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[Autumnal]

In any recent past or later horror, unreliable telecommunications. Messages don’t go to or from you, except when letting them through adds stress. People you don’t know answer at familiar numbers, and people you know appear to be calling from unfamiliar numbers. Monsters sound just like your friends, until they let their masks slip. You can hear others, but they hear and respond to something that sounds like you but isn’t. The ubiquitous cell phone is an amazing gift to the GM.

in any period of horror, inconstant space. The hallway is short for the fleeing monster, long for pursuers. The passage bends left, or right, changing without notice. Sometimes the door opens to one scene on the other side, sometimes to another. Gravity moves to the walls or ceilings for a while, and can make open-roofed areas into bottomless pits the characters must maneuver across. On and on.

 

[aco175]

Monsters are monsters. Goblins and orcs may be PC races in some games, but in mine they will likely try and kill you. There could possibly be a lone one that helps the party on the short term, but generally the heroes do not trust them and they are not welcome into most towns short of a lone outpost that may do some trading with them.

Undead fill tombs and dungeons. If the Pcs break into a 500 year old tomb they are not fighting orcs unless there is some backdoor. They fight undead, maybe elementals and old constructs, but undead cannot be reasoned with and clerics like to make them go boom.

Giant rats. They are the bane to the halfling thief that might become a DMNPC. I have lost more than a few to them.

The map of the King's Road is the most dangerous place in my games. If the map comes out, the PCs are being attacked.

 

[Autumnal]

Undead-ful dungeons yay!

 

[Reynard]

Another one of mine is that dungeons are NOT normal, or sane, or natural. They don't have ecologies because the things in them don't belong in the world. They are nightmare realms tainted by otherworldly power.

 

[Hand of Evil]

• Nobles are behind every plot. The players may never make it that far but some noble wants something.
• Plots are taken from westerns. Land grabs, stagecoach robbers, suppling weapons to enemies, illegal mining/logging, spying, etc.

 

[payn]

Faction play and political intrigue. Genre doesn't matter, if there are not things going on, players involved, and the PCs in the mix, I just get bored with it.

 

[uzirath]

• Things man was not meant to know (elder things, cults, creeping horrors in the deeps).
• Wondrous geography.
• A sense of the past... many things have come before.
• Spirits.

 

[DammitVictor]

Practically everything I run has multiple worlds, kung fu, or magic in it... the majority of my settings/campaigns have all three. I like laser guns and six-shooters best, but I'll frequently include either modern firearms or early firearms instead.

The Elven Imperial Navy, the Thri-Kreen Alliance, and the Githyanki are always in a state of cold war. The Githzerai are always playing all three sides of the conflict in their efforts to overthrow Vlaakith CLVII, or whatever other monarchy attracts their revolutionary ire.

I am a big proponent of Charles Atlas Superpowers and I prefer learned magic or sponsored magic to inherited magic. I prefer animistic and elemental magic systems to arcane magic and Da Gawdz.

I use a lot of intelligent monsters because intelligent monsters have wants and needs and intelligent monsters talk. The players won't always want to negotiate, and can't always give the monsters what they want... but the option is there more often than not.

 

[Jack Daniel]

For pretty much any fantasy setting I create, it's a given that the deities are von Däniken type Ancient Aliens and magic is some form of (misunderstood or deliberately obfuscated) Sufficiently Advanced technology.

 

[Fenris-77]

Hmm, I have a bunch.

1. The wilderness wants to kill you - no boring travel in my games.
2. Secret horrible cults in places you wouldn't expect
3. Books - books of magic, books of history, reliable books, unreliable books, lots of books
4. Wee little pocket kingdoms and baronies instead of huge sprawling empires
5. Magic comes with a cost and it ain't pretty but it flexes hard
6. Folk Horror everywhere