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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4735218" data-attributes="member: 54707">At some time during any given campaign or adventure give all of your players the opportunity to use their best capabilities. Also at some point give them an opportunity to use little known or obscure abilities and capabilities.Encourage innovation on the part of your players and allow them to solve their own problems creatively.Give them new and original challenges and monsters and obstacles. Don't just recycle the same things over and over.Let the player handle his character, it isn't your job to do that. Allow him, within reason, to innovate, invent, experiment, and manipulate his "virtual world" in the same way you can your "real world." Preprogrammed powers and capabilities are a start, like training for real capabilities is for us, but it shouldn't be the limit of what a player or character can do. Let players develop "original characters" fit to their own personal interests.Give players time to consider their best course of action unless they are in the middle of a pressing situation.Give out treasure which is far more interesting and thoughtful than +3 whatever.Use monsters that are clever and cunning.Let players actually build real characters instead of just character builds.Don't get bogged down in so many details that play becomes a rules/bookwork/programming exercise rather than a game.Clever games and well developed campaigns and settings will have a lot to explore. One trick ponies bore many players easily. Vary hack and slash with role play, interesting stories and plots, unusual challenges, bizarre encounters, moral dilemmas, and so forth and so on. There is a time and season for everything but if it is summer all year long then the grass withers and dies and eventually all you've got left is sand and desert.Give players and their characters an opportunity to actually effect the world, make a real name and reputation for themselves, and to change events. Let your world and setting change over time to reflect this. Give them a valuable objective or set of objectives they can aspire towards.Give them opportunities to be heroic and selfless and bigger than themselves. Treat players like adults. Let them iron out their own problems. And trust your players to be as smart as you are. Never discourage originality, even if it won't work in that particular case. Let them find that out by experimentation, not by fiat.</blockquote>

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