Improvisation and Preparation

[Takewo]

Hello friends,

I thought it might be interesting to discuss how we see preparation and improvisation. I do not mean to argue about whether it is better to prepare and railroad or to improvise everything and be a leave in the wind. We've already got this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?486204-How-much-should-players-care-about-the-DM-s-world) for that. It is not a preparation against improvisation.

What I would like to talk about is this: how much stuff do you prepare for a game? What sorts of things do you prepare? What do you leave to improvisation? How do you react to unforeseen actions of the characters?


When I was about to start game mastering a campaign in D&D 3.P, I asked a guy who had been my game master for several years about his wisdom on the matter. He first asked me what I remembered most and enjoyed best from our games. As I answered, he told me that most of that stuff was not even prepared, they were events, reactions and things that he had come up with on the fly as we interacted with the world. In fact, he told me that he had spent hours and hours preparing plots, stats, dungeons and stuff, only to see that the most memorable stuff were things that he had improvised.

For this reason, our philosophy of game mastering hinges basically on preparing the world and building the story together with the players. Let me explain it. When I am about to game master, I prepare a world, that is, I set some interesting places that I define in broad strokes. Then, I create a few people to populate them. I do not flesh them out fully or even write stats for them. Most of the times, I simply write one or two sentences describing them and think a bit about their personality and goals. If I think that somebody will need stats, I create them, but I try to avoid making unnecessary stats as much as possible. In fact, in games like D&D I normally keep a table with average scores on attack, defence, hit points and stuff, and I go with that for the opponents, unless they are particularly important. I also keep a couple of enemy groups more or less fleshed out (something like marauders, secret agents of the evil lord, this sort of stuff) so that I can throw them at the party if it is convenient.

So basically, I think what is in the world, who is in the world, and what is going on, what important people are trying to achieve, what is happening, how the evil forces are moving and stuff.

Then, when the time comes to play, I let the players discover the world, interact with people, see what is going on and decide how they want to interact with the world. The preparation method gives me enough information so that I do not have to come up with stuff all the time (although it is also pretty normal for me to create a character or a place on the spot), but it does not enclose us in a particular route that we need to follow in order to create the story. Rather, the story flows from the interaction among the players with the world.


So, how do you guys do it?

[nedz]

I like running sandbox type games, now no game is a true sandbox but that's not the point.

I have found that prepared stuff is better than improvised stuff in some ways, but half of it never gets used and sometimes the details jar.

What takes the time is fleshing out encounters, especially NPC stat blocks, so I prepare these. I then improvise how I use them.

In terms of maps of the setting: the large scale stuff is fixed, but the detail - below about 10 miles in resolution - I improvise.

So basically I prepare resources - encounters, NPCs, treasure hordes, etc. - and then mix them up in play.

[OldTrees1]

What I would like to talk about is this: how much stuff do you prepare for a game? What sorts of things do you prepare? What do you leave to improvisation? How do you react to unforeseen actions of the characters?

There are 2 stages of preparation: Before t=0 and After t=0.

Before t=0:
I define my world in broad strokes. Which political powers govern where and how? Who are the major players for the setting?
I focus the detailed prep to around the PC starting location. Where do they start? What is that place? Why are they there?
Finally I like the world to be in motion. So I defined a few major NPCs that have plans that will advance as times ticks onwards. If I were to have an Elder Evil be approaching, this is when I would place the dungeons that would be 1 of the sources of information(rule of 3).

t=0:
Characters enter and the game begins

After t=0:
Here I focus on improvisation almost exclusively. Given enough forewarning of where the PCs are going I might prepare material. However most of the material will need to be improvised. However I don't use the "made up on the spot" style of improv. Instead I try to have developed a strong enough understanding of my world before t=0 that I can "derive material on the spot". Instead of "what to do/place" I am asking "what would they do/what would have been here". Practice really helps here because essentially you are asking yourself "If I had spent an hour preparing for this, what would I have made?". Such a question requires both practice preparing material and practice guessing at what you would have prepared. Nowadays, since I use dungeons a lot, I can generated the dungeon I would have prepared without needing any prep time.

[Geddy2112]

I second the above, prepare big things before the session and improvise the details. Have a city with a general layout and a few key NPC's or locations, improvise the rest.

Good DMing means having your tools prepared and improvising how and when you use them. DMing is like bartending-just because you have a well stocked bar does not make you good at making/serving drinks, and I don't care if you are the best in the world if you have no tools you won't do a good job. Players interact with your world are like ordering drinks. Some might stick to the special you know best, others will order predictable staples, some might order variations, but then sometimes you have to mix up something not on the menu, or of your own invention. Or sometimes you might not have a particular thing ready, so you have to substitute or make do.

I actually like when my players throw me curve balls and interactions that differ from my planned things. It lets me know what to prepare in the future, and while they are talking/doing things that I don't have to do(control an NPC, enemy, whatever) I get time to whip something up on the fly.

[EnglishKitsune]

The same as the above, but some of the details I do generally prepare for such games are lists that I can easily refer to for thematic names. Thins like a List of Names for various Races, Lists of Names for Stores/Taverns/Buildings/Streets etc, just quick reference guides that I can cross the name off of once I've used it.

As for plots/events I generally lay myself some ground rules for the area and then let myself improv inside my self built box, such a set of rules would be:

City of Greystone
Primarily Dwarven City, with every 3 out of 10 people a Non-Dwarf
Well Guarded, no Kobolds in the sewers etc. Smugglers are a noted problem though.
Adventurers are welcome in the Merchant, Lower and Port districts, but generally are less welcome otherwise.
Wearing weapons is okay, Armour may get a few curious glances. Open Magic use, while not illegal, is heavily frowned upon.

The other thing I *ALWAYS* prep is a little portable audio recorder, which I keep on the table and normally pointed at myself, so that after the session I can go back and make more detailed notes about what I've created in session, to prevent contradictions down the line. (Players rarely remember details, unless they serve to derail your progress completely because you forgot one minor thing you said 5 months ago in passing.)

[RazorChain]

I'm not going to go into world building but before sessions.


Usually I know where the PC's are going and spend a little prep time developing that storyline and the npc's involved. But mostly I just improvise. I know my npc's and their plots and plans and it's up to the PC's how they crash the party.

[Darth Ultron]

Yea, all the cool people will say don't prepare anything and just improvise an awesome and amazing game out of thin air for the most fun ever. I guess it sounds good, so people repeat it. Though it's a lot like saying ''just toss random food and stuff on a fire and you can cook a five star meal''.

Though there are three ways the ''awesome improve'' works. First, it is possible to have a very fun improvised game, in limited ways, if your not looking for a complex game with lots of details. Second, an improve game is better then a normal game with a boring DM. And third, an improve game is better then a normal game with a bad DM.




What I would like to talk about is this: how much stuff do you prepare for a game? What sorts of things do you prepare? What do you leave to improvisation? How do you react to unforeseen actions of the characters?

I prepare a lot before a game. I set down all the important people, places and things. Generally, a paragraph or two. Anything that might need it, has a stat block. I make some notes about anything I think I might need.

Then I make the adventure. It has the typical plot, with the typical ''what if's''. The plot is created with the players and characters both in mind, so there is little chance of going off the path. As I can foresee most things the players might do, there is little unforeseen.

And I'm not the type of DM that lets a jerk player ruin a game. So if a player really does try a jerk move, I'll just ignore and or railroad it away. And if the player continues to be a jerk they will just be told to leave.

As improvisation for me means a lazy, jerk DM, I would never say I do it. I'd say I flesh out the details as the game moves along.

[Knaight]

How much I plan depends on what I'm doing. If I'm aiming for an in depth longer campaign, I get a more in depth setting, and fill it in continuously, then probably reuse it a couple of times. If I'm running something rules heavy, I prepare mechanical stuff ahead of time. With that said, I can and have run settings improvised on the spot, built out of player input. Sometimes people are just in the mood for steampunk vikings with steam powered mecha, so I make a setting where they can be steampunk vikings with steam powered mecha, usually while they're hashing out characters.

[RazorChain]

Yea, all the cool people will say don't prepare anything and just improvise an awesome and amazing game out of thin air for the most fun ever. I guess it sounds good, so people repeat it. Though it's a lot like saying ''just toss random food and stuff on a fire and you can cook a five star meal''.

Though there are three ways the ''awesome improve'' works. First, it is possible to have a very fun improvised game, in limited ways, if your not looking for a complex game with lots of details. Second, an improve game is better then a normal game with a boring DM. And third, an improve game is better then a normal game with a bad DM.



I prepare a lot before a game. I set down all the important people, places and things. Generally, a paragraph or two. Anything that might need it, has a stat block. I make some notes about anything I think I might need.

Then I make the adventure. It has the typical plot, with the typical ''what if's''. The plot is created with the players and characters both in mind, so there is little chance of going off the path. As I can foresee most things the players might do, there is little unforeseen.

And I'm not the type of DM that lets a jerk player ruin a game. So if a player really does try a jerk move, I'll just ignore and or railroad it away. And if the player continues to be a jerk they will just be told to leave.

As improvisation for me means a lazy, jerk DM, I would never say I do it. I'd say I flesh out the details as the game moves along.


There are two different things in preparation.

1) is world building. This is bulk of the time you spend before you start playing. If you are using a premade world then most of the time goes to aquaint yourself with the world and less on designing.

2) preparing for a session. This is vastly different from world building...most of the bricks are in place already. This is where you go into more details because you know where the PC's are heading.

Improvisation doesn't mean you don't have a plot or a plan or anything ready. It means that you are more fluid and ready to adapt to unexpected situations.

I heartily recommend everybody to improvise, because practise makes perfect

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind. -Bruce Lee-

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns. -Bruce Lee-

[Thrawn4]

Usually I have one or more neat ideas that I want to integrate into the next adventure, so the next step is to find a believable way that allows these ideas to become true.
That said, you usually need a compelling reason for the player characters to pursue a certain goal. Then I make up some obstacles like guards or missing pieces of information, including at least one way to solve these. Sometimes I flesh out the more interesting concepts because I love a certain idea and want it to work out, but the less interesting stuff is summarized in a few key words. The same is true for impressions or reminders. Stats are rarely prepared as I prefer rules-light systems, unless a combat encouter is very likely.
Then the game starts and I have an incentive for the players to persue a goal and certain obstacles that they have to overcome. How they do that is up to them, and this is the part where improvisation is key as it provides the most interesting aspects of roleplaying. I like to improvise a lot of random (non-combat) encouters and fluff related events. It makes for a more vivid atmosphere if there is more than just the next quest but also merchants, pick-pockets and arrogant royalty furthering their own agenda.

I have run some adventures on the fly and some with hours of preparation work, and I find that both approaches work. Both aspects improve the game dramatically.

[NichG]

I almost never prepare anything in solid form, but I do spend time thinking about the game. Most of that thought will get thrown out and won't see play, but it enables me to be in the right mindset to move fluidly when we actually hit game. This tends to be very abstract stuff like motivations, thematic consistency, and a general feel for pacing and overall structure. Then maybe throw in a few personalities and motivations and I'm ready to go.

Stuff like names, stat blocks, etc are totally irrelevant and can be done completely on the fly.

I'm currently running a campaign where the PCs can open up portals to places of their choosing, but it has to be phrased sort of like a wish. 'I want a place we can get rich', 'I want to see my family again', etc. Then a session of the game is them going and doing stuff with that in whatever place results. So with less than 24 hours before game, my players decided 'We want to make magic strong again' (one of the characters' backstory involved them being a god-wizard before stuff got broken and they lost most of their powers).

My process following that was:


- Inventory sources of inspiration. 'Okay, so a place where magic has become weak; there's stuff like that with Netheril/Mystra always dying in Faerun, Technocracy stuff in WoD Mage and the way that Consensus works, various stories where magic has a concrete source and that source has waned/died/etc'. That gave me the thematic structure I was dealing with and various things to pull from to make the details.

- Ask about player involvement. 'Given all these various sources, what would be cool for the players to interact with? Will they feel cheated, rewarded, etc? How can I work in what I know the players want in the end, but make it so that they feel like they didn't get what they asked for at the start? Also, out of those various sources, which are ones the players have the means to influence, versus things where they wouldn't be able to do anything?'. So that filtered out a lot of the previous sources of inspiration. I decided to keep elements of Faerunian Netheril 'mankind has destroyed magic by exploiting it too heavily', worked in an element of the Consensus by deciding that there was a church that had risen to power following the fall of magic which was exploiting a bit of a monopoly on magic-like stuff and had some connection to the products of what the faux-Netherese had gotten in exchange for killing the sources of magic.

- Ask how does this fit into the campaign as a whole? To this end, there were a couple elements and themes from the broader cosmology of the campaign that I could use. Magic in the broader cosmology is strongly tied to things that lived through a former cycle of the multiverse, and there are some specific races and entities to pull from. So I decided that the source of magic that had died would be one of these eternal beings that turned out to not be quite so eternal after all. There were also a set of antagonists I needed to gradually introduce, so I picked one who would be interested in this portal and worked him into the church.

- Decide the surface lacquer. To be memorable, things should be larger than life, so I wanted something very recognizable and exaggerated that would add a sort of flavor to the whole thing. I grabbed the Hamlet from Darkest Dungeons and in particular the guy who commits suicide in the intro after delving into Cthonian mysteries and going insane, and instead I decided that this portal would take place during those initial digs. The result makes for a very Call of Cthulhu/Ravenloft type feel, which ties well with digging for a source of magic in a dead land deprived of it, ruled over by a hypocritical church. That would be very memorable, and would likely cause the players to develop strong opinions and feelings about what was going on.

- What's the twist? I decided that since the request was 'make magic strong again', the twist would be that there was not just one source of magic that the players could revive/capture/etc, but that there'd actually be three, and the source that the players chose would control the type of magic that came out of this adventure. The sources would be the artifact magic of a previous epoch (themed after 2ed D&D magic system), sorceror-like intrinsic magic (in this case, the source would be a remaining vial of extracted Heavy Magic such as what Karsus was messing with in Netheril), or the Far Realm.

That was basically the pre-game thinking. This was all stuff done while cooking, having dinner, etc; not focused prep time. And to this point, nothing was written down.

In the 10 minutes immediately before game I jotted down a few prop notes. I decided it'd be good to make the journey to the source of magic have a kind of feel of an expedition in a jungle, without specific rooms or floorplans but more like a group of people moving through a hostile area. So I drew some tunnels and put evocative names in the major chambers like 'The Distorted Pass', 'The Fallen Army', 'The Hill of Blades', etc. Then during game I would show the players that map and have the lord of the manor explain how far the expeditions had so far gotten, what the hazards were like, and let the players decide which route they'd try to take. That'd be a primary prop and there'd be a good chunk of player engagement involved in them debating which of the various hazards they wanted to deal with or not.

The actual session went something like:

- Players spend maybe the first 30 minutes getting their heads in the game, having external conversations die down, etc. During this time they've basically gone through the portal and have been chatting up a bartender in the Hamlet about the area, getting a feel for where they are.

- The next hour or so is, the players decide to talk to the lord of the estate and interact with him and the church inquisitor who is actually one of the longer-term antagonists come to spy on them. They figure out there's something weird with the inquisitor, tell their stories to the lord, find out the state of the excavations and what's going on with magic in the world, and basically arrange to have an expedition to collect a new source of magic and create an undead god to feed it out into the world. Well, the players don't actually want to do that but they nod at the right times and essentially plan to betray the lord of the manor and take the magic source for themselves. Lots of random worldbuilding details get made up here on the fly - names, what's up with the dead god buried under the hill near here, what's up with the church, how is the church organized, etc. None of it really matters to anything I've planned so it mostly just has to be coherent and sound good. The players also discuss what tunnels to take here, etc. They decide to deal with hallucinogenic mushrooms and non-Euclidean geometry rather than undead armies and fighting wyverns in an underground cave over a chasm. Sure, why not.

- The group sets out, deals with toxic mushrooms that cause people to turn on eachother and become moss-man servitors for subterranean fungal forests, etc. Hijinks ensue, PCs make Balance checks and saves and discuss burning out the caverns and worry about flammable gasses (which I immediately spring on as the explanation for why the lord of the manor hasn't burned out the area - the tunnel structure is unstable and if the gasses explode they lose this passage). NPCs are callous, workmen are lost, morale drops, but its mostly establishing mood rather than a real threat.

- The group enters the Distorted Passes, which is where the Far Realms source is. Some genre-savvy PCs intentionally blindfold themselves, others explore openly, etc. One PC looks too closely and gets the layout of the place stuck in their brain - I tell them they know the way through, but they also know where the center is, so what do you want to do? They go to the center, interact with a Far Realms glyph, one of the PCs extracts some fluid from it and a few of them drink (why?! well, whatever). So now we have a couple of Xenotheurgists in the party whose existence cracks the walls of reality; I tell them they have a Murmur, and if they want to go more look it up on GitP. The PCs decide that they don't want to make this thing the source of magic. The Far Realms connection should be surprisingly benign for genre-savvy players, and I make a plan to play on this later on by connecting it to another thing in the campaign cosmology, but for the time being it goes unremarked.

- The group finds the Fallen Spire (name stolen from a totally unrelated video game), which I decide on the spot is the building-sized spearhead of a deity who tried to smash the lab of the faux-Netherese guy to bits as he was draining them of their power. So the spearhead itself is made of this whitish material which has decayed/peeled off (essentially some kind of heavenly material that has since been corrupted/lost its power), but inside and supporting the structure is a weave of lead wires which are contain the magic source within and only letting it leech out slowly. The PCs mess with this, release some bursts of magic, get excited about it, and make an airlock in the lead weave to go on through. Various hijinks are had with sources of magic tending to over-charge and blow up. Some items randomly get enchanted, others end up being disjoined, but its early in the campaign so the random enchantments gained end up easily balancing out the item losses from the disjunction effect, and the players are generally feeling cautious but okay about the endeavor. They navigate some spatial challenges due to the spearhead being a big empty vertical cone with spellfire shooting from the walls inside, leaving the NPCs climbing down just a bit behind them.

- The group gets to the lab; the antagonist has gone ahead and sealed it magically, but he's a bit of a Riddler type and his seals are more annoying/gimmicky than they are effective. The party goes in, matches wits with him, defeats him in a nefarious game, and secures the prize - a vial containing a few doses of Heavy Magic. The PCs quickly secure their loot, craft a deception to distract the lord of the manor as he arrives, and get out as fast as they can. Session end.

[Darth Ultron]

Improvisation doesn't mean you don't have a plot or a plan or anything ready. It means that you are more fluid and ready to adapt to unexpected situations.


So being fluid and adaptable is improvisation? That is a bit of a stretch, but guess ''improve'' is just the cool buzz word so meaning don't matter as long as it sounds cool.

[RazorChain]

So being fluid and adaptable is improvisation? That is a bit of a stretch, but guess ''improve'' is just the cool buzz word so meaning don't matter as long as it sounds cool.

Well we could use extemporaneously instead. But yes being able to improvise on the spot means that you are adapting to a situation. Let's say that I improvise a meal from yesterdays leftover whereas you would go shopping to follow a recipe.

As I improvise my meal from leftovers doesn't mean that I did not think about how I was going to do it in advance. But as I didn't have all the ingredients I improvise.

If an actor doesn't follow a script he is improvising.

Let's say what the dictionary has to say:

1, 2. Extemporaneous (extempore), impromptu, improvised are used of expression given without preparation or only partial preparation.


Improve is something totally different. It means to make something better or increase it's value.

[SirBellias]

What I've done in the past was prepare the world, with a bunch of random encounter tables for different areas based on what the players might find there. Then I'd tell them some half baked mostly true rumors that I may or may not have made up on the spot, or made up earlier and built a set piece monster for, and tell them to pick one to pursue. I'd they deal with the thing, great. I rolled random encounters at regular intervals throughout in game travels, and let the dice fall where they may. Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes good things happen. It gives my apathetic players something to do.

For my story oriented players, I spend a lot of character creation trying to help them build characters that may mesh with any ideas they want to try, and the other half of it I spend trying to fit their ideas into the world. I usually have a dungeon planned out, and a small section of the world around it, and leave lots of white space on the world map to fill in details necessary for different characters (one race's ancestral homelands, another character's starting town). I spend a lot of time making the world make sense around the player's characters. Then, strangely enough, I give them a goal, and ask them why they are pursuing it. I find it's best to get everyone on the same page for the first adventure or so, and then once that's done they'll have come to grips with their characters enough to build up some personal goals, or reasons to stay together.
During the game proper I roll with whatever they decide to do, laying down the setting as much as possible, and asking them hooking questions if they have no ideas. (is Lorkir the Fighter a gambling man? Where would you go to retrieve information on X? What have you been told about Y that the others may not know? How long ago did you realize you're being followed? When will you realize that we're actually playing PARANOIA? And so on.)

In effect, I prepare a lot of stuff beforehand for both games, but very little in the ways of cause and effect are thought about until I can see what the characters are prone to do.