Re: The book says many things

From: parental_unit_2 <parental_unit_2_at_...>
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 20:16:31 -0000

wrote:

> So, any rules ramifications of this?

Thanks to everyone who answered my query about how to run more improvised games, with less plot preparation in particular.

When I asked how narrators do more improvised play, I was just interested in what kind of preparation it required, and what the HQ rules might actually do to support improvisation.

What I got, overall, is that for more free-form scenarios, the narrator has to have a very detailed setting, and a strong set of narrator characters with close ties to player characters.

There also does seem to be a "plot" in improvised scenarios: The narrator devises one or more conflicts to drive the scenario, and possibly some key events that will be initiated by narrator characters (e.g. healers arrive in the clan needing an escort). However, conflict resolution and intermediate events aren't all glued together into a plot to the same extent as they are in the HQ book examples.

The narrator in improvised scenarios needs very good record-keeping, so that anything made up on-the-fly gets incorporated into the setting.

The HQ rules facilitate this style of play in a number of ways:

• There are mechanics for character relationships and a set of standard relationships that come with keywords in character generation.
• The Gloranthan setting is already very detailed, at least for Heortlings and Lunars in Dragon Pass.
• The contest system allows a lot of stats for narrator characters to be improvised.

There are probably other things I haven't thought about.

Rob