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Improvisation techniques for gamers
Shed your fears and open your
mind to better play
By Pete Darby
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone,
for those who haven't been bored to tears by old drama
queens, is an amazing book, ostensibly about acting and story
telling.
So what? Why should Impro matter to role-players? Because
Impro is practical, fun, and, by itself, is virtually a freeform
game players handbook. Here are my views of how the ideas
in Impro can help you in your role-playing hobby.
Harnessing Spontaneity
In Impro, Johnstone reckons there are three main things that
stop people from being creatively spontaneous:
1) Fear of psychosis
2) Fear of obscenity
3) Fear of unoriginality.
I'm not entirely sure the first two aren't aspects
of the same thing, which is fear of being strange, crazy,
or unacceptably different. Ironically, trying to break away
from those leads to his third fear--fear of being boring
and normal.
The first fears--the fears of being alienated--lead
to people playing it safe with their characters and games.
So, we go back to the same old habits and the same old adventures
and adventurers, this time dressed up in new costumes, names,
races and powers.
Conversely, the last fear--the fear of being bored or
boring--leads to that old favourite, "acting crazy."
Everyone's had that one member of the gaming group who
has to do something suicidal or inappropriate because he says,
"I'm bored," or,"My character would do
that."
Let's look at those first two fears. They indicate we'll
be discovered by others as crazy, or perverts, or crazy perverts.
A small word to the wise--our hobby mostly consists of
getting together with people we tend to know fairly well,
then immediately pretend to be other people. Most "standard"
behaviour for an adventuring party, as remarked by many designers
and commentators, would be seen as illegal, immoral and borderline
psychotic behavior. A standard role-playing session includes
the use of techniques of fantasizing in a social context that
many psychiatrists only recommend to be used under the supervision
of highly trained therapists.
In other words, we're already acting crazy.
People are strange
I'm going out on a limb here: Playing role-playing games
will not drive you crazy. If you're worried that playing
role-playing games will reveal that you're odd, well,
you're already odd for playing role-playing games in
the first place. Don't sweat it. But, maybe you're
not as odd as people who try to conceal their oddness by never
trying anything odd. That's downright weird! Trying to
conceal how you're mentally different from the other
players is not only detrimental to your fun, but it's
also detrimental to theirs. And trying to demonstrate how
you're mentally different (whether more artistic, or
funny, or just plain "wacky") tends to demonstrate
nothing more than your desperate need to hide your fear of
normality.
As for worrying about being dull or unoriginal, consider
this. There's a grand old tradition that says there are
only a dozen or so plot lines, and they've been done
a million times each. There are only a couple of dozen possible
basic character traits. On a grand, cosmic scale, you can't
be original. Or, at least, you can't be original be comprehended
by the rest of humanity.
So, I don't think anything you do in a role-playing
game is going to expose you as being any stranger than the
average gamer, or indeed the average member of the public.
To give you an example of "normal" people, among
the guys I work with are two flight simulation nuts, a gentleman
who turned down the attentions of his wife to play a video
game, a tropical fish enthusiast, a train enthusiast, a martial
artist, and a guy who has more DVD space than clear wall space.
Some of these "enthusiasts" are the same person.
That's just the stuff I can tell you about that's
legal. And all of them tease each other for their idiosyncrasies.
Since I started working, I've been pretty up front about
my hobby, and they've given up teasing me because I don't
get defensive. But, call the train enthusiast a train spotter,
and hooo boy!
There will always be a lot of interest in how much role-playing
games reveal about you. And, sure, when you look back on your
characters and games, you can gain a certain amount of insight
into your own real-life character. But either analysing while
playing or skewing your play to try to display or conceal
your personality just cramps your playing style. Doing so
distracts your attention from the game and having fun. Besides,
what can you possibly learn about yourself if you don't
let yourself go?
Good enough, right now!
Here's where we come to the great, unifying characteristic
that links impro theatre to role-playing: immediacy. The other
players in a role-playing game and the audience of an impro
(and the other improvisers!) don't want a perfect response
in a week's time. They want a good enough response right
now!
You can at least partially assess a good system for a given
group of players by finding out what results the system mechanically
produces in what time frame. An "imagineer" player
may be more comfortable with a longer wait to consult tables.
A challenge-seeker may gladly wait a bit to check the effects
of new tactics. And, the player prioritizing story or theme
may pause long enough to refer to a relationship map of characters
involved in a scene. All of these are part and parcel of the
"good enough" part of the response.
What role players and improvisers can't stand is the
response "I don't know." In impro, it more
often takes the form of the phrase "I can't think
of anything." At least role-players have the crutch of
mechanical game system results to fall back on. "I can't
think of anything" is usually code for "All I can
think of is weird, perverse or dull stuff, and I want you
all to think of me as fascinatingly normal." This is
the impossible thing of Impro.
A liberating phrase that Johnstone advises is "Heh ...
I'm not saying that!" It acknowledges that you've
got an idea, but one that you feel will either be unacceptable
to the group or to yourself. But that phrase (as well as its
paraphrases) has two interesting consequences. The first is
that it becomes easier to accept what's constantly running
through your head because you recognise that you don't
know where a lot of it comes from, and you're not responsible
for the contents, just the expression. Secondly, you get used
to hearing the phrase, "Go on then ... what?" Once
you've made it plain that you've already said you
didn't want to say it, it kind of makes the responding
person mutually responsible for the expression of the idea.
You'll be initially surprised at how little you get the
response "You're right, you shouldn't have
said that," and how often you get "Heh ... why not?"
Offering, blocking and accepting
The most basic tools of an improviser are Offering, Accepting
and Blocking. These terms are jargon for some very simple
things, but labeling them as such brings a level of awareness
that illuminates proceedings.
Offering is simply providing a hook, or a statement, for
another performer to react to. It should be fairly obvious
what Accepting and Blocking are in this context. In a free-form
theatre improvisation, blocking is generally held to be Very
Bad, but it's also a default defensive tactic. If we're
afraid of where another improviser may be leading us, we instinctively
block. If we're invested in the illusion of not breaking
character, as most performing improvisers are, it's about
the only way to express discomfort with another improviser's
actions.
The example Johnstone gives is as follows:
Actor 1: I've brought the elephant
Actor 2: For the gelding?
Actor 1: NO!
Actor 1 offers, Actor 2 accepts and offers, and the Actor
1 blocks. Perhaps understandably, but it's to the dismay
of the audience and the other actor.
How role-playing games differ
Role-playing games tend to have a more pre-defined universe
in which events occur. Role-playing games also accept at least
a few restrictions in terms of simulation. Also, they do not
restrict participants choices to "in-character"
plausibility (most improvisations are so restricted). Finally,
role-playing games must acknowledge the social contract and
boundaries of a group, which often intends to play together
for an extended period of time rather than one isolated session.
These differences mean that role-playing games, by and large,
are far less free-form than improvisation sessions. The basic
technique of "accept everything" that keeps improvisations
flowing so freely, such that they seem the products of telepathy
between performers, shouldn't be used in pure form when
playing role-playing games.
Never say no
This is where rules such as Nobilis' Monarda Law arise:
"Never say No." It seems strange to the traditional
role-player, if only because explicit blocking of other players
offers is often the primary form of interaction between players
and the game master. "You can't do that because
... " The Monarda law clarifies itself by defining the
ways you can say yes: "Yes," " How," "You
Can Try," and "Yes, but . . . . "
If we break these down into offering, blocking and accepting,
we can see that only "Yes" is an unconditional acceptance.
"How" is actually a form of blocking, a challenge
to the stated action, as in "Give me a more acceptable
or interesting offer." "You can try" is acceptance
of the offer not as a completed action, but as a statement
of intent. "Yes, but . . . . " is an acceptance
and offer; that part of the story goes ahead, and creates
a further development.
The very mechanic of offering blocking and accepting is the
basis of some games, notably The Extraordinary Adventures
of Baron Munchausen and Pantheon from Hogshead Publishing.
Pantheon works by having players build a story one sentence
at a time. A written sentence is accepted by default by the
other players. In order to block, players must wager or commit
limited resources. In The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron
Munchausen, there is a slight reverse, in that the block to
another players' offer (which can be any part of their
monologue) must consist of a wager of a limited resource and
an offer of an element to be accepted by the active player.
A simple block is not available to a player wishing to interrupt,
though the active player may block the interrupting offer
(at the risk of their own limited resource).
The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen presumes
an 18th century European milieu for much of its style, but
there is no mechanical restraint on this. Pantheon's
various scenarios reward genre tropes and clichés in
the scoring endgame, but out-of-genre offers are mechanically
no different from in genre offers. They differ from many role-playing
games in that there is virtually no simulation, no "reality
checking" beyond what the players will allow. I feel
that this is part and parcel with their "acceptance by
default" mechanisms; once checking against plausibility
comes in, you impose (sometimes small) barrier to the freewheeling
creativity that these games thrive on.
In more traditional role-playing games, this free wheeling
creativity can be very rewarding. Players can benefit significantly
by changing their unconscious behaviors from blocking to accepting
and offering.
Of course, this creativity can be abused. Players may find
their characters taking paths they neither intended nor wished
to tread. This is a problem the average improviser doesn't
often face, given the lack of continuing characters and artistic
freedom granted performers. Stage improvisers tend not to
get attached to the "guy on a park bench" they just
portrayed, and often they don't invest much in the way
of preparation time or longer term goals, unlike many carefully
constructed player characters.
Thankfully, role-players have a couple of tools most improvisers
don't. Most especially, they have an understanding with
fellow players, a social agreement on how and why the game
is played. If need be, the group can "roll back"
a game to before a problematic offer was made. The price is
that players loses many of the benefits that automatic acceptation
offers, but if it keeps people playing, and enjoying playing,
I'll take that any day.
However, don't abandon spontaneity. Getting rid of the
fear of psychosis, obscenity, and mundaness mainly consists
of treating what pops into your mind as another offer to be
accepted or blocked according to the needs of the game. And,
according to Johnstone, releasing creativity mainly consists
of changing your default attitude to offers from blocking
to accepting, at least within a creative context like a role-playing
game.
Story building skills
Johnstone's guide to building stories is one of the
simplest methods I've ever seen. It has only two techniques--breaking
routines and re-incorporation.
Breaking routines
Every story begins with a routine being broken. Johnstone's
favourite example is the movie The Last Detail, where military
police bringing a deserter in across country decide to turn
the trip into a final binge. Other examples include Hamlet
(a prince in mourning is visited by the ghost of his father
urging revenge), Red Riding Hood (a girl going to grandma's
meets wolf), and Spiderman (a high school nerd is granted
super-powers). In each case, an easily established pattern
is broken, and the act of breaking the pattern causes a level
of dramatic tension, because hey, that shouldn't happen!
Of course, before you break a pattern, you need to establish
the pattern. In fantastic settings, this can take some time.
That's why Tolkien starts Lord of the Rings with a long
sequence in the Shire. He shows what's at stake in the
war, but more importantly he establishes what these short
fellows do normally. That makes the bearing of the ring across
a continent so much more remarkable.
Failure to break patterns can be a source of great frustration,
especially to role-players. One of the most famous routines
in role-playing games is the cyberpunk double-cross. The Johnson
who hired you for a job is actually out to kill you and take
your stuff. Apart from stretching the bounds of credibility
(if the underworld really worked like that, it would collapse
in a week), it forces players into the high farce of either
going along with it, which makes them look like idiots, or
taking the only sensible course of action, and killing anyone
who offers them a job (with thanks to The Critical Miss team
for that particular example of actual play.) The problem here
is that the wrong routine has been established, and isn't
being broken.
That's another creativity tool. If things are looking
"too damn quiet," it's because the routine
has been established, and it has, well, become routine. Break
the routine, and do it now!
So your routine's broken, now what? Well, you'll
probably find yourself, after a short while in another routine.
Hey, remember those dozen or so stories? You've just
jumped from one of them, what did you expect? Well, take heart
that at least this routine is likely to be a little more interesting.
But apart from that, the rule in improvisation is to keep
with a routine until just before it ceases to be interesting.
Yes, just before, and no, there's no way of knowing for
sure. Again, a routine needs to be developed long enough to
be identifiable. Once it's broken we can see that something's
changed.
The game master in most role-playing games has the most latitude
to break things up, but bored, frustrated players shouldn't
let someone else have all the routine-breaking fun. Even if
you don't want to take things in a direction you're
afraid will ruin everyone else's game (breaking the routine
by, say, firing tear gas into the Vatican for no good reason),
a routine can be gently broken.
Reincorporation
So you're happily hacking away at routines whenever
they get too established, and everyone's on their toes
inventing stuff like no tomorrow. But, now your campaign is
looking like the weakest, most baffling moments of "Twin
Peaks." It may be art, but it's ceasing to be fun.
This is where re-incorporation comes in. You take hold of
some stuff you're no longer using, and you put it back
in. Chances are it'll have been part of a discarded routine.
So much the better. The way that stories end, according to
Johnstone, is that everything used so far has been used up.
Every element is destroyed, returned to an old routine, or
recast in a new routine. Hamlet ends with everyone, apart
from the guy mentioned in passing in the opening scene, dead.
Red Riding Hood ends with the wolf dead at the hands of a
woodcutter mentioned in passing earlier. Spiderman ends with
the villain dead, and Spiderman established in a new routine
of lone superhero.
Now, if you're looking to have a successful, invigorating
campaign, that's what to aim for. In a longer term campaign,
you get a more "soap opera" effect, where no routine
is safe from being broken (even death), but there's a
constant re-incorporation of elements to keep the world from
seeming too bizarre. Re-incorporation gives players a feeling,
however illusionary, that there are some things that are,
like them, continuing through the shared imaginative space,
despite the constant breaking of routines. Even in wildly
different adventures, the appearance of old elements can be
comforting or disturbing. Either way, events are bound to
be interesting for the players.
Re-incorporation is not just a technique for game masters.
In a game where players can introduce elements into the game
world (and most do, even in a limited fashion), it's
usually easier to get a re-incorporated element accepted than
a newly invented one.
People often enjoy re-incorporation more so than the creation
of an entirely new plot element. It's somehow more satisfying
to find an old college pal in the dungeons of the insect god
than some heretofore-unknown character, especially if the
college pal cropped up as a throwaway plot feed two game sessions
ago.
I especially like this method of story creation, because
it works in the opposite fashion to most advice. Rather than
starting with asking what story you want to create, then bending
everything to create that, this technique launches play into
the wilderness. Through re-incorporation, the technique manages
to make play look far more planned than it appears. Where
Chekhov famously stated that a gun hanging on the mantle in
the first act must be fired in the third, Johnstone instead
says "If you've mentioned a gun in the first act,
it suggests someone will be shot later. Wait until everyone's
forgotten about it."
By the book
The most important thing I can do for any role-player of
more freeform tendencies is to urge them to get Johnstone's
book.
Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone,
available now at the publisher's Web
site. •
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