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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6597153" data-attributes="member: 177">When considering character generation, or adventure design, or campaign design, some people are very good with "blue sky" thinking.  These are folks who you can say, "Play whatever you want!" and they take off and create some cool, interesting, and imaginative stuff.I am not one of those people.If you give me a blue sky, the ability to choose anything I want, and I am usually struck by option paralysis - given too many things to choose from, all of them pretty good to my mind, I will find myself unable to choose, or create a compelling concept.  Without a germ, or seed, I do not become particularly imaginative.  Give me just a few parameters, though, and I take off like a rocket.  I am sometimes amazed at how it operates.Today, for example:  I am attending a house-con in a couple of months, and the organizer has asked for game submissions, so folks can sign up for them.  And for several days, when I have considered it, I have had not a single idea of what I want to run.  I was, simply, not inspired.  I know this about myself, so I went to the group's list, and asked what genres were still not represented in the offerings, intending to narrow my choices just a bit.  One guy answered that I should run what I want, and players will come - not understanding my creative process, this was unhelpful.  I got an answer of a few genres that weren't represented.  But still, nothing gelled for me.Then, I put an album on the stereo (Tom Petty's Hypnotic Eye if you are curious).  And something in the music, a comment my wife made two weeks ago, and the discussion on the con's list just *pinged*, and there in my head is a solid concept, fully formed, of what system I'll use, what the general scenario will be, some notable rules changes I'll have to use to make it work, a few themes this will be exploring, blossoming out of my head.  And it isn't really *any* of the things alone - it isn't one of the systems mentioned on the list, it isn't an exact representation of the song, and it isn't directly what my wife stated.  And thus, I create.How about you?  What's your creative process like?</blockquote>

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