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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 3276998" data-attributes="member: 29398">A few stray thoughts on this...Games can become dull on two levels.One is short-term...when a particular session, or adventure, is dragging.  Sometimes, it can be because it's just a bad adventure or not suited to the characters and-or players; other times, people just aren't feelin' it that night, whatever...the problem is it can sometimes be hard to tell these two apart.  The options here are limited; a random combat can help sometimes, and there's been some excellent suggestions up-thread on how to spice those up (location, memorable opponents, etc.), but if the problem is adventure-based rather than random player boredom this could backfire by just making an unpleasant experience drag on longer.  If it does turn out to be adventure-based dullness, all you can do is strip down the adventure by removing every non-essential encounter and just get it over with...or, and this might add some excitement, throw in some encounter and make it glaringly obvious the PCs have no choice but to flee.  That way, they can come back sometime later and take care of whatever drove them away, and you're on to a new adventure in the meantime.Ending a session in mid-combat is always a sure way of getting interest at the start of next session. <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=":)" />The other level is long-term...when a whole campaign is losing steam.  Here, it *really* helps to be running two parties concurrently, as the easiest way to spice things up for a while is to have some characters (and their players) switch parties.  But if you're running a typical one-party linear game, about all you can do is lob in some memorable NPCs (going *completely* overboard on an adventuring stereotype can help here...wizards and cavaliers are great for this).  If your players have been running the same PCs for a long time, see if they're interested in cycling in some new blood while temporarily retiring their existing PCs...even if only some of the players do this, it changes things up.Lanefan</blockquote>

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