Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 4809539" data-attributes="member: 19675">IME, having participated in many aspects of creative endeavors, I have to say that, while there are many techniques, many of them are idiosyncratic and may not be teachable.  Sometimes, its as simple as catching lightning in a bottle.Among many other things, I design jewelry, write music and write fiction (no, nothing you're likely to have read).Some of the stuff I come up with is made like building a house.  There is a plan, a starting point, a middle and an end, in a process fraught with editing, false starts, scrapping portions and finally coming up with the finished product.  Which may or may not suck.Other times, you envision the whole project in one flash, you burn like wildfire until the thing is completed, and it is sheer brilliance.  Unfortunately, you can't teach that.1) I have used music to help set a mood.  I don't do this often- its usually more trouble than its worth.  However, when it works, it really works.When I played Kodo's "The Hunted" (theme to the movie, The Hunted) in the background when the PCs in a particular campaign were naked and being hunted as prey, the players shifted mental gears in a flash.  Suddenly, they were talking faster & louder, sniping at each other, and so forth- they were stressed almost as if they were in their PCs positions.2) Try to have your world imagined in every sense you have.  If you can visualize, hear, smell, feel and taste your world, you can tell vivid stories about it.Having your world firmly grasped within your mind greatly helps you tell stories about it, visually, musically, or narratively.  When I created a supers campaign set in 1900, my initial description of it so wowed the players that EVERYONE fully engaged their own creativity.  Every PC was 100% setting congruent.  Everyone played their roles, not their rolls.  Their enjoyment fed back to me to create better and better adventures.When I've half-assed campaign worlds, OTOH, the games rarely last more than 4 sessions.  Nobody engages, so the game withers on the vine.And it works for any kind of writing.I have no doubt that nearly every immortal love poem was composed with a particular someone in mind; that every creator of a great sci-fi/fantasy world could see it every time he or she closed his eyes; that every great inventor could do the same with the parts of his greatest works.</blockquote>

Verification