UK TRPG designer. Writer of 'Sworn by Ghostlight' and 'The Cold Dark' and loads of nasty little dungeons you can die in.
TRPGs: yuigaron.itch.io/
The Cold Dark (Print): https://pandiongames.com/products/the-cold-dark
Matthew John | Yuigaron
the game being fun is literally always up to the group
A lumbering giant grabs a character by the neck and slowly walks towards a cliff to throw them off. It takes multiple turns.
Have an NPC try to drown a PC in a muddy puddle mid combat.
The cat plays with her new little mouse-food for the entire encounter, not harming it until just the right time.
A very minor example and one that is difficult for players to overcome is *running away*. They were trained that this was loser behaviour, and that they will win if they 'just keep fighting for longer'.
Of course, they did not.
Running away also causes you to become lost in dungeons. Also more fun.
A certain game we played for years trained my group to stand still pushing buttons until they won.
Now we're playing much 'lighter' games there was a (far too long) moment where that play still happened and it made the games seem less fun.
They weren't less fun, though. We were.
Having to cook a frozen pizza slice by slice in the air fryer because the oven stopped working.
Quite happy that I've literally only had to spend a few hours on two separate days each and I likely have Months (perhaps over a year if attention is retained) of game to be played.
Having a lot of fun prepping a Mythic Bastionland Realm, although I made plenty of errors and had to redo certain things a few times (my bad).
Currently filling out the extra details and writing up a few key Sites.
Sites are pretty cool, but I wonder when they will become repetitive to create.
Run your next hostile encounter so that none of the characters under your control actually take any action to hit the PCs with weapons or magic and instead attempt to disarm, restrain, or otherwise impair them. At most they might use the terrain to harm them. It'll be much more interesting.
In last night's game of The Isle, two characters—previously separated from their group by a very long fall down some stairs—got chased by horrific sea life DOWN another level, and entered THAT room meeting a very important person (iykyk).
They didn't survive.
