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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emil" data-source="post: 4787018" data-attributes="member: 59657">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.</blockquote>

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