What my GM generally does is intentionally confuse us, or distract us with the comedic relief and then the only way we can catch his disception and figure out he's trying to screw us all over is our collective "hey wait a minute" attitude.

That...And the big NPCs....Simply put, While thinking up your next adventure or session...Overestimate the NPCs when writing the adventure and thinking up baddies to throw their way. You can always tone things down on the fly, which is considerably easier than beefing up on the fly.

Also, try laughing at odd times for no apparent reason. It's great to see them squirm.

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Power corrupts. Absolute power is pretty neat!

Visit the Red Dragon Inn!

I have a whole bunch of these: http://forums.rpghost.com/showthread.php?t=28009

There's also some good (if that's the appropriate word) suggestions by others.

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You call this a .sig?

Official site for the Lost Souls Pack
and the Midian Dark Fantasy Role-playing Game

*Gets up and walks over to T_CATT11. Walks around and peers.* "Are you my old DM?" *Waits for the old "You don't know, do you?" followed by diabolical laughter.

I sometimes have a poker face, they tell me, sometimes not. The big problem is honestly by now they all know me too well and know what to look for in my descriptions, SO, I throw in red herrings a lot. They'll be arguing over the meaning of the tree bent like dragon by the wind, which causes ME a great deal of merriment and means I can break my game face as the land shark sneaks up from behind.

I GM Shadowrun. Instead of laughing, I try to give some life to my NPC's. All of them, so the runners can't tell quiet who is the important NPC's, (they change often.) ;-)

I also use a GM screen, Not so the runners can't see my rolls, but so I can hide my face if need be.

Digital Doom

the creators may die, but the game lives on.