Welcome to the nineteenth, and final, instalment of the column "Winging It", a column discussing the promises and pitfalls of a more improvisational approach to GM'ing. This particular instalment deals with the ramifications of players taking off-the-cuff descriptions of objects and creating the GM's backstory for him.

I've been GMing a few different Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, each with different characters but including some of the same players, in my "Kingdom of Addruran" setting for a few years now, and the improvisational approach to GMing is allowing me to learn much more about the setting in an organic way than I would have if I had simply set out to create everything beforehand.

Of course, there were several things that I had established initially. First off, the Kingdom was only some three hundred years old, first founded when human refugees fleeing religious persecution landed on the Isle of Kachevache. Before that, the residents of the Isle were made up of several human Barbarian tribes, some loosely-affiliated Dwarven cities, and a handful of Elvish tribes and encampments, all warring periodically with a variety of Goblinoid races, all in a constant state of flux. Due to the continuing unrest amongst all these parties, they were able to be overthrown and displaced by the refugees, all with clear leadership and goals.

Currently, the human population (all under a shared pantheon) was clearly dominant in the Kingdom, with all other demi-human races facing levels of oppression (which varies from city to city). All forms of worship not directly part of the recognized pantheon were branded as demonic and continually persecuted. This resulted in dwarves and elves having to worship the same deities as their human oppressors, and their native temples all but completely destroyed right across the Kingdom. There are even instances of slavery of the demi-humans in certain places, although that is officially illegal.

One rather large piece of the history of the Isle has begun to be introduced, however, and it is almost entirely the doing of one of my groups of players.

This particular group, made up of Lempy (a human Cleric/Monk), Aris (an elven Ranger), and Rathgar (a dwarven Fighter), has been journeying about the North and East of the Isle, going on low-level adventures, many of which they have been deciding on themselves (including a very interesting long-term chase scene involving tracking down a group of thieves that had stolen some money from them). On one of these adventures, they came across a map written in a language they couldn't read.

So, intrepid adventurers as they are, they decided to pay to have it examined by a sage in the town they were in (the coastal city of Guinglane). No problem for me, I had more-or-less just tossed in that map into a pile of goodies that some bad guys had in their hideout, with no real regard as to what it would be for. So, remembering some magic items and other ideas mentioned in a few different magazine articles and other sources, I had the sage inform them that it was a map to one of the underground caches belonging to "Lum the Mad".

The players became very interested in that particular name. So, again I had the sage inform them that he was a human Wizard, someone who was well-known on the Isle, from about six hundred years ago.

Now, had I been thinking upfront about this, I probably would have made the exploits of the wizard in question much more recent, at least within the previous three hundred years. After all, I had stated that, aside from some Barbarian tribes, there were no humans on this island previous to three hundred years ago.

The players became so intrigued with this "Lum the Mad", as to who he was and why he was around well before the Kingdom of Addruran was founded, that I have since found myself including bits and pieces of his history throughout the game. Periodically, they will come across low-level magical items (usually ones designed only to open specific doors, or have very limited magical effects) that will be identifiable as being built by Lum. Also, I've found it very entertaining to have any places he was known to inhabit to have the same face design carved into them somewhere, usually itself a magically animated sculpture in charge of opening doors, providing information, or guarding caches and hoards.

I've even introduced the concept that Lum was responsible for creating a sub-race of dwarves, the duergar, who have been found and are being enslaved by certain human mining communities on some of the smaller islands in the region.

The notion that the players have found a purpose for themselves (finding out the true history of Lum the Mad) has made my job much easier with regard to creating upcoming adventures. While not all future game sessions will be entirely about Lum (and his possible return), it certainly adds flavour and depth to many of the adventure ideas that I'm playing with.

Of course, Lum was not the only strange idea I've thrown into the game sessions. Indeed, every time they encounter some new bit of magic, map, scroll, or crumbling book, I try to add in a little bit of history to the setting, just whatever intriguing ideas come to mind. It is notable, however, when the players really latch onto a particular idea as being one worth discovering more about, and it is quite often worth it to go with the players, to give them some sort of eventual payoff to their explorations.

That is the real joy, for me, of this sort of open-ended approach to GMing, the whole notion that, no matter what the players decided to do, they will not derail any carefully-constructed plans of mine, because I have no long-term plans for them. Just a few ideas about where things could go (just enough to keep the game moving even when the players are out of ideas), but nothing concrete.

I'd like to take the opportunity to say how much I've been enjoying writing this column and sharing my ideas on improvisational GMing. I hope my readers have enjoyed my work as much, and that they try to incorporate them into their own gaming styles.