Don’t tell the players the rules.

They have to guess. The game can’t start until they reverse-engineer the whole system through sheer luck.

Oh no! All RPGs are delayed because the ontologically evil minions that it’s morally uncontroversial to kill have unionised and gone on strike.

If you don’t want your games to have to deal with the ethical implications of violence, you’d better be prepared to give them at least a 10% raise and double their vacation days.

Think a nice thing about your GM.

It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s free!

Worldbuilding is hard. Ease the load by not doing it.

You are fighting perfectly spherical orcs in a vacuum. Who wins? You have 45 minutes, motivation is ignored for the sake of the exercise.

Every time you get a Nat 1, something bad happens to Mike Donati.

He’s just some guy somewhere. You don’t know him, and he doesn’t know why he gets these random bursts of bad luck.

Sad but true.

When players give you character ideas, only accept them if their backstory includes the word “red”.

Don’t tell the players, it’ll be a fun puzzle.

Just don’t have any world-building.

Where are we starting in this game? How should I know? I’m not a scientist.

No R, no P, only G

No NPCs.

Every time a character is introduced, you need to go find someone to play them.

“So, have you created a character?”
“Sure, here you go!”
“Excuse me, this is a character _sheet._ I distinctly told you to make a _character_. ”

Ensure that your game is truly balanced by giving all characters and NPCs exactly the same stats.

Your character has a dark, terrible secret.

So secret the other players don’t know it. The GM doesn’t know it. You don’t know it.

But it’s there.

All enemies have super-hearing,

If any PC makes any noise, every bad guy in the setting shows up to whup their ass at once.

Avoid minmaxing by having everyone make the character of the player they hate the most

This game has three skills:

• Combat
• Bake a four-layer red velvet cake
• Miscellaneous

No-one will tell the PCs about plot hooks, because they like the PCs and don’t want them to die.

Instead of giving your players exp or advantage for good roleplaying, give them a little smooch.

Worried about how your players will respond to your big reveal?

Have 5 big reveals, one after the other, and then let your players vote on which one gets to be canon.

­Roll separately for each player, so three of them land in acid and instantly take 10d20 damage, while one is just having a pleasant swim in a picturesque lake.

D1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0…