Campaign Writer's Block

[Oompa]

Hello all,

I have a problem.. I have been playing D&D for almost 6-7 years now, always as a DM (no-one else wants to DM). My party is mostly hack and slash and has role playing as a low priority.

I have always ran the classic modules and/or other published adventures.

In these times i usually have a period where i want to create my own adventure/campaign and my head spins with ideas.. Cool ideas for my players, things like chase downs in cars, invasions of hordes of orcs and undead..

The problem is..

When i try to create something on paper.. it just dies.. The energy to create stuff just flows right out of me.. In my mind i can think of the coolest things.. but when i want to write it down it ain't cool, i ain't excited and it all dies a silently dead..

And i am sick of it.. i want to just once create something cool for my players where i can take the credit for..

Anyone.. Help? Tips? Know this?

 

[Piratecat]

Sure. You're focused on the method instead of the message; I do that, too. Try using a different way of getting down your ideas.

One method I use is a flowchart scrawled on a piece of paper. No one but me needs to know what the words mean, so I don't explain my labels anywhere. I put the bad guys in circles, then use arrows to show how they interact with other bad guys and the PCs.

I also write down dungeons by mapping it, then just scrawling monster names and a trap note into the markin of the map, alongside a treasure notation when i think of one. No keyed entries that'll end up boring me to write down, just a small room with a note that says "latrine monster. Triggers spike trap. Gems under poo." Everything else I can do on the fly.

 

[Emil]

The ideas do not have to look good on paper. As long as you're getting some ideas down to "offload" your memory you're helping your process. What I do is I carry around a small notebook and just write down a quick sentence when I have an idea.

The more you write, the easier it will be. If you think your ideas don't look all that cool right after you write them down, don't let that stop you from writing them altogether. Campaigns and adventures need to be fairly loose anyhow to allow for the players' interaction.

Maybe you should get your players more involved in the planning stage. Throw ideas past them and see if they have some more ideas to flesh them out. You might feel that the element of surprise is lost when it comes down to play time, but what is more likely to happen is that when your players finally come across a situation that they had direct input in they'll think, "hey, I helped make this, and it's really cool!"

You can also see it like movie previews. Your players may know the basics of what's coming up, but you've had time on your own to develop their contributions into something slightly (or completely) different. For example: your player knows that there's an undead orc invasion on the horizon, but they don't have any idea of when that's happening. The player may have had input on the catalyst for the invasion, the reasons, the strategy, the tactics, the overall goals, but they might be in the dark about some other specifics like who is leading the invasion, that the undead orcs have a secret weapon, or that the invaders are actually targeting the player's character for an abduction (to ransom, interrogate, try to convert to their cause, etc).

RPGs are cooperative storytelling, but the role of the players in that storytelling doesn't have to be confined to the boundaries of the play session. Character backgrounds are also excellent idea food. Your players have hopes and expectations in playing your games. It always serves you to cater to those while drafting your setting, campaign, and adventures.

I imagine you've done tweaking of published adventures and settings in the past, and you might find it easier to come up with ideas when you have the skeleton already in front of you. Setting up brainstorming sessions with your players (one at a time or in groups) should help recreate this process for you.

I personally prefer to do the player brainstorming on a one-on-one basis, because it's a bit easier to flow from one idea to another rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of everyone's idea.

It's very important to keep the ideas moving. Whether writing alone, or with a partner. Write down a few details about each idea, then move onto "what's next?" (a new idea.) Then a couple of days or a week later, go over what you've gotten written down and see if any more details come to mind; or maybe new situations will come to mind from the written ideas.

 

[Oompa]

I think i want to create to much in to short notice..

Piratecat, how do you remember all the stuff in your adventures? I get the small notes about things but how about fluff for the players? Like room descriptions?

 

[Asmor]

Just write. Something. Anything. Describe your breakfast, the shirt you're wearing, a favorite movie, just write anything.

Don't be afraid to write stuff that sucks. Most stuff sucks. In fact, 80% of everything sucks. And of the other 20%, 80% of that sucks too.

Just write. Go online and look for "writing prompts" if you need ideas.

Try to write the stupidest campaign idea you can imagine. If that's giving you writer's block, try to write the most mediocre, unoriginal campaign you can imagine.

See, the thing is, while 80% of everything sucks... 20% of it is actually kinda good by comparison. The more bad stuff you write, the more good stuff you'll write.

Or, as a total alternative, don't write anything. If you're playing a system which is good for improvisation (maybe not D&D, but perhaps Savage Worlds for example), just stick the player's somewhere, do something to them, and then let them figure out what's going on. Pay attention to them and steal their ideas, but make them think they were your ideas all along.

 

[Keith Robinson]

I also write down dungeons by mapping it, then just scrawling monster names and a trap note into the markin of the map, alongside a treasure notation when i think of one. No keyed entries that'll end up boring me to write down, just a small room with a note that says "latrine monster. Triggers spike trap. Gems under poo." Everything else I can do on the fly.

I tend to write everything out so that the finished article is just like an adventure you'd buy, but without the art. All the details are there, from descriptions, to room details, monster stats, treasure - the whole shebang. This is extremely long winded and painstaking and I can often get bogged down doing it. I enjoy doing it, but it can nonetheless become a real chore sometimes.

So your suggestion is a good one. I love doing maps and often think I'd like to try to be a little less rigid in my approach to designing adventures, so I might just try to put together a small adventure and to hell with the detail. It would hopefully speed things up leading to more time to get my ideas down, rather than get bogged down on just one or two.

 

[JoeGKushner]

It's cheap to say, but ideas are easy.

The real work is in fleshing them out.

I'd suggest trying a 'sandbox' style adventure where you write up a couple of lairs and put some of the cool threads and plot lines you'd like the players to examine.

The lairs will get the fleshing out and you can use the actual events of the campaign as a guide post as to what the players want.

 

[Piratecat]

Piratecat, how do you remember all the stuff in your adventures? I get the small notes about things but how about fluff for the players? Like room descriptions?

Some stuff I'll draw in on the map (I'll put a star where a statue goes, or a little arrow saying "statue".) Most stuff I'll describe or make up on the fly. The only things that need to be pre-done are details that will be relevant later -- the text carved on a wall, for instance -- and everything else can be made up as I go. That describes 90% of my DMing; I decide on plot and loot ahead of time, and make up most of the details on the fly. This ensures I never get bored while prepping.

I tend to write everything out so that the finished article is just like an adventure you'd buy, but without the art. All the details are there, from descriptions, to room details, monster stats, treasure - the whole shebang. This is extremely long winded and painstaking and I can often get bogged down doing it. I enjoy doing it, but it can nonetheless become a real chore sometimes.

Yeah, I've tried this, and it's the kiss of death for me.. a guarantee that I'll get bored and burn out. Some people love this, and more power to them. I'm just not one of them.

 

[Doug McCrae]

As Piratecat says, most of it can stay in your head, it doesn't need to be written down. In fact it can be harmful if you have to pause a lot of times during a session to look things up.

Just use a few keywords, subject headings, to serve as memory triggers. Look into mind mapping. You might find it useful (for a lot of things, not just GMing). What Piratecat describes is pretty similar to a mind map.

I just write down a few things for adventures. On one side of paper I have some keywords for the session - subject headings and subheadings with places and NPC names - and a few things I'll find hard to remember, usually stuff I looked up on wikipedia (my game is set in the present day) such as the 'Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Forest Glen, Maryland'. Little details like that add a veneer of verisimilitude to all the nonsense about super-cats attacking animal testing labs. On the other side of the page I have some names to give to random NPCS tailored for wherever the adventure is set, like Japanese names or Colombian or whatever. I find it hard to come up with normal names on the spot.

The other thing I have to do is stats for the bad guys. That's easier in D&D though when you have books full of monsters.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

If you're getting bogged down in the details trying to get everything down, just have an "idea dump" brainstorm session. I do this here and there whenever I'm feeling inspired. Basically I just grab a notebook or open up a word processor and start putting every little thought that pops into my mind that sounds cool (not necessarily in detail). Later I go back to that when I'm writing the detailed part of the adventure, using it for inspiration and ideas. Later, I go back and add more ideas that pop into my mind throughout the day.

As an example, my initial brainstorm for an adventure to start off a campaign was the following:

• Characters captured & in a room
• Don’t remember immediate details of what happened
• Drawn into a trap?
• How they got there slowly revealed
  • In town, greeted w/asked question, “So, did you _______?”
• Setting – Underground dungeon
• Exit locked; only key is on BBEG
• Meet other adv. group there?
• Cult captured them, maybe?
• Captured trying to infiltrated some key area of the cult
• Cave collapsing as time goes on
• Missile zombies!?
• Why did they go against cult in the first place?
  • Protect town? (meh, cliché)
  • Phat l3wt?
  • Settle a debt?
• Gelatinous cube!
• Mercenaries?
• Dungeon race?
• Magic?
• Escape cell w/skill challenge?
• CORN BREAD MONSTER
• Volcanic underground setting? IE lava, etc
• Minotaurs?
• Lion ring
• Dangerous exit vs door exit?
  • Dangerous exit IE Saw?
• Two possible deep encs: BBEG, traitor to BBEG
• Digging deeper into cave via mining? Why?
• Vampires?
• Ancient artifact?
• Warring factions in cave?
  • Fire themed one?
  • Elements?
• Diseased/poisoned things

Yes, some of it is absolutely ridiculous stuff I just found funny at the time (see: corn bread monster). But basically I just sat there writing down whatever came to mind. The DMG is a great source of inspiration, by the way

I later took that and fleshed it out into a full adventure, using maybe 1/10 of all of that with ideas left over for the next session. I'd send what I made up but I did it on paper and I don't have a scanner (I made it all in a notebook but just copied the brainstorm to a .doc file).