"Just Make It Up"

In all my time playing and running roleplaying games, one trend that I have consistently experienced is that the most enjoyable and exciting game sessions were those that were heavily improvisational in nature, often being almost entirely “made up on the spot”. These “off the cuff” game sessions tend to glow with a unique brand of lively dynamism and raw vitality, in a way that is rarely seen in pre-prepared games. I would strongly advocate that more referees experiment with running their games in this fashion.

There is certainly an argument that a game needs a solid mechanical “backbone” to rely on, in terms of having established procedures and rules that allow the game to run smoothly. With this taken into account, I’ve found that there’s a lot of value to be had in entirely concealing the game’s mechanics from the players, and having the players focus on interacting with the game world in an entirely naturalistic manner, while the referee handles the mechanical elements of the game “behind the screen”.
In my own games, this is the approach I usually adopt when I’m running a play-by-post game, and in this format, I’ve found this method of refereeing to be highly conducive to fast, smooth, and immersive gameplay.

We can see some precedent for this style of play in some accounts of the earliest sessions of D&D, with players reporting that Gygax and Arneson would referee the game from behind a sight-obstructing obstacle, such as a filing cabinet with all the drawers opened, or a sheet of plywood with holes cut in it.

The primary obstacle to this style of play is that is requires a high degree of trust between the referee and the players in order to function well, as well as requiring an experienced, knowledgeable referee, who is capable of maintaining total impartiality. If these requirements are met, however, there are a number of notable advantages offered by this style of play, most significantly in the area of facilitating player and referee immersion, facilitating a high degree of player agency, and maintaining a fast pace of gameplay.

In my own case, I’ve found that Dungeons & Dragons is a game that very quickly becomes “more trouble than it’s worth”, in the sense that the actual gameplay experience at the table isn’t improved by additional effort put into planning and preparation for the game. Indeed, the best games I’ve ever ran have always been built off extremely minimal or zero prep.

In my recent games, I've really become sympathetic to the idea of stripping out many of the mechanical “working parts” of the D&D ruleset, and prioritising speed of play and player agency over everything else. For example, I think “counting squares” to determine movement distance is extremely overrated. This is one area where I’ve found that simply “eyeballing it” has been more than sufficient on every occasion.

Any decent referee is capable of considering the situation at hand, and ruling something to the effect of “the wargs that are pursuing you are way faster than you are, but since you had a short head start, you’ve got a single round to ready an action before they reach you. Let me know if you’re casting a spell, preparing to unleash some missile fire as they close in, or making any other preparations” or whatever is appropriate in the context of the game world.

I remember when I used to run tabletop games with my friends in high school, I’d add in many additional “ad libs” to the events that were occurring in-game. There wasn’t official provision for these additions in the rules, but I found that they made the game world seem so much more genuine and “alive”, rather than just being something set up as a backdrop for mechanical gameplay.

For example, if I had two characters fighting with swords, and one of the combatants rolled very high on their “to hit” roll, but then immediately rolled very low when determining how much damage their attack inflicted, I would often decide to make up some additional effect on the spot, something like “you give your adversary a shallow horizontal cut across the forehead, causing blood to run freely into his eyes, which will impair his vision and cause him to take a penalty on his next attack roll” or whatever else fit the situation.

These outcomes weren’t being drawn from a pre-existing critical hit table or something like that. Rather, it simply emerged organically, as I found myself really leaning into the “oracular power of the dice”, interpreting the results of the dice in a more open and “freeform” manner, and then describing what was going on in the game world based off that.

I recall one particularly memorable moment where a fight broke out in a smoky, dingy, crowded tavern. A player tried to give an opponent an overhead blow with their sword, only to find their sword blade getting stuck in a wooden crossbeam on the low tavern ceiling. Immediately afterwards, the opponent their character was fighting tackled them against the bar, leading to a wild brawl as both characters began grabbing bottles, flagons, and tankards, and started smashing each other with these improvised weapons. Meanwhile, other characters were getting thrown through tables, grabbing up wooden stools to fight with, and generally causing mayhem in a way that wasn’t strictly bound to the combat rules as they were outlined in the book. Altogether, this whole event was so lively and imagination-firing, and this “liveliness” was largely due to the more freeform, improvised, “made up on the spot” nature of my rulings, with the dice rolls acting as a general guideline that helped shape my rulings as I made them in the moment.

I have observed that this more “freeform” style of refereeing is commonly seen amongst referees who have been playing and running games for many years. It seems to me, that the “hidden truth” of tabletop gaming is that the game system you’re playing is of very little importance, compared to the importance of the referee and players having good chemistry with one another.

This post turned out lengthier than anticipated, but I’m glad I’ve written it up. As always, I welcome any contributions from my readers, and I encourage you to contribute in the comment section below, as well as on the usual Discord servers. Lastly, I would definitely recommend checking out the “further reading” section below, as I have found these sources to be particularly interesting, and of relevance to this topic.

Until next time, readers.

Further Reading:

https://darkwormcolt.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/professor-mar-barkers-rpg-rules-in-full-perfected/

https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2010/10/mar-barker-on-rules-lite.html

https://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/07/helgacon-v-outdoor-spoliation.html