To run a role playing game is to tell a story. The main goal of a role playing session is to entertain. The players and the GM alike are their to explore the possibilities of the plot and to enrich each other's role playing experience. A good role playing game session is one that leaves you feeling something. A game is a lot like watching a film, many people watch films for different reasons, horror for a scare, drama for the emotion, action for thrills and a bit of (often) mindless violence. An RPG is no different to a film in this regard and I suspect the films that you regard as boring are only so because they evoke no response from you! Your role playing sessions should thus evoke this response; scare each other, thrill each other, entertain each other and feed your imaginations with each others thoughts...this is the making of a truly awesome role playing experience.
If games turn into dice rolling fests then, stop, take a break and come back to it when you're all in the mood. Don't be afraid to give the GM a break, it's difficult to keep thinking up original plots for adventures, trade places every now and again, let the GM play a game or two you'll all be better off for it!
Scheduled games only work for long periods if the schedule is not too tight and indeed the game plot is robust enough to survive more than one or two games. Play when you want to, don't force yourselves!
The GM has to find stories to tell, inspiration is the hardest thing to come by when you are trying to manage a group. The steady flow of new experiences for your group are in your hands... give them too much and they'll get confused, give 'em too little and they'll get bored. As GM you must carefully nurture your group giving them enough story to hold their interest and enough experience to keep them excited.
Never give away too many freebies, while this will make a player happy in the short term, you'll be setting a dangerous precedent for the group and before you know it you'll have a party of super-heroes on your hands that are near unplayable as they are just short of immortal.
Don't be afraid to let players reap the fruit of their stupidity, after all your game is trying to be believable! if someone is dumb enough to pick on a dragon, they should indeed expect to die.
As GM you are expected to be judge, jury and executioner if needed. This is not to say that you should lord over the players imposing your will upon them, but you should ensure that arguments are quickly resolved and that desicions are reached quickly, fairly and realistically as often as possible.
This said it is thus common knowledge that the GM's word is indeed final in the most immutable sense. A warning to the would-be power-GM's out there; if you are an arse, you'll end up GM-ing yourself as players simply won't attend your games. Feel free however to not invite problem players to your games thus ensuring the harmony of the group.
Writing an adventure is much like writing a short story, with one important difference... you never know how the adventure will end!
When designing an adventure it is often best to start with an over-all plot to build you tale within. It is crucial that you provide a valuable reason for the players to be on you adventure otherwise your game will quickly lose meaning for your party. A plot is the skeleton of the story, essentially what you would read on the back cover of the DVD and the message you'd get from a film's title and perhaps poster art. It's often a good idea to give your adventure a name that you can share with your players almost as a sneak preview of things to come. Why is the party here? What is it the party is to achieve? What are the consequences of the plot?
When designing your plot and the plausible/valuable reason for the party to be their, you need to begin to understand who the major players in the tale will be. Who is the arch-enemy? Who controls what? Who can the party regard as allies? Fleshing out these alter-ego's often introduces sub-plots and other adventure opportunities. The more real-world detail built into the encounters your players have other AE's and places the more gripping your story will be.
Plots should personally involve one or more party members, helps to keep the party motivated during the game. If the party digresses from the plot, it's often interesting to see where it leads, but as GM you should find a way to lead the party back to the main story or perhaps encompass the new sub-plot into the main story line.
Try to develop a pool of factual data that the players can learn and know to be true. Make sure that if you name the ruler of County Riskanur count Alfred Riskanur the fourth that the his name is still that five adventures from now or at the very least that his offspring/usurper now sits upon his throne! Keep an air of consistency to your games and once again the players will feel at home and be able to better interact with the living breathing world you create.
It is best to write all other aspects of you adventure as a series of interconnected scenes and thoughts. Some scenes are mandatory and very detailed as they are the essence of your tale. Some however may be entirely optional and as such probably shouldn't be massively detailed as they may never ever get played. It's easier to manage a whole scene of role playing at a time, the length of the scene itself is unimportant, only that it has a start and an end that are definite and that you as a GM know which scene (if any) should be played next.
A useful tool in keeping an adventure real is a time line. if you plot all of the major scenes on a time line and make the players aware of the passage of time in the game, then they're more likely to feel like real participants in a real world as the story unfolds. This will also help to maintain the flow of the story and create a real sense of urgency.
When designing a scene you'll need to have clear descriptions of the environment including terrain, encounters, treasure, traps etc. It's probably best to have two descriptions for each area, one that is apparent to the players and another that has all the detail for the GM to read ahead of time. It's also extremely useful to have a simple list of points to remember for the GM to use during game play. The GM stopping to silently read a lengthy paragraph in the middle of a game is extremely boring for the players and should be avoided at all costs!
Once you have selected a plot and designed the scenes to include in your adventure. It's a good idea to decide how many scenes you are going to use in each game session. Try to use a few tricks of the film trade, keep your players guessing, end a game session with a cliff-hanger or two.
Dividing up an adventure in this way makes it digestible for your party, don't make adventures to long, otherwise your group may well have forgotten why they are there when they make it to your final scene. In order to avoid this Adventures should rarely last more than three or four game sessions.
Once you have reached the end of an adventure, you and the players need to decide if they would like to carry on using the same alter-egos for another adventure or if they'd like to start afresh.
It's often highly desirable for players to hang on to their AE's as this is the only way they'll manage to increase in power. As such the pressure is on the GM to find new ways to challenge the party of now more powerful AE's.
To make multi-adventure games possible you need bigger goals for your party to achieve, goals that are so important and all consuming that each party member has an excellent reason to stay with the party and continue adventuring. Think of the classic tales that do this like the tale of Sinbad the sailor or The Oddesy, One common theme and master plot with many sub-plots each of which an adventure in itself able to be told separately or as part of the whole epic.
Once the GM has created the adventure the group of players and GM meet up and each scene is played through. The GM describes a scene to the players who each describe their actions in turn, this process of action and reaction continues until the scene has served it's purpose.
The GM may require the players to roll dice to determine the outcome of the actions they attempt or he may simply inform the player of the outcomes.
Each scene in the adventure is addressed in this way until a conclusion to the adventure is reached.