Search Results

The first encounter of the day is only unchallenging because the players know that they can waste their daily powers on it. If you create the expectation (or better yet, the suspicion) that the encoun …

How about this: Declare that inside manifest zones (or other areas where the environment, by its very nature, suggests that some supernatural activity should be more possible than usual), players can …

It sounds like your players are at least attempting to act in-character. You want them to act in-character as well, but their use of information learned outside of the game (or in previous campaigns) …

Whatever you do, avoid making your players feel cheated. If you're playing a game where planning an 'optimised build' is important, don't let the new elements render existing build less useful, or in …

Obviously, If you do this the way you've described, the party will figure out what's going on in about five seconds. To prevent this, there's a number of different issues you need to tackle, so let's …

According to page 108 of the Numenera core rules: As a general rule, the GM should intrude at least once each session, but no more than once or twice each session per character. So, at least on …

You could say to your players, "Y'know, in this campaign, not all problems can be solved by punching them. And some problems that could be solved by punching could be better solved by not punching, or …

There's a saying amongst certain roleplayers: "If it has stats, we can kill it." The accuracy of this saying varies hugely from game to game, but it's relevant to this question because it highlights …

Try to change just one habit per session. Like you, I've had to un-learn old habits when I started running new systems or realised that something I was doing was actually counter-productive - though i …

Be vague. Seriously, be delphic in your predictions. One of the classic tropes of fantasy is that any prophecy that comes to pass will come to pass in some way that no-one expected it to: Sure, "The K …

As others have already said, rolling the dice should be interesting. This means that the consequence for failure should be meaningfully different to the consequence for success. The issue you appear …

I think of this as a two part issue: "How do I work out what NPC expresses with their answer?" and "How does the NPC express themselves in that answer?" Given that you're only worried about major NPC …

Some games do specify in their rules, adventures and supplements that certain rolls can or should be made in secret. Dungeons & Dragons 3.5rd edition, for example, explicitly specifies that the DM sho …

The answer to this depends on your playstyle - but you don't have the problem you think you have. Observe: If you run a simulationist sandbox-y style of game, where you don't require your players to …

I know some people hate and fear the deck of many things, but as a GM running a high-lethality sandbox campaign, there's many things I like about it - and I'd like to deploy one for my players to find …