Play Unsafe Graham Walmsley – Part 1.

The first part of a review on an interesting book written to improve your roleplaying skills and Walmsley bases his advice is based around the art of improve theatre, doing things on the fly and he challenges some of the presumptions about play. Dividing the book into five key chapters, he starts by examining how roleplaying games work.

Play
Here Walmsley identifies that over-planning can stifle a game. If you imagine a scene and wait for it to happen, then it won’t. Also the stuff you make up on the fly is invariable better, because it fits with the flow of play. The other key idea is don’t try to be awesome, because you won’t be, play average, be boring be dull. The theory goes that if you try to be boring and be obvious in what you do, if you do what you consider is obvious you can end up seeming to be original and brilliant. This is because what is obvious to you may not be to the others, thus you come across as brilliant. Evidently, not everything you say will come across as brilliant but you stand a much greater chance than if you waited for a scene that never seems quite the right to time to play it.

I believe there is a lot of strength in this idea; it allows you to relax because you are not trying too hard to drive the story. You go with the flow, directing it the way you want by reacting to what is happening whilst have general plans in your head. Your not striving to find that moment, that scene you desire to see happen but the timing never seems right. You do plan, but your plans have a general theme rather than specific events. After all if you want a specific event you may be better writing a book as the other players and GM have their ideas and will impact on your story, taking you in a direction you don’t expect and thus you hold onto an idea that may not be going anywhere. Your not playing, you’re waiting.

Build
So what do we do if we don’t plan ahead? Well, Walmsley argues that we should build on other player’s ideas. Often, when a player posits a suggestion it can be stifled by the others around the table. We shoot it down by negating what has just been said and we should be fighting this urge to play safe. Instead we should embrace the ideas and add to it, driving the scene to even greater things. When someone suggests something that affects your character, rather than work against it, go with ‘Yes and …’, add something, a response, an additional twist, something that moves the story on rather than saying ‘no that won’t happen to my character’.

A sound technique to help keep the game flowing as it makes you focus on the action, not shutting the action down. You are aware of the environment that you character is in and you react to what is happening, thus driving the story on to better things.