All good ideas. I tend to do none of them so implementing at least a few of them should help!

Exploder wizard said:

"It doesn't take much to make henchman #1 memorable. For example in the movie Die Hard there was a scene featuring Gruber's henchmen in a lobby entrance of the building preparing for a police assault. The henchmen are all loading their weapons and taking positions. One of the henchmen (Al Leong) glances down into the glass countertop and notices the boxes of candy bars. He slowly reaches down and snags one after glancing around to see if anyone is looking. It's hilarious! It only takes a moment of screen time and it provides a bit of character to an otherwise generic thug."

I Love Al Leong

https://www.alleongfanclub.com/

Quote from: Vic99;810487I Love Al Leong

https://www.alleongfanclub.com/

I remember him from Big Trouble in Little China.

My #1 tool: interesting npcs. Motivations yield responses, and events more or less create themselves.

One important thing to remember is that the players' interest should drive how much time is spent on what. If they want to move on, don't fret about it. If you don't provide enough that interests them enough to explore, then that's a problem to address.

Be a Player more often.

Go to conventions and store gamedays, be a Player. Play games you would not play otherwise. Watch what works for you and what doesn't. Copy and use the ideas and actions that worked for you in your own group when you run your games.

Quote from: Old Geezer;810296"Listen!  Do you smell something?"

Like the night Phil ran us through the Red Fort in Delhi, and hugely enjoyed making us literally sweat with his description of just how hot and miserable it was in the 'Underworld' of the fortress's Mughal casemates and lower chambers?

(And just how surprised he was that the Indian Army didn't just shoot him out of hand for sneaking around the place?)

Quote from: Exploderwizard;810392Giving mooks a personality helps bring the world alive. Good movies make good use of screen time featuring mooks to make them memorable.

Yep.  Stunts I've used:

* Party fighting a bunch of mooks in a grand melee.  Mook #1 goes down.  Mook #2 flings herself across Mook #1's body, screaming with grief and rage, before whirling back to her feet over him, plainly hellbent on defending him to the death.

* Party rogue, with two NPC assassins in tow, infiltrating the enemy army's castra with an eye towards mapping out a surgical strike.  She finds herself at an aid tent, where a priest of the Wicked Evil Faith is busy setting up bandages and herbs for the next day's efforts.  He turns out to be a genial duffer, and they chat amiably for a few minutes before she goes on her way.  On the way back, however, one of the assassins goes in and waxes the priest, saying that he could have remembered her face.  Poor rogue is so distraught, she tracked down the priest's home parish and made a donation for his soul.

* Good Guy Nation is being invaded by Bad Guy Nation, and party is helping the guerrillas harassing enemy columns.  They run into a fellow they've met before, the mook henchman of a Bad Guy.  He's a sadistic bastard, and they know it, and are somewhat astonished that he's working with the guerrillas.  He knows damn well what he is, he hisses, and he knows damn well he's bound for a bad end.  But he's a patriot, damn it, and he's fighting for his country, and the party can go fuck themselves if they don't like it.

Y'know, Pencilboy, I don't know where you live.  But following Chirine's comment, I've another key bit of advice.

Okay, this is all very well and good for me to say -- I'm a native of New England.  But if you want to make it real, go to some of these places.  I've been in colonial forts.  I've been in a stockade.  I've walked the clamshell-paved streets of Mystic Seaport.  I've been on USS Constitution when the cannon has fired and on the Mayflower II on a turnaround.  I've pumped bellows for blacksmiths, been in Pilgrim homes, hauled ropes to the songs of the last shanteyman of the Age of Sail.

I can't tell you how much this helps to make it real: to know what a low-tech farm is really like -- to know what a period inn is really like.  To know what a cobblestone street is like after a heavy rain, to know how heavy a mainyard on a whaling ship is on a dry summer's day (and wonder how much it must have sucked to be raising it in a howling winter's gale).  To know what a cavalry charge coming right at you feels like ... I can depict it because I've seen it.

If you're at all in a historic area, visit such attractions.  If you're not, seek out the local reenactors.

Lots of good suggestions from people. A little while back I dropped my thoughts on what GMs typically do and some cues into a mind map.  Here's a link in case it's of use to anyone:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/v724pvfga9faqld/GM%20skills.pdf?dl=0

Study fiction writing.

http://www.amazon.com/GMC-Motivation-Conflict-Debra-Dixon-ebook/dp/B00DZ01FRY/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1421688933&sr=8-9&keywords=gmc&pebp=1421688910269&peasin=B00DZ01FRY

Great advice. Thanks!

The other thing I would recommend studying is stagecraft.

See, I no longer worry about most of the NPCs in my world.  Yes, the village blacksmith's wife's sister's husband's cousin's dog has a name.

Absolutely nobody gives a fuck what it is.

Just like when you visit the Baron in his great hall to talk to him, all those nobles and retainers and knights and ladies and such?

They're a bunch of extras standing around going "rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb" for a day's pay at SAG scale and a catered lunch.

Because if the players are there to talk to the Baron and one of the party wanders over to the sidelines and starts talking to some random guard, either that person is bored with what is going on in the main part of the scene, or the person is poking at the stage set to see if they can punch a hole in the canvas.

Either way, the correct solution is to talk about why they aren't engaged in the main direction of the scene.

And even if it's a sandbox game, if the game has reached the point where "let's go talk to the Baron" is what the players want to do, somebody saying "I'm going to go over here and talk to this peasant slopping the latrine instead" indicates something isn't working right.

(nods to OG)  It's why the listings of NPCs of most RPG products drive me crazy: they're just freaking wasted space.  Overwhelmingly, a city writeup (say) is loaded down with loving descriptions of the monarch, the chancellor, the knight marshal, the high priestesses, the guildmasters ... complete with detailed combat stats and lists of magical items.

The players aren't likely to encounter these people.  They're not going to do business with the Grand Master of the Alchemists' Guild; they're going to patronize Malabar the crazy blind alchemist on the corner, and him they need to know about.  They're not going to fighting Duchess Dame Beryl val Almareth, the Knight Marshal and commander of the national military; it's Captain Tamara, the commander of the 4th Company of the Potent Destiny Legion, the one who the party rogue lurched into and spilled his ale all over, who'll demand a duel, and we need to know her stats.

Hell, I've been running the bulk of my parties out of Warwik City, the national capital of one of my world's great seafaring powers, since around 1979.  The first player to meet the King was just two years ago, and she's a native of Warwik City who's now a foreign princess married to the admiral-in-chief of the Kingdom's strongest ally.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;810593Like the night Phil ran us through the Red Fort in Delhi, and hugely enjoyed making us literally sweat with his description of just how hot and miserable it was in the 'Underworld' of the fortress's Mughal casemates and lower chambers?

(And just how surprised he was that the Indian Army didn't just shoot him out of hand for sneaking around the place?)

Lordy, I'd forgotten about that.  I think we were surprised they didn't just shoot him too.  How the hell did he get away with some of the stuff he did?

Quote from: Old Geezer;811135Because if the players are there to talk to the Baron and one of the party wanders over to the sidelines and starts talking to some random guard, either that person is bored with what is going on in the main part of the scene, or the person is poking at the stage set to see if they can punch a hole in the canvas.

Do you reckon that's always true?  What if the Baron was seen by that random guard in a poor disguise consorting with ladies of the night instead of the Baroness?  My players often try to talk to the "window dressing" for some info from the common man while still moving the scene forward...at least I think that's what they're doing.