Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
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Post by Samuel Wise on Jan 11, 2016 6:18:29 GMT
This episode is great. Learned so much about improv, which remains as one of my favorite storytelling techniques outside of writing. And taking an improv class is such a great idea.
I also love the idea of questioning players on what their characters see a great way to increase player interaction in your story and your world. Plus, it is a great way to build your world.
A lot of great ideas and all of it helpful. Thank you so much!
Colerock and Gromly have become some of my favorite characters now. And now I am really Thirsty and water elementals will never be the same again.
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Post by joatmoniac on Jan 11, 2016 9:12:41 GMT
It was way too much fun to record, and was even fun to edit. Granted I was a little scared, as I know DM Chris was as well, of the impending improv piece at the end. I think that turned out great though, and was of course my favorite part of the interview. Tons of really good information from James about improv and here are some of the things he talked about at the end:
UCB Theater Improv Manual
Trust Us It's All Made Up you can rent it for $3 or buy it for $8 on Amazon For the last one just Google ASSSSCAT UCB and dig through a lot of great content. So much good info from James. I'll definitely have to listen to this one again to see what I might have missed. |
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Post by DM Chris on Jan 11, 2016 15:54:28 GMT
Twas way too much fun. Water elementals now have two weakness' in my world. Drinking their hearts and throwing loads of paper on them...
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Post by DM Kiado on Jan 11, 2016 16:41:35 GMT
That was a good episode. I would of been super nervous too, but yeah, you guys did a great little story. This medium is really made for someone like James and his friends that like RPG's, they bring a professional touch to it that makes it some of my favorite podcasts.
You really can hear everything James talked about on his One-Shot Podcast, and Campaign that Kat runs. One of my favorites of this example is the fairly recent One-Shot where they play Rogue Trader. There is an Aeon Priest NPC, and one of PCs decides they don't like him, and they all weave that into a great amount of hilarity for this poor NPC, who suddenly finds himself the butt of everything. You can see them weave it from a comment, to a story item and turning an off hand comment into something you are laughing to tears at 15 mins later. They do this all over the place, on Campaign and the One-Shot episodes. You can hear when they create stuff, then watch it build from there. Educational and highly entertaining.
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Post by friartook on Jan 11, 2016 19:49:44 GMT
Very entertaining episode guys, and so dang validating for me!
When James said, "Prepare to improvise" I almost jumped up and down. Those words are my #1 piece of GM advice. It sounds like I'm on the right track with how I am instituting improvised scenarios into my game group. This is a great example of the "You're a better GM than you think" advice. I keep thinking my sessions are lack-luster, but my guys are deeply invested and have been steering the narrative more and more.
A few weeks ago, I walked into a crazy situation with my face to face group. I may have told it elsewhere on the forums, but I can't remember. If so, please forgive me.
We were missing two of our players, and via FB messages had determined to do a board game night instead of our ongoing EotE campaign. On a whim, I bought all my EotE stuff along, just in case. Turns out this was a good move. When I asked my guys what game we were going to play, one of them said something like, "Well, I was thinking we could do a sort of flashback side quest. You know, like they do on Campaign." (I've got two of them addicted to Campaign now, working on the rest) I'm sure my "Uuuuhhh," was entertaining to watch, as I pulled myself together. I'd brought the dice and books, but had nothing, nothing! prepped for a session. But, I agreed.
I recalled the Scars on Soccoro episode of Campaign, and decided to do a side quest on Soccoro as well. Turns out, we did everything just as the Campaign folks did. I described Soccoro, then asked them why they were there. We created an entire session out of this. It was super fun, and 100% improvised! As I get more comfortable improvising and playing off my players' ideas, I'm finding I do less and less prep.
In fact, I haven't written any adventure content since that improvised flashback session.
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Post by janewalksfar on Jan 11, 2016 22:20:48 GMT
LIES! Almarianknight promised this would be an episode about thundering ice tridents!
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Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
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Post by Samuel Wise on Jan 11, 2016 22:44:42 GMT
LIES! Almarianknight promised this would be an episode about thundering ice tridents! That was an improvised answer...  |
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Post by DMC on Jan 12, 2016 1:40:30 GMT
Best episode for me in a long time! I got a ton out of this one.
Kudos fellas!
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Post by galakan on Jan 13, 2016 19:49:11 GMT
So one of the things that really got me started on RPGs was back when my buddy was trying to make his own system. In order to playtest new features we would do something we called "The Big City" exercise.
Pretty much the DM gets 30 mins to come up with a story that they are going to throw us into (the first of these ever ended up being in a big city they named "Big City" it sorta stuck). Meanwhile the players get 30 mins to make their characters and come up with how they know each other.
Then we do a one shot session with this setup.
This was a pretty good exercise in doing an improv campaign for us. It also made a ton of great memories!
Has anyone else done any improv-ish exercises like this with their gaming groups? If so, I would be interested in hearing about it and maybe trying it out.
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Post by ino on Jan 13, 2016 20:06:00 GMT
I once heard that it was easy to look at something and say why it couldn't happen, but was a better writing exercise to say how it could happen. As an exercise for part of my group who wanted to play outside of our main campaign, I made a random monster generator based on the group's level. It would pump out 4 encounters, with a single or number of monsters and the environment. The group took turns running each "level" of a tower and had to improvise how each monster got there and why. Was interesting and had some funny moments.
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Post by DMC on Jan 13, 2016 22:02:41 GMT
So one of the things that really got me started on RPGs was back when my buddy was trying to make his own system. In order to playtest new features we would do something we called "The Big City" exercise. Pretty much the DM gets 30 mins to come up with a story that they are going to throw us into (the first of these ever ended up being in a big city they named "Big City" it sorta stuck). Meanwhile the players get 30 mins to make their characters and come up with how they know each other. Then we do a one shot session with this setup. This was a pretty good exercise in doing an improv campaign for us. It also made a ton of great memories! Has anyone else done any improv-ish exercises like this with their gaming groups? If so, I would be interested in hearing about it and maybe trying it out. Not quite that extensive, but for each of my Session-0's, I go around the table with my players and have them come up with story ties, NPCs, personalities and quirks, distinguishing features, names, etc, and let THEM co-flesh out details with me and each other. For example, for an NPC, one person will give the name, one person will give the profession, one person will give something unique about them, etc. |
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Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
|
Post by Samuel Wise on Jan 14, 2016 0:22:44 GMT
UCB Theater Improv Manual Got it! So far it has been a really good recommendation with great information for any beginner into Improv. It's great! |
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Post by kjmagle on Jan 14, 2016 15:42:44 GMT
I love this episode because it is dear to my group. We have some good people that can do improv... However you get frustrated when you "lob a softball" to then and nothing but crickets. Probably due to they are doing something else at the time (one major problem with online rpg".
Improv is is needed in a game unless you want just a boring "you go here, you attack this, you win" game.
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DMFunkopotamus
Commoner
Posts: 20 
Favorite D&D Class: Sorcerer with nuclear bloodline
Favorite D&D Race: Demilich
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Post by DMFunkopotamus on Jan 17, 2016 19:44:00 GMT
Fantastic episode. One gem that really shined for me was in the improve example, asking a player to identify a special weakness of the foe. That's brilliant on so many levels. I'm totally stealing it.
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Samuel Wise
Demigod
Ready to Help...
Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
Favorite D&D Race: Mousefolk
|
Post by Samuel Wise on Jan 17, 2016 23:48:12 GMT
The more I learn about improv, the more I can appreciate this episode (as James mentioned, it was to get the listeners interested in it. Reading through books on the subject is so helpful!
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