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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 3916844" data-attributes="member: 545">Yet somehow a game between skilled gamblers is exciting, even though the rules and probabilities are out in the open.No, the element necessary for suspense is hidden information.  Simply hiding some specifics of the encounter is all that is really necessary.Only a foolish DM says: "You meet 5 goblins, AC 6, HP 4, To Hit +1 in the room."  Better to say: "You see 2 goblins.  A door is open on the other side of the room from which you thought you heard movement."  More goblins?  Something nastier?Simple randomness also injects unknowns into the encounter that can help suspense, although this can be clumsy.The most clumsy choice is to hide rules.The very first two or three times you were playing RPGs, sure.  But reading the book would not have helped out much either way, as you would not have yet realized how to assess the danger of 6d6 damage.The first few times I played chess, those knights were pretty exciting, too.You cannot get much of a rise out of genuinely skilled players out of that type of suspense.  Whether the rumors tell me that the Necromancer can cast Lightning Bolt or Horrid Wilting or the dire-sounding custom spell Xurwec's Kiss of Doom is only window dressing.  As a player, I have to choose in a specific encounter whether to choose tactics that escalate or de-escalate the level of violence based on an ongoing guesstimate of relative strength.There are many different ways to inject suspense into this decision making process.  As I said before, hiding the rules is the most clumsy.Ah.  I would call much of this arbitrary setting information, not rules.  Yes, part of the fun is exploring the campaign setting which will necessitate a strong dose of trial and error.But much setting specific knowledge should be character knowledge.  The world may be 100% new to the players, but many specifics are not new to the characters.My wizard is very likely to know how water and lightning interact.  As a player, I ask my DM to interrogate my character's brain on my behalf.  Or I can look it up.  Which is the better choice depends on how much DM tolerance has for fielding a potentially endless stream of questions.</blockquote>

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