Mike Mearls Games
patreon
Improvised Actions
🕑 Added 2025-02-09 18:45:29 +0000 UTCBefore I dive into today's topic, a few housekeeping updates:
I am behind on post comments, mainly because I have a few projects that are entering critical phases or just kicking off. I've been working on a major release for Chaosium that is due out later this year. We're nearing the finish line for that. I've been able to keep up on post volume here, but not always schedule.
To that end, in the coming week I am going to focus on posting Q&A drawing on comments made to my last few posts.
I am going to be at Gary Con in late March as a guest. If you want to catch up with me there, let me know in the comments.
Finally, I am working on a version of the monster math for Odyssey that I can share here. It'll be fairly rough, but I hope it is enough that you can stat up your own critters.
OK, on to today's topic:
Improvisation and TTRPGs
Because TTRPGs rely on a human moderator - the DM - players can take a vast array of actions in the game. The DM relies on a description of an action, considers how it affects play, then changes the game environment or the working of the rules to determine what happens next.
Many RPGs handle interpersonal conflict this way. You want your character to intimidate a gangster, and you know that the local Mafia capo is known for his short temper, so you might say something like, "I tell the thug, 'If you want me to leave I will, but I'm sure that Don Coscarelli will be unhappy when I tell him how you treated me.'"
The GM might decide that your threat is good enough to force the thug to back down. Or, he might have already determined that the thug is Coscarelli's beloved nephew, causing the threat to make the situation worse for you.
In modern games, a die roll might decide what happens. The GM asks for a bluff check. If you succeed, the thug slinks away. If you fail, a good GM might improvise the thug's personal tie to the Don, making a bad situation worse.
The act of improvising and rolling makes TTRPGs distinct from other types of games. However, that pattern tends to fall away in combat.
The Challenge of Combat
Combat tends to be the most heavily designed, balanced, and constrained element of a traditional TTRPG. It casts the GM and players as quasi opponents. The space for improv is therefore constrained.
Let's go back to the example above. Let's say that you decided to punch the thug. You roll an attack and succeed. You then roll damage in most games. The system tells us exactly what happens with success and failure, primarily because the thug in turn uses that same procedure against the player characters.
When the thug tried to intimidate you, the GM relied on a description of what was happening and then turned the narrative over to you, the player. What do you do in response?
It would likely be quite unsatisfying for the GM to roll the thug's intimidate skill then ask you to describe how you decide to flee, or what makes you brush off the thug's threat. In traditional TTRPG play, player agency is critical.
Combat works within that agency by setting up hit points or a similar mechanic, and deriving agency from a player's ability to work within that system.
Improvisation in combat runs counter that that. It either digs into the action economy, requiring a player to risk swapping out a mechanically effective attack for what might be a pointless attempt at improv. If improv succeeds, how do we then map it to hit points or any other health tracking mechanic?
My Approach: Improv Actions
I've noticed in my D&D games that players often want to manipulate how their enemies fight outside of simply attacking. Some examples:
Compel a monster to attack them instead of a more vulnerable target
Act helpless in hope of avoiding attack
Lure an opponent to move somewhere
Distract an opponent to let someone else hide or escape
Alter the environment, such as by knocking over a pillar, barring a door, and so on
I'd like to attack this by adding an improv action to each player turn.
An improv action allows a character to attempt something outside of the bounds of the rules and their character sheets. The player describes that they want to do and the DM decides if it calls for a check. They can also decide that the action is powerful enough that it replaces the characters' attacks for that turn.
The idea is to encourage creative play by letting players do it without taking away from the regular business of bashing the enemy over the head. The DM can opt to have an improv action replace an attack if they want to apply the effect as an attack.
For example, a thief trying to escape the PCs climbs a stack of crates to reach a window. The beefy luchador character charges forward and tries to knock over the crates. The DM could apply the following process:
If an action alters how an enemy acts or can act, but doesn't damage the or make them vulnerable, it's an improv action
If an action damage an enemy or makes them more vulnerable, it's an improve action + one attack
If the improvised action is powerful enough to be worth the character's full turn, it's an improv action + the character's regular action
In the example above, the DM can call for a Strength (Athletics) check in place of a single attack. The thief might take some falling damage, but has lost the option to escape via the window.
Obviously, this approach needs more refinement to make it easy to apply, but I hope the concept sounds interesting and provides a way to encourage creative play in any situation.
An Aside: Rules for DMs
I an increasingly moving to writing DM-facing rules in the form of check lists or yes/no procedures. I think this approach makes it easier to manage rules and play and shows the DM the why behind a rule to help them expand and apply the rules as necessary. Here's an example for targeting:
To target a creature, the attacker must meet all three of these criteria:
Are they aware of the target? You can't target something if you do not know is there. You can't target hidden creatures, but you can target invisible ones that are not hidden. You might not be able to see an invisible creature, but if it is not hidden you can hear it, see signs of its presence, and so on.
Can you physically attack the target? There needs to be a clear path for the attack. Otherwise, it is blocked.
Is the target in range of the attack? In close combat, it needs to be in your reach. For a ranged attack, it needs to be within the attack's range. Otherwise, the attack falls short.
I hope this approach makes it easier for DMs to absorb the rules and apply them, rather than attempt to memorize and repeat them.
Comments
Lojaan
I like your thinking but, I don't know, this feels really awkward to me. Combat is slow enough in 5e without having to add "do you have an improv action?" at the end of everyone's turn. And every one of those improv actions will have to be actively GM moderated. And if players do something once they will expect to be able to do the exact same thing every combat. Wouldn't this be better placed as advice on how to GM in a way to encourage the type of play that you want, rather than put a really nebulous, and potentially time consuming and contentious tool in the players hands? OSR, FitD, PbtA and Mothership games have no problem with this style of play at all and they don't have a specific action action for it.
Fabiano Fagundes
Even when I am a player, I think "player agency" is overrated. I think I agency is the ability to say what my character would do given that situation. If the situation is that my character is mind-dominated to do something, what the character would do? The action that he was dominated to do. I do not think that breaks agency. It is the only possible answer to that situation. Agency is not "I always have options to do what I want", but "I must decide how my PC answers to a given situation, even if there is one possible answer to that".
