Catch Your Hare

I’m at a convention in Leicester and we’ve started playing Hero Quest.

There’s this guy opposite. For his introductory scene, he tries hard to be entertaining: speaking to imaginary barmen, putting on a voice, doing a monologue.

It’s excruciating to watch. My stomach knots. I grimace/smile politely and wait for him to finish.

I’ve seen similar in White Wolf LARPs. A player gets up to make a speech. They try so hard: I remember one guy, reading a poem, pacing self-consciously; another, opening a meeting with affected “girly” mannerisms.

Excruciating. (And I’ve done the same myself.)

You’ve probably got similar examples. (I’d like to hear them). Think of comedy games where players try to be funny. Or horror games where they try to shock.

One superb piece of impro advice is don’t be clever. If you try to clever/funny/entertaining/horrific, you’ll probably fail.

Instead, be obvious. Do the obvious thing. Often, that obvious thing will, to everyone else, seem astonishingly brilliant.

For example: I ran a horror scene for a Vampire LARP. We’d established that the Prince had been sent letters, written in blood.

Now, to me, it was obvious that the paper should be nasty, too, not just the ink/blood. How about parchment, I thought, made of human skin? It was obvious: ink=blood, paper=skin.

Man, people were shocked. In a good way. There was a sort of horrified awe.

Later, I ran a scene in which characters had a dreamlike vision of a murder. Again, I just did obvious things.

Obviously, I thought, removing that patch of skin was the murder. So the vision was of a woman, strapped face-down, as the skin was peeled off her back.

So how did she die? Well, obviously, to me, she bled to death. She lay there, bleeding, until she died. She’d scream, of course.

And, when I explained this, there was a wonderful shocked awe.

These days, when I play, I try to be obvious.

Note that obvious doesn’t mean “boring”. It’s the obvious thing to happen next in the story. Often, that’s very exciting.

For example, we played My Life With Master and, in the endgame, found ourselves in a hospital. A bit dull, I thought. It seemed obvious, to me, that we should go up to the roof: and, of course, the final scene had the Master falling to his death.

(By the way, I’m sorry all those examples are about me. I’m terrible at remembering what others do in play. I feel guilty about it.)

I like people to be obvious. Their “obvious” often seems brilliant to me, just as mine is to them.

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Some behaviours are associated with high status. For example:

• Holding eye contact
• Stillness, especially keeping the head still
• Taking up lots of space
• Being relaxed
• Standing tall
• Speaking directly, as though you do not expect to be interrupted
• Saying things which imply that you are better (in some way) than the other person

Equally, some behaviours are associated with low status:

• Breaking eye contact downwards, then looking back immediately
• Twitching or unnecessary movements, especially of the head
• Touching the head or hair
• Taking up as little space as possible
• Being nervous
• Speaking hesitantly, as though you expect to be interrupted
• Saying things which imply that you are worse (in some way) than the other person

There is a synergy between these. If, for example, you hold your head still while speaking, you may find you stand straighter and speak more directly.

Some status behaviours will come more naturally to you than others. Personally, I find it harder to play low status than high.

People may respond differently if you change your status behaviour. I remember going to the bar after an improv class, having just played high status. When I ordered my pint, I spoke very directly and clearly, as though giving the barman an order. He jumped to get the glass: but looked angry for the rest of the night.

You can use these behaviours, as a player representing your character, at the gaming table. When someone threatens you, try playing low-status (cringing, begging) instead of high-status (angry, defiant). Try starting a scene high status and moving to low: or vice versa.

Having said that, there’s a danger: and I’ll come to that in the next post.

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To start with an obvious point: many stories are about status.

Take King Lear, for example: in which a powerful King slides, slowly, towards impotence. Or Cinderella: a rags-to-riches story. Or Great Expectations: in which a boy is suddenly elevated to high society and, gradually, watches it crumble around him.

Status changes are storytelling gold. Take any low-status character: say, a milkmaid. Elevating her to high status will almost always make a good story. Equally, a high-status character: a lord. Bringing him low will make an equally good story.

The best roleplaying games do this for you. The Shab Al-Hiri Roach is based on status (which it calls Reputation): every scene ends in a fight over status. Contenders follows underdogs as they crawl out of the gutter. Polarisfollows “the greatest people that this world will ever know” as their world collapses.

But you can use status in any RPG. You can tell stories about kings or underdogs and deliberately change their status. As players, we can boost other characters’ status or bring it crashing down. As GMs, we can play high-status NPCs, and let the PCs bring them crashing to earth.

Pretty obvious so far? It gets better, though. There are techniques you can use to enhance status; and there are barriers you can clear away.

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A quick disclaimer, before I start.

Often, roleplayers want to learn improvisation techniques, to use in games.

The problem is: impro, in the Johnstone style, isn’t really about techniques.

In fact, Johnstone improvisation is very Zen. Some of the best pieces of Keith Johnstone’s advice are:

• “Be more boring”
• “Do nothing!”
• “Stop trying to be clever!”

and I genuinely suggest you try them in gaming.

My point is: there are improvisation techniques, and they’re good, but it’s more about the the thought process than the techniques.

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