On Ad-Libbing in RGPs and World Building

As a bit of an aside from boardgames which has been entirely consumptive of my free time these last weeks I thought I would post about RPGs and in particular one of my passions ad-libbing. So obviously I am a fan but you can’t ad-lib in a vacuum if you want a game to last more than a couple of sessions. For this reason I have some strict rules 😊

So the first is I am a big fan of macro level world design. I hate those hints for starting GMs that tell you to start small with just a goblin lair or a village then expand your world as you go.. poppycock I say.  That way madness lies. Start by fixing the10 pillars of your setting Geography, Climate, History, Economy, Religion, Demographics, Politics, Language, Magic and Factions (I will write a blog on each one in time). Think BIG not small. When you have these and as a result a sandbox with defined edges and internal logic you can ad-lib everything and it never falls apart. You never have to worry about prepping for a session again.

So the secret to ad-libbing is to remember you are the GM, you are making everything up. It doesn’t matter if you made it up 3 weeks ago and wrote it down in detail or if you made it up 3 seconds ago and its all in your head, it’s all made up. If you have a well-structured sandbox you can make it up in a logical space so it won’t contradict other stuff you made up. However, there is a peril ahead. There is a temptation to have an idea and then to make sure the PCs will always encounter it. It's called illusionism, if you follow such things. Now this isn’t just a problem just for ad-libbing, in fact it’s much MORE of a problem for wrote preparationists because they write a thing and can’t think quickly of another thing so you are going to encounter the Bandit Camp whichever fork in the road you take. This is one of the reasons why I love ad-libbing. The true power of table top RPGs should mean you don’t have to rescue the princess, you can instead wander down to the docks steal a ship and become a pirate on the high seas. That only works if the GM can invent a dock and a boat, and a pirate rival feared across the high seas in the time it takes you to say “actually let’s head down to the Docks instead”.

So you need rules. Not many rules, I mean it’s not Germany… So I have three rules.

1.       The Lady or the Tiger

2.       The Thing is Always where you Last Left it

3.       Nothing gives you enough time to plan like a silly voice

The Lady or the Tiger comes from that short collection you read for O’Level English when you were fifteen, 21 Great Stories.  Well actually it’s a classic of the form written by Frank Stockton. In the story a man is captured for having a love affair with the Princess of some distant kingdom and in that kingdom punishment for crime is placed in the lap of the fates. The accused will open one of two doors, behind one is a ferocious, and presumably suitably hungry, tiger behind the other a prize, in this case a beautiful young woman who the accused will be forced to marry and live a long and happy life with. The clever bit of the story is that the Princess manages to sneak in to the dungeons and tells her lover which door to open but we never find out if she told him the Lady so he can live his life but with someone else or the Tiger so he can’t. Any way for ad-libbing the rule is you must be one step ahead of the PCs if you present them with a choice you must have both outcomes set in your mind before they choose. If you don’t then you basically allow Illusionism to creep in. If you know that behind one door is the desiccated corpse of an ancient knight and in his hand an ancient map the edges of which are frayed and crumbling and behind the other is an um… then you will tend to let them find the knight every time which renders their choice an illusion. So always decide what is behind each choice before your party opt for that path. Doesn’t have to be detailed that will come later but decide what it is.

The Thing is Always where you Last Left it, this one needs much less explanation. Once you spin out the idea for a river pirate who talks like Tom Hardy and is secretly the son of the Duke of Margras and the party decide that rather than take the river boat they will travel overland or pay the Guild the 3000 silver stags for the teleport, you can’t move him. He plies his trade on the river Gress upriver from the Falls of Postim. Sure you might link to his father the Duke you might be able to use him again if the party comes this way but you can’t pick him up and move him, to the next river they come to. That is illusionism. Look on the positive side you didn’t spend 4 hours writing up an adventure where the party has to help him recover his young son from the Gnoll raiders. Even if you know he is one of Those NPCs that the players will love and talk about in 6 years time over a pint … he had to stay where you LAST LEFT HIM.

Lastly, and this is to be fair more of a tool than a rule, Nothing gives you enough time to plan like a silly voice. If your party are heading towards a blank place of the map half of your brain needs to focus on fixing that and populating it with stuff, but there is no reason why the other half of your brain can’t be presenting them with a Tinker with a range of interesting wares on his cart, or a farmer than needs a wheel fixing, or a serving wench that likes a bawdy tale or … An interesting NPC gives you space to think. They also reinforce the pillars of your world.  No one is going to read your two page summary of the economic trade conditions of the Plains of Haasta but because you thought about it and wrote in down back in the second paragraph of this rambling blog post  you can spin up a random merchant who finds themselves come down from the Mountains of Shamarkis to the East laden with spices and exotic fabrics. You can weave the fact that across the mountains the land is hot and dry and home to the Pascar people who grow the sweetest spices and tend the Jafir moths that give the finest silk money can buy. This call back to stuff your party don’t know or care about gives the world weft and weave and gives you enough time to decide how many ships are in the Docks, where the crews are , the name of the rowdy tavern oppose the Harbour masters tower etc …

Any way enough of this poppycock, away with you now I have games to design.