What are your indispensible "Hand Waving" tools for coming up with stuff on the fly?

[Theo R Cwithin]

I go to the bathroom.
*snip*
"What's the coolest thing that could possibly happen right now?"

With or without Ex-lax?

 

[luckless]

Train your players not to stray too far from an expected path.

"Oh, you don't want to follow the suggestions of the last NPC that you should check out that tower? Ok. Your party gathers itself together and you head toward the town gates. The fluttering wings of a raven catch your eye, and you notice the key stone that holds up the massive arch over the gate looks suspiciously loose,..."

If they don't get the point, you use the time they spend drawing up new characters to think things out.


(Actually I've only GMed a few times, short sessions testing mechanics of custom games. I much prefer to play and spend my the extra time out of game that would go toward creating plot lines and such working on actual fiction writing, or random useful ideas to pass onto the game's GM. I get way too obsessive with details to be both a good GM and a sane human at the same time.)

 

[evilref]

Train your players not to stray too far from an expected path.

"Oh, you don't want to follow the suggestions of the last NPC that you should check out that tower? Ok. Your party gathers itself together and you head toward the town gates. The fluttering wings of a raven catch your eye, and you notice the key stone that holds up the massive arch over the gate looks suspiciously loose,..."

If they don't get the point, you use the time they spend drawing up new characters to think things out.

I think this is absolutely dreadful advice for all manner of reasons. Killing their characters arbitarily because they don't follow up on the traintrack you've laid out for them? Shameful behaviour for any GM.

 

[S'mon]

I think this is absolutely dreadful advice for all manner of reasons. Killing their characters arbitarily because they don't follow up on the traintrack you've laid out for them? Shameful behaviour for any GM.

I think he was joking.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I usually have a few encounters in the wings, but mostly I can just wing it. On the back of my whiteboard I have expected defenses and damage tables for 4E, and I can make up a monster in seconds. Fudging has been my defense against boredom for decades of playing.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

1. Use the players' speculation against them. They always come up with more bizarrely paranoid stuff than you can.

2. When in doubt, the modifier is +/- 2.

 

[darjr]

I've taken the stuff already prepared and used it as fodder.

Your already prepared material can be torn up and repurposed on the fly to create the new things you need based on what the players are doing.

For instance I had an encounter in a warehouse with folks brewing drugs. The players, instead of raiding the place, pretended to be drug lords and purchased the whole place, lock stock and barrel. The crooks, after teaching them how to run the factory exited stage left.

I used that encounter to build the next one. I reused the NPC's and some of the prepared 'dialog' for the antagonists monologuing during combat.

 

[Pbartender]

I go to the bathroom.

Seriously.

When they do something completely unexpected sometimes you can just roll with it. But sometimes looking in the faces of the players the mental gears just kind of lock up. I go to the bathroom (I probably needed to go to the bathroom anyway - I drink a crapload of Diet Coke.) where I can get a couple minutes to clear my head and ask the question that needs to be asked:

"What's the coolest thing that could possibly happen right now?"

Then I do that.

+1UP

I don't always go to the bathroom specifically, but I'll call a five minute break... The smokers head out to the porch for a smoke, the others head to the kitchen for drinks or snacks. I get a few minutes to collect my thoughts and figure out what happens next.

Very often, I use Rel's same question, "What's the awesomest thing that could happen?" Sometimes it's just WWtBBEGD? "What would the Big Bad Evil Guy do?"

Either way, the little bit of extra time to stop, clear my mind, and think the situation through is all I need. The rest is just pulling a reasonable stat block out of a rulebook or adventure module and repurposing it to suit the situation.

 

[3d6]

1. Use the players' speculation against them. They always come up with more bizarrely paranoid stuff than you can.

This seems to work a lot. I think sometimes the players even like the encounter/event more than they otherwise would have because they 'figured it out' before it happened, and you know you don't have to worry about players questioning the underlying logic of an antagonist's actions. It already made sense to them.

I tend to throw in a bunch of basically random, but evocative red herrings just to encourage the PCs to free-associate. Mystic portals, strange runes, odd noises and events, arcane devices of unknown purpose, etc.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

1. Use the players' speculation against them. They always come up with more bizarrely paranoid stuff than you can.

That's a really good point. There's nothing wrong with flat out asking the players what their characters are thinking or rationalizing. "Why are you doing that? What do you expect when you go there?" Then take that info and twist, ignore, or otherwise use and/or abuse as needed.