#4: \"Gimme a P! Gimme a J!\"

[RPGnet Columns]

http://www.rpg.net/columns/gestalt/gestalt4.phtml

Summary:

Perceivers and Judges in gestalt games.

Go to the column (http://www.rpg.net/columns/gestalt/gestalt4.phtml) for more information.

[Ryan Paddy]

I was with you right up until the Cruise Liner.

I feel like you're asking the wrong question, something like "How can planners and improvisers work together on the IC events in a game?" Your answer of planning some events and improvising others is unsatisfactory.

None of your criticisms of improvisers were about how they handled in-game events, they were all about OOC slacking. Improvisation is the ideal solution to handling IC actions and reactions, because the nature of the actions in a roleplaying game are unpredictable - most especially in an rpg or larp with many participants. Chaos is the only certainty. All OOC planning of IC events lead to railroading, it's only a question of how much. So why include heavy planning on the IC decision making at all?

I think the question you should have asked is "how can planners and improvisers work together on the game as a whole?"

My solution is to direct all heavy planning towards OOC activities: organising the time and place of the game, the participants, the equipment, etc. Logistics.

And then leave all IC action as much up to improvisation as your team is capable of handling. Because that's how you'll achieve the most responsive, believeable interactive fiction.

In short:

OOC: well planned
IC: improvised

I can think of two exceptions to this:

* Deciding the starting characteristics of the IC setting at time-in. That's something that heavy planners can be quite useful for, but you still have to be careful that it doesn't lead to railroading. Just stating what the situation currently is can tempt some people to start planning where it should go from there.

* Let the heavy planners make plans on behalf of NPCs. However, the NPCs must plan exactly as the players would plan for PCs. They have no idea whether their plans will be successful, as it depends on the dynamics the actual play. They can make contingency plans, etc. This is a great way of creating intelligent multi-dimensional NPCs who appear to have a life of their own. The danger is that the planners might prefer to fudge the game so that their NPCs plans work when they shouldn't.

There is a type of heavy planner who just wants to write a script, they don't even want to do contingency planning. It's a bad idea to give those people any influence over the IC setting at all, even the two limited types above.