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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Templetroll" data-source="post: 1699445" data-attributes="member: 2201">One of my players told me that paranoia was a survival trait in my world.  Apparently, I enjoyed myself so much running encounters with shapeshifters and illusionists along with a nasty taste in puns made them suspect anything that 'seemed okay'.  the more normal it looked the more they worried.An example:  The fellow at the castle warns the group looking for the party's wizard's lost father, who were about to enter the dungeon beneath it, "Be careful, there's a white dragon down there!"  Later, they defeated the undead dad on a bridge overlooking a deep, dark chasm the wizard decides to get rid of a flaming sphere after the fight by rolling it over the side and letting it drop.  "We'll see how deep this is." he said, then proceeded to not watch or listen as it fell and hit bottom.  When the slightly singed dragon showed up the wizard got mouthy and the dragon backslapped him.  After he got a negative level the players realized that guy above was warning them about a wight dragon!They groveled in character, the wizard gave up his father's corpse and the players groaned enough about the pun the dragon just told them to get out. I was pleased. Another thing is I took the comments from various D&D sources, like there had been 10th level magic and higher in the past, and used that as part of my history for the world.  An empire had outfitted its armies completely with magical armor and weapons and sent out companies of wizards with all manner of sticks of nastiness and these armies were led by the likes of Leuk-O and his Mighty Servant.Then, something happened.....  The "Decline of Magic" was a mystic event that lowered the limit of what magic could be performed any longer.  It destroyed the enchantments on almost all of the magic created by the Empire but enough survived and was carried away by non-Imperial folk that it got scattered beyond the area formerly controlled by the Empire.It was an easy way to explain why so many similar magic items were scattered all over the place and so many forgotten 'heavily fortified defense installations', aka dungeons, were out there also.  Also, the Emperor, still around after all these years, used a spell to summon folks to him.  This was my GM way to remove absent PCs from the game.  I put in a reason for the Emperor to do it later, once some players started trying to figure it out.It took more than 10 RL years of running but finally some of my players were on an adventure that took them to the past and found out it was they who caused the "Decline of Magic" that devastated the world and brought about the collapse of the Empire.  they were pleased.D&D is a pleasant game to play.</blockquote>

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