Where do you get your ideas, and how do you turn it into a campaign?
I'm just curious. I'm a new DM and I think I'll be better at homebrew, so I want to start on something for once we're done LMoP in like a month or 2. I think I have like a partial idea, but I want to see other inspiration.
I've read and played video games all my life. Most of my inspiration comes from that. World building for me is hugely inspired by the Elder Scrolls/Zelda. Characters I make up myself with ideas from everywhere, plots I cobble together from refurbished tropes. Don't be afraid to borrow, or even straight steal. You'll find a way to spin in time.
I think a lot of my world building comes from sources tangential to the theme I'm interested in for my campaign. If you wanted to do a low magic kind of campaign, you might read or watch stuff like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. Want something in the Dark Sun vein? Mad Max is literally perfect for that setting.
I think if you know the general theme you want for your setting, any pop culture that you already enjoy that's in the same style is perfect for inspiration. I also just really like thumbing through the older D&D books. You can find a ton of plot hooks and interesting stories in there. I know you can find archives of Dungeon magazine online, and just scrolling through those old PDFs can be hugely inspiring.
Shoot, even the current adventures are great for inspiration. I've owned Hoard of the Dragon Queen since it's release like 3 years ago, but just read through it for the first time the other day. The whole first chapter about Grenest sounded like a great mid-adventure hook to get the party really invested in a town. Later chapters include mention of Voaraghamanthar, a black dragon that lives in the swamp outside Castle Naerytar. I instantly fell in love with that whole chapter and plan to drop both set pieces right into my next game!
Video games, books, movies, tv shows, and gaming products (like actually reading through the Monster Manual and finding some random thing mentioned about some monster and that making me think "Wouldn't it be cool if..."). Plus I've had so many years bathing my brain in those various sorts of media that it sometimes spits out its own remixes or reiterations of things its been years since I read/played/saw/did.
As for turning the ideas into campaigns, I more often than not work the idea into a brief pitch to give my players like "How about a campaign where all the characters are students at an academy of magic and they get into hijinks and drama on and around campus?" for a campaign I ran that was vaguely inspired by Harry Potter, or "How about a campaign where the characters are professional treasure hunters and each adventure will see them searching a new location for a new treasure they've been hired to acquire?" for a campaign I ran that was vaguely inspired by Tomb Raider video games - and then we build characters as a group, with me taking note of any details the players come up with that I can use as story elements to further engage them, and we start playing with me having very little if any idea where the campaign is going to go beyond the initial set-up. So I react to whatever the players have their characters do, setting reasonable obstacles on the fly, and make it all up as we go along - heavily leaning on anything the players mention in or out of character to help me decide what elements to include as things move forward (such as having the party encounter goblins in the forest if one of the players says "I bet there are goblins in the forest" and doesn't sound like they'd hate to be right about it, or deciding that it was in fact a red herring that a particular NPC seemed suspicious because one of the players expressed doubts that the mystery was supposed to be that easy to solve).
I have a few things I have dreamed up and put together over the years, and I 'keep them in my pocket' ready to use at a moments notice. I have one in particular that I have used three times with three different groups, I seemed original and nobody was the wiser. Noman_ashthorn is right, don't be afraid to borrow or even steal. Players need something familiar to ease them into something new, and they almost never catch on that you ripped something else off. Here are some of my personal ones:
#1 Rip off the beginning of Final Fantasy 9: The player's are a group of high profile thieves disguised as a theater group. Their first mission is to kidnap a princess by splitting into two teams, one team to put on an enthralling play to keep the royal family occupied while the other team sneaks into the castle to kidnap the princess. When the second team gets there, plot twist! The princess is in the middle of running away anyway and goes with you willingly!
This is a good one to use if you want to tie everyone's backstory together (require that they all have a reason to adventure together via the group). Also, the group I had at the time were a bunch of min-maxers and the always used CHA as a dump stat, so I required that everyone have a minimum CHA of 12 and bring some sort of non-combat related performance skill to the table.
#2 Rip off Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A lot of people don't know the D&D universe, but they do another another universe (Like Buffy or whatever). It fits with D&D pretty well, I had a player that was the 'slayer', a player that was 'the watcher' and players that were, like, witches.
Well anyway, there are a couple of ideas, I am sure you have your own. Have a great day!
Where do you get your ideas, and how do you turn it into a campaign?
I'm just curious. I'm a new DM and I think I'll be better at homebrew, so I want to start on something for once we're done LMoP in like a month or 2. I think I have like a partial idea, but I want to see other inspiration.
I've read and played video games all my life. Most of my inspiration comes from that. World building for me is hugely inspired by the Elder Scrolls/Zelda. Characters I make up myself with ideas from everywhere, plots I cobble together from refurbished tropes. Don't be afraid to borrow, or even straight steal. You'll find a way to spin in time.
#OpenDnD. #DnDBegone
I think a lot of my world building comes from sources tangential to the theme I'm interested in for my campaign. If you wanted to do a low magic kind of campaign, you might read or watch stuff like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. Want something in the Dark Sun vein? Mad Max is literally perfect for that setting.
I think if you know the general theme you want for your setting, any pop culture that you already enjoy that's in the same style is perfect for inspiration. I also just really like thumbing through the older D&D books. You can find a ton of plot hooks and interesting stories in there. I know you can find archives of Dungeon magazine online, and just scrolling through those old PDFs can be hugely inspiring.
Shoot, even the current adventures are great for inspiration. I've owned Hoard of the Dragon Queen since it's release like 3 years ago, but just read through it for the first time the other day. The whole first chapter about Grenest sounded like a great mid-adventure hook to get the party really invested in a town. Later chapters include mention of Voaraghamanthar, a black dragon that lives in the swamp outside Castle Naerytar. I instantly fell in love with that whole chapter and plan to drop both set pieces right into my next game!
Video games, books, movies, tv shows, and gaming products (like actually reading through the Monster Manual and finding some random thing mentioned about some monster and that making me think "Wouldn't it be cool if..."). Plus I've had so many years bathing my brain in those various sorts of media that it sometimes spits out its own remixes or reiterations of things its been years since I read/played/saw/did.
As for turning the ideas into campaigns, I more often than not work the idea into a brief pitch to give my players like "How about a campaign where all the characters are students at an academy of magic and they get into hijinks and drama on and around campus?" for a campaign I ran that was vaguely inspired by Harry Potter, or "How about a campaign where the characters are professional treasure hunters and each adventure will see them searching a new location for a new treasure they've been hired to acquire?" for a campaign I ran that was vaguely inspired by Tomb Raider video games - and then we build characters as a group, with me taking note of any details the players come up with that I can use as story elements to further engage them, and we start playing with me having very little if any idea where the campaign is going to go beyond the initial set-up. So I react to whatever the players have their characters do, setting reasonable obstacles on the fly, and make it all up as we go along - heavily leaning on anything the players mention in or out of character to help me decide what elements to include as things move forward (such as having the party encounter goblins in the forest if one of the players says "I bet there are goblins in the forest" and doesn't sound like they'd hate to be right about it, or deciding that it was in fact a red herring that a particular NPC seemed suspicious because one of the players expressed doubts that the mystery was supposed to be that easy to solve).
Hi,
I have a few things I have dreamed up and put together over the years, and I 'keep them in my pocket' ready to use at a moments notice. I have one in particular that I have used three times with three different groups, I seemed original and nobody was the wiser. Noman_ashthorn is right, don't be afraid to borrow or even steal. Players need something familiar to ease them into something new, and they almost never catch on that you ripped something else off. Here are some of my personal ones:
#1 Rip off the beginning of Final Fantasy 9: The player's are a group of high profile thieves disguised as a theater group. Their first mission is to kidnap a princess by splitting into two teams, one team to put on an enthralling play to keep the royal family occupied while the other team sneaks into the castle to kidnap the princess. When the second team gets there, plot twist! The princess is in the middle of running away anyway and goes with you willingly!
This is a good one to use if you want to tie everyone's backstory together (require that they all have a reason to adventure together via the group). Also, the group I had at the time were a bunch of min-maxers and the always used CHA as a dump stat, so I required that everyone have a minimum CHA of 12 and bring some sort of non-combat related performance skill to the table.
#2 Rip off Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A lot of people don't know the D&D universe, but they do another another universe (Like Buffy or whatever). It fits with D&D pretty well, I had a player that was the 'slayer', a player that was 'the watcher' and players that were, like, witches.
Well anyway, there are a couple of ideas, I am sure you have your own. Have a great day!
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