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So I set myself a challenge: 30 days, 30 low-level encounters right? I have a game going every week that's at level 2 so I figure I can work the encounters into the game, plus I was thinking about starting a blog with free encounters and ideas so these would be good fodder for that too.
I grab some dice and the PF Beastiary 1. I get "2d6 goblins" so I put that down and start designing. They're the Mirthskinner Tribe, called such cuz they skin their victims and wear grinning masks of said stuff. Then that leads me to an idea, which in turn becomes part of a larger power struggle between a ghast who was a former cult leader and just HAPPENED to have been a noble when alive.
Now I've got a cursed noble line, a survivor of the ghast's family predations, said survivor has grown into an Aristocrat 1 but also exhibits burgeoning Sorcerer powers with the Undead bloodline. Oh, and she chafes against her super-lawful asimar lady-in-waiting and is not-so-secretly in love with the captain of the guard, a half-elf Warrior. Said captain has made a deal with the goblins to deliver the girl whose kidnapping will draw out the lady-in-waiting so that she can reveal the whereabouts of the family fortune and all concerned except the asimar and her mistress believe the ghast to be a myth.
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What's wrong with me? First I spend months with writer's block and am so burned out running my other game that I turn the reigns over to one of the players, now I try to discipline myself to writing just simple encounters and instead I have the rudiments of an entire module.
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It just comes and goes Hoover - that being said, if the stuff doesn't fit into your "simple encounter" project SAVE IT FOR LATER!
As far as 30 days of 30 simple encounters - start with a guideline and layout. Focus on the basics - the creature(s), a hook, the terrain, the time of day/night - and then confine your encounters to "sort of" fit those parameters.
If you come up with something deeper, set it aside (still work on it though) and focus on generating encounters for the project. Even though its simple in scope and by contrast detailed encounters are great, there's something to be said for sticking by your own rules on a project.
The modules are in you though - if generating encounters serves as a tool for creating bigger things then by all means use it! Even if they just become notes that get set aside.
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I'm not as prolific a writer when it comes to putting together encounters and adventures as I used to be, but I still go from a simple idea to three more slightly less complicated to six "HOLY CRAP which do I use next?" games. Then I go through a phase where I couldn't write Orc and Pie w/out help.
I recently had an idea for a game involving "red pearls". What started as a simple "Here, keep these safe for me for a week and I'll pay you 1,000 gold to the now named "Sanguine Pearls" to being an important part of the religious rituals of a tribe of Ettercaps. Then they evolved into a cursed item that if whoever holds them becomes compelled to return to them to the temple or slowly transform into an Ettercap himself. This in turn led to an idea that I've wanted to explore for a long time (a psionic setting based on Green Ronin's old Mindshadows setting). This in turn led to the possibility of the players discovering a portal to a savage inner world populated by Stone Age cultures and dinosaurs. After cleaning up the notes, I realized that a jumble of ideas that loosely hung together has turned into a 3 or 4 adventure campaign arc.
Just enjoy the creative output, no matter how convoluted and expansive it gets. Your own notes can be the best source to mine for more information later.
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So I will place a suggestion here, even though you expanded upon this in the GM Experience thread.
Instead of just rolling or picking through CR appropriate encounters maybe another method would be to focus on core ideas and themes and write/fit the encounters around those themes or ideas (and motivations).
So in your goblin write up the theme would be: Hunters.
Or another variant (if you keyed one random encounter to follow another) The Hunted. Or another variant for the Fey encounter would be: Aid. Basic and core words and terms that form the focus of the encounter while keeping the encounter on point.
So if you dropped one into your game you could either run it as the PCs meeting the Goblins first, or maybe they can meet the Fey (as it fits the environment) first who thinks its being stalked by creatures trying to catch it or kill it, then shortly followed by using the Goblin hunters encounter.
A method (just an idea really) is to start with a series of basic words/themes. Then see if you can randomly roll or just pick a creature that fits the word/theme to create an encounter. Some you can combine - then let them swirl around in your head. Some combined will not make sense, those are usually the most fun to try to put together.
Some sample words/themes:
Abandoned
Aid
Anger
Broken
Brothers
Controlled
Criminal
Cult
Dying
Envy
Entropy
Epoch
Fallen
Famous
Fey
Greed
Hideous
Home
Hunted
Hunter
Ignorance
Justice
Juvenile
King
Lame
Love
Mother
Nocturnal
Order
Pearl
Possession
Quest
Ravager
Summon
Torment
Transform
Under
Victims
War
BTW, I stole a few words from Cal's post to add to my sample list.
I know what you mean, though it doesn't have anything to do with encounters, I tried to force a Zealot for a playtest, I tried to force a chosen one for a rise of the runelords, but it wasn't until I read somebody else's character that inspiration struck. The muses are fickle b$%#@es buddy.
My game tonight did not go as I'd foreseen, and I even jumped past something I'd planned to originally happen before they ended up in the savage inner world, but after some carefully concealed railroading, I got them to a point where I feel comfortable picking up the game next weekend with a larger group. And it's now 5:31 am and I can't sleep because this new twist in the plan has my head so full of ideas I can't sleep. I've not written anything down yet, as I'm too jumbled for any notes to make sense. After some (eventual) sleep I'll fill up pages in my notebook later today.
Most likely the thing that is wrong with you is that your expectations and goals for a game aren't aligning with the expectations and goals of your players. You keep trying to fit a circular peg into a square hole, so to speak.
I've seen this kind of cycle many times in my self. When I'm GMing I often start to get burnout, which I believe is due to the fact that the players I have generally aren't much into role play, and tend to be more focused on hack and slash.
Then when I am not GMing, I get the urge to GM to the point where I could (and have) create an entire campaign in anticipation of playing. Then I manage to get the group back together, play for a handful of sessions, then the beginnings of burnout start up again.
The solution, at least for me, was to lower my expectations of the players, and when burnout starts to creep in, search the internet for inspiration.