Remind me never to play in one of your games…

If we don’t have enough to play our regular session, we’ll play “DM Roulette”.

DM Roulette is where there is no set adventure. The first person chosen as DM (by however method) starts and makes stuff up off the top of their heads. After a predetermined time (usually 30 minutes), another player is chosen randomly and becomes the DM, with the previous DM assuming that player’s character’s role.

The fun of this is spontaneity, every person gets to be DM and add to the story, and you never know the character you’re going to be playing after your turn as DM.

P.S.: This really works best if you have pregenerated PCs of various levels.

I ran a one-off or two where I switched things around. I’d hand out characters to break their patterns – I’d give the ‘loner’ player a brash extrovert to play, the ‘leader’ player would get the subservient body guard, the ‘healer player’ would get the semi-psychotic assassin so on.

Quite apart from the one-offs being a lot of fun, they also challenged peoples’ expectation of themselves, and loosened them all up a bit.

Changing the seating arrangements is a great idea to spice things up without making things too new. I’ve noticed the seating arrangements often reflect our character interactions: those sitting closest tend to interact with each other more than those across the table.

I noticed different styles of play, or at least different tactics used when players sat next to a different person.

This to me seemed to be a good thing. Unfortunately, shortly after we change play locations, the players tend to pick spots around the table and stick with them.

We are going to change venues again in another week or two so it’ll be interesting to see where people position themselves.

Although our regular game runs on Monday evenings, one weekend a month someone in the group will run a one-shot. This lets everyone play a different character which helps to keep from getting burnt out on the one they run in the long-term campaign.

All hitting the great outdoors together was a great time for our group, although the other tourists STARED at us so when we admired the Old Man’s Cave site in Hocking Hills by saying that it was a “very defensible position” and “what sort of climb DC would you call that rock formation?” and deciding where we would put the watchmen and where we would build our camp and calculating how many rounds it would take to get to the top.

Then we went canoeing, which began an entirely new geek discussion about ships and water and whether my friend, who brought a Japanese-peasant-style conical straw hat should try to cause Vietnam vets to have flashbacks.

A couple of the members of the group took up golf and German longsword and other similar activities together, as well, and I was always up for a good discussion about philosophy or literature.

Occasionally someone would bring their computer over and we’d have a LAN party. It really boils down to the fact that your gaming buddies are your *buddies* and while it’s fun to share one hobby, it’s even more fun to share *many* hobbies. Gaming is cool, and so are many other things, so it became kind of a meta cool fest.

That way it’s not something that’s always expected, and it gives an added fun factor on especially intensive combat or RPing sessions.

I’d suggest the seating to my group, but I think I’d get hit on the head. I’ll have to try MSR’s suggestion on what to do when the whole group doesn’t show up.

Really cuts down on table chatter.

These one shots stir the pot quite nicely. Seating changes, it may be at a different place, and everyone is playing something entirely different.

Plus its a great way to try out different systems, new rules, or just play something out of your ordinary routine.
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Another way of keeping things fresh is to pitch a change-up in the type of adventures your run. For ex. If you mostly run straight forward quest-type adventures grounded in the real world of the setting, maybe a horror adventure in “the land of Dreams”; instead of your normal creeping horror game, have the characters deal with a mundane mystery with a happy ending to remind them what they are fighting for.

• Switch up the seating — no one sits where they usually do.

People tend to get into a pattern of sitting in certain locations around the GM, or used to sitting in certain places in a gaming space. It can cause someone to be in the spotlight just because of where they are sitting. Conversely it can cause someone to fall back into the shadows if they are, well, back in the shadows. Moving people around can make sure that games have different flavors, or that contributions are heard from all around.

Setting up a good gaming space can be one of the hardest things to do, but in the end it can be one of the things that has the most impact on a game.