Written by Campbell Wright
INTRODUCTION:
In 2016, Matt Mercer appeared in a youtube video on Geek and Sundry titled: “Preparing for the Unexpected” where he talks about improvising and adapting to unexpected moments in TTRPG. As a part of this video, he talks about Improv: “The improvisational skill is useful in all facets of life I’ve found and this [TTRPGs] very much so”. Brennan Lee Mulligan at various times has talked about his background in Improv and his time at UCB (an Improv school in LA and New York), and its importance for Dimension 20.
So why is Improv such a good background for Role Playing? In essence, Improv teaches many skills for effective storytelling and embodying a character – which is at the core of both running and playing TTRPGs. There are far too many skills and techniques to go into detail here, but I thought I could give a couple of examples of techniques from improv that can improve your role play, as both a facilitator and a player.
I do want to make a quick note here and point out that the style of game that these tips are for is primarily a story focused one – not every TTRPG, or even every table, has a focus on story (For example, some more tactics focused RPG’s such as Lancer may have less story than something like Legends in the Mist). However, for the story heavy tables/TTRPGs I hope that some of this information will be useful.
FOR THE FACILITATORS:
An improvisational technique sometimes used to set the space is called “scene painting”. This simply refers to describing what is in the scene, and in some instances can include performers indicating where the objects/things are in the physical space, to allow the audience to imagine the physical room filling up with these imaginary descriptions. While TTRPG’s are often descriptive, I think that elements of this technique can be used to embellish our descriptions a little further.
In TTRPG’s there are a few different places we can apply this technique. The first is as players enter a new room, environment, or space. Describe to the players what is in the new environment, but make sure to discuss more than what is there. Engage the senses! Sounds, smells, touch, and even taste can be effective for establishing a tone or feeling in the new environment (Sounds and smells for example, are particularly effective for horror).
As you open the door to the king’s chambers, the heat hits you first. Despite your best efforts, black smoke fills your lungs and leaves you coughing, the taste of charred flesh in your mouth. Fearing the worst, you brush the acrid smoke aside and step through into the room. Your vision is limited by the black smoke that roils in the upper half of the room, but you hear the king cry out for help from the far side. You rush to him to see a large roast boar completely aflame. “My dinner!” the king wails.
Horror example (warning: body horror, skeleton):
As the eldritch energy fills the room, the walls begin to… twitch. There is a pulse, a heartbeat, accompanied by a soft, wet, sussuration. The air smells sharp – cool and moist, but electric. The quiet static that comes before a thunderstorm. Even as you turn to run the blast strikes you and your muscles begin to writhe of their own accord – not moving your skeleton, but detached and flailing independently beneath your skin. You turn to look at your fellow party members, but where Surai once stood is instead a gaunt skeleton, bones separating without ligaments to hold them together and rattling as they fall to the ground.
The second place this technique can be applied is in combat (for those TTRPG’s that employ it) – particularly when using a battlemap or similar to draw or indicate what is present in the combat arena. When using a battlemap, we can be more specific in terms of showing players exactly where things are within the area. It’s a good idea to add in some erroneous items that simply fill out the space – sometimes adding these little tidbits of set dressing can completely change the way a combat runs when players begin to mess with it.
The Witch’s cabin is full of strange arcane paraphernalia. You can hear a notebook on the desk whispering softly to itself, and the light from the oil lamps flickers, sending shadows skittering across the walls. You’re on edge, waiting for a sign of the witch when she suddenly leaps at you! Roll initiative…
Mary, you’re up first!
Mary: I know the witch is attacking us, but I would like to briefly examine the notebook on the desk – maybe we can use her own magiks against her?
etc…
Another extremely useful place that scene painting can be employed is in introducing players to the world. Imagine that our description is like a camera, floating far above the world. We start by describing the wider land – the place in which the game is taking place. Once you’ve given this initial description, we can then zoom in to the specific region within the land and describe it. Repeat again for the town, and for the specific locale within the town before “placing” one of the player characters in this location. Matt Mercer can be seen using this technique at the start of Critical Role campaigns 2 and 3 to great effect. This is very useful for providing players context to the wider world. In addition, it gives players a glimpse into the history and regions that surround them, and creates a sense of intrigue where players want to find out more about this place, or that historic event.
On the other hand, it is also a perfectly valid technique to dump players into the action immediately, and this is something that Brennan Lee Mulligan loves to do. His appearance at the start of critical role campaign 4 is an excellent example of this: “Someone you love, very much, is about to die”. This technique can be a little more… disorienting. But it can also immediately get players’ attention and hook them into being invested in the story.
Another technique which Improvisors discuss when storytelling is the difference between “Advancing” or “Extending” the story. Advancing refers to moving between narrative beats – the next story moment, the next plot hook. Extending refers to providing additional details – slowing down a moment to give additional descriptions about senses, emotions, and character details. Generally speaking, we are advancing the story wherever we can – introducing new villains, encounters, a new room of the dungeon. But, it is important to know when and where to slow the story down and let the players take a moment. Whether the moment is to explore the world, to play out a scene with another character, or discover their new favourite goofy shopkeep, it’s important to give players the space to play with the world and one another. The trick here is finding the right balance between the two. Too much Advancing and you’ll find your players are not invested in the world or their characters because they don’t feel them. Too much extending and your players will get bored and listless and may be struggling for ideas of what to do next. Alternating between Advancing and Extending effectively is key to telling a powerful story.
FOR THE PLAYERS:
Many systems use descriptive elements to tease out who your character is and their place in the world. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, uses Ideals (your character’s morals, what your character stands up for), Bonds (People and places your character is connected to), and Flaws (vices, compulsions, fears, or weaknesses of the character). While these are useful for getting you in character, they don’t do a very good job of informing your character’s journey. When storytelling in Improv, one approach to quickly creating effective characters is to create a character that wants something. It’s all well and good to have a character with a tragic past, but if they don’t want something, or to change something about the world, they have nothing driving them forward on their quest. The thing your character wants doesn’t have to be obvious to themselves, or to the other players at the table, but if it is something that they want, desperately, it will help to drive them forward and motivate them in their quest/s. I think the reason that a system like Dungeons and Dragons does not include this in its character creation is because there is a presumption baked into the system that players are either adventuring for 1. Money, 2. To live out their Ideals/moral beliefs (i.e. because they are heroes they will do the right thing), or 3. Because the DM will give them a reason to go adventuring. While this presumption can work for some groups, I think a more interesting story can arise from characters that have their own wants that they are seeking to address. Even if that want is “to earn money for my family back home”, that is already a more interesting motivation than adventuring for personal greed. (Extra little writers trick for experts: make a character that desperately wants something, but in truth, and perhaps unbeknownst to them, they actually need something else).
Another trick to make your characters feel real and lived in is to allow your characters to be changed by the world. In many of the most effective stories, a character goes on a journey into the world and comes back different, changed, by their adventure. This may be due to new experiences, scars, or different beliefs than those they had when they left, to name some examples. In any case, a character that is changed and affected by the world around them is a far more interesting one than one that returns to town almost the same as they left. Role playing offers a myriad ways for characters to be challenged, to fail or succeed. Let your characters learn something from that journey, and allow them to change into something new over time. This is something that I think the players of Critical Role excel at. For example, the difference between some of their characters between the start and end of The Mighty Nein (Campaign 2) is huge, and a significant portion of this simply arises from allowing their characters to be changed by the world and one another.
OUTRO:
A final piece of advice – Be bold! Be boisterous. Make stuff up! Don’t be afraid to let your players make up things about the world and accept them as canon. As a player, don’t be afraid to make bold offers or strong character choices – they won’t ruin your facilitators plans, and often lead to new and exciting beats that the facilitator hadn’t planned for. TTRPGs are at their best when both players and facilitators/DMs are telling the story together.
I hope that you find these tips useful and can take them to your table! There’s so many more techniques and ideas present in improvisation that I know I use in my games regularly, but not nearly enough time for me to write them all out in a single blog post. If you’re interested in learning more, Poprox Improv will be running an Introduction to Improv for TTRPG players course later this year (more information can be found here once it is available).