Inspiration (or the lack thereof)
Greetings everyone! It has been quite a while since I’ve been seen on ye olde blog post, and, as I’ve made mention on stream, I was seriously lacking in inspiration on what to write! And that happens more often than one would like, trust me. But it’s not just blog posts that inspiration might dry up for, is it? Game ideas, NPCs, new characters, all of these things we need a spark of something to get the creative mind going, otherwise you might just be left with a shell of something that doesn’t truly interest you or your players. So, that’s where today’s post comes from; a lack of inspiration gave me the inspiration to put together some tips on what to do when YOU lack inspiration! So let’s dive into it.
Let’s start with a scenario: You’re already running a game, it’s a few sessions (or longer) in, and suddenly your carefully crafted story hits a snag. Players have done what players do, and left you scrambling for how to change your story to fit their actions. But alas, you’ve hit a wall and can’t figure out where to go next. So let’s see what we can do about that, shall we?
- Look to the player’s backstories for inspiration: If you’ve had your players come up with details about their life outside of their adventuring/superheroing/spaceship captaining, look to pull elements of that into your next adventure. See if there’s anything there that can, if not fit the main story you are trying to tell, be a side mission for your players for a session or two. One, it will get the players more personally involved since it’s part of their character’s story, and two it will give you some time to divert from the main quest for a bit, and hopefully give you time to get something going for when you need to head back to it.
- Depending on the system you are running, look to a short published module that you can insert into your game. Alex did this in our Netherwar game when the tone took a decidedly different turn than what we were expecting, and we spent four sessions running around different tv-inspired scenarios. It was a diversion from what we were usually up to, but it made us play outside of our comfort zone, and by doing that we had to think more on our feet with things. A pre-written module frees you up from needing to think about the nuts and bolts of the game (encounters, rewards, basic story, etc.), allowing you to focus more on how it fits into your overarching story. Plus, reading through it might just get you that flash of inspiration you were missing.
- Spend some time not focusing on the game. I know, it seems counterintuitive, but sometimes when you’ve got a block the best thing to do is leave it where it is, go off and do something else before returning to it at a later point. Find a good book to read, a TV show you haven’t seen before (or an old one you love), play a video game, go outside, whatever it is, go and do it and don’t say, “I’m doing this to look for something to add to my game.” That will defeat the whole purpose of trying to clear the block by not focusing on it. Inspiration can be fickle, and if you try digging for it, you might just end up frustrated. By doing something else for a bit and not trying to look at it as research, your mind might gradually unlock, and give you what you were looking for.
I know the above tips were focused primarily on game running, so what can you do if you are lacking inspiration for a character? Well, #3 above is also a great way to get inspiration for a character. Outside sources are general building blocks for characters, as we can take elements of our favorite characters and their stories and try to weave them together in a new way for what we are trying to create. Another thing you can do: use the dice to give you random samples to choose from! Some core books already break things down into numbered tables that would allow you to pick up that sided die to roll on, and you can always go through the backgrounds/races and classes and assign a number to each, and then just roll those dice! You might land on something you didn’t expect, and bam, inspiration acquired!
Hopefully these tips and tricks will help you out, if you ever find yourself devoid of inspiration. Happy gaming!