich noble. A character that has perhaps never held a gun, nor wants to start learning.
When I read the combat chapter of Traveller, it was about 8 pages, a drop in the bucket for D&D. You dont level in Traveller either. So there isnt a lot of meat on that bone. The cool thing was how freeing that was to improvise interesting combat encounters. I focus on the skills of the characters, instead of the abilities. I ask the players to think what their character might try and accomplish. We work together to make narratively interesting things happen.
Now when I run D&D/PF there is so much meat on that bone. Its fun to build a character or NPC with the system and apply their abilities inside a rules boundary and see what happens. Here the mechanics matter more than the narrative because its the tasty game part of the RPG.
I know that I can play Traveller more mechanically, or D&D more narratively, but I like the distinction. When I game in different genres and with different systems, I like them to feel unique and specific. I know most folks like to find that happy place and use it everywhere. Im not one of those.
There are all different styles, but it bothers me that when people see rules and details that they can only see it as mechanics for mechanical play.
I don't like rules light because it is vague. I like the crunch of d20 because it is descriptive and makes communicating details easier. How well made is that sword? A single number tells me the answer, 20 is a well made sword crafted by a master, and 40 is the best sword on the planet and of peerless quality, and 5 is something a child put together. Thus, the number tells me some important detail leaving the description to focus on the more flowery and historical details about the sword.
But it is so hard to find others who can look at it that way.
Well, this is a thread about improvisation skills needed to run games. All due respect, I'm not looking to weigh the merits of one system or another. Also, again with all due respect, I think the need to improv is needed in running any game system, it isn't MORE important in one versus another. Per Haladir, some systems are almost exclusively improv, but depending on play style even something as crunchy as PF1 could be improv heavy too.
The quantity of improvisation required by the runner of a game also comes down to prep. In a crunchless system where it's ALL improv, this doesn't matter, but in 5e or PF1 or even Werewolf: The Apocalypse, if you do no prep, expect to be improvising a lot. Alternatively, if you spend weeks meticulously planning every detail of an adventure, you likely will have less making things up on the fly to do.
The last thing though is the playstyle of the players at the table. If they're like most of mine and just show up to the table looking to be entertained they pretty much put themselves on a railroad, plot wise and there isn't much I've got to come up with spontaneously. Still I run my games on the axiom that no plot survives first contact with the players!
I think my favorite session of running Pathfinder ever was in my old Rise of the Runelords campaign, about 10 years ago. In Book 2, The Skinsaw Murders, the PCs has finished exploring Misgivings, the haunted mansion of the serial killer, The Skinsaw Man, and had ventured to Magnimar for the first time.
That first session in Magnimar consisted entirely of the PCs exploring the city and taking in the sights. The highlight was spending time in the Lord-Mayor's Menagerie, which is the city's public zoo. The area was described in like two lines of text, so we collectively defined what was there. We spent at least 90 minutes of play time in that one location!
We barely engaged the Pathfinder mechanics at all in that session: There was no combat. I think I may have called for one Perception check one Diplomacy check, and a handful of Knowledge checks over the course of a 4-hour session. It was all role-playing, with me improvising businesses and NPCs on-the-fly. I occasionally referenced the "Magnimar" gazetteer in the back of the book (Pathfinder #2). There was one encounter with some street urchins who attempted to pick the party's pockets, but that was resolved with pure roleplaying, with nary a die hitting the table.
For the rest of the campaign, whenever something scary or gross happened, one of the players would say, "This sucks! Can we just go back to the zoo?"
[And that happened a good six years before I fell into story-games!]
The style of play impacts the need for improv and also the style of improv.
Properly done prep gives a few generic items that can be molded to fit the needs which is still improv but of an easier style, but more "traditional" (for lack of better term) prep can almost, but not quite, elimimate improve, but only while the group stays within the bounds the gm expects, and any departure results in the gm needing to do even more improve work for that segment than if the gm didn't bother with prep at all, because they have to make any improve fit with a wealth of other predetermined info.
Similarly, letting players dictate info still requires improve from the gm but again, a different style of improve.
Right now, one of the games I'm playing is Flotsam: Adrift Among the Stars. It uses the "Belonging Outside Belonging" RPG framework, which is both GM-less and diceless. (The framework is also called "No Dice No Masters" for that reason.)
The game is about the underclass aboard a space station. The game has no predefined setting or situation: The players come up with both during Session Zero guided by some story-prompt quesrions. Characters have playbooks, which broadly define the character's role, including the kinds of things they're good at and what gets them into trouble. There are robust relationship mechanics that set the PCs at each other and/or the situations/factions on the station. Play starts with one player framing a scene with their character and one othet, and you go.
It's a completely different RPG experience than a traditional GMed game that uses dice for resolution: The whole game is made up/improvised on the spot by the players, with the rules themselves providing the only guidance.
Storytelling and roleplaying aren't necessarily different things. There's certainly a lot of overlap - the wargaming part of RPGs isn't necessarily roleplaying at all (though it can be) and you'll run into any number of quotes from RPG designers and players about storytelling if you read on the web about RPGs or talk about RPGs at all.
Maybe the distinction you want to make there IC is about structure in some way? Edit: or perhaps it's about whether the world explicitly works by story rules rather than pretending to simulate a 'real' world.
I first encountered the style of play described as "first-person immersive" roughly a decade ago on the now-defunct RPG discussion forum The Forge. I'm not sure who coined it, but its use was pretty widespread. (Note: I misremembered earlier. It's "First-Person Immersive", an adjective that describes play-style.)
The style is "first person" because the player is experiencing the game-world exclusively through the senses of their character. It's "immersive" because the style encourages the player to remain in that imaginary perspective without regard to the gamist components of the rules being used or to make decisions based on the metagame. Play itself can be done first-person ("I probe the pool with my ten-foot pole. Do I find anything at the bottom?") or third-person ("Brak probes the pool with his ten-foot pole. Does he find anyting at the bottom?") The emphasis is that the GM presents the world exclusively through the senses of the character, and the player reacts accordingly.
This style of play emphasizes the simulationist axis under both GNS Theory and the Threefold Model, or the "experiential" component of Ron Edwards' Big Model.
This preferred player style has also been described as "Explorers" under the Bartle Taxonomy of RPG players.
Again, it's a possible play style that works well in some rules frameworks and less well (if at all) in other frameworks. So, yes, first-person immersive play works in many traditional RPGs, such as OGL 3.x, or 5e, or Call of Cthulhu or 2d20... but as the rules of the game approach a certain level of complexity such that "system mastery" becomes necessary for advanced play, first-person immersion becomes less tenable.
And this style of play is pretty much antithetical to narrativist RPGs, where the players are expected to take narrative control from time to time, as per the game rules, the established style of play at the table, or both. It's also tricky at best to use in GM-less games, where the players alternatively take on traditional player and GM roles.
I just saw an interesting article on the artificial limitations D&D imposed on RPG play-style in the early days of the hobby, and the ramifications that we're still dealing with. The article is by Jon Peterson on his RPG blog "Playing the World".
And Twitter thread by Brandon Leon-Gambetta (author of the telenovela simulation RPG Pasion de las Pasiones) on why deep dives into RPG theory just isn't some peoples' bag.
I just saw an interesting article on the artificial limitations D&D imposed on RPG play-style in the early days of the hobby, and the ramifications that we're still dealing with. The article is by Jon Peterson on his RPG blog "Playing the World".
And Twitter thread by Brandon Leon-Gambetta (author of the telenovela simulation RPG Pasion de las Pasiones) on why deep dives into RPG theory just isn't some peoples' bag.
Ha, I saw this myself this morning. I started a new thread on RPG systems to stop topic drift here.
