Rap and Roleplaying

or the Zen of Freestyle Gaming

Part I - An Overview

It would not appear at first glance that rap and roleplaying have a whole lot in common, right? Rap, with its stereotyped image of gun-wielding, misogynist machismo, seems very at odds with the image of sword-wielding, valor-seeking knights, damsels in distress and what-have-you. Oh let’s not forget that rap is music and roleplaying is not—that’s a sizable difference to take note of. The two activities have seemingly nothing in common whatsoever. But, if you’ve been paying attention to the title of this article, then you know I beg to differ. There is a place where rap and roleplaying converge, and that place is in the freestyle.

For those of you unfamiliar with the particulars of rap, freestyling is basically making up lyrics off the top of your head. Usually someone puts on a beat, and you just “flow” with it, letting loose with whatever phrases and metaphors come out on the fly. That’s the basics of it. Good freestyle rappers can keep this up continuously for several minutes, and it’s amazing to hear.

And then we have freestyle gaming, which I define here as GMing from off the top of your head. You just let the ideas flow out of you, and respond intuitively to what the players are doing. Characters, encounters, and whatever else are all off the cuff. As crazy as it sounds, it can and does work, and can often be a useful method for generating future ideas for your campaign.

I am of course aware that many people already prefer this method of gaming. What I am attempting to do with this article is to provide a brief overview of some techniques and tricks to help those who game this way and to help those who do not understand what freestyle gaming entails.

So, back to rap.

The best freestyle rappers write rhymes down constantly. They have a huge arsenal of rhymes that they’ve memorized that they can choose from when they perform. Sometimes they might use a full line, other times only a phrase. They do however have a base that they work from.

A GM can use this technique by keeping his own idea notebook of anything from descriptions of characters to cool phrases to describe a combat action. Then, when you are conducting a session, you are never really “cold” for ideas—there is a wealth of them in your head or your notebook. Just pick them up and use them.

Freestyle rapping isn’t pre-fab, however. Just because you have an established base of rhymes and lyrics to use doesn’t mean that you use that base as a crutch. Part of the art of freestyling is to be able to come from the gut and just say something that pops up and follow that until you’re done with it. Sometimes you get surprised with what comes out of your mouth. That’s a good thing.

I just got an e-mail from a GM who said that when she was running an NPC in her game, she just spouted out something that she had absolutely no plans for, no idea whatsoever what it was. But she also started to think that that would be good for something—and this is the next caveat I’ll roll into.

Those things that come out of thin air, these are the things you can use to build an interesting exciting campaign with. By keeping notes of things you make up on the fly and examining and thinking about them later, you begin to feed off of your own ideas. Freestyle GMing can be like doing brainstorming in the middle of your adventure. A lot of my best NPCs I made up on the fly. I took notes on what they were like, what they said, and then fleshed them out after the session was over.

Freestyle gaming is also great fun. For me, it’s always a fun challenge to see how I’m going to react and what things I can make up as we go along that will entertain and test the PCs. It’s also rather enjoyable because I rarely make maps that I won’t bother using because the players didn’t see that part of my preplanned scenario. There are a lot more reasons I enjoy it, but I’ll let those wait for the next part of this article, which will give some more specifics, and illustrate how to get started.

Until then,

Enjoy.