[GMing] Where do you get your adventure ideas from? (1 Viewer)

[Pillsy]

I've finally started getting back to working on preparing for a game I put on hold back in the Fall once I started having ideas for adventures again. I loved the concept, but couldn't come up with a good set of adventure seeds to save my life. And then I noticed that nothing inspires more adventure ideas than bad puns. Hell, the thing that kicked the whole thing off for me was Afterburner's "Burnin' for You" avatar:

Also, I know there's a great D&D adventure called "Wight Club", even if I haven't worked out all the particulars yet.

The other thing that's been working really well for me is the "X meets Y" kind of spitballing that was mocked so ruthlessly in "The Player":

[video=youtube;dwnhRRRQtaI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwnhRRRQtaI[/video]

Seriously, I think I may have been waiting my whole life to run "Nightmare on Jump Street".

Since I mostly run contemporary law-enforcement, horror and conspiracy themed games (all at the same time of course), I also sometimes take a fair amount of inspiration from news reports and the occasional "true crime" documentary.

So what works best for you when you need an adventure idea, or even a campaign idea?

 

[Richard R.]

Old episodes of Have Gun, Will Travel.

Half-remembered comic books I read when I was a kid in the 70's/early 80's. Marvel's Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, Micronauts, Utterly batshit DC war comics with apes and haunted tanks fights fighting Nazi dinosaurs and Robo-Hitler...

Old black-and-white Jungle Adventure, Film Noir, French Forgien Legion, and War movies. Usually have solid stories as their spine.

News stories.

"Marginal" culture of all kinds -old pulp SF paperbacks, 80's B-movies on VHS picked up for 50 cents at the Salvation Army, fanzines, propaganda, even porn.

Old issues of Dragon and White Dwarf, the early ones from when RPG culture was still kind of wild-and-whooly. Just looking at the miniatures ads is great inspiration for odd NPCs and creatures.

Shamelessly stealing from other GM's blogs.

 

[DarkDungeons]

Mostly from the players themselves. I try to encourage them to be proactive and let them set their own course for adventure.

Otherwise, I steal from just about everywhere for neat story hooks, NPCs, etc. My GM brain is always processing all the entertainment I engage in for how I could use it in an RPG if I gave it a fresh paint job.

 

[Black Vulmea]

Academic history books and journal articles.

Fiction's just too tame.

 

[Royale]

I always seem to find inspiration in unexpected movies, and my players are none the wiser since I tend to take the basic concept and beat it into an unrecognizable monstrosity. I just finished GMing an adventure that was a mix between Fantastic Mr.Fox (a family movie with animals as the main characters) and Road to Perdition (A roaring twenties mafia movie). For whatever reason I liked the fable-like quality of Mr. Fox and the dark subject material of Perdition, it worked out well.

 

[bottg]

Everywhere. For example, i was watching Time Team this evening, and thinking how cool it would be to run a game where the PC's are sent off to the welsh marches with some money, soldiers and villagers, and told to get on with it. Trade, planning etc, interspersed with welsh raids.

 

[ntharotep]

This would be insanely long if I made a list so I'll just touch on some:

1. My head. I have an overactive imagination to the point where, at times, I have been barely functionally insane. Its what spawns my writing, first and foremost, but also all of my other hobbies which tend to have some creator bits to them. It has gotten better over the years and I'm not plagued with a constant barrage of characters, concepts, settings, etc like I used to be but its still there.
2. Players. My last 4e campaign had been the first game most of my friends, including myself, had played in the franchise in years. There was talk at the table about how one player missed Spelljammer, one Ravenloft, etc and I decided to throw pieces (small cameo-style pieces) into the campaign. We never got to the Ravenloft bit but the players enjoyed the nod to Spelljammer and Planescape (though, technically, planescape was still around in 4e as the City of Doors is mentioned, etc.)
3. Books, Movies, TV, even other games. I love the old Books of Lairs which not only had a group of monsters to encounter but a story hook for the encounters as well. I dug these 1e and 2e books out, adapted the monsters to 4e, and used the same story hooks. Years ago in the 2e era, I had had a shop in one D&D town called "Needful Things", a little old man running around one campaign calling himself the "Dungeon Master" and giving useful advise before disappearing in a puff of smoke, etc.

You can even find free adventure seeds (I think they are weekly?) on the D&D site itself.

 

[Beyond Reality]

Stealing ruthlessly from my favorite authors that I know my players haven't read. I created a long-running deadlands campaign based on chopped-up material from the Dresden Files...also a bit of stuff from Big Trouble In Little China. I'm also currently running an Eberron campaign and those parts that aren't pre-written adventure material are mostly inspired by Terry Pratchett (namely Feet of Clay).

 

[Jack of Tears]

I've always hated hearing that question, "Where do authors get their ideas?", because it seemed so obvious to me ... everywhere they look.

But there are certainly places you can look to jump start ideas if you're struggling.

I like using the "Once Upon a Time" Storytelling Card Game - pull out a few cards and lay them down, because they are designed to tell a story each card can provide some kind of element you should be able to pull an idea from. Sometimes it doesn't work, but it can be great for a quick fix.

Art books are fantastic. Pick up one of those coffee table books with pieces of artwork - preferably a wide selection from different periods - then just flip through a few pages until one catches your attention. Usually something in the piece will spark the imagination or fire up the inspiration.

Look around your desk, there is bound to be something on hand that you can spin into an idea: at a quick glance I've got Dolls in Coffins; Chinese philosophers drinking tea; a Micro-cassette tape; two Rings touching one another; a set of Alice in Wonderland paraphernalia - depending on the setting I could draw an adventure idea from most all of those.

Mindtrap and similar problem solving party games - pull out a few cards and flip through them, they can give you a few quick ideas for scenarios that can blossom into something more.

And, of course, always listen to the players during the games - they often come up with some very interesting ideas that you can use somewhere down the line. (our hobby tends to attract creative minds, after all)

 

[zeth]

I buy pre-published adventures then tinker with them. I rarely creat a campain on my own.