I think I have flown too close to the sun. I had the idea to combine a game I love (Fear and Hunger) with a show I love (Delicious in dungeon) and we have already had our first session. But I am really struggling to figure out what the actual story I want to have is. I'm not a big writer but I think being a DM is really fun, I just lack that creativity sometimes. Any tips or ideas where to get inspiration?
I definitely should have just used a book campaign -_-
This is exactly the reason that after my first one shot I only run published campaigns, I love the moment to moment creativity of DMing but I'm terrible at plots. If you're adapting Delicious in Dungeon you're essentially looking at mega dungeon stories so try to break it down into levels just like the show does; what's happening on each level? Is there a particular threat for that level or a situation that needs resolving? Are the party the only people there or are there other parties or even communities and shops? That way you're not looking at one huge very intimidating writing challenge but instead a series of smaller more manageable chunks
If you've got the spare cash might be worth looking at something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage. It's another mega dungeon taking players from levels 5-20 and is broken down like I described above so you can just lift big chunks, change the names and use that. It also features a BBEG who is an insane wizard so not too different from Delicious in Dungeon's Archmage so again you can steal his stat block and change a few things to fit what you need
Hm... dungeon crawls are quite tricky to build stories around because they then to have a lot of just "hey this is a cool idea! Let's put it in somewhere..." rooms, and well, dungeon crawls are so far removed from "real life" that you can't easily adapt historical events or stories from everyday life or stories from books to them (that's where I get most of my ideas).
Most dungeon crawls have a simple (if somewhat flimsy) overarching story that just exists to justify the character exploring the dungeon despite it being super dangerous to do so, and why the dungeon exists in the first place. Some thing like: "a crazy paranoid BBEG build this mega dungeon filled with traps and the killed the character's parents so the character seeks them out for revenge", or "a terrible curse corrupted the BBEG and turned their ordinary castle into an elaborate labyrinth & dungeon, this curse is infecting the surrounding towns so the party has to go in and defeat it."
Then rely on emergent story telling based on what the characters choose to explore / interact with.
If you want more than that, you should look into some of the underdark lore and you can start expanding it out into not just being a dungeon, but a subterranean world with different environments and different civilizations interacting with each other.
For my campaign inspirations I usually steal from book series, or sometimes videogames, or sometimes TV series. Books are usually the best though since they tend to be long but also fairly narratively consistent stories.
I think I have flown too close to the sun. I had the idea to combine a game I love (Fear and Hunger) with a show I love (Delicious in dungeon) and we have already had our first session. But I am really struggling to figure out what the actual story I want to have is. I'm not a big writer but I think being a DM is really fun, I just lack that creativity sometimes. Any tips or ideas where to get inspiration?
I definitely should have just used a book campaign -_-
This is exactly the reason that after my first one shot I only run published campaigns, I love the moment to moment creativity of DMing but I'm terrible at plots. If you're adapting Delicious in Dungeon you're essentially looking at mega dungeon stories so try to break it down into levels just like the show does; what's happening on each level? Is there a particular threat for that level or a situation that needs resolving? Are the party the only people there or are there other parties or even communities and shops? That way you're not looking at one huge very intimidating writing challenge but instead a series of smaller more manageable chunks
If you've got the spare cash might be worth looking at something like Dungeon of the Mad Mage. It's another mega dungeon taking players from levels 5-20 and is broken down like I described above so you can just lift big chunks, change the names and use that. It also features a BBEG who is an insane wizard so not too different from Delicious in Dungeon's Archmage so again you can steal his stat block and change a few things to fit what you need
Hm... dungeon crawls are quite tricky to build stories around because they then to have a lot of just "hey this is a cool idea! Let's put it in somewhere..." rooms, and well, dungeon crawls are so far removed from "real life" that you can't easily adapt historical events or stories from everyday life or stories from books to them (that's where I get most of my ideas).
Most dungeon crawls have a simple (if somewhat flimsy) overarching story that just exists to justify the character exploring the dungeon despite it being super dangerous to do so, and why the dungeon exists in the first place. Some thing like: "a crazy paranoid BBEG build this mega dungeon filled with traps and the killed the character's parents so the character seeks them out for revenge", or "a terrible curse corrupted the BBEG and turned their ordinary castle into an elaborate labyrinth & dungeon, this curse is infecting the surrounding towns so the party has to go in and defeat it."
Then rely on emergent story telling based on what the characters choose to explore / interact with.
If you want more than that, you should look into some of the underdark lore and you can start expanding it out into not just being a dungeon, but a subterranean world with different environments and different civilizations interacting with each other.
For my campaign inspirations I usually steal from book series, or sometimes videogames, or sometimes TV series. Books are usually the best though since they tend to be long but also fairly narratively consistent stories.