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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emperor Valerian" data-source="post: 1569458" data-attributes="member: 15043">I find myself DMing something like that.  Often I think ahead of time a cool 'moment' to involve the players, and try to build things up to that point.  How do I go about it?  Looking things up, and improvisation.For example, one session I had in mind getting a PC rogue/bard to fight one on one a rogue/assassin nemesis of his that had been harassing the party for a while.  The player in question hadn't had many 'dramatic moments' for his character, and I knew everyone would think the idea of him and his evil nemesis fighting mano a mano with rapiers would be cool.  However, the players are good players, and IC they would be wily, and I knew they would try and find some way to intervene.I thought about it, and it led to more dramatics... the rogue/assassin's son (whom another party member has a beef with) shows up as well.  But the party is six strong... how to keep people from pile-driving?Solution:  Bring in the BBEG too.  Have her incapacitate the party with some of her nasty spells (giving the party an idea of what they are up against), as well as preparing the way for the dramatic moment.End result:  The party finds themselves incapacitated by the BBEG (epic level spellcaster), who leaves the party to the machinations of this assassin and her son... as well as kidnapping one of the party NPCs.  Leaves the rogue in question free to move, so the assassin can toy with him.In the end, the party fighter, without a weapon, fought the son (who had a katana) and took him down, while the bard/rogue outdueled the assassin in a straight up rapier battle.  The party had some satisfaction: two of their main enemies are down.  But there's also a major plot-hook... one of their friends has been kidnapped, and they need to rescue him.  Three major dramatic moments spun up because of one I imagined.  Roll with the punches... it can lead to great fun. <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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