Exchange of Realities

About a week ago, I was doing an trawl through Limyaael’s archives and found “Ten Things To Do When You’ve Gotten Bored With Your Novel”. Now, I haven’t had a chance to work on a novel in ages—I’m not sure I’d know what to do with one if I got an idea for it at this point—but I found that a lot of her ideas are just as applicable to games as to novels. So here’s my rehash, revised for the bored GM.

1. Pick up the dropped plot threads. This one really doesn’t need much translation from the original. Somewhere in your game, you’ve probably had something that you left alone; an intriguing character, an unexplained situation, a random battle that could be explained as not quite random. You might already have an explanation for it, or it might be something you can whip up a reason for and a story arc around. So use it! The resulting action and the players’ responses might be just the improvement you need.

2. Grow a new antagonist/secondary character. This should be pretty self-explanatory. Even a temporary opponent for the players or a new possible ally—or even someone they’ve never met before and may never see again—can break the monotony, giving the group something to do and you a chance to try your hand at someone who doesn’t have a mess of established plot roles.

3. Choose the part you like and focus on it. Everyone has types of scenes that they particularly enjoy running—combat, dramatic revelations, introduction of new characters, skill challenges, you name it. And what better way to increase motivation than by doing what you enjoy? If you can’t fit a specific sort of scene in on its own, consider trying to adjust a scene you’ve got to incorporate elements of the kind you like: have a skill challenge lead to a dramatic revelation, introduce the a new character during a fight, have ninja attack during a fancy dress ball.

4. Re-evaluate the scene’s purpose. A lot of GMs don’t really think about what their scenes are for; I’ve asked mine about the reasons for certain scenes, and gotten some really odd looks in response. But think about it for a bit. Why do you need this particular scene? Is it necessary for the introduction of a character or a plot point? Or to drop a red herring? Are you using it as a way to break the constant action, or to put action into a sequence that’s been mostly thinking and talking? Figure out what the scene’s for, then figure out whether you really need it to do that. Changing the purpose—or removing the scene entirely—might make the game more interesting.

5. Shock… In this suggestion, Limyaael asks, “All right, what’s the worst thing that could happen without killing the plot?” This is a job for random battles, freak weather patterns, unfortunate coincidence, and in general, things that could reasonably happen under the current situation but would be downright inconvenient. A little hardship never hurt anyone, and discovering that even being a demigod isn’t necessarily going to save a PC from bad enough weather can be highly entertaining.

6. …and awe. This one requires a bit more player input, since what you’re trying to do is elicit a “Coooool” reaction from them. Revelations, moments that are just really cool, mysteries begging to be solved, nifty views or objects or spells…. the sky’s the limit.

7. Change the character focus of the scene. Now we’re getting into stuff that’s harder to do in a game. Doable, though. Got an NPC who wants to talk to a specific character? Is there any reason why she couldn’t talk to a different one? Might this not be a good time even to—gasp—have an NPC be the character on which this scene focuses? (Or, if you’re prone to stage-stealing DMPCs, have yours shut up and let one of the players take center stage for a little while?) On the other hand, you could change the focus in general. Sidequests, anyone?

8. Change the accepted axiom of the scene. This one, again, is a lot harder to do in a game, as the players are shaping the thematics as much as you are. Basically, what you’re trying to do is take the same scene and give it different thematics. Limyaael explains it a lot better than I can.

9. Interrupt the scene. While this could be done with the old gamer axiom “When in doubt, have ninjas attack!”, that’s not the only way. A fight could be broken up by someone coming in with a message that gives both sides a new objective. An exposition scene could be split by—almost anything, really.

10. Slog. Self-explanatory. Sometimes you just can’t change things, and you’re going to have to muddle through.

And then there’s my Solution 11: Ask the players for help. If you’re bored, there’s a good chance they’re bored too, and they might have some ideas you wouldn’t have thought of on your own.

So if you’re getting bored with your game, consider applying one of these techniques. Who knows? It might give you just the zing you needed.