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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 6903167" data-attributes="member: 60965">These are excellent, @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=67" target="_blank">Rune</a>! I agree with 90% of what you've said so far and am adding a few to my "How to Awesome GM" document.A few other things I thought of that may be worth adding:Carve Inspiration in Stone - if you get an cool idea for an item, encounter, bit of history, NPC, whatever, don't trust that you'll remember it later when you "have time to work on it." Write on scratch paper, shoot yourself an email, text yourself, jot it in your phone, whatever. I have a notepad in my phone where I just quickly tap down the basic gist of something like "Black Carriage - steals babies" or "McJones' sister is actually the murderer!". It might be in the grocery store, walking to your car, waking up in the middle of the night, taking a quick break at work, asking someone to give you a second to write down the amazing idea whatever they just said sparked, whatever - just store it before it's gone. It doesn't need to be a ton, just enough that later that night (or whenever you get time to prep) you don't sit there thinking "what the hell was that really cool idea I had at the restaurant?"Also:Let Your Babies Die -The villain may be your favorite NPC ever, the huge army of necro-rabbits she's going to breed and the Rod of World Breaking she's going to assemble is going to be rad. Then the PC's get a lucky crit the first time they see her walking a necrobunny or cut the rope bridge she's traversing or drop a boulder on the carriage she just got into. You can make a hundred more NPCs that will eventually be just as cool - finding some crafty, McGuffiny way to have them survive the unsurvivable might just yank the victory from your player's fingers or even destroy their immersion and the campaign(I've had this happen) and you may be ruining your players' sense of accomplishment and ruining a great story ("Remember the time you cut down that redwood that so it would fall on the Giant King right after he'd sworn to come back and destroy everything we loved?")Who knows, maybe with that NPC gone, a couple others idling in the back of your head will have room to burst out onto the stage, maybe the villain was just a pawn for someone even worse who now has the PCs on their hitlist...Lastly:Other Stuff Happens Too - every session, try to slip in somewhere a hint of something happening elsewhere in the world to make it feel like a real place rather than a "world in stasis" like in a computer game where the rest of the world is static until the players show up.Maybe orcish refugees are come pouring through the country after someone called the Dark Hammer put the Orclands to the torch, maybe rumors fly of a Harpy Queen taking over the Kingdom of Togo or an burning airship streaks across the distant horizon. While much of it might be unrelated to what the PCs are doing right now, it might ripple down and effect them, especially if they eventually end up traveling to Togo or the Orclands. Other events may be prophetic, foreshadowing something they'll face later, building up threats or, even better for prep, maybe you'll be able to "backwrite" later, tying what they are tasked with now to an event they witnessed or heard about eight sessions ago.For example, what if the burning airship streaked through the sky, then a month later your group is hired to retrieve the Sacred Astrolabe of Astrolabia and they find out it the AstroPrince is desperate, knowing the airship carrying it was ambushed by Dragon Knights a month ago but with no idea where it went down. Maybe you had zero idea what the airship was about back then, but when the players piece it together, they'll think you're amazing for planning that far ahead and you'll see them nod as the world dial clicks one notch further towards "Full Immersion".</blockquote>

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