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So I was out with my family at this Mayan themed resturant and as I was walking back from the restrooms, I saw one of the actors in costume trying to sneek up behind me while carrying on of the sticks they use in some of their shows. The first thought that came to my mind was that that would make a great encounter. The PCs are exploring an ancient ruin when they are attacked by a native monk who belongs to an order charged with protecting the place. What kind of odd places inspire you with your games?
I get inspired by all sorts of things. Sometimes just by watching the news on TV, sometimes by books and movies, or sometimes when I visit special locations on a holiday. Curiously I hardly get inspired by fantasy books.
Terrain. I'm always inspired by pictures of dramatic landscapes, and it's even better when I get to go there myself! I like to imagine how it would look with a castle or a tower or an ancient city somewhere in the scene. I also think of how it might work for possible wilderness encounters. I think travel should be an important and interactive part of the game, and many of my DMs have just glossed over it in the past. So I try to put locations and spots that are just "along the way" for the party to encounter; if I can think of something that might live there, friendly or not, all the better!
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I seem to recall this thread's been done here before...I might be wrong though. Anyhow My Inspiration {tm} usually comes from other people. Just talking about pretty much anything in a coffee shop long after the sun goes down with a hot cup of coffee...I can get the oddest sparks of ideas. A discussion about homeless and violence leads to the creation of an urban gang in a port city. Discussing politics leads to creating a new type of government and differant characters for leaders. Talk of comparisons between eastern and western theologies leads the the backstory for a conflict between two differant churches. Heck, even just single encounters; "I was on my way here and the oddest man in a hat stopped me" suddenly turns into an encounter with a bardic pickpocket who steals the wizard's familiar. And yet if I tried to just sit down and come up with them, I couldn't. Odd.
Geez, where to begin?
Quite frankly, there's already a good start going here on what inspires me:
Terrain - vacations (driving in Scotland from Ben Nevis to Skye on a day with lowering clouds), coffee table books, National Geographic, all good sources of inspiring terrain that gets the imagination juiced up
TV and movies - sometimes it's plots of shows, ideas gleaned from documentaries on PBS, travelogue shows (like the one that I watched about the living areas carved out of a massive Polish salt mine)
Books - and not always fantasy/sci fi either, I've had a hankering to try running a Roman campaign based on Caeser's Gallic expedition for a number of years now, just no time to actually really develop it
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I get a lot of my inspiration from history. The real world has all kinds of crazy, fantastical events in it that I gladly steal for my campaigns and ideas. Particularly when it comes to achieving some kind of aesthetic in the doodles I do for my players, I use real historical examples to inspire my images. I also get a lot of inspiration from fiction, as has been mentioned before, and I'm working right now on a D20 Modern campaign setting that is directly tied to HG Wells War of the Worlds, but set about 150 years after the "Martian" Invasion.
For me, movies do the sweetes trick. I just need to get "rolling" and inpiration comes swiftly and nothing gets me in a better mood than a good movie.
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My main wells of inspiration are history, chatting with friends, and fiction. Historical people and events are incredibly inspirational, you can't get anything stranger sometimes than reality. Chatting with friends gets the creative juices flowing and I'll think of some strange thing to throw into the campaign. Fiction is obvious.
I'm going to go with movies and books. Taking scenes out of them, even quotes or characters is really easy. Comics are also quite useful.
I could run an entire Conan campaign on just the comics for instance.
People are my biggest source of inspiration. It doesn't matter if it's my mom, my boss, the mailman, or the guy who just cut me off in traffic. Everyone is someone's arch nemesis. Everyone has someone who loves them that they don't even know exists. Everyone has a story.
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I find that the best inspiration is BBC News.
I have a habit of creating very topical stories and adventures which play play around with reality a little, changing it as necessary and to make the nice twists. Plus I learn loads from the reseatch stage! :)
This probably steams from my old love for the Final Fantasy and Metal Gear series of computer games - though I've sort of given playing computer games up in recent years.
Another source is Wikipedia for its plot summaries of obscure books and films - all ripe for the ripping. Two good examples that I'm currently playing around with are Megazone 23 and Detonator Orgun.
Cheers! :D
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National Geographic - a priceless scource for inspiration. I'm buying every issue I can get my hands on; even ancient ones. Highly recommended as a great scource for inspiration.Hey! Aren't you supposed to be blended with battery acid and consumed by Sebastian for inspiration?
That...That's far more disturbing when you think of Absinth as a person as opposed to a beverage...
History, constantly. I can barely read a history book without mentally sketching out a world heavily-inspired by it. I spent several weeks on a fantasy version of Japan where the figurehead emperor was actually the last of the dragons that brought people to the islands and had been asleep for a few centuries. Other, longer-gone dragons set the bounds of the various provinces (forgetting the correct term right now) in establishing their own realms. But they vanished and with them went arcane magic.
Then magic returned to the isles sort of in the place of Buddhism in real-world Japan's history. At that point I started trying to think up good fantasy things to plug in the place of Korea, China, and India.
The present project is more or less the Holy Roman Empire, but not so tightly bound to actual historical dynamics...unless Kostchtchie mustered an army of giants from Himalaya-scale mountain range somewhere in modern western Belarus and set out to wipe Bohemia, Prussia, and Hungary off the map and in exchange for help in repulsing him, the aforementioned converted to Christianity and agreed to cooperate with the psionic Inquisition. I'm not as up on my Central European history as I could be, but I think I'd have noticed something like that by now.
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Hmm, my inspirations come from some wicked concotion swirling in my mind. I tend to like wars, genocides and general heroism in the face of certain doom. World War 2 has just about an endless amount of material to draw upon for just about everything Epic. I love stories about sacrifice and moral choices. I like testing the lines and blurring them.
For sculpting a story or adventure, it is just about the same for me. I think of some cool ideas and they then form into some cool moments in a story. From there I have to bridge the gaps with logic and believablilty. Gaps really are about signifigance and plausibility. Once you have a cool idea, you have to make an extreme effort to make it meaningful in the context you imagined it in. This gap filling process is where you seperate the "idea people" from the "I did it people".
Other people have completely different approaches to writing, but I really work so I can reach a spectacular moment (that I imagined). Might I also say that the "Gaps" sometimes yield even more brilliant content then the actual moment I'm working towards.
If you love your "Good Ideas" and think they are good enough to share, you have to drag yourself through a horrendous amount of work to prove it to "someone else". I am considered one of the best DMs my players have ever run into, but I am also one of the most obsessed DMs when it comes to fleshing out the details and preparing for adventures. I am working on material months ahead of the actual game so it will be thoroughly smooth and cool when it is finally live.
Cheers,
Zuxius
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National Geographic - a priceless scource for inspiration. I'm buying every issue I can get my hands on; even ancient ones. Highly recommended as a great scource for inspiration.Hey! Aren't you supposed to be blended with battery acid and consumed by Sebastian for inspiration?
:-)
I guess I'm lucky that - so far - Sebastian hasn't considered me as a "fine blend". Really, who would enjoy Absinth from germany? *runs*