And then suddenly...

[boredgremlin]

How many times during running a session do you find yourself saying "Suddenly!" or something along that vein? To me it happens way too often and I've been trying to consciously reduce the number. I'm trying to plan what I'm going to say a bit more and build tension more gradually. Somehow after years of playing the big SUDDENLY just isn't so surprising

What do you think? do you have alternatives for me?

lior

"Suddenly you see" is often really "you have haggled and screwed around for an hour with something stupid that was supposed to take 5 minutes" and i want to have a fight to stay awake.

 

[3d6]

Well, I don't think there are many sentences that actually require "suddenly" to work. Its an adverb, after all. You could say "the ninjas attack!" instead of "suddenly, the ninjas attack!".

My commonly used phrase is "it appears to be". It appears to be a door. It appears to be a man. It appears to be a room. It appears to be 10 feet long.

 

[DragonLancer]

How many times during running a session do you find yourself saying "Suddenly!" or something along that vein?

Far too often, and I kick myself every time. "Suddenly's" just seem to jump in there.

 

[Felix]

One DM of mine, who reads these boards, has campaigns were everything was:

And all of a sudden _______________.

Everything. It got to where we started saying, "Well, it's my turn, so, all of a sudden, I attack!" He took the ribbing well, but still couldn't break free of his verbal crutch. Heh.

 

[jmucchiello]

My commonly used phrase is "it appears to be". It appears to be a door. It appears to be a man. It appears to be a room. It appears to be 10 feet long.

I do that. Sometimes I mix it up though. Throw in a "seems" as in: It seems to be a door. It seems to be a man. It seems to be a room. It seem to be 10 feet long.

I have also been known to bow my head in shame after using the word "indescribable" while describing something to the PCs. The word jumps out of my mouth and just hangs there in the room until someone laughs and there goes the session for 5 minutes. "Did you see that?" "No, what did you see?" "Well it appears as though I can't describe it." "That is peculiar"....