Happens so often I don't bother planning that concrete anymore. I draw a blank map, so just in case fight x happens here I can fill in the dots to whats there. Or if it happens at y or z as well. Quite often my players do all sorts of freaking incredible [censored] that screws my game up. Consequently I have learned to improvise, and I have also only plan out entire sessions in a few hours and leave them loose and malleable. Although just in case my battery is dry that day I always have one backup adventure ready to go. Usually not needed though.

Case in point. They were hired by the Lok Revnants to help gather information on the Trade Federations military expansion into their region of space. All is going well for a few situations, and then it was like the force itself just didn't want them on this plotline anymore. They were planning one of the biggest things yet. Reprogramming the droid army on board to help the Lok Revnants take the ship with almost no effort. So there they were in one of the droid storage rooms, and he rolls a 1 on his use computer. Another 1 on his check to hide his hack attempt. A 1 on Initiative. Suffice to say they had a speeder chase down a long hallway out into the hanger of this immense ship. All the while being chased by B1's on Stap's. So their speeder gets trashed just at the end of this tunnel and bursts out into the open in flames. The two party members alive pick up the rest of the crew and haul ass into the nearest ship. They take off super fast, but a huge Blaster Cannon manages to get a few glancing blows at them. The shields manage to hold off the attack (barely), and off they go. At this point I tell them that the rest of the hidden weapons on the ship are coming online and starting to fire any moment. So they decide a quick hyperspace jump. 1 on Navigation and 1 on Pilot. So I go to Hypserspace Mishaps chart and roll the percentile. 100... roll again twice add both results. 100.... again... and finally one more time. I got 100. I decided to go for a unique effect at this point. They jumped 40 years into the future and crash landed on Hoth.

House rules, writing my own campaigns/adventures, taking player ideas and running with them
I always tended more to the storyteller end of the RPG spectrum so I never liked rules-heavy systems like D&D

We learned early on not to do too much prep. Some parts of the world were in great detail on a technical level. A great city with a few towns but beyond that, it was pretty much off the cuff. Prepackaged adventures were mostly inspiration with some background info. The Traveller games were the same. They ranged from 4 guys and a 200 ton Free Trader (think Serenity) to toons so rich they buy a fleet of ships and claim a small empire of their own.

Don't be a slave to the rule books.
Don't be afraid to let the players write the story.
Make everyone roll a die once in a while for absolutely no other reason than to keep them guessing.

Some of the best games ever played were complete departures from what was originally on the agenda.

A good DM will make rulebook adjustments. I still have my campaign put away in a big box, and now I am trying to see if my new friends have an interest in playing.

Remember the PnP game Boot Hill? so I guess now we have Red Dead Redemption.

My friend was asking about the "funny" dice. Well , we needed to do calculations that computers are doing now anyway in the background.

I'll see your Boot Hill and raise you Top Secret !

Crap, now you have me thinking. What was the name for the first electronic d00's? They had 2 strips of red lights (tens and singles) and looked like drag racing starter lights, and the mechanism was about the size of a cucumber.

edit: it wasn't Lou Zochii's invention; for some reason Dragon Bone sticks in my head.

Oh! I've been begging to get this question answered, since I can never get a good one.

When you want to roll d100 (d10 twice), which role counts as the ten digit, and which is the one digit?

Depends if you're the player or the GM, or how desperate you are, or how much time you have in the game, or how many beverages have been consumed, or if the sun has risen, or if your GF is nagging...

Real Answer: Generally if rolling 2 die 10's, each will be a different color, with one color being designated as the 10's before the role. If only one die, then the first roll is generally the 10's.

At least that's how we played

updated nominations if I have missed anything let me know

You can get d10's designed to be the 10s as well

I've just started a new WFRP campaign so far I have run Mistaken identity which only went down so so, I think Shadows over Bogenhaffen will go down better. I'm going to read through death on the Reich and be ready for the PC's to go sandbox.

old_andy it actually sounds though that the session was a success, to be honest it would be faster for me to answer how many times it hasn't happened

Which made me scratch my head at the no betrayal rule, a major Paranoia designer saying no betrayal. Maybe it was the bad feedback he got for SRIK for WFRP, but the material is considered to have good ideas, just not fitting in with the campaign, and some players felt he had written a fantasy paranoia adventure (its a hosejob all the way through). But removing betrayal is removing an important plot tool, and in the case of SRIK he mafe it so it was likely the PC's could not go on to Empire in Flames. As a stand alone its fine though.

His whole anology thing comes from working on WFRP, and a direct influence can be seen on his work on TES

I used to keep a saphire blue marble in my dice can. When someone would ask what it was for I'd tell them it was a D1

I still have and still play the second edition. I think that was still D6 but not sure. I still play the game but I find the rules quite confusing. It'd be nice to actually find some people who still play this game so I can properly teach my step-son how to play it. I guess my advlt mind has a tough time following and understanding the rules unlike my childhood mind.

And Hero Quest was an awesome game. You still got to build your character and what not. There were stories and you could make up stories. You just had an actual map/board to play on rather than drawing your visual aids.

Don't get me wrong I really like Hero Quest but I think a line has to be drawn somewhere, or we end up adding a lot of boarder line things. In fact I want another good dungeon crawl game at some point Descent seems to be the best modern one, but no character advancement in the base set.

I have heard a lot of good things about the latest Star Wars RPG might be worth checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Wizards_of_the_Coast)

That reminds me of a Cyberpunk adventure I was playing with some friends and my luck ? with die rolling is extreme towards both ends of the spectrum. The party had split up and I was with one half of the party in a car somewhere, while the other half of the party was in a camp elsewhere, needless to say the party I was with got into a mobile firefight and through some obscenely bad rolls I managed to shoot the driver of our car in the back of his head with an EMP rifle (if I mind right) killing him instantly, needless to say given we were going at high speed this caused a crash which killed that half of the party. The driver also had the remote detonator for a cortex bomb planted in the skull of one of the other party members back at the camp which of course was triggered and blew them up as well.

I've also managed as a player for a roll to try to figure out a language, to end up with a result which would have let my character learn one of the most esoteric dead languages from a single page of a book.


Back to the topic at hand, I'd have to say for the PnP I've most enjoyed it would have to be the H.e.r.o. system for it's sheer versatility and the campaign's I've played using it.

Orcbait has put up http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1106909-best-pnp-rpg/page__view__findpost__p__16208685 so I'm going to go ahead and lock this one