Austin Improv

kbadr wrote:

acrouch wrote:

Wesley wrote:My personal least favorite game is Slow Motion Samurai. With a passion.

Why?!

I still don't know why we pull this one out for performance. It's a great teaching game, but it feels weird to do it in a show more than once every 2 or 3 years.

Save the teaching games (Living Machine, What Comes Next, Slo-Mo Samurai) for the workshop, please.

I'd trade most of the clever-clever exhibition games for a scenic setup or scene-from-nothing. Fun, but light - all cheetos and no meat.

Frankly, I'm less worried about which games get called than heavy-handed directing that confuses or irritates the players and audience. If you're not making the players shine, begone!

I totally agree. Living Machine, WCN, and Slo-Mo Samurai are too much about teaching a specific skill and leave little for audience enjoyment. I personally don't like watching them.

I love Slo-Mo Samurai. It's quick, it makes a good picture, and it always entertains me. And the times I've seen it, the audience enjoys it immensely. So long as the players go real slow, die gloriously, and fully commit, it works out really well. I actually have more doubts about it as a teaching game than I do about it as a form of entertainment.

Ah, well. To each his or her own.

Oh, I'd also add that I'd only every break out Slo-Mo Samurai as the opening game, in place of Category-Die. I do agree that it would be weird to see it as a scored game, starring less than the full cast.

Roy Janik wrote:I love Slo-Mo Samurai. It's quick, it makes a good picture, and it always entertains me. And the times I've seen it, the audience enjoys it immensely. So long as the players go real slow, die gloriously, and fully commit, it works out really well.

Gore and lots of it. Audiences seem to love spurting blood. And big, big, expressions on people's faces. This is not a game that requires subtlety.

I don't think I've heard of Living Machine before.

Roy Janik wrote:I love Slo-Mo Samurai. It's quick, it makes a good picture, and it always entertains me. And the times I've seen it, the audience enjoys it immensely. So long as the players go real slow, die gloriously, and fully commit, it works out really well. I actually have more doubts about it as a teaching game than I do about it as a form of entertainment.

I'm with Roy here, but I think it does work well both ways. For an opening game in Maestro, it's quick, dramatic, and pretty much every audience I've seen has been thrilled with it. As a teaching game, it's great for demonstrating that it's usually better to go down awesomely and dramatically and put on a great show than to "win" - which has obvious applications to other scenework.

However, the players shouldn't be learning this in the course of playing slo-mo samurai in front of an audience. The game works best if everyone is on the same page, re: the performance being more important than the points, or the win - which, again, applies to Maestro as a whole.

(This is partly why, when I've used this for an opener, I sometimes cut the fight halfway through - shorter! - and give the bonus points to the first four or five players who let themselves be killed. I reckon you could try the same thing with a mime tug-o-war or whatever, too...)