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So I'm not new to writer's block, but it's the first time it's hit me this hard in a long while. None of my usual tricks are working. I write adventures and campaign bits for my home game, just to keep writing, but even that has become like swimming in molasses.
Its kind of killing me too because I finally have what I felt like I was missing. For years me and the family have been shoehorned into a little starter house. Now I've been fortunate enough to move into a bigger place that among other rooms has a basement space for me to use as a gaming room and an office. Now I have my own space, its quiet with the right lighting, and I'm surrounded by all my gaming gear.
And. I'm. Not. Writing.
Any tips or tricks you all have for curing this dreaded malady?
Write about peripheral stuff until something strings together into something real good. Flesh out some NPC's or the lore about a place or item, you will usually find a couple threads in that writing exercise to make for something truly compelling.
Do something tedious and boring that you need to get done.
I know I always do the small stuff like writing a backstory for someone or an item or place to start, that leads into maybe a theme or something to build off of. I'm making a prison in a graveyard that was meant for a knight, thought to be a his grave but really a prison made for his betrayal of his Lord; his legend was preserved while he was really imprisoned for his love of the Lord's daughter. I was stuck, so I started making surviving NPC's that knew the knight, his fellow three other Lord Knights; and made some interesting conclusions: another knight loved him but she knew that he had eyes only for the princess, while his brother loved the knight who loved him. That was interesting but didn't lead to much, until I went and started making the prison where he was tormented, and driven to the abyss; his place of torment was twisted by his eventual darkening of spirit, twisting his captors into abyssal versions of themselves. He lies deep below, in an Iron Maiden, revisiting his pain upon those who dared to ruin him. All that together made me envision a failed attempt at his rescue by the two knights mentioned earlier, which culminated in a dire betrayal of them; he had a choice, escape in a shattered body and mind, or to embrace the darkness and truly repay his captives. It lead to a lot of extra lore and new NPC's being introduced which will give the scene more impact. I just wanted to share an example to illustrate my process, it's not a great example I know, but hopefully it helped.
Music helps sometimes (at least for me).
Revise something you already wrote, until the new-writing end of the brain kicks in?
Maybe stretch a different corner of the writing brain by writing something you woud never normally write?
Try and make sense of something randomly generated?
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I go here when I'm bored, writer-blocked, etc. and I pick up seeds of ideas. I don't try to force myself to come up with something, I just scatter these horrible, Lovecraftian seeds around in my mind and wait. Then I watch an old favorite film, listen to something new, read some news articles or old novels, and so on. Eventually, something will click and the entry I've read previously gives me an unusual take on something mundane and familiar. Before I know it, I've got a blank page open and jumping headlong into a new project.
Something else I do is randomly generate dungeons outside of GM planning. When a roll gives me something I didn't want in that particular dungeon, I jot down some vague requirements and roll again. After a few minutes, I've got a enough specifics to design the start of a campaign. I probably never use the dungeon I attempted to randomly generate, but the ideas that came out of it make the whole process worthwhile.
SCP is good, but it's a derivative of creepypasta's which imo are really good ideas to look at for inspiration.
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Creepypastas get too caught up in style to be of any use to me, whereas SCP provides a common form and focuses on the specific "threat" and how to contain it. It's ideal for GMs looking for idea seeds.
So I'm not new to writer's block, but it's the first time it's hit me this hard in a long while. None of my usual tricks are working. I write adventures and campaign bits for my home game, just to keep writing, but even that has become like swimming in molasses.
Its kind of killing me too because I finally have what I felt like I was missing. For years me and the family have been shoehorned into a little starter house. Now I've been fortunate enough to move into a bigger place that among other rooms has a basement space for me to use as a gaming room and an office. Now I have my own space, its quiet with the right lighting, and I'm surrounded by all my gaming gear.
And. I'm. Not. Writing.
Any tips or tricks you all have for curing this dreaded malady?
I've been trying to write things for 35 years now. I have a lot of great stories and things to say but I just don't know how to motivate myself to put them to paper. You are one of the most amazing and gifted "adventurists" posting on this board, so I hope you find your muse! I'd read anything you wrote!
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DMC: I'm flattered and honored dude. I've read a lot of your posts as well; very creative stuff. It's hard to get stuff down but once you get over that hump and finish something its an awesome feeling.
@ JA/necro/HBP: thanks for the ideas and resources. I usually have music running but maybe I just need to switch it up. Ironically I spent the weekend buried in my old 1e DMG rolling up three random dungeons, but none of them "spoke" to me. Still, it's worth revisiting again.
I like that dungeon a lot Jackie-boy. That's good stuff. More importantly I like the process. I'll have to get on the interwebz, get some inspiration, and then pick out a detail to embelish.
Thanks, Mark!
I did something a year or so ago that helped me for awhile. I stepped out of my "comfort zone" of fantasy and pulp action and wrote some personal things for others to read. Nothing deep, but just a month long series of "Things I Love" that I posted on FB for my friends to look at. That was fun and it did make me think that fantasy might not be the route I should take if I ever managed to get over this hump.
Thanks for the compliment Mark, it's very much appreciated, as the example I gave was vague and wasn't the best. Funny story: the whole knight storyline came off of my inability to make this Lord I spoke of stand out at all, so I started making the Legend of his greatest knight, and then I felt (because the theme of the game is exploring the ruins of this kingdom that fell) that it wasn't the whole story, so I made the legend and then did revisionist history of it, coming to what I described. It's a sidetrek, just to shed insight into the state of real affairs; but it netted me a dungeon, a princess, four knights (I know I only described three but I like to compile loose threads for later), an area, fully lored out items and characters, and some insight into where I was stuck, namely the Lord.
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+1 to what DM Cal said about your awesome posts.
Not sure what it is you're trying to write, or if you're one of those people that tries to hammer everything out simultaneously.
So for the “shotgun method” of covering multiple things I find myself writing (table top RPG related, at least) –
Personally, I write myself a lot of notes about design intent things for when I’m “outlining” campaigns and then try to go back in and fill in the little details when I’m inspired about those areas. (I’ve been doing a lot of orc stuff lately, inspired by some Shoanti & alchemical goodness that I’m going to steal for a nice schism in my FR campaign).
I then go back and try to pick 3 or 4 paths my PCs are likely to either be willing to stumble along or be somewhat dragged along (depending on how pro-active / reactive they’re feeling during that time) and pull some flavor and throw some encounters together along with some NPCs and “visuals” that I’ve made note of wanting to have my PCs experience.
I steal from Jim Butcher’s advise on writing characters and try to make sure they are memorable with some sort of mnemonic trait I can use to bring up their description with my players. I also try to think of a few “memorable quotes” so I can get their “voice in my head”. If they have a specific combat role or socially antagonistic role, I try to think about their tactics, backgrounds and biases and see what I can do to have them mesh in a more organic manner. I also try to reuse bit characters I’ve described that PCs may have discounted or belittled in the past.
I try to pick two or three of the below and go with whatever is currently most striking my fancy:
Boss Battle
Environmental challenge
NPC (options: Antagonistic, Recurring, Victim, Potential Employer, Potential Employee, Contact, Infamous, Spy, Red Herring, or Ally)
Venue Backdrop (ie where the encounter is going to take place, if it’s in an urban environment, I need to write something more than a dungeon)
Hook (ie how the PCs find out about the scenario and what it is that makes them want to engage the challenge)
Backstory (what I think the PCs might find interesting about both the set-up &/or resolution of the scenario, or how I can write it in to make something about the PC[s] seem even more cool)
Future Dev potential – will I be able to use some of this for a future encounter / scenario / role-playing opportunity, what can I put in to make it awesome when it comes back
Hero Moments – is there some trick / schtick or feature of one or more of the PCs that could make them really shine that doesn’t get to come out often? – go with it! (ex maybe a PC has a mostly useless favored enemy or a backstory that could come in handy to give them additional perspective or make them realize that the NPC is a great liar and that they believed them right up until they started talking about the PC without realizing who the PC actually was…)
Hope that helps !
-TimD
Also, do you have a whiteboard / chalkboard / something to doodle on that you can look at on a wall? … that sometimes helps me out if I have stuff I can look at and move around a bit while organizing.
What might help is shifting your creativity into something else. Try drawing instead. No art talent? No problem! Grab some graph paper and draw out a map or a dungeon. Now start making notes on the dungeon, then write up a description the dungeon. Add myths, monsters and characters and fill up that space.
See, now you are transitioning from one craft (art) to another (writing). Your mind is swimming with ideas from the map you just made and you are primed and ready to write up some tasty nuggets. It's a smooth artistic slight of hand.
-MD
PS: I highly recommend The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Even just reading a chapter can often light a creative fire. Highly recommended for any writer or artist.
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So much good advice folks thank you! A couple folks have mentioned drawing random dungeons and that's my usual go-to. I'd suggest it on to anyone else suffering blockage, at least as far as writing gaming material.
My ritual is to grab a graphing notebook, a new retractable pencil and a protractor. Then pull my old 1e DMG and a few dice and start rolling. This usually clears me out but this time it didn't do the trick.
Yesterday I got some stuff I'd ordered from Frog God Games. Among them was a little light reading in the form of Rappan Athuk. I went to all the obvious spots in the book: the well, the final FINAL room, the graveyard and Mouth of Doom. But then after some dinner and a clear head I found myself drawn to the wilderness adventures; particularly a ruined keep
I don't know why I honed in, but I did. I felt this electric tingle in my brain so I kept going. I got to the treasure of the site. Among other treasure it lists
I'm currently stumped on my own homebrew campaign. The party stumbled into the beginning of a dungeon hack that has nothing to do with RA and I need to finish it before the next session this Saturday. But for a moment I let inspiration take me and I came up with this as an angle for a side plot involving 2 megadungeons from FGG: The Lost City of Barakus and Rappan Athuk. I tweaked and modified; hope you enjoy
For over a century there has been a myth around the lands of Endholme. A legend of an ageless woman, agents of her unseen legion and the bronze figurines they bear. Many myths have a basis in fact and this is one.
Her true name is Ozonhageda and she is an adult bronze dragon. She appears to mortals in a human guise and bestows on the virtuous bronze figurines. These allow her to track and gather these men and women, who call themselves the Bronze Legion and refer to their patron as the Mother. She cares for her agents when she can, always in secret, and keeps them working in disparate cells but always for the good of all.
The Legion is not always lawful good, though they are more often good in spirit and subtly guided toward lawful ends. The Mother in Bronze has striven against the great evils of this land like Orcus and Devron for over a century. However she has gained an adversary, an equal: the red dragon Aragnak.
His progeny, Bezzalt has spied on Ozonhageda for years and now their conflict is coming to a head. A group of bugbears seek to loot her lair of her most precious possession; her only egg. Worse yet, they have the support of a powerful drow cleric from her temple in the utter depths of Barakus. She and her aranea servant have woven a powerful curse into a net of the darkest webbing; once applied it will trap the Mother in her human guise and weaken her physically.
And so the plan is set and the trap is made. All that needs be done is have Ozonhageda appear to the next agents she's chosen for the legion. Luckily for the bugbears, a new group of adventurers has just arrived in the city...
So its not my finest work and it still has some holes that need patching, but not bad for reading 2 sentences of treasure from a random encounter.
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Go, Mark Hoover, Go!
That's amazing. I'd run that game.
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...not bad for reading 2 sentences of treasure from a random encounter.
This is usually how my best ideas crop up. I remember drafting half of a campaign after rolling "flying buttress" on some d100 chart and browsing visual examples online...flying buttress. I don't know--brains are weird.
Good luck and keep some dice/d20app close at all times!
Welcome back Mark.
Save me a seat at your table!
-MD
And sometimes, in the dead of night, inspiration strikes. I just wrote my next adventure, encounters and all, in less than two hours.
The current story line involves resurrecting one of the party members who was killed by my son's character after the deceased killed a valuable NPC in cold blood. My son felt bad about it and offered to help figure out a way to resurrect him. Last week's adventure was a jewel heist (it takes a 10000 gp diamond as part of the ritual) that was a blast. This is the one where they encountered Red Vengeance, the vigilante crime fighter in the city they were in. The jewel heist went off way too easily, fooling them into thinking they'd gotten away with it. It was the escape that threw them. Usually the hard part is the first part of a game...lol. They were completely taken off guard.
So, they have to find someone who can resurrect their friend, and through various sources of information they discern there is a wizard who is reputedly powerful enough to do this. Sure enough, there is, but the catch is she's a lich.
Now they're nowhere near ready to take on a lich. She's just there as the means to an end. She offers to resurrect their friend, but the price is steep. Not only do they have to give her the 10000 gp diamond they stole in the last adventure, she demands they bring her a child that she can rear and pass on her secrets to as she grows. Knowing this group of Chaotic Neutrals and Neutrals, half of them will try to do it while the other will half try to prevent them. Regardless, it's a moral dilemma. There is an out where the child is concerned; one of the PCs can give up adventuring and stay with her (there are a couple of players who want to play something different and this would give them that chance).
If they refuse and attack her, she teleports away, leaving her undead minions to deal with the party. There is a magic item in her lair that she was going to use to bring back their friend (a Cauldron of Resurrection), so if they can figure out how to use it they can resurrect him themselves. But first they have to survive the encounter with the Githyanki bounty hunters looking for a magical sword stolen from one of their comrades, the lich and her minions, and each other's violent tendencies. I'm excited about it.
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I enjoy going and writing poetry. Short fiction 800 words a story or chapter.
Father
Mother
Child
Uncle
Sibling
Blood relatives
Hut
Cattle
Plough
To cultivate
Radish
Muddy
Footprint
Crow
To scream
Pirate
To attack
To thrash
To threaten
To intimidate
To March
Deck of ship
Waves
To deficate
Musty
Sound of sleep
To drop off
Bald
Slave
To spear
Rhinoceros
To tan
Stained
To sieve
To stamp
To powder
To extract
Mica
Silver
To measure
Radius
Wedge
To crack
To move
To erect
To dam
To incite
Revolt
To overthrow
To pull down
To destroy
To laugh out loud
Cheering
To scatter
A Poem.
Every word in that poem I pulled from an English-Indonesian dictionary because the words ended with the -uk phonetic and aranged them into a story.
"I made a mistake..." The old man coughed up what little remained of his life and struggled to reach out to the youngster who had devoted her life in tending his sickness and she simply placed his hand in hers and looked at him with sympathy.
"In what way have you made a mistake Pater." Katare kissed his hand and focused her attention on him. What mistake could you possibly make who led us to this place before the City of the Gods?
"Do you know my full name child?" Katare looked at the old man who had been Clan Patriarch all her life. She only knew his name was Pater.
"Pater." He smiled at the name and Katare smiled at his response. After a moment of rest he shook his head.
"That is merely part of my status with the Clan. Dwei-Pater is the full word but that is not my name." Dwei-Pater. Katare contemplated the full name of the old man before her. It had to have been his name. it was the only thing he had ever been known as.
"I don't understand Pater." Katare shook her head and reveled in the sensation of blissful ignorance. he put a hand up and brushed his rough hand across her forehead.
"Put your hand over your forehead and look toward the City of the Gods." Katare seemed confused by the idea but she turned to look with her hand across her forehead.
There was no City. The discovery was distressing.
"I don't understand." Katare turned back to the old man to find he had passed, his crooked lips parted oddly and his were closed as if he had felt pain.
Katare climbed to her feet and turned to look at the far side of the river and walked toward the bank of the river that had separated her Village from the City. The city had been there. She had seen it all her life, even the others of the Clan had seen it. And now? Nothing.
"I don't understand. What does it mean?" The hands of her mother enveloped her.
"What does what mean Katare?" Katare pointed across the river at where the city had been.
"The City has gone." How could her mother not see the obvious? The City of the Gods had been there all her life.
"What's a City?" What's a City? How could her own mother not know what a City is?
How could her mother not see or remember the City?
"A City is like a hundred villages and each is a very big village with hundred Clans living there." It was the only description Katare could grasp herself. Liya shook her head at the alien concept though the feeling of being surrounded and suffocated came to her. Bad. The word described everything she felt as her daughter spoke. The Slap came from nowhere but it was filled with fear and hate and rage and loss. Liya had lost her daughter to that which was Bad.
Liya dragged her daughter toward the River and pushed her into the water, the child flailing against her mother's strength.
"You are not my daughter." The words seemed to scream across the Village drawing everyone's attention. Liya pushed the thing that was not her duaghter down into the water and held her under until she stopped struggling. Liya let go of the body. allowed it to simply drift down river.
Katare wanted to let go. she desperately wanted to let go, but now here body revolted against her choice and she coughed and breathed - struggling for air. She spewed river water from her lungs and tried to climb up the mud of the bank. She collapsed in the reeds and closed her eyes and did not open them until it was night and frogs made their evening calls.
Katare didn't understand anything that had happened. What had she done that was so wrong? The City had gone and her mother had hit her and tried to drown her in the river. The River. Which side of the River was she on? She watched the flow of the water. She was now on the opposite side of the River. She didn't know how to swim. She couldn't go home but she knew how to make one. She needed shelter and a fire and food.
Food. Frogs would do for now but first. Her hands dug into the clay of the river bank and collected clumps of it. and she threw it on the dry grass until she had made a huge clay bowl. Katare raised the edges of it and added more until it was enclosed with a clay smoke stack with a reasonable hole in top. Straw and wood all went in the hole as fuel. Frogs. A quick blow and they were dead so she skewered them on twigs and placed them over the smoker. And the fire. Stones were a little harder to find down here but she had beads made from them sewn to her clothes.
The Frogs cooked - or rather burned but she didn't really care now. She was the only one who remembered the City of the Gods. That had to have meaning.
I Wrote city of gods after seeing a piece of art showing primitives living in the shadow of a futuristic city.
Adventure module writing, I went to old modules with primitive stories and networked the basic dungeon maps into room numbers linked by lines. I then built a story around something.
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Well thank you again to all the advice on this thread. Every one of you have helped me in one way or another, as last night's game can attest. I started to have a good idea for another campaign and that helped clear the fog for my actual game so I went through the steps: over a few days I worked out a bit more, thought about gaming less, and listened some different music (went back to my 80's pop roots). In the middle of all this an idea came together from Rappan Athuk - a sub-level.
The current obstacle for my guys was really uninspiring: a horde of goblins. Sure, they worship Lamashtu and they are doing some bad stuff, but at the end of the day they're just a goblin horde *yawn*. I think that's part of what was blocking me up.
On the level of the dungeon my guys are exploring I had a hall going off to one side which is supposed to end at a chamber they haven't found yet. Our very last encounter I rolled the session before last night was a gelatinous cube and I had it coming down from that side hall. So I took some of my own advice: sometimes if your players haven't SEEN part of the map, it doesn't have to stay the same as the first time you drew it!
I added a sub-level all around the gelatinous cube. Slimes; molds; alchemical ooze swarms. The idea started swirling: what if there was an alchemist down here? The goblins had employed some Alchemist's Fire; what if they didn't make it themselves?
So I thought up a sub-level of a deranged alchemist who's looking to experiment on people with slimes. She gets ousted from polite society and flees to the Lower Warrens (megadungeon PCs are currently exploring) and sets up shop near the goblins. She does a deal with them: they help her get settled and keep supplying her with victims, she keeps them in alchemical gear.
Only the alchemist gets greedy. She's burning through her "experiments" too quickly so she takes a couple errant goblins. A war goes down and the goblins survive, but they take heavy casualties and accidentally unleash many of her "test subjects". Now they've cordoned off the alchemist's sub-level until they can properly cleanse the thing and annex it for themselves.
Enter the PCs. They just happen to stumble into the goblins' lair right when they're on high alert but in recovery from their recent skirmish. Now the party has a choice: they can keep crawling through the goblins' lair or try their luck in the alchemist's sub-level. As a form of enticement I've dropped the hint that there may be a secret passage topside that the alchemist had built but didn't get the chance to use.
Now the party is hooked. They have changed course and are heading down into the alchemist's lair. Last night they fought through 4 rooms (in a 3.5 hour session) and did very well (all CR 1 and 2 threats so far; party is APL 2) but they haven't really gotten into the worst of it. Once they get through the next door they found, they'll enter the heart of the sub-level and really begin to understand who they're dealing with.
So I wanted to use a race unusual to my game to make the alchemist stand out, and I settled on a grippili. She was a frog-like humanoid who not only had depraved experiments but got her ideas by worshipping aberrant gods. The heart of her lair is decorated with giant frog-like humanoid statuary. These beings are distorted and hideous. Then deeper in she has an image of a gargantuan froghemoth that she worshipped at the feet of. Finally she was using alchemical ooze swarms to slowly torture and eventually kill her captives, all the while trying to turn people either into monsters or humanoid-slime hybrids.
Again, many thanks for getting me out of my rut and on to this sub-level. The PCs have discovered a sacred site on the outskirts of the main dungeon entrance. I'm going to have the alchemist's "back door" come up right near this site so that this gives the party a bit of a win. If they survive to the end of the sub-level they will have cleared the section, found an easy way to access the dungeon and tied that into their newfound allies at the sacred site. They said they wanted to try and establish a base here in the dungeon; now they have the chance.