Improvisational Game Mastering, Part 1

I don't prep. With a teething infant, a large roster of guitar students, a small graphic design business, and a wife who feels the creative urge as strongly as I do, I don't have much spare time. The small quantity of time I'm able to steal from the rest of my life is going to be spent painting, or composing a song, or writing an article for an awesome gaming blog, not prepping for a game.

I'm an improvisational game master. I play by ear. I fly by the seat of my pants.

I don't go into a game blind, however. When I sit down to run a game, I have a bandoleer of tools and techniques that help me and my players create a story out of nothing. They pretty much amount to this: let the players do all the work for you.

These are pretty common techniques among the story-indie-hippy-narrative crowd, so I can't really take credit for inventing them. Don't be afraid to use them in your Savage Worlds or 4e campaign, though; they're system agnostic.

Flags

Fred Hicks once wrote something to the effect that a character sheet is a love letter to the GM. What the player writes on her character sheet is a pretty accurate indication of what she wants to see in the game. If she creates a barbarian named Ug who has high levels in ass-kicking and seduction, then Ug's player wants lots of ass-kicking and seduction in the game.

I make a point of looking at all of the character sheets before every game and taking note of each character's highest skills, stats, and feats (or closest approximation in the game we happen to be playing). Each time I bring up a situation that spotlights this aspect of the character, I put a tick mark next to it. Hopefully, at the end of the session, everyone at the table has had their character involved in a scene where they could show off how awesome they are.

Kickers

What has just happened to your character that he can't ignore? That's a kicker.

Has Ug just found out that the evil wizard is his long-lost father that he began this quest to find? Did Arianna wake up in the forest naked with the taste of  blood in her mouth and no idea why or how? Kickers.

I have each player write a kicker for his character right after character creation. With a little luck, I can find some common threads that I can use to tie all of the characters together.

Fishing

Fishing is a simple technique where you ask your players to provide details about events that have happened in the fiction.

GM: Ug is sitting at the bar, and a strange looking old man in a worn cloak pulls up a stool next to him. After a couple of drinks, the old man mutters something under his breath that makes Ug's face go white. What did he say?

Ug's Player: Oh! Um...

I don't recommend using fishing more than two or three times per game session, but it can act like a super flag. There's no better way to find out what your players want to see in the game than to have them tell you. It's a great technique to use when you can tell the players are getting bored.

Questions and Comments

If you use these techniques in your game, I'd love to hear how it worked out for you. Also, if you have any techniques that you use at your table that you'd like me to share in future articles, or if you have any questions about particular issues in your game that you think I can help answer, drop me a line at brennen@thediceoflife.com