I'm the designated cook in my group. Last session I GMed for the 1st time in 11 years, so I decided to make homemade egg rolls (did the frying and everything) and some Thai curry. Both went down well.... oh yeah and they thought I did a good job for the most part.
@ piiman think fluff, fluff, and more fluff. Try approaching it from every angle (not just the combat.) Think about really interesting things your character might do that are nice descriptions of him, and at the same time don't stand out when on a run (like leaving a calling card of a red rose or something dumb like that.) Maybe it might help for you to write down a few interesting things that you might do in character and write them down. Try making it descriptive, but brief and interesting. It's tough, but for instance when I was GMing I threw in a character on the fly in a city that was anchored to a choral reef with the hub being a carrier ship (the setting was created by another player not me.) He had tattoos running down half of his face of different pieces of coral, and the outlines of the coral were shimmering slightly with little silver flashes moving in and out of the coral itself as the party looked at him. He was wearing an ingram mac 10 and tried to get the party to pay 100
a head as a bridge toll. Needless to say the party threatened him so he backed down to 100
total, but as they were leaving the party hears the guy say "At least my daughter can eat for a week now." The medic in the team then notices that the men have scurvy (as vitamins are hard to come by in an island city in the middle of nowhere.) The medic has a change of heart and helped them out a bit more by giving them some vitamin C packets and a few other little small goodies, which I then took and played off of if. The guy later helped them out tremendously at the end of the story as well as helping them out with general knowledge of the area on the spot.
That is the kind of stuff that promotes good RP, so even if your not the GM try to make things flow better. I rewarded the party for good roll playing in that situation with not just karma (which everyone got,) but with actual in-game goodies as well.
