Techniques for spicing up aventures! By: Everyone?!

[Agent Oracle]

Wow, that sounds pretty interesting, think you might post such a list as a sample?

Sure, here's the list I'm currently working with. As I use a encounter, i remove it, and think of a new one. it's kind of short right now...

1. A length of aged, moss-green rope is stretched across the path.

2. Three rocks arranged in a very small shrine, the air is a bit colder near it.

3. The bark of a tree has been peeled away on one side. Bizarre markings are soldered into the exposed dead wood.

4. A large group of (1d4 X 15) travelers marches solemnly in the opposite direction of the party. Their leader carries a religious standard of (one of the party member's deities)

5. At meal time, birds begin congregating in the area near the PC's.

6. A pair of children's shoes, nailed to the ground.

7. A blanket filled with bones.

8. A faded standing directional signpost, with no less than forty-three separate arrows, many of which seem to have been added as practical jokes.

9. A book that has evidently been outside for some time.

and that's it right now... I've used others like "animal skin nailed to a tree" and "open sinkhole with a stream flowing at the bottom of it" in the past to great effect. And during some of their Travels the non-violent encounters got much more.. well, wierd ("anomalous gravitational pull causes the dwarf to become nausiated") and others only work in context of the environment they were playing in ("Three children, huddled together in the ruins of their destroyed home.")

Did i mention i'm playing dragonstar?

 

[bubbagump]

The first thing I think of when trying to spice up an adventure is "pacing." I've found that even on those "off" days when I just can't seem to muster up the colorful vocabulary I'd like to use, I can still get the players into things by keeping the game moving. A few techniques to consider:

Have everyone roll attack and damage dice simultaneously. Make sure they all roll publicly so nobody cheats.

Make a list of several die rolls ahead of time so you don't have to waste time in-game actually rolling. I use a dice-rolling program so I can just click a few times and it's done.

Don't be afraid to gloss over unimportant details. For example, while it may require a high strength roll to open a particular door, if you know there's nothing significant beyond it, just tell the players they manage to open it and get on with play.

Opposite of the above, it sometimes builds the suspense if you have the players roll for practically everything. For example, in a recent game in which the PCs were crossing a wet rope bridge under a roaring waterfall with opponents on the opposite side I had them roll balance checks, rope use checks, reflex saves, and anything else I could think of. As written the bridge was pretty easy to cross and the opponents were pushovers. The players, though, got really nervous and went to extremes to insure their characters' safety. They had a great time.

Create a synoptic version of your adventure. Writing down only that information necessary to run a combat can save a lot of time that might otherwise have to be spent searching through stat blocks or room descriptions. A short list of saves or skill checks that might have to be made in an encounter can also save time.

Talk faster. Yes, I know it sounds silly, but as a professional public speaker I can promise you there's no better way to grab, hold, and build an audience's excitement. If you talk faster they'll listen more intently and react more quickly.

I'm sure there are a thousand other ideas out there, but these are a few I've used to some success in my own game. Hope they help.

 

[InVinoVeritas]

I never pull people away from the table. If the party splits up, we're all still at the table describing our actions. If one group gets into an encounter, I'll give NPCs to the uninvolved players and continue the action from there. It keeps everyone engaged and reduces player-player conflict because everyone will know that they'll have a chance to attack the other PC later anyway.

I also have asides. Sometimes, I'll describe some side action that the PCs aren't involved in at all. One I've used for fun is at the start of the game, the players all play a group of kids that play in the woods and encounter something terrible... then I switch to the PCs, who then get hired to find the kids. The players are immediately invested in saving the children because moments ago, they were the children.

Also, if you give the players NPCs, you can kill them horribly and regularly, and no one minds.

 

[Hussar]

Cool thread.

One thing that can be fun is the Scroll of the Blindingly Obvious. Not meant to be terribly serious, but it can really add fun.

The party finds a magic scroll as part of a treasure. Opening the scroll releases a cloud of glittering particles that covers the opener. The sparkles then fade. There is nothing written on the paper. Then, every so often (maybe two or three times in a session) pass a message to the victim of something that is really obvious. For example, if the party is walking down a passageway in a dungeon, pass a note saying the victim feels cold, or nervous or tired. Stuff that is probably very true but never gets mentioned in game.

Watch the victim sit and spin.

 

[Wik]

Damn, this is a good thread; the reason I come here, pretty much.

I really like that idea of "one-sentence scens that don't involve combat". I use something similar, although there's no list. The last such encounter involved a pub in the merchant district of Sasserine, as the PCs dealt with a one-eyed barkeeper at three in the morning while doing their best to avoid a religious confrontation (the group's cleric worships Wee Jas, while the pub sided with Kord, and Sasserine sort of has a Wee Jas/Kord schism going on). Fun encounter, actually.

One thing I just started putting together today is an on-going series of encounters centred around our group's Dragon Shaman (a Dwarf, who is based off Copper Dragons). I want to throw in a Rogue/Dragon Shaman assassin (probably a Green, although maybe a black or something...) who opposes the group in small ways. Really, I want to use him to cover up some plot holes in the Savage Tide adventure path, so that I'm going to have Him be responsible for the murder of Keltar Islaran, as well as involve him somehow when the Kellanis try to eliminate the PCs in the second episode, perhaps replacing the Battle Dancer. I like the idea of having a BBEG who doesn't really oppose the group, but is really an on-going foe for just one PC, so that whenever this villain shows up, that one particular PC can throw his gauntlets on the floor and say in a gruff voice "leave him alone. He's mine."

 

[Aeric]

One storytelling trick I've used to great effect is something I call the "Quantum Leap"--always leave the session on a cliffhanger. It will leave the players enthusiastic about the next session, and it will cut down on most of the chatter time prior to the actual start of the session (since they are eager to find out what happened to their characters!). If you find yourself close to the end of a session where everything is neatly tied up and there isn't enough time to get into the next story arc for the cliffhanger, make something up. If you're not comfortable coming up with things on the fly, create a list. It doesn't have to have anything to do with the adventure at hand, but it shouldn't be so random that it couldn't somehow be tied into what is going on. At worst, it provides a challenge for you to come up with a way to build an adventure or tie-in to the current plotline before the following session.

Here is an idea I've yet to use, but is on tap for the next game I run:

Write up a dozen or so "hooks" that might appear in someone's character history. They could range from "your father went missing on an important mission for the king," to "you have a identical twin brother." Make sure they are things that you could use as part of your campaign plot, or at least center a subplot around. Put all of these ideas into a hat or similar container, shuffle them up, and before anyone writes a character history, have them each draw once from the hat. Whatever hook they draw must be incorporated into their character background somehow. By having at least one hook per character, you can weave the characters into the story, making it personal and meaningful.

 

[Aeric]

Another idea I had was to run dungeons abstractly. Rather than describe each individual corridor and room (many of which wind up empty anyways), why not focus on the rooms that have content in them and leave the rest to extrapolation?

Example:

"You spend the next few hours exploring the abandoned dwarven citadel. After searching what seem like miles of twisting passageways, crumbling halls, and abandoned living quarters, you finally come upon an interesting sight: a river of lava, illuminating the otherwise black depths of the earth, spanned by a single stone bridge. Upon this bridge, as if waiting for you, stands a single massive figure...."

Of course, if your group actually enjoys going room-to-room in a dungeon and mapping out every empy room and T-intersection, then this idea isn't for you. I find it to be a way to keep the action fresh and exciting without sacrificing one of the sacred cows of D&D (the dungeon).

 

[QuaziquestGM]

Be careful of using combat to force pcs together, particually the "getting run out of town sort". Some times a player will unexpectedly turn sourpuss over being put in a no win situation for the purposes of plot.

For example, I needed to add two new pcs to a running 2 month old campaine where one of the plotlines is that an anti arcane, anti "witch" human supremisit religious group has taken over a frontier area. They burned all the "witches" a week ago, and the non humans have left town. The setting is pseudo northern europe. One Player makes a 1/2 ork. Another gives his human rogue an arab name and dress, inculding turban.....The two PCs already in the game are a 1/2 elf wizard, and a dragonborn with a "hat of polymorph to halfling". The set up was, "you meet in a tavern...and the 14 "redneck lumberjacks" throw you out of town together....." The new guys are level 1 one with the established PCs are level 2. The odds are 14 to 4. One player managed to turn what was going to be a worst a "friendly beat down" into a blood bath by pulling an "illegal" weapon after the lumberjacks left thier axes on the pegs "above their table...their table meaning that they didn't even order and the waitress brings them what they always have..." (chairs are "legal" in a "Freindly" racially motivated brawl...rapiers are _not_)

Some players have the misconception that the GM is supposed to always set the players up to win, and take it rather bitterly when they discover that this isn't the case. In this case my attemp to establish a lively and interesting champain world and provide the PCs with rivals or bitter enimies to face later didn't work as the player didn't realize that to have legitimate rivals you have to occationally lose. Of course the other players liked it, and are talking in character about how much they dislike the sect and want to take them down if given the opportunity.

Another tactic that I have had mixed success with in the same game is a "Vision" sequence.
Parapharsing the situtation so my PCs won't know exactly what is going on....You have the party find an sick and incapacitated person (small size race is best) or dog, something that needs a level of healing that the PCs just don't have access to so they only have the option of slowly nursing it back to health. That night the pcs are attacked by something that is overpowering, scary looking, and not quite right , which incapacitates them easily. Then they wake up at mid morning, find that thier patient died during the night, and that they all had the same nightmare about something like giant sized hobgoblins defeating them.

The point of course, is to deliver a message that someone needs a "hero" by showing them the "victim's" perspective of helplessness against the "overwhelming gaint scary monsters". It also give the pcs a reason to have a grudge against say, a party of normal sized hobgoblin slavers that are raiding the local haflings.

In this case, again, some of the players liked it, and though they haven't compleatly figured out what is going on, like that I am giving them reasons to have motivations for getting involved and delivering them in a manner other than "they beg you for help and offer payment". However, the one guy didn't like being in a no win situation, even if it was a dream.

 

[Evilhalfling]

if your going to do a no win situation, do it fast and obvious - a 2 hr fight that was impossible to win or flee is a terrible idea. esp when its a dream, and then you wake up and have to do it again. A new DM lost two players on that game, I stuck with him, mentioned it was a bad game, and he got better.

Earlier we "fought" a dragon each of us got one action before being left for dead, a much better senerio.

 

[Renfield]

Thankfully my group were a group of close and old friends when I made a mistake like that. They made sure to let me know it was indeed a mistake. Went through a lot of phases when I was younger realizing the best way for me to approach DMing, found out it was storytelling and *then* it took me awhile to find out that the PC's weren't my pawns to railroad wherever I wanted the story to go. Ah highschool.

As for combat being used to bring a party together. Yeah, you do have to be careful with that, but if you're doubtful your party dynamic would work with such a thing then simply don't use the technique. I find it has worked for me and when players are being seemingly stubborn in meeting one another it's a good way to force them to work together in a scenario that would at least encourage them to meet up with one another after... Some groups just need that sort of push and naturally played wrong can end in disaster, however, it's fairly easy to play it write.