Engine Publishing - Unframed.pdf

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Credits
Authors:
John Arcadian, D. Vincent Baker,
Meguey Baker, Wolfgang Baur,
Emily Care Boss, Walt Ciechanowski,
Stacy Dellorfano, Jess Hartley, Kenneth Hite,
Jennell Jaquays, Eloy Lasanta, Robin D. Laws,
Michelle Lyons-McFarland, Don Mappin,
Scott Martin, Alex Mayo, Jason Morningstar,
Martin Ralya, Kurt Schneider, Ken St. Andre,
Monica Valentinelli, Phil Vecchione,
Filamena Young
Publisher:
Martin Ralya
Editor:
Martin Ralya
Art Director:
Martin Ralya
Graphic Designer:
Darren Hardy
Layout:
Darren Hardy
Cover Artist:
Christopher Reach
Cover Designer:
Darren Hardy
Interior Artist:
Christopher Reach
Indexer:
Martin Ralya
Proofreaders:
Robert M. Everson, Daniel Milne
Capitalist Tool:
Kurt Schneider
In memory of Aaron Allston, David A. Trampier,
and Lynn Willis
With special thanks to John Arcadian, who was
right about
Unframed
needing interior artwork
enginepublishing.com
PO Box 571992
Murray, UT 84157
Unframed: The Art of
Improvisation for Game
Masters
is copyright ©
2014 by Engine Publishing,
LLC, all rights reserved.
Jason Morningstar’s essay,
“Agreement, Endowment, and
Knowing When to Shut Up,”
is copyright © 2013 by Jason
Morningstar, all rights reserved,
and is published by Engine
Publishing, LLC with permission.
Ken St. Andre’s essay, “Why
Trollworld Has Two Moons . . . and
Other Tales,” is copyright © 2013
by Ken St. Andre, all rights reserved,
and is published by Engine
Publishing, LLC with permission.
Engine Publishing, the Engine
Publishing logo, and the truncated
gear device are trademarks
of Engine Publishing, LLC.
Gnome Stew, The Game Mastering
Blog, and the Gnome Stew logo
are trademarks of Martin Ralya.
Mention of ©, ®, or TM products
and services is not intended as
a challenge to those rights or
marks, or to their holders. All such
products and services are the
property of their respective owners.
The Engine Publishing logo was
designed by Darren Hardy.
Published by Engine Publishing,
LLC in July 2014.
Dedication
This one’s for Jonathan Jacobs and Fred Hicks,
without whose inspiration there probably wouldn’t
be an Engine Publishing. Sláinte! —Martin Ralya
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Introduction
Improvisation is at the heart of roleplaying. No matter what roleplaying game
(RPG) you’re playing, and no matter whether you’re the game master (GM) or
a player, you’re improvising constantly during the game. Even if you plan out all
of your adventures in advance, down to the last detail . . . you’ll still find yourself
improvising, in little ways and big ways, all the time.
There are a few good gaming books out there that address improvisation; my fa-
vorite, other than this one, is Graham Walmsley’s
Play Unsafe,
which changed the
way I look at gaming. (It’s seriously good; you should buy it.) But none approach
improvisation from many different angles, and I wanted there to be a book that did;
U
nframed
: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters
is the result.
The title refers to two things about improvisation that I love. First, that ideas you
come up with on the spur of the moment are sometimes rough and unfinished, but
brimming with potential and wonderful in their own right—like an unframed can-
vas. And second, that what you improvise during play is often less constrained—
less polished, less “framed”—than what you prepare in advance, and like a painting
coming to life and bursting free of its frame those ideas tend to be surprising.
In
Unframed,
Engine Publishing’s fifth system-neutral book for GMs, you get the
collected wisdom of 23 GMs on improvisation—a core skill for every gamer. And
not just any 23 GMs, but a diverse group of people with unique GMing styles,
varied gaming backgrounds, and a wealth of knowledge and hard-won experience
to share.
There’s no One True Way to play RPGs, and there’s no one way to improvise; by
presenting different perspectives on the many aspects of improvisation for GMs,
Unframed
aims to be a toolkit you can draw from for the rest of your GMing career.
Each essay packs a hell of a wallop into just a few pages. There’s a flow to the book
(a lot of thought went into
Unframed
’s topics and reading order), but every essay
stands on its own and you can read them in any order.
Unframed
is also a tool for players: It’s full of tips you can use to better portray
player characters (PCs) as well as non-player characters (NPCs), advice on putting
forth ideas that are easy for other players to embrace, and tricks for quickly embrac-
ing—and running with—the improvisation your fellow players are doing at the
table. If you play more often than you GM, or love GM-less games
or live-action games (LARPs), you’ll find plenty in this book to
make your gaming more enjoyable.
Selecting “just” 23 authors for
Unframed
was insanely difficult.
Working with them was not—it was a pleasure and a privi-
lege. Thanks for buying
Unframed,
and happy improv!
Martin Ralya • Salt Lake City, UT • April 2014
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