Where do you get ideas for adventures?

[Pants]

So... after purchasing Advanced Bestiary from my local B&N store, I was flipping through the book and I came upon the 'Amalgam' template. Suddenly, as I was driving home, I got an image of an Amalgam Roper/Gargoyle stuck in my brain (it doesn't matter if you can actually do this, I haven't read through the mechanics yet... ) and then I start thinking 'Well, how the hell did this happen?'

After about 20 minutes of thinking, I have an entire Eberron adventure fleshed out... all because of one template. AND, this is after three weeks of some bad DM-block.

The book already paid for itself before I even got it home.

Anyone else get some good adventure ideas from really strange sources?

 

[Bryon_Soulweaver]

Yes, every day life..... Plus some of my imagination.

 

[jdrakeh]

Current events and modern televsion series re-packaged in a fantasy wrapper. As screwed up as it sounds, stuff like the De Lay investigation can form the core of a great political D&D campaign, while all of the press of for operations in the Middle East can spawn hundreds of possible fantasy scenarios (I've ripped off Black Hawk down story for a 'behind the enemy lines' campaign, for example). Also, I'm aching to run a '24' fantasy technothriller that revolves around an errant magi cracking the code for nuclear fission.

 

[amazingshafeman]

My players would make a mess on the floor if they knew how many villains were a rehash of their strange quirks mixed together in an odd fashion.

 

[The Hound]

Waaaay back in college I made up a compaign based on several songs from Blue Oyster Cult's "Secret Treaties" album (vinyl in those days) and a poem on the back of said album. Most of the time since then I have used mutated real world history (wars, revolutions, etc) as the basis for events in the world that the PCs get caught up in, or else the plots or subplots of fantsy novels that I like.

 

[Altalazar]

You can get an idea from anywhere. I got an idea for a great adventure just from looking at drawings of the layout of the great pyramids in egypt in a Time-Life book on world history. It was a fun adventure, when I was done. I combined Egyption architecture and my own pantheon.

Another adventure was inspired by the notion of an idiotic town guard with throbbing viens in their foreheads. You never know where inspiration will strike...

I think a friend of mine was inspired by a velvet painting of elvis for a rather strange, but memorable D&D adventure.

 

[Wiggus_Ironhand]

Life and the people i work with at Wal-Mart.

 

[jdrakeh]

Waaaay back in college I made up a compaign based on several songs from Blue Oyster Cult's "Secret Treaties" album (vinyl in those days) and a poem on the back of said album. Most of the time since then I have used mutated real world history (wars, revolutions, etc) as the basis for events in the world that the PCs get caught up in, or else the plots or subplots of fantsy novels that I like.

As an eternal fan of BoC, I must ask - do you still have notes for that campaign laying around? If so, please PM me or email me, as I'd love to run this for two good friends of mine.

 

[philreed]

Everywhere. I've had dozens of ideas from David Liss' novels alone.

 

[shilsen]

The shower. Same place I get my ideas for academic essays, lesson plans, PCs/NPCs, etc. I really should find a way to move my desk in there.

As for non-physical places where I get my ideas for adventures, there's no specific thing. It may be a line in a book I'm reading, a billboard I walk by, a person I meet, an event I hear about, and so on. Everything is potential material.

Since I've also essentially given up on having a pre-planned direction for my campaigns but let them develop naturally off the PCs' desires and decisions (and their backgrounds), a lot of the time my adventure ideas come up because of what the PCs have done (or chosen not to do, for that matter).