The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Advice
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Advice is a panel game in which three performers each represent a different quality of counsel: the wise advisor, the misguided helper, and the genuinely harmful guide. The audience poses problems and each advisor responds in character. The game creates comedy through the contrast between the three advisory styles.
Worth Reading
See all books →
Impro
Improvisation and the Theatre
Keith Johnstone
Drama Games and Improvs
Games for the Classroom and Beyond
Justine Jones; Mary Ann Kelley
Improvised Theatre and the Autism Spectrum
A Practical Guide
Gary Kramer; Richie Ploesch
Pirate Robot Ninja
An Improv Fable
Billy Merritt; Will Hines
Improvisation for the Theater
A Handbook of Teaching and Directing Techniques
Viola Spolin
Creating Improvised Theatre
Tools, Techniques, and Theories
Mark Jane
Related Games
Wise Wise Wise
Wise Wise Wise is a game in which three performers give improvised advice to audience questions as a panel of sages, each delivering their counsel one word at a time to form a single sentence. The game demands close listening and the willingness to follow collective sentence construction wherever it leads.
Good, Bad, Worst Advice
Good, Bad, Worst Advice is a short-form game in which performers offer three tiers of advice on an audience-suggested problem: sensible, questionable, and catastrophically terrible. The escalating absurdity creates a reliable comic structure, and the contrast between tiers generates the game's comedy. The game rewards calibrated comedic intensity -- each tier must be clearly distinct from the last -- and the ability to commit fully to advice that is increasingly outrageous.
Mix and Match
Mix and Match is a character and scene game in which performers combine disparate audience-suggested traits, occupations, scenarios, or styles into a single scene. The game takes two or more elements that do not naturally belong together and challenges the performers to find coherent logic within the absurd combination. A brain surgeon with a fear of blood, a cowboy at a ballet class, or a romantic comedy set in a submarine: the game rewards specificity, commitment, and the ability to ground heightened premises in recognizable human behavior.
That’s Right Bob
That's Right Bob is a short-form game in which two performers play co-hosts who must agree with everything the other says, building an increasingly absurd shared reality by enthusiastically validating each new claim. The game embodies the "yes and" principle at its most extreme and rewards escalation through mutual support.
Consciences
Consciences is a scene game in which each main character has an additional performer who voices their conscience, offering moral guidance, warnings, or temptations. The tension between a character's desires and their conscience creates layered comedy and dramatic irony. The game is closely related to Alter Ego but frames the inner voice as a moral authority.
Two-Headed Professor
Two-Headed Professor is a game in which two performers speak simultaneously, one word at a time, to answer audience questions as a single expert. The challenge of forming coherent sentences in tandem demands extreme listening and mutual surrender. The game rewards the ability to follow rather than lead and produces comedy from the unexpected word choices that emerge.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Advice. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-advice
The Improv Archive. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Advice." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-advice.
The Improv Archive. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Advice." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-advice. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.