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I give named opponents something cool to use against the PCs. I give mooks and random enounters standard treasure (rolled randomly). I roll up treasure like I always have (since the 3rd grade): ME: (rolls) "A +1 dagger? That's stupid." ME: (rolls again) "A scroll with protection from...

One need only look to the headlines for good Spycraft adventure ideas. An Evil Mastermind creates a Weather Control Device to threaten the US with catastrophic hurricanes. The Agency responds by deploying armed, super-intelligent dolphins to defeat the Mastermind in his undersea lair.

Why convert it? Its a great one-shot game, but that sounds like a lot of work for a game you rarely play more than a few sessions of. I say play it as written. Why throw out rules where one of the weapon sizes is "Don't Point That at My Planet" and one of the skills is "Hurt People Really Badly"?

Walt has The Shining.

I thought this too. I just chalk it up to "The Scully Blindspot" which is a concept my wife and I came up with to explain when characters in a movie or TV show don't do the obvious thing so that the writers have an excuse to continue the mystery. It's named for Scully on the X-Files since after...

I am in the same situation. I have three players, all good friends. One recently became a new father and attends about half of our sessions. We play on Thursday nights from 7-11. With my players, I find that I rarely have to adjust the adventure as written. We mostly use Dungeon adventures with...

Exactly. I just discovered Banks. I love those books.

The ship is sentient and has the full rights of any citizen. It chooses the PCs as its crew. For extra fun, mix this with any of the ideas above and keep the fact that the ship is intelligent a secret. One of the PCs could actually BE the ship. Say that the ship interacts with humans using...

I ran Paranoia at a con one time for a bunch of people who had never played. Despite being told countless times that it was ok to backstab--they tried to work together like a regular RPG. Here are a few ways I put a stop to that: I stole an idea from the adventure in the book. The PCs were...

This is a great article--I just love this stuff. Increased vocabulary is just one of many things I gained from playing D&D from a young age. I still remember asking my parents what "the latter" and "the former" meant and their surprise at my question! Just think about this one contribution of...

I've been thinking of geeky gamer names for some of my homebrews. "Potion of Blur" is one of my favorites. It doesn't make you blurry--it makes everything else blurry. Thac0hol, potion of delusion, cure light wounds, Beholder Bitter are some others I was thinking of.

This is a phenomenon I call "The Beer Curve". Some skills increase dramatically with the first few beers and then drop off precipitously after a few (or a lot) more. I noticed it first while playing weekly pool games during happy hour. Any activity that becomes easier when you are more relaxed...

Another vote (and quote) for The Big Lebowski--it's one of the most well-crafted movies ever made. Thug: Holding up bowling ball, "What the hell is this?" The Dude: "Obviously, you're not a golfer." Other's I can't get enough of: O Brother Where Art Thou Kelly's Heroes The Godfather Any Sean...

Resiliance is the NPCs saving throw bonus--for all saving throws. Competence might be the same for skills, but I don't remember.

Another thing you can do is use rough estimates. My high school physics teacher had a whole class on estimation. He showed us, with real examples, how we could come pretty close to the real answers of complex math problems by rounding to make the math easier. In D&D, who cares if the 107 hp...

At low levels, I have hedgewizards offer to enchance the PCs weapons temporarily. Its like a magic weapon spell that lasts much longer. For a small fee, the weapon gains a +1 enhancement bonus that is lost when the player rolls a 1 on an attack roll. I'm sure you could stat up a spell that did...

How about a magic item that allows the druid to wildshape into templated animals? Or another that applies the template to summoned animals from summon nature's ally? I'm working up an adventure involving a lizardfolk druid with the ability to summon and wildshape into animals with the reptilian...

Most of my long-running campaign has consisted of Dungeon adventures tweaked to fit into our over-arching plot. All the changes I make are in the name of making the adventure more fun. One of the things I do is customize the treasure for the PCs. Its easy to switch one magic item for one of...

There are tons of card games where you have to start by asking everyone what rules they are used to using. Euchre, gin, and poker are just a few. The incredibly fun and terrible hang-over inducing drinking game a**hole is another. How about Axis & Allies (the old school, pre-revised edition)? I...

We play on Thursday nights, and some folks have to drive 30 minutes to get home. So we play from 7-11pm sharp. I watch the clock pretty closely to make sure we end on time--even if we have to stop 30 minutes early to avoid getting into a prolonged battle. I always try to end with a...