11.4 Spontaneous Play

This game was designed for spontaneous play. I describe this type of play as one where the players, including the GM, don’t need to spend hours preparing the game, and they don’t plan or think much about what they are going to do in the game. Instead, you prepare some basic materials that you can spontaneously use during the game to develop your story.

Spontaneous play works best when you use a couple of techniques that are suited for it. I’m going to describe some of them below; maybe they’ll be useful for you.

Reincorporation

Keith Johnstone, in his book Impro (on improvisational theater), describes a concept that he calls shelving. The actors introduce a certain item or fact into the story, then “put it on the shelf” until later in the scene, when they finally realize that they can use that item or fact again within the story. I like to call this reincorporation, to describe the whole cycle.

Reincorporation is a powerful tool for spontaneous play. The GM or the other players put things out there spontaneously, and later during the game, you can reach back to the things you’ve established and tie them back into your game.

This can happen already on a very small scale. In one of my playtests, we had a character scene (with the example character Sijyka) during which the player described how his character salvaged a part out of a steambot. In the conflict that followed, the player used that part to make an ad-hoc gadget that he used against his opponents. He reincorporated the item, for which I as a GM gave him as many dice for his maneuver as I could.

Reincorporation works on a larger scale as well. All those links on your character sheets are facts, characters, and other material that can be reincorporated later.

Related to the concept of reincorporation are seeds: those are story elements you throw out there to shelf and later tie together.

Seeds

Seeds, to me, are ideas and events that we put into the story without knowing how they’re going to turn out or what all their details are.

During play, don’t hesitate to throw things into the mix even if you have no idea how they connect to everything or anything else. Mystery and revelations in stories don’t have to be painstakingly designed. They can just evolve organically as you play, if you’re flexible enough.

For example, when the PCs are in familiar surroundings, throw out something unusual. Maybe there’s a strange object attached to the characters’ airship. Maybe an enemy who attacks the characters has a weird tattoo. Maybe instead of paying the PCs with gold, the strange old man hands them his greatest treasure, an arcane looking piece of machinery that hasn’t worked in eons. Maybe the same NPC keeps showing up at random times to make cryptic statements.

What’s going to happen? Why is it happening? And how is all of that connected to the PCs and their story?

You don’t have to know the answer to these questions when you introduce seeds. Once they’re in the story, you can actively look for ways to tie them into what’s going on, and at some point you’ll most likely end up with some sort of coherent picture. As coherent as any Final Fantasy plot, in any case.
In many cases, the PC players will come up with their own explanations. Listen to them as they discuss ongoing events in their character scenes. If what they say makes sense—and it might be a lot better than what you had planned—just go with it!

Situation Webs

One way of keeping track of what’s going on in your story, and how things are connected, is to start a situation web. You can write the various seeds and links onto a big sheet of paper and start to connect them with lines. Along the lines, you can write how they are connected.

For example, let’s take Zadie and Rasheem from the earlier chapters. They both share a link, namely Zadie’s old partner and current nemesis Locust. You could tie them together in a simple triangle. Just draw a line from Zadie to Rasheem that says, “on convoy mission together,” one from Zadie to Locust that says “nemesis,” and one from Rasheem to Locust that says, “?” That “?” could turn into “contact to black market,” or “ex-lover,” or “killed during raid,” or something completely different, depending on how Rasheem figures out what happened between him and Locust.

It could also be more complicated, however. Rasheem could have received the necklace (which, as you might recall, Zadie had given to Locust) from another character. Now you have a relationship between Rasheem and that new character, and then one between that new character and Locust. How are they connected? And how does that connect to the attack on the convoy and the gathering of demons in the ruined city? Those are all connections you can fill in as you play, and the more you can somehow create connections between all of the links, seeds, and PCs, the better.

You’ll end up with a big web of interconnected characters. They all should have a strong impact on each other. One way to have such an impact is with powerful emotions, another is with needs or goals. Zadie feels hatred toward Locust and wants him dead. Rasheem might be on the run from the unknown fourth character, who in turn lives in fear of Locust (or is his new lover). And so on.

Having a situation web drawn out allows you to tie new events, items, and characters visually to the rest of the story. That ancient item the old man gave the PCs? That’s needed for a ritual in the ruined city by the demon lord. Those tattoos on the PCs’ enemies? They’re the mark of Locust’s new gang of elite raiders, on the lookout for the ancient item. That strange object on the characters’ airship? Maybe a bomb that the raiders placed, or a beacon from the demon lord, or maybe a present from a third faction that the PCs haven’t encountered yet, but who are tied to the ones they know.

Speaking of factions, they obviously play into the situation webs, as they usually relate to each other in a large scale kind of way. People within a faction relate to one another in any number of personal ways—and vengeance, betrayal, espionage, secret affairs, and other things create ties between characters in different factions. The deeper the PCs are in the middle of all this, the better.

Just Play

It can be daunting to play a spontaneous game, where even the GM doesn’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a fear that it could fall flat, that nothing happens, and that nobody has fun, because the program hasn’t been developed in advance.

This fear is most common with groups who are used to putting most of the responsibility of what’s happening in the game with the GM. But remember, this game is different. If you’ve got a GM and 3 PC players, the PC players are responsible for 75% of what’s going on in the game. Their characters should be driving the story forward. They should interact with each other. They should throw out links and seeds left and right, to make sure there’s enough material to play. They should always have something in mind that their characters could do next. And with all the seeds and links you’ve got, there’s always a way to make things matter.

In the end, it’s worth it getting over the initial apprehension. Trust your spontaneity, trust the power of seeds, and most of all trust your friends who are playing with you. As long as you’re all in it together, you’re going to be just fine.