For me what I like about the idea of the (for lack of better terms) ‘casting games’ that Mo described is that they fill a constructive role in terms of extracting/revealing the ‘best’ possibilities of the setting/situation/character space. The fact that they are also fun games in of themselves is also appealing, of course, but mostly it is appealing because I think ‘aha now I can get all my fellow gamers to join in on this activity that I already like, and in fact already do — without feeling like I am holding things up.’ And of course because I like guided, structured imaginative activities (hey no way) and I think they can produce better results in terms of actual preparation.

Interestingly, the “scripting” in Crime and Punishment plays with those kinds of ideas. It makes prep part of the play by making a different part of the game other than just the “acting the fiction” part. Of course, it does it in a very story, rather than character, focused way.

But yea — I’m very interested in ways of making Prep a form of group play, rather than lonely fun or just group prep. If prep can be made into a fun activity of its own, a subgame of the game, then so much wow is to be had….

This is really lovely, I wish more games did something like this — and the other stuff you mentioned, really, but I was thinking about something very much like this the other day as my group did our prep session for a Sorcerer game. As usual I had any number of character concepts floating around in my head and it was frustrating having to choose between them without really being able to do any ‘test driving’ at all (outside of my head.) I love the idea of a low-pressure environment (obviously there is still a pressure to perform the scene well, in accordance with the exercise, but) to drill through dozens of character concepts and try out different things and see what ‘sticks.’ Especially since all of that work will get incorporated into the story/game, in terms of texture & overall possibility of the world.

The balance between prep & play is an interesting issue too. I can happily spend multiple sessions ‘prepping’ certain kinds of play (Sorcerer, Shock:, any focused WoD game, etc.) but I know a lot of other people find this frustrating. It would certainly be more fun if the prep involved more planned activities, or games-in-themselves — but the focus these days seems to be very low-prep.

Here’s Holy Virgin High, the soap I remember from when I was there, and here’s a wiki page listing all the soaps that have run at Oberlin. Apparently this is a vibrant tradition of semi-improv. I wonder where it began?