When You Feel Evil...

[Arcaneye]

I know that after a long time of arguing with my players, I finally fall into the dark side and come back with the full force of hell.

I make the evilest puzzles and mazes that can be thought of. I have my favorite little checker board floors that the whites teleport you places and the blacks usually are bad...very bad.

And of course, the black ones are all over the place. There is one square that summons a flaming sphere that follows you very slowly. Of course there is a random time in which three fire balls land on three random squares. I love being evil.

[venatus]

i know the feeling i even baught a book full of deadly traps and puzzels in order of their difiiculty of coures i don't go flow blown evil very often but i am usually quit evil durning most of the game sessens and my players have more fun that way.

[Hussar]

What is possibly worse than being evil is being completely and utterly unbiased. Make all of your rolls in front of the players. All of them. No fudging either way. I've found, that by doing this, I am a much nastier DM than I ever was. Even fairly minor encounters suddenly become much nastier.

I rarely kill players. However, now, I also never SAVE players either. Now, it is entirely up to the dice as to whether you live or die. As DM, I set the stage, but, it's up to the players to survive.

My players are learning too. They are starting to use good, solid tactics and even cooperating on occasion. Instead of five or six individuals, now I have a pretty good team. If your players figure out how to cooperate effectively even some of the time, they become far far more powerful.

[JSUN]

Hussar said:

What is possibly worse than being evil is being completely and utterly unbiased. Make all of your rolls in front of the players. All of them. No fudging either way. I've found, that by doing this, I am a much nastier DM than I ever was. Even fairly minor encounters suddenly become much nastier.

I rarely kill players. However, now, I also never SAVE players either. Now, it is entirely up to the dice as to whether you live or die. As DM, I set the stage, but, it's up to the players to survive.

I have never fudged a single die roll and I advocate/ agree with what your saying here. Great advice.

JSUN

[EK - Shadow of Death]

I love fudging dice rolls - its makes for better storytelling. However, Hussar's idea sounds great - I'd like to try it out sometime.