Narrative Surprise

Phil Nicholls blogs at Tales of a GM, where he writes about narrative gaming, faster prep and more story. He is currently running a HeroQuest Glorantha campaign in a home-brew setting. Phil has written for Johnn Four’s Roleplaying Tips newsletter and produced a selection of self-published pdfs.

This essay is taken from the archives at Tales of a GM.

http://talesofagm.com/

This essay was written as a contribution to the travelling RPG Blog Carnival. In that month it was hosted by Mike Bourke at Campaign Mastery, where the topic was A Stack of Surprises.

Narrative Surprise

For many years, my understanding of surprise in RPGs was bound up in the traditional concept of who attacked first in combat...