How do you keep a moron in suspense....?
How many of you are going to use that same dad joke...?
I like suspense in my games and most of the time it comes at the end when we have a cliff hanger. Hopefully, players will want to come back next session to see how it all turns out. The other way to make a game suspenseful is to stack the deck against the players. It's a hard thing to do nowadays because getting people to play together regularly is very difficult. Once a regular player character is created--and I don't care which system it is--it's pretty hard to kill them off. If you get the old TPK there's a good chance that's the last session for the campaign. So, it gets pretty suspenseful when a character--or the whole party--is on the verge of being wiped out and nobody knows for sure if fate--or the game master--is going to step in to keep hope alive.
Unfortunately, the way I get suspense from most of my Roll * 20 games is the moments from start time to 15 minutes after start time when I--and usually one other player, but not always the same one--are waiting around to see if anyone else will turn up. It's also suspenseful to see who's going to drop out of the campaign first. In defense of my flaky players, most of them would like to play, but then work gets in the way. I envision the suspense they feel as their schedule is being set up at work--will I play or won't I? I'm sure it's the same feeling I get when asking my wife's permission to head out to a game night.
How many of you are going to use that same dad joke...?
I like suspense in my games and most of the time it comes at the end when we have a cliff hanger. Hopefully, players will want to come back next session to see how it all turns out. The other way to make a game suspenseful is to stack the deck against the players. It's a hard thing to do nowadays because getting people to play together regularly is very difficult. Once a regular player character is created--and I don't care which system it is--it's pretty hard to kill them off. If you get the old TPK there's a good chance that's the last session for the campaign. So, it gets pretty suspenseful when a character--or the whole party--is on the verge of being wiped out and nobody knows for sure if fate--or the game master--is going to step in to keep hope alive.
Unfortunately, the way I get suspense from most of my Roll * 20 games is the moments from start time to 15 minutes after start time when I--and usually one other player, but not always the same one--are waiting around to see if anyone else will turn up. It's also suspenseful to see who's going to drop out of the campaign first. In defense of my flaky players, most of them would like to play, but then work gets in the way. I envision the suspense they feel as their schedule is being set up at work--will I play or won't I? I'm sure it's the same feeling I get when asking my wife's permission to head out to a game night.
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