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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Simon" data-source="post: 1754836" data-attributes="member: 21938">I think if you play in a game, and enjoy it, you can consider *why* you enjoyed it and try to reproduce that in your own GMing attempts. Conversely, if you play in a game with a lousy GM you are more likely to make sure that you *don't* repeat their mistakes than copy them, I think.Most of my 20 or so years of RPing have been spent GMing, but I have learned a few things from playing in other games.A friend way back in college ran some D&D games and he always (without fail) did two things in every game - one was to insert a DMNPC who would "surprisingly" turn against the party at some point. It got so predictable that he would say "This guy comes up to you in the tavern and...." and we'd all say "No! He can't join us!". Secondly, in a standard dungeon game the first combat we entered would always alert every other occupant in the complex so we'd end up waiting in the first room whilst waves of bad guys came at us, then wander through the deserted dungeon and glean up the tresure.Lessons learned: (1) Don't be predictable with your NPCs. (2) Whilst the hermetic dungeon room may be unrealistic, the alternative is dull.I've recently joined a new campaign (1e D&D) and am playing for the first time in ages. Things that I've learned from the DM (who is much better than my college friend....): (1) Sit back and let the players make all the bad decisions. (2) He does a neat little gimmick for bonus XP which amounts to "Tell me what you've done to deserve it". I've adopted this as it good for getting players want to do things in the adventure. (3) Complex plots are all well and good, but a bit of dungeon-bashing is fun once in a while. (4) Wizards towers, in adventures written in the 1980s, all have the same features and the secret lab is always reached via a teleport.</blockquote>

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