More On New Choices & Roleplaying

A friend made several excellent points about the improv game "New Choice" and making stronger choices. Her comments got me reconsidering the way I was thinking about choices. I know there's always the risk of being partially or completely wrong when I write about something, but that's part of the reason I'm writing.

I'm not entirely sure what the instructional value is of the game New Choice (also called Bell & Buzzer). When played it, I thought it was about learning to make stronger choices. As my friend points out, it might be seen as tool for getting out of ruts, e.g., reusing the same locations again and again. How many scenes to you want to see in the kitchen or a park? It might also be an exercise to give "'permission' to improvisers to explore extreme states."

I'm rethinking the importance of coming up with "strong choices" (aka strong offers). My friend reminded me that I seen a lot of amazing improv moments where "dull" offers were accepted and built upon and made into great scenes. Those moments may outnumber the number of scenes made great by strong offers. I've also seen a lot of dull scenes that started with strong offers. It's ultimately about the teamwork and chemistry of the players.

I can't say I've played in a lot of roleplaying games with great chemistry and teamwork, except maybe in tactical battles destroying groups of monsters. I've experienced group chemistry playing scenes in improv. My effort now might be better spent listening to other players' "offers" and building upon them than thinking about "New Choice" or obsessing about character. I think it's still good "blurt." Whether players look at my offers and make "Yuck" faces is out of my control, but I can work to listen and help make other people shine.

After obsessing about improv and roleplaying, I'm now busy reading books about project management. I finished Management 3.0 a few days ago, and I got through another excellent book, Kanban. I now want to read more about lean development so I'm going to tackle The Principles of Product Development Flow after I read Project Management That Works. Whew!