Hello everyone! I don’t have much experience, but one thing I learned while playing Troika! with my friends is that the more I prep the more forced the game will feel (at least to me). I think it has to do in part with the fact that I will more or less voluntarily try to steer players towards content I prepared (it’s some kind of sunk-cost fallacy I think) and in part with me kind of knowing what to expect, making the game less enjoyable to DM. The best sessions have been the ones where I had two or three ideas and winged it, building upon what the players did or said and generally improvising. The biggest con to this approach is that it’s hard to keep everything consistent and I’m constantly afraid of contradicting stuff I said before or just plain forgetting it. I want to start taking notes, but I’m also afraid of being distracted from the players while I jot down stuff. So I ask you what are your tips for a more immediate, “plug and play” style of playing. I’m not too interested in having a balanced game or telling intricate overarching plots, and I enjoy strange situations that require creative thinking the most (plus cool worlds and creatures/NPCs). I would love to find a way to start playing out of the blue like one does with boardgames (well, the casual ones everyone plays)
You have demonstrated great insight into the challenges of being a referee in an RPG. You will find your way. Here are a few tips that I can convey as I have made nearly every referee mistake possible. ;)
To help remember things engage your players in the story. Have them do recaps of the show so far, the session night and even a what happened last time. It is shocking how much we forget as referees even though we have created the scenario and taken notes. Collective memory for a collective experience. There will be errors. There will be retcons (which we used to call post factualization). That is the nature of improvised collective experiences.
Preparation is good. However the game is there for the whole table and “letting your darlings” go is even more important in collective experiences as it is in writing. Consider the elements that don’t get used as future ideas. It is more important to balance referee and player needs. I am sure there are multiple threads here about “rail roading” vs “sand boxing” if the table is happy (this includes the referee) then you are doing stuff right. It is also okay to have a debrief once in a while after session. Players can let the referee know what is working for them and vice versa.
I have been improvising comedy for a long time and being able to do things out of the blue takes practise. It also takes specific practice in narrative and listening. Making things work out of the box like a board won’t ever happen in an RPG. Even a board game requires everyone to learn the rules and story. Learn to prep with checklists. Sometimes even flowcharts are needed. Notes should be one or two word reminders never sentences.
Troika looks insanely wonderful. A game after my cybernetic heart. There is a free online resource about improv comedy at learnimprov.com. <disclaimer> this is my site but it is CC 4.0 and comletely free of charge, or tracking, or remuneration
Not really what you asked, but preparing and improvising aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
IE, you can prep some encounters, rooms, vilains etc, but mostly on the surface, they don’t have to be predetermined as, for example, goblins in a cave, or the villain can be anyone or even better, you just improvise him towards the end, for a huge plot twist in your players mind, while you just picked what happened to fit the best at the time combined with what you prepared.
Adapting/reusing on the go what you prepared/envisioned is, imo, one of the best skills a DM can have and work on. And this applies for things you prepared in a previous session but happened to not use at the time.
I hope that helps.
