I've been playing P&P games since around the time of AD&D.
Around maybe four years ago I decided to take a break from DMing to relax and work on more pressing real world matters.Close to a month ago my wife asked me when do I the next time I think we could play some pathfinder might be. I told her that I would start working on something right away because she highly enjoyed playing when we did manage to find time to play.
For the past month I've been putting together adventures and then scrapping them because I feel that they aren't good enough or I don't like the direction they've taken. Years ago I used to be able to pull adventures and campaign out of thin air over night. Now I can't even finish mapping out a dungeon. I'm only twenty five so I know it's not my age creeping up on me. I think I'm just in a dead moment.
What can I do to get some of my old drive back?
Short version: I'm burnt out after taking a break from gaming. Help.
Watch some appropriate films, especially ones that inspired you when you were younger.
Conan, the Thirteenth Warrior, 300 (not old but still)
Read some books to get you going again....
Have your wife take a stab a DMing a one off....
Go back and reread any old adventures you saved...
Ask the boards for input on your ideas....
I'd say grab an adventure path. I think as a DM we sort of train ourselves to constantly be looking for ideas. A player might think about the game an hour or two outside the actual game session every week. DM spend alot more time on that. Even if you arent actually working on it, things are knocking around in your head.
You have to get back in that habit. And the best way to do that is to avoid the frustration of writers block and just start playing again. The fastest way to do that is with premade adventures, and paizo is the best in the business for those.
Those are pretty good ideas. Any suggestions for when I suddenly have a massive blah moment mid-level design?
Also, maybe consider trying a little world building.
See if building a custom story world might get your creative juices flowing as you strive to fill the new world with an adventure that will do it justice.
on a side story, (to support Lincoln's suggestion #2 above), when my group was stuck the aspiring GM opened the floor for us to pitch storyworld ideas, and the flood of wackiness that ensued ended up with us playing a steampunk, post civil war western game of Mage the Ascension. The communal brainstorming session that created this storyworld got everyone very invested in the concept of the game.
There's a thread on the boards here called "1001 Campaign Seeds." I think it's pretty fantastic. Give it a look HERE!
I could always start outside and narrow things down once I have the surrounding area created. Normally I focus on the immediate area around the town/dungeon and expand.
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Those are pretty good ideas. Any suggestions for when I suddenly have a massive blah moment mid-level design?
build the entrance to the dungeon, and the primary encounter(s), and the final room(s) and encounter(s)....
... if you are stuck with the middle... postpone it
allow yourself the luxury of walking away from it and coming back later...
... start keeping a scrapbook of dungeon room/encounter ideas that you can plug in later when you are stuck.
Or intentionally leave the map unfinished in case you need to insert: hostages, extra monsters, foreshadowing, traps, locations that support the ongoing narrative...
Those are pretty good ideas. Any suggestions for when I suddenly have a massive blah moment mid-level design?build the entrance to the dungeon, and the primary encounter(s), and the final room(s) and encounter(s)....
... if you are stuck with the middle... postpone it
allow yourself the luxury of walking away from it and coming back later...
... start keeping a scrapbook of dungeon room/encounter ideas that you can plug in later when you are stuck.
Or intentionally leave the map unfinished in case you need to insert: hostages, extra monsters, foreshadowing, traps, locations that support the ongoing narrative...
I think I'm going to do just that.
Thanks for all the awesome help everyone. I think I'll be able to pull something together now.
Run an adventure path (or a couple of modules).
Yes i know that they cost more than making your own adventure up but they save A LOT of time becuase you are paying for other people's time.
There problem solved.
First, consider your audience; in your case, your wife. Now...get rid of your audience completely.
That's right - don't think about your player(s) at all.
I find when someone asks me for a game, I immediately think: "what would THEY like to see on the table?" Then my process gets bogged down with trying to impress them or make them happy and I never really get anything done from second-guessing myself the whole time.
So, if you had no players, and you wanted to play a game, what would YOU want to see?
I've been on a fairy tale kick lately. A lot of eastern European culture studies, old folklore, CRAZY fairies. I mean there were some SERIOUSLY messed up stories going on out there...and some of them were told to children! Yikes!
Ok, anyway, I did this a little while ago. I had a bunch of buddies and they were all rampant board gamer/tactician types. They wanted more and greater action scenes and didn't want "to be bothered with the talky-talky" as one of them put it. I'm a big story guy myself, so I was in a rut running a game for them.
So I sat down, blanked them from my mind and thought about what I wanted to see. Witches. Werewolves. Weird, occult stuff mingled with the more wicked little fey in these old stories: tales about strangers that drain your blood for bad manners or steal and eat your baby.
So I started there. Who cares about 4 guys with their battlemat; my game would be about a witch tricked into a bargain for her powers. It would have a bogeyman that stalked children's nightmares and stole their eyes, then their souls. There'd be a goat you'd have to shear to kill but doing so would doom a little girl.
No, it didn't all come to me at once, but blanking out my audience helped get the faucet dripping. It still took me a good long while before my adventures were actually on paper. And, predictably, my players didn't want them.
So I got new players. I put the game down and BAM! I've had a year of good games. Now that I'm running the game I want, I've added little bits here and there to include the players and their characters. But the bonus is: now that I'm interested in my own stuff, I have been creating SOMETHING for the game non-stop for this whole year.
One of my players calls it "obsessive creativity." That's a nice way of saying I add a lot of fluff to my game. But out of fluff comes adventure.
Sit down and write some fluff. ANY fluff. "Deep in a wood howling madmen gather before an ancient stone."
From that, depending on your proclivities, you can literally draft ANY game you want. A fan of Lovecraft? Its a cult ushering in the Great Old Ones. Like fairy tales? Maybe its a fairy revel. Perhaps you're really adept at undead/horror; the men are dead, returned to foul unlife to spread a plague of devastating tragedy.
Take my advice for what you will. Or else don't, and print this post JUST so you can then crumple it and toss it in a fire. Whatever you do though don't give in to writer's block. Dead air like this is unnatural; your muse WILL come.
Well Mr.Hoover I think you just became my muse.
I just thought about what I would like to see and I thought of something interesting.
The pc is part of a small to mid sized town. the town's main export is either grains (perhaps some sort of corn or wheat?) or livestock (I'm thinking cows or some sort of large pig). The town also has a church, a smith, a tavern/inn, a clinic, and a old partially collapsed iron mine. The town is on the edge of a forest supposedly "protected" by an insane druid that eats humanoids. (Perhaps it's actually a tribe of carnivorous fey, lizard folk, or some sort of forest bound/cursed undead)
Having a unexplained sudden interest the mayor of the town decides to gather several people for an expedition into the mine attempting to reopen it. Of the twelve workers sent in only one returned badly wounded, semi-delirious, and speaking of monsters lurking in the mines. He was sent to the clinic for emergency treatment but he died of "natural causes" shortly thereafter.
Turns out that the head of the clinic is operating a hidden lab under the clinic experimenting on the townsfolk that have "gone missing" or have been sent for treatment and died. He's forcing grafts onto their bodies and breaking their minds until they're little more then howling beasts. (think bio-engineering meets steampunk)The only thing keeping the villagers from realizing whats going on is the fact that the clinic really is a clinic focused on saving people and treating sicknesses. All but one or two members of the clinic have no idea whats going on.
Days after the incident at the mine large numbers of livestock are being found slaughtered in the fields. Two-toed footprints are found amid the carnage and can be traced back to a nearby marsh.swamp (perhaps they belong to some sort of were-crature or a large, bestial, deformed, bat-like, vampire). The creatures making the footprints are hunting the head of the clinic at the behest of an outside influence.
What do you guys think?
Can somebody explain the sock drawer joke?
Can somebody explain the sock drawer joke?
It's a reference to your comment about losing your drive. Variation on the old "I found Jesus, he was behind the couch all along" joke.
EDIT: Ninja'd by Lincoln Hills. Blasted slow internet is killing my response times.
Ah. I understand now. I suppose in context that can be kinda funny.
@ Kanna-lanna-ding-dong: this sounds like a fun foray into some serious dungeoneering. What kind of theme are you shooting for? I know you said "bio-engineering meets steampunk" but do you want just some capricious folly in a dungeon, are you getting all dark and horror-themed w/the torture of the villagers or what?
I ask b/cause the opening theme will inform the rest of the adventure and campaign. Sounds like you'll need to read up on a lot of aberrations, fey and magical beasts.
It might be that there's a disease the clinic is trying to cure w/these experiments. On the flip it might be that the humanoid-eaters in the woods are failed experiments. Yet another angle could be that the docs are trying to create a means of dealing with whatever's living in the forest. Finally perhaps there's really no good explanation for the experiments: some otherworldly force is simply making the clinic perform them for whatever nefarious purpose of its own.
I can't wait to see how all this turns out. Somebody get me some popcorn and an obnoxiously large soda; this is gonna be a good show!
