When I was first starting out in this hobby, game books and supplements were a luxury and due to my limited budget, I really only stuck with core books and those rare books I got as gifts from family. This meant that if I wanted to play the game I had to create my own adventures, but no matter how expertly devised my plan seemed, my games never ended up the way I thought they would.
Over time, I stopped pre-planning my adventures and began running my games improv style. After about two decades of running these types of games, I suppose I lost the sense of how unusual this style of gaming is. I found that I got just as much out of the game as my players did. All of us were not only participants in the story, but we were all the audience as well, as none of us really knew what was going to happen next!
Of course, not every game turns out to be a masterpiece, and over the year, I’ve picked up some tricks and learned some habits that make those duds fewer and farther between. And since not everyone might be an old school gamer, I thought I’d offer up my thoughts for those who want to try running an improvisational game.
First thing you’ll want to do is decide what type of game you’ll be running; decide what your main location will be (city, planet or ship) and prepare several locations and NPCs within that setting. I’ve even asked my players to detail their character’s favorite haunts and some folks they would regularly encounter. This will help you flesh out your chronicle, but you should still do a lot of the work. For example, you may decide that all of the strings will be pulled by your suave business person; since none of your players would probably know this before the game starts, you’ll have to have some idea as to where they hatch all their plans from and who does your villain’s bidding.
The more you can prepare, the more smoothly your games will go on the day. I typically go into the games with a rough idea of Who, What, Where and Why, but try not to paint myself into a corner with details. This brings me to my counterpoint: don’t over prepare! What I mean by this is allow yourself the room to place a location in the needed area on the fly; if you’ve mapped out every corner of your city, for example, you can’t have that dive bar your characters need to escape into. And looking at your notes for what building you’ve placed in location G-14 takes time and urgency away from the game.
Over the course of the chronicle, you and your players will flesh out numerous locations and characters–enough to make your location a living breathing aspect of your story, almost as if it was a character itself. This absolutely necessitates taking great notes and maybe even expanding on them after the game. If your contact drives a red sports car one week, they’d better still be driving that car next week (unless something happened to that car, of course).
I also highly recommend having access to a list of names that you can use for your impromptu NPCs. You can make your own list, grab one of those baby names books or go online and find a website that generates names (see “The Name Game” by Linda Whitson) for your style of game. Whenever you give something a name, make a note of it, because a character you intended to be a throwaway NPC might become a player’s love interest, victim or future contact. Take notes of everything!
Lastly, I want to give you advice on personal style; running an improv game can be scary, especially when you try it out for the first time. If I didn’t feel comfortable with making up a random detail or suggestion from a player, I would often just say, “No.” “No” is a story killer. Nothing great or memorable comes from a “no”; all that you’ve really done is set in stone that such a place, item or character doesn’t exist in that situation.
Consider the power of “Yes, and…” When a player suggests something, what they may be saying is that they want that element as part of the shared story. “Yes” gives your players the power to participate in telling your shared story, introduces new characters, locations and situations to your game. Game Masters may be hesitant to give so much power to their players, but GMs, you aren’t giving up as much power as you think because “Yes” is only part of the equation. “Yes, and…” give you the power to alter the suggestion or add your own details.
This style isn’t for everyone and the transition doesn’t need to be a complete one or even happen all at once. Take your time and open up just certain aspects of your game to improv and if you like the way it feels, do the same for more and more aspects of your game until you’ve gone completely off script! How many of you are interested in doing this? Are you already doing this? What is your experience?
Alex Montoya
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