I play a long time now and from time to time a GM comes up with aweseome ideas to connet the ingame and real life experience of the player. Some times it is just coincidence that such a situation come up. Let me give you a few examples:
1. Four player sitting in a lorry in a big old dwarven mine and drive down in the underground. All players sitting on for chairs (positions like they would sit in a lorry (two in front to behind)). Now the GM says: "A left curve is coming what do you do" Then the players have to lay left or right on there chairs (depending how intelligent or how lucky they are *G). One player has the brake ...
2. You build up a huge dungeon on the table and shut down the light. Every player has a little plate with a snap light stick to see what he rolls. Every player also has a miniature with a snap light stick so he can only see only about 4 fields around his miniature on the map in the dungeon.
3. You build up a city in dense fog and for the fog you put cotton wool on the map. Where the miniatures are you remove the cotton wool
It would be great if you could give me some examples how you implement such a 'technique' or situation.
Thanks in advance and I hope we can collect some awesome game mechanisms here to make even more fun for our player :)
That's a neat little twist there with the chairs, seems prone for accidents though. the 2nd isn't bad but with the high amount of playable races that have darkvision it feels like it'd come up rarely, and at that for likely only a very few amount of characters
My suggestions then.
* RL loot! A tad bit limited depending on how and what you're playing with and having to invest some money into the idea but it's a big difference between getting a +3 arbitrary sword or an actual miniature/lego sword or whatever of any kind. A not so expensive solution could be to buy any ol notebook, the shabbier the better, then color it/burn it/cut and paste a new cover et voila; a completely unique and customizable spellbook.
* The dread of time. Simply add an hourglass in any encounter with that of say a powerful entity or my favorite; Death himself. If the dm pretends to study the turned hourglass during a conversation it'd feel as if he's judging you, mayhaps waiting afore his assault.
Would like to see more ideas as well.
Give the party a riddle on the location of a powerful artifact. Hide something that looks like the artifact in the session room and hint it's location. In order to retrieve the artifact a party member has to solve the riddle and break the fourth wall to get it.
In a Vietnam game, the dm played radio broadcasts from the period. He also had a lot of sound effects (helicopters, gunfire) and a flair for description. We were dragged into 'Nam.
Eventually I plan on either building myself, or getting custom made, terrains, buildings, and so on..... Likely, between DwarvenForge and HeroForge, I hope to one day be able to run particularly immersive campaigns for my players.
In the mean time, I'm on the hunt for various SFX CDs for the fantasy genre, so that I might be able to play them at appropriate times. Wandering down the hall of the haunted house, cue the creaky boards, the eerie wind, and when they trigger the haunt, the blood curdling death scream.
Oh, and dimmer switches (with accompanying little flash lights).
So far, all I've got going for me is background music. Tavern music, ball/gala music, and of course, battle music.