How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Rupert

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."

We have a running joke from a situation a long, long, time ago where the GM forgot to mention something critical to the players are they entered a room. The players acted on the information they had, and then the GM says, "The orcs wake up and attack you". Of course, he never said there were orcs, asleep or otherwise, in the clearly visible beds but he was sure he'd mentioned it and that the players were just being brazen and assumed the orcs wouldn't notice them moving through.