‘Autumn Nature Golden’ by ???????? ??????? (a.k.a. ‘1103997’ – the cyrillic symbols of the name just won’t show) from Pixabay.
Most GM’s first reactions to running out of prepared material is to throw something they haven’t thought out at the players as a stalling tactic…

Last time we played my superhero campaign, the players got through all the material that I had prepared and polished with more than an hour of playing time remaining. (I thought that I had prepped enough – but, oh well…)

While I had some vague ideas about what was to follow, I hadn’t yet put them into coherent form.

Nevertheless, I was able to improv those vague ideas into an entirely acceptable day’s play.

We’ve all been caught in that position before – forced to choose between improv and letting the players down.

I’ve written several articles on improv gaming for Campaign Mastery in the past, and for those looking for technique tips, I commend them to your attention. Just type “Improv” in the search box at the top of the page.

For this article, I want to look a little deeper than technique into what’s necessary to make improv a success.

You see, in the days that followed, those vague ideas all fell into place, crystallized as from a super-saturated solution by the improvised play part-session. Everything made perfect sense, including the parts already played.

It is entirely likely that if I hadn’t admitted the situation here, the players involved would never have been certain that what happened wasn’t what I had always intended.

1st Requirement: Ideas

I’d already spent time thinking about what I could do for both this part of the adventure and several subsequent ones that are to follow, generating ideas in isolation and brainstorming possibilities. I simply hadn’t found the right connecting thread with which to tie them all together, yet.

That meant that I had limited the scope of the improv required, at least to some extent. Less to create out of whole cloth means less to go wrong.

2nd Requirement: Characters

I had already defined and named most of the NPCs that would be involved.

This is an area that I am not good at improvising, so having the building blocks already worked out to some extent meant that I was again constraining the scope of the material to be invented to areas in which I was strong.

The lesson is that when all else is equal, prep the material which is of greatest importance and with which you have the most trouble inventing on the spot first.

3rd Requirement: Interactions

One of the many thoughts to which I had subjected the ideas mentioned in (1) was contemplating how different PCs might interact with those ideas and vice-versa.

Ideas and encounters aren’t just things that happen, they have to propel not only the main exterior plot but, through interaction with the characters involved, enable them to advance their own individual plot threads in some fashion. This gives them gravitas and relevance to both the characters and the campaign.

This is an especially important standard when it comes to random encounters and wandering monsters in D&D. Each encounter should be viewed as an opportunity, not just as a random happenstance.

4th Requirement: Context

I already knew the overall shape of the campaign, and of this plot thread within the campaign, and the goals that these encounters were to satisfy within those contexts.

That helped refine the ideas by telling me what could be accepted as is and what needed tweaking to conform to the requirements. In other words, I wasn’t starting out completely blind; I already had some idea of the ‘shape’ of the plot needed.

5th Requirement: Training

I’ve read a lot of stories, of all lengths, and watched a lot of TV and movies. More usefully, I’ve digested and analyzed what I was seeing and reading. What’s more, I had practiced constructing relevant reviews of such material.

For example, here’s a review I wrote about a movie called T3rminal Error, which was published by a site that offered free DVDs for those willing to write short but literate and useful reviews:

T3rminal Error (Flashback Entertainment) 95 minutes

Reviewed by Mike Bourke

There’s an art to getting maximum enjoyment from a “B-” movie. It involves deliberately overlooking the odd moment of wooden acting or poor direction, seeking out the humor that would be there if the second-rate effects and sets were deliberately second-rate, and plugging holes in the plot with your own imaginative speculations. The less of this work you have to do in order maintain your engagement with the plot and the characters, the more successful the B-movie is; in other words, the key is to adopt a different critical standard to that which you would employ when judging an A-grade movie.

‘Mars Attacks’ lampooned B-movies from the Science Fiction genre by deliberately making one as a comedy; in just about every way I can conceive, it could be and should be honored as the ultimate primer in how to go about this art. Which brings me to “T3rminal Error” starring Michael Nouri, Marina Sirtis, and Matthew Ewald. Judged by A-movie standards, this would not score terribly well; judged by B-movie standards, it’s excellent. I first came across it in my local video store when they were offering 7 $2-a-night movie-rentals for a week at $10. I went through a LOT of B-movies at the time! But this one stood out, for reasons that will become clear as this review proceeds, and which led my to buy the DVD when I spotted it.

The plot is fairly straightforward – embittered ex-employee creates an evolving virus contained within a sound file to exact revenge on his ex-boss. In the tradition of all B-movie killer viruses, this one quickly gets out of hand, growing and evolving at computer speeds to become ever more deadly, intelligent, and self-aware. It’s up to the ex-boss (Nouri), his wife (Sirtis), and his son (Ewald) to escape the virus before it kills them.

This is an action-drama first and foremost. At the time, computer viruses were not often contained within sound files, and there were no computer viruses that could evolve or adapt to security measures. Neither of these facts are true, 4 years later. And while it’s improbable that even a virus evolving at computer speeds could achieve sentience as quickly as this does, and especially not while maintaining its basic nature and purpose, it’s not completely implausible. So plot-wise there are no major holes, though there are a few niggles here and there, but it’s fairly predictable and just a little cheesy – one of the defining characteristics of a B-movie.

Then there’s the acting. Sirtis, in 2002, was just coming off years of regular work on Star Trek The Next Generation and had appeared in at least 3 Star Trek movies. Calling her “an accomplished actress” is not unreasonable. Surprisingly, young Matthew Ewald seems almost as casually-competent in his role. Which leaves Michael Nouri… While he gets some great lines at times, especially when dealing with a long-time associate stuck in wheelchair, there are times when his performance comes across as a little wooden. He gives the distinct appearance of being somewhat uncomfortable with his dialogue and its technical terminology. In other words, Syrtis and Ewald deliver performances far superior to typical B-movie standard. And, by the way, that technical terminology is mostly used correctly, something that is rare for even big-budget movies, let alone B-grade ones. Where it isn’t used correctly, it’s because the movie was just a little bit in advance of developments that we have seen arrive; the concepts were right, but the terms that have since been attached to those concepts in real life aren’t the same as those used in the movie.

There are no extras. Picture is in standard 4:3 television aspect ratio. Sound is Dolby stereo. Production values are as good as B-movies get, which is pretty high, if rarely cutting-edge in any respect.

By B-movie standards, this is A-grade entertainment – eminently watchable action-adventure. By A-movie standards, it’s a long way short of cutting the mustard; but don’t let that stop you from giving this disk a turn in your player. So long as you know what you’re letting yourself in for, you won’t be disappointed.

Feature: 6/10 (9.5/10 B-standard)
Picture: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Extras: 0/10
Overall: 6/10 (9.5/10 B-standard)

PS: Checking around, I’ve discovered that this DVD has a different cover in the US, and has also been released in some markets as “Peace Virus”.

All that means is that I’m used to deconstructing and reconstructing stories, and have thousands of them filed away in the back of my memory somewhere – a treasure-trove when you have to come up with something in a hurry.

6th Requirement: Experience I

I have lots of experience in generating ideas and structuring/refining them to fit a defined plot requirement. While you can do so without that experience, it makes shortcuts possible (that effectively increase available thinking time) and makes you more aware in advance of potential pitfalls and how to avoid them.

7th Requirement: Experience II

Coupled with that, I also have a lot of experience in implementing an idea on the spot and making sense of it later – and of what can go horribly wrong when you do so. Again, this permits greater efficiency of process and greater awareness of dangers and the best way to evade those dangers.

The two types of experience are not the same, but they do add to and enhance each other. One teaches technique, the other editorial review and rationalization. Applying the techniques on the fly and as you go makes the ad-hoc material more substantial and more correct, as though it had been pre-planned; applying the editorial review teaches how small picture elements relate to a big picture, and the rationalization techniques can then be applied to the selection of those ‘small-picture’ elements to have them contribute to the big picture you want – it doesn’t do you much good if your picture elements are painting daffodils while you wanted them to be assembling an Eiffel Tower.

8th Requirement: Time

I can’t emphasize this enough – all of the above had been done well in advance, and I had tackled the question of what would come next even if a sufficiently-developed thought had not yet been derived to answer that question.

In other words, I had set time aside to come up with the answers, and had primed my internal think-tank to focus on the problem by reminding myself of the parameters and plot objectives and the pieces I had to work with. It was just that the thinking time had not yet yielded anything satisfactory.

When you present the subconscious with a problem, it tends to keep working at it. Strange associations may form with material you are watching or reading (or may not); eventually, seemingly from out of the blue, you will have a flash of inspiration.

This process takes time. When you haven’t had enough time to complete it, and hence have to improvise a solution, you still have the benefit of the time spent trying to solve the problem; these create a kind of instinct for what should be there.

Normally, when you recognize the results for what they are, you take the time to test the logic and implications (and so on) of the plot element. When you’re improvising, you don’t have time for that, you have to trust in that instinct; and the longer you’ve been trying to think of an answer, the sharper those instincts will be.

9th Requirement: Effort

It does little good to just sit around, waiting for an idea to present itself, during that time; you have to actively work at it. You have to ask yourself the question that you are trying to answer repeatedly whenever you have an odd moment to spare; ask it as you’re going to bed, as you’re in the shower or bath, while you’re eating lunch – and then spend a minute or two trying to think of an answer or a different approach to the question. If no answer is forthcoming, set the question aside – until your next opportunity to mentally poke the problem.

The subconscious is easily distracted, and if you don’t refresh the problem’s priority by regularly returning to it, it is all too easy for it to be put into the too-hard basket – the round one, by the door, that gets emptied every night.

If that happens, you will get to D-Day and find nothing but silly ideas that don’t make sense, don’t achieve the story goals, and won’t cut the mustard. And then you really are in trouble. So you’ll probably go with one of them anyway, and deal with the fallout later.

Like the time the PCs in an early D&D campaign of mine were confronting a Black Dragon of enormous size (courtesy of a random mixture of potions that it had swallowed – the PCs hoped to poison it, or blow it up, or something). The party mage, who fancied himself an alchemist, stepped forward with the foolish notion of somehow neutralizing the mixture and returning the dragon to manageable proportions.

I hadn’t anticipated that possibility, hadn’t spent any thought on it whatsoever – a mistake, in hindsight – and the only idea I had was a silly one, but I went with it anyway. So the dragon swallowed him whole. Next session, I had to make sense of this and get the PC back in the game.

The alchemist realized that he was in the Dragon’s stomach, with the potions, many still in their bottles, and was able to mix some of them with certain herbs in his backpack (with suitable effort in the form of rolls) to construct an extremely strong emetic. Result: the dragon projectile-vomited up not only the alchemist but the potions as well, both opened and unopened, ending the effect of the unstable potion miscibility, and making it feel unwell-enough that it retreated from the battle, a bit more wary of swallowing humans wearing funny clothes in the future.

The Tenth Requirement: Trust

The last requirement is the toughest one of the lot, especially after you’ve been burned by throwing out a silly idea and having to scramble to put some sense back into things, later. You have to have developed trust in your instincts – not blind faith, mind you; you still have to be aware of how far your trust can extend, so that you can recognize the bad ideas that lurk beyond it for what they are. This trust is a constantly-changing thing, and it can be game-system and genre- sensitive.

You can only develop trust in your instincts when you’ve done the hard yards and met all the other requirements that I’ve listed, because they are the foundations of prudence, inspiration, and good instincts.

And you never know when you’ll have to rely on your instincts, so it behooves us all to make them as good as we possibly can. Even to the point of running an atypical campaign on the side to sharpen one or more of these requirements.