Inspiration Where You Least Expect It

Or maybe you do expect it. I don’t know. I’m not psychic, and that’s one of my listed shortcomings. I think aside from “Why did you come up with such a stupid idea as the Athirua?” one of the most frequently asked questions of me from readers is how I manage to get all these ideas. I always talk about being full of ideas that hurt my mind because they’ll most likely not come to fruition. A lot of people, bless their souls, have absolutely no ideas and it pisses them off. Unfortunately there’s no miracle cure for this. Everyone has some method of getting ideas and it’s always different from everyone else’s methods of gaming ideas. Everyone’s methods of getting ideas are also wrong and blasphemous to the hobby and everyone else’s methods of gaming ideas are better and more in the spirit of things. Everyone is also rather mean-spirit, more so than anyone else. I think that string went places.

So here’s how I come up with ideas, or at least, my sources of inspiration for ideas, for D&D and such.

Images: Almost chiefly, I come upon ideas by looking at images. I don’t like places where images tend to be mixed in with comments, most of which are very poor, like most imageboards. So instead I go to mass image hosting places. My favorites are danbooru and akibakko, both of which have mature content so be careful when you browse them. However, if you know what to type into their blasted search box (this is harder with Akibakko, which has the poorest tagging I have ever seen), you can find all sorts of amazing anime artwork. I love anime, so looking at anime-style artwork always inspires me. A quick search for fantasy, or sci-fi (which doesn’t show up on Akibakko because Akibakko’s tagging is pure ass) will turn up loads of gorgeous stuff by numerous talented artists. Danbooru is where I mine for character portraits for my Myth-Weaver sheets. If you can brave the world of moonspeak, Pixiv (see here for how the fuck to join Pixiv) is another AWESOME place to look at. Not only are these good places to look at images, you can find artists there with websites and links to more of their material. As you explore the links and look at all their galleries have to offer, if you’re anything like me, ideas will flow like crazy.

If you hate anime, you probably have your own ideas of where to find images you like. If not…well I’m not much help there. At least try giving the above a peek – anime is a style more than it is a medium, and you will be surprised at the diversity of artwork you can find if you let go of your prejudices and give it a try. I wish danbooru would have grown a content filter before I recommended it to you, but it never did, so you’ll find questionable content mixed into any of your searches. This is unfortunate, but try to ignore it if it is not appealing to you. If you search for genres like “fantasy” or “scifi” you’ll find less crud.

Architecture: Anyone who knows me knows that I HATED my architecture course this semester at the University. However, I learned a huge amount about Architecture and it really gave me a lot of ideas about roleplaying. You can’t learn about a building or a style without seeing the history and the artists that brought it to life. Architecture is also tied to the land, so it is almost possible to build a community in your mind, with history and style, from a starting point of one important building and its context. There are numerous resources for architecture, but I think the best way is to get a book from a big library (a university library would be great) that talks about architecture. Ask a librarian to help you or use the library’s website if possible. Search for time periods or even just single monuments and make sure that the book provides illustrations. Not only will you expand your mind, you’ll get something out of it that, even if it doesn’t generate ideas, it can help you polish the feel of your games when you do get an idea. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe a museum or a church in simple terms again.

Reading: Of course, you can get a lot of ideas from reading. I generally don’t like reading for RPG ideas because you run the risk of bringing stuff almost verbatim from what you read, and your players might pick up on it. If you feel you can distance your own idea enough from its implementation in a book that your players will not be able to tell it is that unless you spell it out for them, then read. But not just pulp fantasy with pointy-hatted wizards and dungeons and fighters with huge muscles and whatnot. Ditch that for a while (blasphemy, I know, but just do it) and look at other stuff.

For example, one of the books most influential to me was Stephen King’s The Talisman. This book is a massive modern epic, funny, tragic, and just fucking awesome in general. And this is coming from someone who thinks Stephen King didn’t lose his magic, he just didn’t have much to begin with. Other people will recommend The Dark Tower series, but I think something like The Talisman, which you can’t just instantly convert into an RPG game by throwing around stats for the characters and whatnot, is better. It challenges you to adapt the material. Another series of books I liked were the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, despite the whole “THE CHURCH IS EVIL” angle you’ve seen a billion times already, they manage to be fantastic stories.

I never liked Lovecraft’s stuff for the stories, because they seemed altogether more concerned with describing the walls and doorways more than the monsters and characters. But there’s no denying that the themes discussed are very interesting and influential, and I use a lot of that in my games and in my creative writing in general (sometimes in quite unorthodox ways, like my “Magic: The Gathering Meets Cthulhu(esque) Mythos” fanfiction that I should update sometime…)

Take something that isn’t pulp fantasy, and make the creative effort to get it to work in D&D. It will jog your brain more than anything that can be easily converted. It doesn’t matter what system you play and how anyone intended it to be used when they made it. Use it for what you want to use it. If you fail, you’ve learned something, and you can try again.

History: I love history, but I tend to be bored by medieval-to-early reformation European history which a lot of D&D seems to be based around. Again, lets try to look at things harder to change. Look at the 16-1700s and above. The conquests and establishment of the new world, revolutions, the dark periods from the first world war to the second world war, the histories of countries that may not get much emphasis in schools, like the Phillipines, Korea, Africa. I personally am a sucker for indigenous people. The Japanese Ainu, the Australian Aborigenes, the Puertorican Taino (part of my own ancestry), the Native Americans, bits and pieces of all of their mythology (especially Ainu and Taino, which I’m most interested in) features in my own campaign setting, changed in ways to fit and to my own tastes, but present nonetheless.

Another good source of ideas is family history. My grandfather, for example, has quite a story. His upbringing was very tragic and he grew up with a family not his own and that didn’t accept him, for very complicated reasons. He went to war, and he had to deal with a changing Puerto Rico in the face of americanization and changing political climates. He is the kind of personality and has the kind of background that any D&D hero could use, no matter how high the stats are at 1st level. Talk to your own elders, or your own family members, and listen to their stories. It might not come easy to you – not everyone’s a journalist – but talking to people and learning about them is one of the best ways to gain inspiration. After all, rpgs are about the people.

Food: Okay this is getting away from the topic. Time to cut it off.

Until next time, have lots of love, platypuses and black sheep.