Lots of good advice to be had. My 50 cents worth ... No plan survives contact with the PCs. If you provide three ways for the PCs to sneak into the villains' lair, chances are pretty good they will completely miss all hints * , then come up with something completely different. All you can do is be prepared for a little ad-libbing if necessary . * [What is blindingly obvious to the GM often isn't for PCs, and vice versa] When all else fails, TAKE A BREAK. Seriously. If the PCs do something that is totally-over-the-top-never-would-have-thought-of-that-in-a-million-years-bat####-frackin'-crazy, do NOT try to ad-lib / talk your way out of it right away. Have a break, go to the toilet, get a soda from the fridge, run screaming from the room, or (if feeling honest) just tell your Players "Congratulations, guys, you got me by surprise with that one. I'm gonna take a few minutes to think about how to deal with it...". If your group is semi-decent, they will understand, and may even take this as a compliment. ------ I totally endorse and support Jinson's advice: "... if you players are unpredictable, perhaps you should be unpredictable too. Have them roll to notice something, and then have it turn out to be nothing much (i.e. shadow, floating debris, etc.)....". In short, bluff them ... At various times, let Players see you making die rolls behind your screen and (apparently) taking notes. For no reason or, if they ask, you answer with something like "You'll find out, soon enough...". Have a little emoting with the above - one time snigger, another time look disappointed, another time smile like a Cheshire Cat. Single out PCs for odd seemingly out-of-the-blue questions ("Is your Character wearing thick boots? He Isn't? Oh, well..."), and make note of the result, with emoting as above. NEVER EVER say definitively that a room is empty, tell the PCs that it SEEMS to be empty. Occasionally question a PC's actions ("Are you SURE you want to do that? You are? OK."). Mention minor random (and totally harmless) things - lights snap on automatically when they enter a room, another room feels cold, or there is a packet of Chewie-Froots(TM) floating in the airlock. Not everything has to be significant. Don't overload the game with trivia, but sprinkle a bit around for added flavour. The point is that this is all bluff, but if you carry it off well, your PCs will be totally paranoid, which is always a good thing.

7thSeaLord wrote:

Single out PCs for odd seemingly out-of-the-blue questions ("Is your Character wearing thick boots? He Isn't? Oh, well..."), and make note of the result, with emoting as above.

Heh... yeah. About three months ago I e-mailed my players, OOC, and asked them to each write up for me how their character would react to discovering a fork of themself had been stolen and was running around out in the world, thinking it was the alpha fork. Then I just went on with the game as normal, refusing to answer any questions about why I'd asked. At our last session, months later, the players discovered in game that their characters had indeed been forknapped, although the characters haven't figured this out yet. We now have two threads of the game running using separate forks, and I'm sure they're wondering if there aren't more of them out there. :)

7thSeaLord wrote:

Lots of good advice to be had. Mention minor random (and totally harmless) things - lights snap on automatically when they enter a room, another room feels cold, or there is a packet of Chewie-Froots(TM) floating in the airlock. Not everything has to be significant.

A friend of mine used a variation of this that was very evil. Hence I encourage all GM's to learn from it. The game was Cyberpunk 2020 and we were out on a boat in the bay or some such. Every so often he would say "an AV flies over. An autogyro flies over" etc. The first two or three times we all looked up, did threat analyses etc. Finally he said "its the sprawl, something flies over your head every 10 or 15 minutes" and we all chilled out. But still he'd sprinkle in drones, avs, helicopters etc overflying. Thus we completely missed the bad guys doing their recon overflight just about sunset. . .

7ThSealord, that reminds of a WereWolf game I ran once where the party were infiltrating a Pentex-Syndicate jointly run facility. They stepped in lemon juice. Just, normal, ordinary lemon juice. Everything told them that it was just normal, ordinary lemon juice. So, they did not realize that the lemon juice was what the syndicates It-X Provided killbots were programmed to track, since the only people who would be in the lemon juice were people who should not have been there.

Another thing. When running a combat, or anything else of a heavy-duty "action" nature, DO NOT let it turn into a book-keeping exercise. Describe what is happening. You don't say, "The monster hit your Character, and did 8 damage". B-o-r-i-n-g. Instead, describe what happens - "The monster lets out a deafening howl, and slashes at you with its claws..." , or "The monster hisses from the darkness, and you feel one of its pseudopods squeeze painfully tight around your left leg ...". Encourage the Players to do the same when describing their Character actions. Not a requirement (some people are better at this than others), just encourage it. If the PCs do a lot of damage, or achieve something major - provide detail about what happens (head explodes, a limb detaches, whatever ;) ). Likewise, when something bad happens. Don't be afraid to ad-lib a little, and even throw in a touch of comedy - somebody accidentally drops his knife, roll to see if he skewers himself in the foot; or somebody finally kills that dang monster, determine which PC gets his nice clean protective suit sprayed with guts'n'gore as a result. Trust me, spectacular successes, and comparably spectacular failures, are what Players most like talking about afterwards. And, this is very important. Always, always make sure EVERY Character gets at least one chance to do something cool and/or significant in the course of each session.

Cardul wrote:

7thSeaLord wrote:

Another thing. And, this is very important. Always, always make sure EVERY Character gets at least one chance to do something cool and/or significant in the course of each session.

Aff, though, from my experience, some PLAYERS are oblivious to those opportunities. And, as a GM, I find myself wanting to reach across the table and smack that player repeatedly until he starts thinking(yes, I have someone specific in my group in mind...)

Fair enough. The best you can do there is (a) Try to find out what may get that Player's interest. Could be a lack of confidence, or just feeling overshadowed by others. Maybe.; (b) Don't be subtle, it never works that well; (c) Keep track of who has what skills, capabilities, specialized equipment and backstory. Use that knowledge. If he is the only partymember with IR Vision, that could prove significant at some stage. (d) Don't be afraid to fudge "random" die rolls. If the group is in combat, and Mr Oblivious is still scratching himself, have him be a target for at least one attack or any other occurance that demands immediate attention. If the group is in a social situation, have the sloppy drunk throw up on him specifically, or pick a fight, or whatever. Not all the time, obviously - don't pick on the guy (much), but do put him on the spot at least once a session.

The Sandman wrote:

Also, find ways to mess with players who metagame. If they aren't at least occasionally having to roll a Stress Test against Things That Should Not Be According to RAW, you aren't doing things right.

Mentioned earlier on this thread were the ideas of using bluff, red herrings and "routine" occurrances to mess with the Players' heads. This works especially well against metagaming - they are often too busy trying to analyze something innocuous to try anything funny.

The Sandman wrote:

Just for example, one longer-term thing I'm likely to throw at the players in the game I'm starting up is a digital asynch; that is, their psi abilities function only on infomorphs, synthmorphs and poorly on pod people, with dumb AI treated as animals. If I want to be really cruel, I think I'll wait until they finally figure this part out to have that NPC fork itself into something like a Futura morph in order to have an assistant with the regular version of psi abilities.

Throwing in stuff that is not entirely standard is a good way to catch the more knowledgeable PCs offguard. Good luck, but I advise caution. Within my group, we have a couple of laws about this kind of thing, named after one of our number: McGregor's First Law Of GMing (better known elsewhere as 'Gary Jackson's Second Law of Player Dynamics'): Regardless of its condition, ANY Doomsday Device located anywhere in any RP scenario will inevitably be activated by the Player-Characters. Usually by accident. McGregor's Second Law Of GMing: Any rules tweak, "unusual" tech, unique artifact, weird ability, superweapon or special tactic that a GM creates for his game should also include the assumption that PCs will somehow acquire and make use of it. If your bad guy's powers provide any major advantage, then rest assured that one of the PCs' first questions will be "Can we get it, too?". Third, perhaps fourth question at the latest, I guarantee.

The Sandman wrote:

And other little things. Like, for example, a corp that has some stuff it really wants hidden from radar and T-rays and that decided to defend against snooping by putting basilisk hacks inside the facility walls. Or finding any avenues for trauma that a player left open in their backstory and exploiting them mercilessly. Or trying to induce paranoia in anybody who's ever been a fan of Lovecraft or a player of CoC/Cthulhutech by putting the primary known Factor outpost in the system on Pluto.

Ah, yes, paranoia and exploitation. They can bring joy to the GM's heart. I would add that any Disadvantage that the Player took to get extra points for his/her Character should be given proper exercise. That doesn't mean clubbing the PC over the head with his Character's major disads at every oppurtunity. But, lulling the Player into false security by seeming to forget them, only to later use them as part of a major "revoltin' development" can be nasty. Very satisfying, too. "You bastard" is one of the highest accolades a Referee can receive from his Players :D .

The Sandman wrote:

In this case, my answer would be "Sure; considering that it's the result of a nasty strain of the Exsurgent virus, however, you probably don't want to."

:) Don't count on it.

Regarding NPCs ... Having properly fleshed-out NPCs with distinct personality traits and agendas really adds something to any RPG. A GMing trick that works very well for me is to mentally "link" significant NPCs with specific personalities that I already know well from real life, the movies, history, other games, novels, etc.. These are then used as the basis for individualizing that NPC - speech, body language, etc.. You don't need a full "one-to-one" match (better if you don't - so the Players can't figure it out), simply borrow a few snippets of that personality where necessary and appropriate. Doesn't matter if you are no good at impersonations (I'm not either), just changing posture and altering one's speech when playing the part of somebody that the PCs must interact with, enhances the whole experience for the Players.