Low-Prep/No-Prep Play
Lance D. Allen:
This thread is continuing a discussion from here
First, I'd like to provide a basis for where I'm coming from. My preferred playstyle is long-form closed-form gaming. I want the long campaign with a foreseeable ending a climax to strive toward. That is my ideal for gaming. However, my experience has never, ever borne that out. The longest games have fallen apart due to personal and life issues among the players, anything from having a baby to getting out of the military and moving home. So I've had some games that follow the long-form, but I've never managed the closed-form with those longer running games. Mostly it's been abortive attempts in that direction, or shorter-form games.
So take that legacy of disappointment into consideration when I talk further.
First, I'll talk about my experiences with 3:16. Originally, I sort of bullied John Harper into running it for me. It was the only game I bought at GenCon that I hadn't played at least a 5 minute demo of before purchasing. I didn't regret it. John ran two missions in one sitting. A few things were different; His planets were named for flowers. But he sat down and did mission generation right there at the table. It was awesome. I was less than pleased with the character I chose to play, though he'd have been more interesting in a longer run. As it was, he was somewhat boring for a oneshot. The game itself was a lot of fun. The other players were immediately invested into conflicts with each other, and while there wasn't anything game mechanical, it would have happened eventually, had it gone another mission or two.
So I take it home. My group has been playing D&D, but we've got a matter of weeks left before I deploy, not enough to start another adventure arc. So I suggest 3:16. I promise, and deliver, explanation of the rules, character creation and a full mission in under three hours. They enjoy the game a lot. At least one or two of them ask where they can buy the game.
We played two sessions before army life gets in the way. Fastforward to Kuwait. A whole, entirely new group of players, this one entirely military (the last one included my wife), and currently in the middle of a deployment. We played one session with three players, then added a fourth (female, if it matters) for the second and third. Once again, I did no prep before the first, promising and delivering explanation, character generation and a full mission in under three hours. The second and third sessions had very little prep.
We had consistently good play. It was hardly earth-moving play, but it was very good, sometimes very intense (we had at least two stand-offs when one player character was one step away from being killed by another; different players each time). Both groups were relatively new groups. We hadn't known each other for more than a few months, and didn't have that established routine. We weren't exactly friends yet (and rank adds new, interesting complications), so socializing purely for the sake of socializing isn't something we do. As a matter of fact, with the group consisting (currently) of 1 Staff-Sergeant, 2 Sergeants and 3 Privates-First-Class, pure socializing has some inherent risks.
I'll leave discussion of other games for later, if we feel it's pertinent. Now I want to address a few of the points made in that previous thread.
Re: The Session is Important. This is very much true for me. I'd rather roleplay than do most other activities, to include boardgames or watching movies. Finding time to do that is difficult. When shit has fallen through in the past, a lot of the time, people just went home. So having a roleplaying game that I can pull out is a good way to preserve that session. People didn't want to play a card game, or even just shoot the shit. When I make the (to them) preposterous claim that there's this awesome-fun game that can deliver a full session to include basic explanation of the game and character creation without any preparation, then it's a far better prospect than being disappointed and not getting another shot to game for another week.
Re: GM Ownership and Preparation. I was in no way making that point. But I think you should Callan, because I think there's a lot of interesting things left unsaid in that paragraph.
Re: Why not just play a board game? Answer: Because I want to play an RPG. Why should I be restricted from playing an RPG if I've not done prep beforehand? The one thing worse than doing lots of prep and having the session suck is doing lots of prep and it never, ever being used. This extends into traditional gaming, too. I used to do a lot of story prep in my games. Then the players would do something totally out of my expectations, and half of my plans would come to naught. Now, I'm sure that I could have learned how to get them back on track, but the concept of railroading or even all roads lead to Rome isn't something I was in to then, or now. Finally, I've been frustrated because I wanted to game, but because the players didn't have adequate time to do their own preparations. So I submit that requisite preparation can actually be a bar to having fun. I'm not saying it always is, because obviously that's completely untrue. I'm simply saying that it can be, and has been for me in the past.
Re: Boardgames (a different point) What keeps a boardgame from sucking? It can be a tried and true game that your group has played before, but on a given night, it just doesn't work. I think this shares the exact same virtue as low-prep gaming. If you play a boardgame and watch a movie instead of gaming, and it sucks.. Well, it's a loss. Maybe everyone will question why it was done in the first place. But in the end, at least you didn't invest lots of time before you played the game or watched the movie, so that it's even more wasted time.
Re: Low/No-Prep equates to "a fairly good chance of it sucking". If I gave this impression, then my apologies. This statement is completely untrue. Half-ass or no prep for a game that needs it (D&D, Shadowrun, etc), it may be true. But it's not universally true. In 3:16 it's not true. In Zombie Cinema, it's not true. In several of my own unfinished efforts, it's not true. Preparation doesn't, as an immutable law of gaming, increase your chances of having a good time. See my paragraph above where I make the claim that prep can actually be detrimental to fun.
Sorry it took so long, but work is work.
So, let's discuss this.
manatic:
Whoa, a hefty opening post! A lot of interesting things there comment on.
I'll also start off with my gaming history, since it helps to understand where I'm coming from. I don't have any real preference when it comes to game form. Thus, our group has gone through it all: oneshots, long campaigns, short campaigns, twoshots, threeshots...Some campaigns have been completed, most haven't. And yet, new campaigns steadily keep popping up. We have a pool of 10+ players, most of who have been playing with the same group for at least 10 years. We share a similar gaming culture, we know what to expect and hold certain fairly similar - but unspoken - quality standards for game sessions.
A campaign is usually associated with the GM running it. We have x's D&D, y's Vampire and z's 3:16. There is active discussion regarding these different games, good ideas get borrowed a lot, bad ideas get tried and scrapped. Usually it is the story that matters and the system chosen is simply the mechanic deemed most suitable for the task at hand.
One thing in common with all the three GMs (myself included) is the tendency for prepping. We have different ways of prepping, but we still do it. Occasionally you're forced to run a game without prepping. It happens, we're fairly good at it, but we rarely make a note of it to players.
Scheduling games is fairly hard, and we have a private forum for that as well as the discussion of current, past and upcoming games. The group actively reads the forum and expresses interest for the different gaming projects. This means that when people come to a game, they have a fairly good idea of what to expect and they hold a notion that what they expect has been prepared for them. So, it's not "a night of playing rpg's", but "a night of x's Vampire".
I'm a fairly low-prep GM. My normal preparation consists of jotting down a few names and sketching a few scenes on a sheet of paper, and then making a rough mental image of the upcoming session. I like to improvise a lot and fill in the blanks as I roll with the game. Occasionally there are scenes which I have completely failed to take into account beforehand, and I consider it a small failure on my part if for this reason I can't keep the game rolling or I have to fudge a scene or something similar. My highest priority is that even if I AM pulling the whole session out of my hat, that shouldn't be the feeling conveyed to the players. As a player I hate that feeling of being completely dependant on the whims of the GM.
I've long been a fan of scifi-action as well as war movies, so I was excited to pick up 3:16. The game's simple mechanics were instantly likeable. For a low-prep GM the system pretty much does all the boring work for you. You can randomize the planet conditions, the alien type etc, and concentrate on the fun part e.g. fleshing up and detailing the scenario. I pretty much pitched the game to the group as "something a bit lighter than usual." The sessions are quick, dramatic and light on system mechanics and preparation, and yet allowing for a lot of growth story-wise. Optimal for my style of GMing, I might say.
Those are the premises from which I enter the discussion. Now for the specific issues:
Re: Session importance & Why not play a board game? As mentioned above, for our group the evening's session is specifically about one campaign/oneshot of the other. There's usually not really a call for roleplaying in general, so we're mostly just content to chat away for an hour or three and/or play a board or a card game, if the evening's scheduled rpg session happens to fall through. This is somewhat interesting, I don't think the idea of an impromptu stand-in game has even been thrown around in years.
Re: Frustration because of "useless" preparation. I see your point there. This is why I like to avoid heavy prepping. Even when I pay a little more attention to prep, it's mostly scenes and npc's that can be used no matter what the players do. And I'm not talking about a type of railroading either. Even if it happens that I don't get to utilize all that prepped material, I can always use it somewhere else or integrate it into something else. I agree with you on requisite preparation being a possible bar on having fun. In our group we're starting to move into a culture where we are very upfront regarding the expected level of preparation from both the GM and the players, for exactly the reason you brought up.
Re: Boardgames vs. low/no-prep games. Here I beg to differ. With a tried and true boardgame you always have a pretty clear idea of what it will be like even if it's not as fun as usual. "Yeah, it wasn't the best session of Zombies!!! but hey, it was still Zombies!!! and the game's always pretty good fun." As such, it doesn't have the potential to completely crash, making it a safer option while still retaining the potential to be a lot of fun. Of course this thing only applies if it's just important to play something.
Re: Role of preparation. I'd like to dispute the sentence "Preparation doesn't, as an immutable law of gaming, increase your chances of having a good time." That sentence is correct, of course, because of the words "immutable law of gaming", meaning that even one differing example wrecks the idea of preparation always being helpful. Still I contend that preparation, no matter how minimal, will usually increase your chances of having a good time even if the game you're running doesn't require it to work. It's not guaranteed, but it will increase the odds in your favour.
gsoylent:
When I run games I tend to enjoy it a lot more if I have no idea where things are going. And I think my GMing is more vibrant and responsive as a result. However the problem I find with low/no prep, and therefore largely improvised, games is that, unless you put some other mechanic, there is no way for the party to mark progress.
Crudely put, with a detailed pre-written scenario progress can be measured against how much of the scenario content has been covered. As there is a predefined end game point, a smart, efficient or plain lucky party will probably get to end game faster or in better shape than a sloppy, clueless or unlucky one. Whether it is an murder investigation, a dungeon crawl, a political conspiracy or epic journey there are good and not so good choices for the party to make.
The more the content is improvised, the fuzzier this becomes. Essentially the party cannot progress to the next chunk of story on their own efforts and the choices they make actually don't matter a whole lot. The story unfolds at whatever rate the GM deems dramatically appropriate and that is that.
What I like a lot of 3:16 is that the Alien Tokens provide the way to measure progress. Even if all the scenes are totally improvised, the Token are there to measure progress. Once they all been used up, the adventure is done.
Lance D. Allen:
That's interesting. I don't know that I've ever considered prepared story to be a measure of pacing.
Here's the thing, though.. Why is measuring progress important? So long as the group is playing, having fun and what they're doing is meaningful to them, why does progressing matter at all?
Let me back up and respecify that comment. Why does progression toward a predetermined ending matter? I get progress being important. Feeling like you're not moving forward is frustrating.
My play, for most of my gaming career, has been as a GM.. and I basically never plan whole story lines. Like Mikko, I prefer low-prep. My reasons may be different; he didn't specify. My reasons are the aforementioned prep going to crap deal, in addition to the fact that a lot of the time, the players can come up with better stuff together than I can alone. And anything they come up with they're likely to be more interested in than my little story. I figure my job as the GM isn't to lay the story out for them to progress through. My job is to find their buttons, and push them. Keep them moving forward, and let them decide which way forward is. All the while, I'll keep laying stuff out in front of 'em that hopefully will keep pushing those buttons.
Marking progress? I usually haven't any idea how far along my players are... and I like that. Just like you said in your first line, my GMing is more vibrant and responsive when I'm guessing where things are going.
Mikko,
to address two of your points that I feel are pertinent: I have no contention with the claim that preparation *usually* increases your chances. My contention is simply that preparation is in no way necessary. Completely no prep play can have a very high chance of fun, if the game being played is designed with that in mind. D&D? Not so much. 3:16? Absolutely. My own design efforts are largely low-prep/no-prep games.
In reply to boardgames being reliable fun.. I contend that a no-prep RPG can be equally reliable. I also want to clarify that the sucky session chances have little to do with the game itself, and more to do with the player dynamic on a given night, and the player interactions with that particular game. If the game is brand new to the group, then obviously the chances for suck are a bit greater.. But no greater than if you pick up a new boardgame, or a new movie.
gsoylent:
Why does this sense of progress within the plot matter? Maybe "progress" isn't the right word, but I'll try and make an example. I was going to pick some real actual play examples to stick to the aims of this forum, but I ended up getting so bogged down in the detail that my point got lost. So I'll try a crude, generic example.
Say I play a hobbit in a game. My mission is to ditch this ring into Mount Doom. How long does it take me to get to Mount Doom? If the whole area is mapped that gives me a pretty good indication of how long it might take if I take a direct route. If I take the long way round, it might take longer, but it's me the player who is deciding this, it's my choice. Also the choice between going over the mountain or through the mine might make a whole lot of difference on the assumption that the GM has prepared different challenges for the different routes.
Now say the GM is just improvising. There is no map, nothing pre-planned. So when do I get to Mount Doom? Pretty much when the GM thinks I've done enough. I can't really make it go any faster or any slower. Nor does it matter if I go through the mine or over the mountain because I'll only encounter exactly what the GM wants me to encounter exactly when he wants me to.
Like I said, crude example. In theory the GM is reading the player and interpreting his desires. If the party act cautious, they probably want to avoid dangers, if they look bored, maybe it's time to cut to the chase. But in the end the decision of whether the party is getting closer or further from the their objective is entirely up to the GM's discretion. And I find this to be demotivating as a player.
Which is not to say I am against improvised, low-prep adventures - in many ways they are superior to highly prepped games - just pointing out that it presents a different set of problems.
Truth be told, I really don't know what works. Every style of play I know of seems to have problems and I don't seem to be getting any closer to a style I am happy and confident with.
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