How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Yeah, that's a good idea. It's a lot easier to forget the Duchess you're secretly conspiring with your ally to frame for murder is literally standing right across from you when it's something the GM said about the scene 10 minutes ago alongside the rest of the infodump than it is to do the same when you can actually see her there.

I try and describe scene in roughly reverse order of importance if it's not a combat moment. That way hopefully the players will not have forgotten important stuff because it was early in the description. I try not to have too long a description so they don't tune out. However, if someone interrupts me part-way through, I'll probably answer their question, or resolve their stated action and skip the rest of the description - "You were so focussed on spotting and then charging the orc that you didn't pay attention to the rest of the room and didn't notice the bear-trap the orc had planted in the doorway. Ooops."