Bored with knowing what will happen next

[Voadam]

I think I was reading a post by Barsoomcore about using a set of swashbuckling cards for his players. They'd been in a desperate situation being trashed by an NPC BBEG when a player threw down a romance card or some such, so he changed his unstated background motivation of the villain for the attack, used the new theme and ran with it, and had to come up with improv stuff on the fly which turned into some of his best DMing moments, he said. IIRC.

Something like that where story/plot elements can change in dramatic ways that vary depending on the circumstances when the player's use them.

 

[Grimstaff]

Another fun thing I did once in a FR campaign was to tell the characters they were going to be laid up for 3 months in Waterdeep to ride out the winter and I needed to know what they wanted to do for those three months.
Each player had his own (wildly differing, btw) agenda and ideas, so I basically got to build all sorts of stuff on the fly for them. One player wanted to research some magical stuff, another wanted to build some thieving guild connections, the cleric wanted to build a new ministry down on the wharves, etc. It was fun for me to wing these things, and satisfying for the players, as I tried to kind of build off of their expectations rather than nudging them in the "right" direction for an andventure or plot line of my own.

 

[bento]

After tiring of GMing after a long dungeon crawl I handed the game over to a player who was itching to try his hand at running things. I let him run the game for a few sessions with the stipluation that the players needed to be in Saltmarsh for my next GM turn.

He started out by advancing the clock 30 years due to strange magical effects of the dungeon the players were in, and suddenly some of the NPCs that I had carefully planned for were now much older or entirely gone. The farm they were using as a base was over run with weeds and the family killed by werewolves. Next came the army of goblins swarming over the land and other crazy stuff.

Needless to say, when you think things are a little to predictable, ask a player to take over for a few sessions and see where things go.

 

[igavskoga]

I'm defnitely not sick of DMing, I sure as hell don't feel like being a player in somebody's campaign.

I've basically got a prep method down, games take no time to put together and they're a breeze to run. My players are happy. But I'm bored with knowing what will (probably) happen at a game.

Any suggestions on how to add more unexpectedness on the DM's side of the screen?

While I'm not entirely sure what you're after, I'll offer up my humble suggestion: Let the players do most of the work. This is the main theme behind my style of DM'ing. All of my prep is done pre-campaign on timelines, relationships, and the world. The players plop themselves down and just go. I never know where they'll end up from session to session, what they'll do, or which hooks they'll end up following. I let their actions ripple into whatever else is going on and have factions or individuals affected react accordingly.

It keeps things pretty interesting on my side of the screen. Aside from updating timetables and agenda and NPC movement, I'll occasionally have to plop down an ambush, encounter, or the results of machinations coming to fruition... but even then there's no guarantee that the characters will always interact with it. Its not uncommon for them to unwittingly evade any of the above simply because they were somewhere else.

The way that the characters affect, and are affected by, the world around them keeps things pretty unpredictable.

I know that's pretty vague, and may not be what you're looking for at all, but I can't really be more specific without being immersed in the salient details of the What, Where, Who, and Why.

It seems to me like you've got a set pattern, technique, and general game plan that is extremely efficient but is no longer challenging to you. My very general advice would be to completely shift the paradigm around which you've built this pattern, if not outright set the pattern aside wholesale for a while.

Either way, I sympathize, because its that exact boredom and repetition that you seem to be suffering from that drove me, years ago, to the style which I currently use.

Best of luck to a kindred spirit - I've seen your E6 work and find a lot of similarities in outlook and style.

 

[Tonguez]

I use semi-random set peices

BAsically take each 'room' and gove 5-10 possible events in the room

eg the 'room' is a village square
Roll D20
1-3 the town square is crowded as this is market day
4 someone points to you and yells "Thief!"
5 the town square is crowded for a hanging
6 the town square is empty
7 the town sqaure is empty but for a caged silver dragon
8-12 its a typical down for the town a few villages pass time in the town sqaure and wave as you appear
13-14 its a typical down for the town a few villages pass time in the town sqaure and frown as you appear
15-17 its a typical down for the town a few villages pass time in the town sqaure, they seem to pay you no mind
18 its a typical down for the town a few villages pass time in the town sqaure. Suddenly a large druken man staggers towards you "You I don't like you" he growls
19 its a typical down for the town a few villages pass time in the town sqaure. A welldressed man strides towards you an enthusiatic look on his face as he offers his hand in welcome
20 the town sqaure is gone and all that remains is a deep black crater...

 

[barsoomcore]

I'm bored with knowing what will (probably) happen at a game.

Any suggestions on how to add more unexpectedness on the DM's side of the screen?

Oh, good grief.

Come on, man, PUSH yourself. Run a game you are afraid to run.

Run a horror game and challenge yourself to actually SCARE your players.

Have a game dictated by a passionate love affair.

Run a game where each player is a ruler of a country and they have to deal with political issues -- notably each other.

Run a game where the players play dungeon monsters and have to defend themselves against constant attacks by dungeon delvers.

Run an Exalted game. A Spirit of the Century game. An Amber game.

Create a setting that outdoes any setting you've ever created in terms of detail and sophistication. Pack it full of memorable NPCs, create your magic system and experiment with a million house rules. Take out one or more "standard" elements.

Don't allow your players to choose any class but wizard.

For goodness' sake, dude, USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

 

[Ry]

Oh, good grief.

Oh, good grief. I play a Universalis game of hard sci-fi and psychological horror. I've run games that check off your list fairly exhaustively (except romance, which my players and I aren't interested in). I'm talking about spicing up an existing campaign that my players enjoy a lot. I don't want to just say "this campaign's cancelled, your much-loved characters are gone." I do want to say that I can sit down at the table and genuinely be surprised by what happens there.

 

[WSmith]

There were a few posts by mmadsen a couple of years ago on breaking the mold from the standard campaign. I have them on my hard drive if you can't find them. Maybe you could use some of those elements to spice up your game.

Wait you said as a player not a DM, right? Try a character you would never play. Or, this is the most theropuetic play trick I know. Have your PC charge fist, ask questions latter. You might end up with a dead character, but sometimes, going out in a blaze of glory is quite fun.

 

[Obergnom]

Well,

as I am at that point about once every two month, here is some advice:

Challenging the characters by encounters is no longer fun because you know what your players are able to do and can built the encounters just right? They are neither over nor under challenged? Try to add some randomness and stick to it. Use the Crit Cards from Paizo or those Swashbuckling Cards and use Random encounters instead of prept encounters. The table gave you 4 Frost Giants? In the middle of the Desert? Against 5 low level heroes? All dwarves who think giants are their racial enemy? ... I guess thats a challenging situation. Try to work with it. You will be suprised how much a little chalenge can add... (Of course, maybe your encounter tables should not include Frost Giants in the Desert... btw. Mother of All Encounter Tables by Necromancer Games is great for this... I had to fit a Behir and a bunch of Dire! Goats into a Mountain Pass... it was a great encoutner )

You know everything that might happen during the session? Because you planed for everything last monday and your players just are not the kind of folks to ruin your day? Hand out index cards and let every player write down something he would like his character to do today. This can be as simple as "Kronk wants to smash through enemies, finally putting his great cleave feat to good use, which he was not able to use since the start of the campaign!" to "Kiara wants to meet her brother Cedric, whom she last met 10 years ago, by that time he left home to become an andventurer". Be sure to mention to your players you might not be able to introduce even half of what they give you, but do it every session. Allways try to add at least one thing into the running session. Bonus: You will have a pile of ideas to work from for session prep.

You know what will happen in your campaign 10 month from know? You allready know the end, to you it feels like watching the whole "Firefly" Season for the 20th time draged about the course of a year? Simple solution first: Do not plan to far ahead. You will allways subconsciously railroad your players to stay with your plot. Do not create a plot. Just create events and wait for your players to react to those events. As you allready have a plot, try really hard not to force your players to follow it. Before every session starts, ask yourself, is there a point in todays session where my players have a real choice or am I just taking them for a ride in my big story?

Last time this happend to me, my players were about to attack a Drow Outpost. I thought they would attack, kill the drow, take the info and leave. This is what happend: The first guardian, a Gauth Beholder and a bunch of Minotaur Zombies overwhelmed the characters. Instead of killing them, the Drow captured the characters (Allways take every chance to change your campaign, worry about consequences later). They were able to flee when the Drow where attacked by an army of Kuo-Toa, 3 sessions of trying to find equipment in the Underdark followed (These were entirely player driven) and when they finally went back to the outpost, it was in the hands of the Kuo-Toa...

In essence, try to figure out ways to challenge yourself during the game. The problem with being a DM is, if you have nice group of players who would not ruin your plans or if you are very good at creating fail proof plans, you can guarantee yourself a good session by preparing enough. You can prepare every encounter and hone it to the point where it will just take the right amount of resources, you can lay out the pacing of the evening before the players even arive at the table, you can plan the entire story for years to come, so you will allways give away the right amount of information, your players will never be left in the dark nor will they just skip parts of your campaign because there is nothing more for them to learn... in a way, you invest a lot of time to bore yourself. Worse yet, as you get better at doing all that, it will not even cost you a whole lot of time...

 

[barsoomcore]

Oh, good grief. ... I do want to say that I can sit down at the table and genuinely be surprised by what happens there.

Then allow yourself to be surprised. You're the one restricting possibilities and rejecting suggestions. Be open to your own imagination and you will surprise yourself. Nothing we say can do that for you.