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My name is Joanna Winters; this is the first of a number of articles that will take my real-life experiences and tweak them for your tabletop sessions. Don't think, however, that I've led some illustrious career, some monumental history that sends me enduring the mounts of Everest. I don't work for Discovery or Natgeo: I merely find answers for what I and others find puzzling. Often times, these answers are far more mundane than their circumstances lie.

the fantastic, every session, is also boring

Most tabletop sessions revolve around the fantastic: dragons, mindflayers, vampires, drow, carrion crawlers, a veritable checklist from your favorite bestiary. There's nothing wrong with this: most people roleplay exactly for these reasons, to live in a movie world entirely different from their real life. They get away from real life because there's just so much of it: the mundane everyday is quite boring. I contend that the fantastic, every session, is also boring.

When the PCs arrive at a town and are immediately confronted with tales of melted iron statues, burned houses, stolen treasure hoards, and giant objects in the sky, they'll jump to the idea of a dragon to be vanquished: it's just the natural thing to think. What if, instead, it's merely a human arsonist, an entirely mundane explanation ballooned into rumors and tales by a frightened populace? If the PCs are equipped for dragon fire, what will they do when they find out it's only a teen, testing the waters of his own battle against adult authority? Alternately, consider a local magistrate orchestrating these attacks, and only making it appear like a dragon... but for what reason?

Similar flips can occur with any typical monster: instead of a humanoid vampire sweeping down from the abandoned castle each night to drain the blood of an unsuspecting populace, consider thirsty worms that burrow upwards, feasting on the sleeping homeless. Tiny little worms are rarely scary, rarely a "monster", and rarely worthy of a sword thrust or a magic missile, especially when six feet under. When a character's traditional means of problem solving are taken away (no weapons, no magic, no negotiations), what will they do instead?

Instead of a mind-controlling psionic, it's the waitstaff's ordered use of poison that sends the Countess into senility and rash decisions (see Curse of the Golden Flower for inspiration). When adventuring in the Underdark, players expect to find drow and duergar, but have them instead run up against a group of lost children, filthy, scared, and deranged, believing the PCs to be another danger to be faced and overcome.

When everything turns out to be a traditional monster, the fantastic becomes the mundane.

keep them in the tavern for months worth of sessions

Expectations don't always end with just monsters. We grin each time we play into the "you all meet into the tavern" stereotype, but stereotype and cliches are exactly what you should look for when creating a unique experience. Start the characters in a tavern, and then keep them there for weeks, for months worth of sessions. Literally, the characters can't leave. Vertigo's recent relaunch of House of Mystery, where the characters are trapped in an inn to tell stories as payment for their room and board, is a good example of what you can do with just one tavern. If the PCs can't leave the tavern you've placed them in, you've not only made it a brand new challenge for them, but also for you: with only two floors and 17 rooms, how do you keep everyone entertained for an entire campaign?

Instead of an ambush in the middle of the night, ambush the group in the middle of the day. Our own world often demonstrates that, when bad things happen, you're entirely on your own. Cries for help go unheeded, and out-and-about citizens continue on their merry way, oblivious and unwilling to the needs of the PCs.

Go ahead, send the players to a dungeon, but make it one floor and one room, abandoned and with no conflict. Or, make them slave through a 20-floor dungeon, traps and treasure at every turn, with the final room containing the somber and expected single pedestal with a calmly glowing scroll hovering just above it. When that scroll turns out to be just a grocery list, like the note below I found on a phone's message pad, and not the massively powerful spell or document one would expect, the question and wonderment of "why?!" becomes the new motivator for the adventure.

Treat your players to the fantastical mundane by playing to their expectations of dragons, drow, and dungeons, and then bringing our own world's tendency toward the simplest explanation.