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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5178100" data-attributes="member: 4937">Yeah, writer's block has to be one of the most vile spells that was ever contrived.  You deal with it by writing, and, in my experience, it helps to be around other writers.  I did my most consistant writing when I was around someone else who was being productive.  It also helps to not have a real job or a family, I'm discovering.Right now, I've got ideas for all my major subplots.  I just need to turn them into dungeons and event hooks.  But, despite having ideas for the richest most intrigue filled settings I've ever attempted, I can't seem to turn ideas into paper.Things that are helping me right now:1) Noticing just how simple at the core most published adventures actually are.  Part of writers block is just simple fear at turning out crap.  Don't be afraid to turn out crap.  Semi-polished crap gets turned out all the time, and much of it turns out to be entertaining to the players.  Even the good stuff is rarely more than a linearly connected series of mini-dungeons with clues lying out in the open about where to go next.  High standards are your enemy.  Once you get stuff down, you can always hit it with your wand of cool and polymorph it into awesome.  The trick is to get that material to work with in the first place.2) Be random.  Another way to overcome fear is to just let the dice decide what you are going to do.  Random up a monster.  Force yourself to figure out an encounter with this monster.  Repeat a couple of times.  I tell you what is not helping me right now.  Realism.  I've been discarding alot of ideas on the grounds that, "Noone would build that.", or, "Someone would have noticed/explored/taken care of that long before now.", or "This area is relatively civilized.  If there was anything really dangerous nearby, wouldn't everyone know about it?", or "That's nothing like a working ecology."  Of course, the problem with that road is that if you go down it to far, you soon realize that adventures are themselves unrealistic.  And, while on the one hand I need the urban setting to do what I want, I'm realizing why I avoided it in the past.Oh and the tropes.  I'm so totally done with, "An innocent has been kidnapped/A mysterious curse is plaguing a village/A stranger comes up to you and offers you a job/monsterous humanoids are raiding the outskirts of the kingdom/It's the middle of a festival when something suddenly attacks/a series of ritual killings are occuring/the widow of a condemned man wants you to clear his name".  Yet, I seem to get dragged back to them again and again.</blockquote>

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