Tag Archives: improvisation

Ability Lists as an Improv Checklist

When running a most improvised scenario (either something as ambitious as the Dracula Dossier or just riffing off a paragraph or two of notes), One Useful Trick is to have a copy of the investigative ability list for your game to hand, and check off abilities as you call for them or the players use […]

See Page XX: Fakebooking It

This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Like most creative endeavors, the GMing craft comes with its share of eternal conundrums. One classic example is the question of whether you carefully prepare adventures, or improvise them in response to player choices. Carefully prepared adventures […]

See Page XX: Yes, But… Part Two (The Scenario)

This article originally appeared on DyingEarth.com, between 2004 and 2007. You can find part one here. A column about roleplaying By Robin D. Laws Last month we plundered the gilded halls of improv theory, appropriating for our own roleplaying purposes the “Yes, but” technique. GMs using this technique avoid answering player requests with a categorical […]

See Page XX: Yes, But… Part One

This article originally appeared on DyingEarth.com, between 2004 and 2007. A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Considering how focused roleplayers are on plundering and looting, it’s surprising how little stealing we’ve done from the world of improv. Like us, sketch comedy troupes use collective, on-the-spot creativity to make entertainment out of nothing. And […]

GUMSHOE Scenario Sparks

by Bryant Durrell The Yellow King RPG can be daunting for a Keeper: four different settings, potentially lengthy campaign arcs, and to top it all off the canonical kick-off asks the Keeper to improvise connections between the Deuced Peculiar Things invented by the players and her carefully crafted scenario. I’ve always struggled a little bit […]

Improvising With GUMSHOE

Improvising With GUMSHOE by Steve Dempsey This article discusses an improvised variant of the GUMSHOE rules. It can be just as easily used for Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, or any other GUMSHOE game. Most games of GUMSHOE are played using a scenario that the GM has written. Not only does she introduce each scene and play […]

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