Roleplaying Tips

• This Week's Tips Summarized
• A Brief Word From Johnn
• This Week's Tips: 6 More Exciting Ways To Create Tension
• Reader's Tip Of The Week: Tension Tip

1. Dramatic Music Creates Subtle Tension
2. Create Lots of Character Confusion
3. Sacrifice NPCs as Warnings & Examples
4. Fast Combat, Fast Play
5. Build Tension Through Clues Leading Up to the Encounter
6. Lay Tension-Building Groundwork Before Exciting Encounters

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• Law enforcement tips
• How to create dangerous situations for PCs without killing them
• How to sustain an atmosphere of horror
• Tips on how to individualize NPCs
• Information on relieving tension, such as how to get humour right.
• Tips for chatroom and play by e-mail roleplaying
• Good ideas for beefing up PC-driven agendas & goals
• How to make a routine orc encounter a memorable affair
• Diceless roleplaying tips

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1. Dramatic Music Creates Subtle Tension
   
   Put on some dramatic music in the background to help build tension. Watch the volume though: shouting over loud music certainly builds tension, but I think the trade-off on communication is not worth it.
   
   Heavy Russian classical music suits any genre. And Holst "The Planets" is a personal favorite because it has light and heavy moments. Constant heavy music just becomes white noise in the background, but varied music attracts attention and builds tension better.
   
   Does anyone else use music in this way? What artists/titles do you play?
   
   (Thanks for the tip Ursula.)
   
   

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2. Create Lots of Character Confusion
   Confusion creates tension. So create as much confusion you can with one important rule:
   

   Make the PCs as confused as you can without cheating. Give the players 100% of the information their characters would have, but no more.

   
   This means you need to create confusing situations instead of abusing your position as GM and holder of all the information. If you withhold information from the players that the characters would have had, your players will just get angry and frustrated with you--the wrong kind of tension.
   
   Examples of great confusing situations:
   
   • Darkness, fog & mist, bright light, blindness
     
     
   • Illusions, shapeshifters
     
     
   • Battles where the good guys and the bad guys are not easily identified (i.e. a city riot)
     
     
   • NPCs who don't say what they mean, or whose emotions can't be read easily
     
     
   • Strange happenings whose source is not obvious - a crowd of screaming, fleeing people; a ship wildly tilting in calm water
   
   

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3. Sacrifice NPCs as Warnings & Examples
   
   Nothing creates tension better than a close call. So, get some NPCs involved with the story and start killing them off or making examples of them to scare the players.
   
   One thing to remember is that the sacrificial NPC must be valuable somehow to the characters and/or players. It creates no tension when someone the PCs don't care about gets harmed or slain.
   
   Think of the "red shirt" security guards in the classic Star Trek series. They were the ultimate canon fodder and did little to create tension because you knew they were just there to be sacrificed.
   
   Examples of NPCs that have value as sacrifices:
   
   • a distant relative to a PC (i.e. cousin, niece)
     
     
   • the holder of some occasionally useful knowledge
     - the local sage, the professor, the old woman
     
     
   • someone important to your game world: having the Head Guardsman accidentally drink the poison intended for a PC creates more tension than if it had been an anonymous servant who died
     
     
   • someone the players like
     
     • the friendly shepherd boy who keeps asking to join\ the party
     • the helpful barkeep
     • the nosy, but cheerful neighbour
     
     
   • a romantic interest of a PC
     
     
   • a person who has appeared in previous stories
   
   The message you want to give to your players is "hey, this could really happen to your character, so watch out, cause I'll do it." And the more unexpected the NPC's demise is (i.e. "wow, I can't believe the GM actually killed old Bill") the greater the shock and the greater the future tension.
   
   

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4. Fast Combat, Fast Play
   
   Play faster than your players can think and you will create all sorts of great tension. However, a small warning: be fair and consistent in your treatment of play, otherwise your players will rightly think you're being unfair.
   
   Examples of speeding up play:
   
   • Make it a house rule that when it's a players turn to announce her/his action they have five seconds. If they take longer, they miss their turn, or they have to go last, whatever you decide.
     
     Then, as you go from player to player, hold up your hand and count down with your fingers. (The fingers add extra pressure on the players to make decision quickly.)
     
     Make sure you announce your five second rule before the time comes to use it though. Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to suddenly start using it at an important time.
     
     
   • Start action resolution with a different, random player each time. Some games have an "Action Announcement" phase before action resolution. Instead of starting with the same player during each Action Announcement phase, choose a random one. This forces all the players to be ready all the time...constant tension.
     
     
   • Give automatic successes to small challenges so you get to important and major challenges faster.
     
     I've been on both ends of this and my friend Marcus puts this technique to great use when he is the GM:
     
     One time I was playing and I announced my character was trying to do something. I can't remember exactly what, but he said "Ok, you made it, what now?" I was totally stumped because I expected a lot of dice rolling and some time to think while my action was being resolved. Instead, my action was successful right away and I had to immediately think about what I was going to do next. Talk about stress!
   
   

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5. Build Tension Through Clues Leading Up to the Encounter
   
   Instead of moving right into an encounter and starting the dice rolling, lead up to it slowly and give creepy clues to build the tension.
   
   The best time I have ever experienced this was when my friend Django was the GM. We had discovered a cave complex that was inhabited by a monster. Instead of having the monster jump right out at us and getting the encounter started, Django scared us silly with clues as we wandered from cave to cave, leading us inevitably closer to the monster's lair:
   
   • deep and nasty claw marks all over a cave's walls
     
     
   • an intermitent howling that seemed to be more than just the wind...
     
     
   • a skeleton of an old victim; and from its position, indicating a sudden and painful death
     
     
   • large piles of offal, signs of a huge beast
   
   I remember that when we finally got to the monster we just turned and ran. Of course, we told our village a different story when we got out of the caves but that's another matter. ;-)
   
   

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6. Lay Tension-Building Groundwork Before Exciting Encounters
   
   Plant seeds about the terror, difficulty, ferocity, danger, etc. long before the time finally comes for the encounter. This tip closely relates to Tip #5, but takes a longer view approach.
   
   Use such things as rumours, legends, stories, clues and physical evidence to communicate to the PCs that bad things will happen if they ever deal with ___________.
   
   And it doesn't matter whether or not you have concrete plans for this future encounter. You will find a way to use it when the time comes. And when you do the players should be very tense.
   
   This method, making up rumours and stories about things you don't have planned yet, is also a great way to keep your campaign flexible and helps when you GM on-the-fly. Keep your rumours vague enough though so that you don't paint yourself in a corner.
   
   One final note, remember to break up the tension once in awhile too. Everyone will need release from time to time or you may have players taking stress-leave from your campaign.
   
   

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