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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Haltherrion" data-source="post: 5119788" data-attributes="member: 18253">This is a very powerful technique applicable from writing fiction to refereeing to public speaking and more. Figure out what is expected by the players and do something different. It can really energize your story or campaign. The players will come to realize that you aren't playing to stereotypes and will be eager to find out what is really going on. You can apply it for prepared and for ad libbed material- just pause, determine what you would expect if you were in the players' shoes and then choose something else that still fits the situation but is not an expected outcome. The princess and dragon example is good. You can do it for anything. It can even be a way to poke fun at old cliche's: the players start in a bar looking for something to do and the patrons run them out of the bar because of all the trouble other adventurers have brought in the past. Or the job-notice in the town square for giant-rat-slayers is really a trap to press-gang some landlubbers into a pirate crew. The goblins the party meets in the woods on their first adventure are noble and discerning savages wronged by the elves. And so on... It's something I try to do frequently when I prep scenarios. Last session in our final 4E Test run, the players knew they would have to deal with hordes of recently risen undead due to where the previous session had gone. The expectation: waves of mildly interesting undead dudes. The surprise? Not all the risen dead were evil or wanted to be risen, they were willing to help the players if they didn't play to their prejudices. Plus I pulled a few unexpected monsters on them and as they ran to a castle for refugee gave them real, material support from the defenders (players often don't expect help from friendly NPCs in a situation like this to matter much- nothing like that first ballista bolt coming out of the blue when the situation was dicey to pleasantly surprise.) The more you play against expectations the more suspense you will build in your game. As long as you choose things that are sensible for the situation you really can't over do it. And if you never pick the cliche'd path, at some point picking the cliche is itself a surprise <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Next time you watch a good action or suspense movie you enjoy, look for the places where the writer went against expectations. You can even do this to avoid lulls and pauses in the game. Are the players approaching a spot in the game where the king's advisor is going to give them a long-winded exposition that they are going to have trouble following? Find a way to omit that that still delivers the information. (The exposition starts, a messenger arrives saying the barbarians have broken through, advisor says- "you'll just have to do without the info get going, I'll tell you what you need to know in your dreams" and then later give them snippets at night as needed.) It's a powerful tool that the players will appreciate whether they consciously realize you are using it or not.</blockquote>

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