Make-Shit-Up-Theater

While I was writing up a post about the D&D Next playtest I realized 3 paragraphs in that I spent more words defining Make-Shit-Up-Theater than I had to say about the playtest.  Since Make-Shit-Up-Theater is one of my favorite aspects of RPGs in the first place, I thought it deserved it's own post.

Aside: I mean "Shit" in the nicest way possible

I really mean no disrespect to the game, gamers, GMs, DMs, grandmothers, or people who make shit up for a living.  "Make-Shit-Up-Theater" is what I and some close friends have called this concept for years, and it seems dishonest to call it anything else.  I do not intend to offend.


That being said I love Make-Shit-Up-Theater, which is when someone does something not covered in print, whether adding something to a scene, fleshing out a setting, or improvising rules.  It can (and should) be done in pretty much any RPG, and you've probably all done it before as part of whatever game you play, but I find you get more out of it by thinking about Make-Shit-Up-Theater as it's own thing, so that when it happens you do it with purpose and certainty.

The concept of a Dining Room is more important than a map of each chair's relationship to the table.

First I'll talk about adding something to a scene.  This is where players logically use what would be present in  a scene, but that hasn't been mentioned, to do something cooler that simply roll their dice at the monster.  Some games are built entirely on this kind of Make-Shit-Up-Theater, and the best example I can think of is Feng Shui.  Feng Shui is a Hong-Kong Cinema style Action RPG that tells the GM right off that "The Map is not your friend".  The general idea is that the mere presence of a map will hedge in imagination and that you will lose out on cool opportunities because of dumb things like distance calculations.  Feng Shui style Make-Shit-Up-Theater can best be presented as an example:

GM: "You guys bust into the warehouse. There are a bunch of bad guys loading drugs onto a truck. They pull out guns. What do you do?"

Gun Dude: "It's an illegal smuggling operation, right? They want to make as few stops as possible so they'll have some big fuel tanks in the corner where they fill up before leaving. I light 'em up, Both-Guns-Blazing, catching a couple mooks in the blast!"


Martial Artist: "So there's a big explosion of burning fuel? Well there's gonna be a big stack of drugs somewhere that they were loading up, and it's on fire now for sure! I charge up and kick a mook into the stack, so he comes out flailing, covered in burning drugs and catches another mook on fire!"


Ninja: "It's a warehouse, so there's a catwalk with a couple of gun-toting mooks overseeing the operation.  I ninja-leap up to the catwalk and run along the railing past the mooks. When I'm at the end I slice through the cables suspending that end of the catwalk so that it clangs to the floor in front of the garage door, blocking the truck in.  I of course flip to safety atop the truck as the catwalk falls, crashing to the ground and scattering the mooks on it."


Water Elementalist: "A little too much fire for me here (Gunfire and otherwise".  The fire sprinkler system must be about to start spraying, so I'll amplify the water pressure so that it drenches all the mooks in a massive downpour, hopefully making their guns inoperable.  Just for good measure I'll make the chemical eyewash station agaisnt the wall (There's one of those right? Just because you're running a drug smuggling operation is no reason to skimp on OSHA compliance) burst in a massive firehose stream, knocking a couple of mooks off their feet."


Spirit Summoner: "Wait, wait, I've seen this one! They're smuggling the drugs in big terracotta soldier replicas right? Let's see how they like it when one of those big clay suckers animates and starts pounding the crap outta them!"

Remember how the GM started that scene? Warehouse, Mooks, Drugs, Truck, Guns.  That's it.  Not even how many mooks, just "a bunch".  Each PC adds something to the scene and uses it to make something cool happen.  The biggest stretch is the terra-cotta soldiers, and really, in a game about kicking bad guys, why shouldn't that happen? Basically, Feng Shui tells the GM that if you're gonna say no to something, there better be a damn good reason.


Now imagine that same scene in a traditional game with minis on a grid.  Does the gunman have line-of-sight to the fuel tanks? How far can the martial artist charge? How high can the ninja jump? Is the catwalk even near the garage door? I don't see any eyewash station on the map! What terracotta soldiers?  Giving the PCs a part in setting the scene makes a big difference!  This is Make-Shit-Up-Theater at its finest.


Masterpiece Theater this ain't.

Another aspect of Make-Shit-Up-Theater is setting.  Traditionally in RPGs the only setting the player ever had a hand in creating was his own backstory, and the player was lucky if it ever got mentioned in-game.  Setting was the explicit purview of the GM, or the Campaign Setting bible.  In the worst case, this led to games where intricately crafted settings, plots, and NPCs were yawned at or hacked through because they only had meaningful connections to one person at the table, the GM.

In my last post I talked about the FATE system, and how it taps PC creativity to build story elements that connect the individuals to the group and the group to the world.  This gives GMs and PCs a wealth of story elements that they can use to create worlds and plots that really resonate with the players instead of seeming like generic adventures full of stock characters.  Even if the story elements players introduced are generic adventures full of stock  characters, they are their generic adventures and stock characters.  Don't worry about creating unique, never-before-seen kindly barkeeps.

Don't limit Make-Shit-Up-Theater to backstory and character generation either.  The 4e DMG2 has some really cool examples for letting the PCs introduce new elements in-play, such as "You see the tower, what does it look like" or "You find someone hiding in the alley.  Who is it?".  PCs will probably be stuck at first (mine were) but with some coaxing and practice they'll be giving you story elements to thread into the plot like it was their story all along (which it sorta is).

Just roll and see what happens.

The last piece of Make-Shit-Up-Theater is doing things that the rules don't cover.  Most games reward improvisation and creativity.  Those that do not usually have pages of complex rules attempting to cover every situation imaginable.  Even 4th edition D&D (which I love warts-and-all) constantly reminds players and DMs about improvising and trying things not covered in the rules (this is unfortunately overshadowed by there being a power for nearly anything, thereby accidentally implying that the action cannot be done without said power).  This is the least fun aspect of Make-Shit-Up-Theater, only because it usually comes after two or three people at the table have tried to find a rule for the action in question, sucking energy away from the game.  Make-Shit-Up-Theater is best invoked immediately when a rules question comes up, before any looking up of rules occurs.  If you can use Make-Shit-Up-Theater to move your game forward immediately, any rules mistake will be overpowered by the sheer awesome (ideally, at least).

So that's Make-Shit-Up-Theater, an RPG tradition going back to even before the first PC tied a lamp to his 10-ft pole.  Purposefully invoking Make-Shit-Up-Theater can help keep your game from slipping into a series of rule lookups and Most Strategically Viable decisions.  I've found that just saying the words brings a little more energy to the table.

Has Make-Shit-Up-Theater been missing from your life?  What's your favorite example of something made up out of nowhere that really took off?  Do you think it should be spelled "Make-Shite-Up-Theatre" because you are from England?  Well if you don't let me know in the comments then you will take that dark secret gnawing a hole in your heart to your grave!  Have fun!  And if you don't know the answer, make some shit up!