Where do you get your ideas? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Where do you get your ideas? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Kezot
10-07-07, 10:05 PM I've spent a fair deal of time lurking on these boards, and despite all the amazing campaign ideas I find, there is always something missing: an origin. Ideas like a world set on a d20 or a setting with basically every concept turned on its head are all over the place, but I have never seen anyone say where they get their ideas.

I got the idea for one campaign (which I never ended up using) during a vacation to Italy, for example. While we were driving through Tuscany, I was listening to Iron Maiden, and one of the songs made me think of a battle happening on the vast plaines and beautiful hills. By the time we reached our hotel, an entire epic campaign had lept into my mind, full of nations, religions, gods, and powerful artifacts.

Another time, I was walking home from a party, and I looked at the full moon, and a thought popped into my head: "What if the moon was the size of Earth?" End result, a setting with a double planet, and the psionic, technologically advanced inhabitants of one world invading the pastoral, magical land that the PCs inhabit.

So,

Iron Maiden + Tuscany = Epic War Campaign
Full moon + 15 minute walk = Twin Worlds Campaign

This led me to wonder, where do you get YOUR ideas? Do you sit down and try to think them up? Do they just come to you? Or does some other method lead to your campaigns?

P.S. The name of the Epic War campaign is "Gates of Tomorrow", and the song directly responsible is "Monsegur". If you recognize the album, good job.
Darth Syntax
10-07-07, 10:17 PM I've been building fictional worlds sense I was quite wee and as a result I can get ideas from all manner of things. I also read voraciously and have drawn many ideas from books. The writings of Jorge Luis Borges have been particularly good for ideas.

I've worked on worlds that owe their genesis to particular pieces of music, to the sound of an unusual word, to the particular phrasing of a passage in a novel. And, as is more often the case, an idea will simply spring into my head.

Of late I've been plagued by the following sentence: "At the head of the Stair of the Ten Thousand Herons, where traitors are thrown to their deaths, there is a melon vendor." I have no idea where this place is, other than it is in a city upon a cliff overlooking the sea. I can't explain where the idea came from, but this is the sort of seed from which worlds can grow.
LefferDP
10-07-07, 10:18 PM Trying to sleep. I keep a pad of paper next to my bed just in case I think of something cool before I fall asleep. I know if I don't hop up and write it down then, I'll forget about it.

I've been building fictional worlds sense I was quite wee and as a result I can get ideas from all manner of things. I also read voraciously and have drawn many ideas from books. The writings of Jorge Luis Borges have been particularly good for ideas.

I thumb my nose at your Modernist author!

Of late I've been plagued by the following sentence: "At the head of the Stair of the Ten Thousand Herons, where traitors are thrown to their deaths, there is a melon vendor." I have no idea where this place is, other than it is in a city upon a cliff overlooking the sea. I can't explain where the idea came from, but this is the sort of seed from which worlds can grow.

I blame the melon vendor, mostly.
GoriceXII
10-07-07, 10:32 PM My ideas came to be in a series of events. First of all was a conversation I had with a friend of mine years ago about a small nation that was trying to build up a civiliztion in spite of alarming odds. I got my other ideas from:
Sharpe
George R.R. Martin
E.R. Eddison's the Worm Ouroboros
George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin
David Gemmell's books
Rhapsody of Fire's music
Plato's Republic

But other things come to mind...the Tower of Glass that is so important in my game came from a long held fascination with seeing a small castle made of glass bottles in British Columbia. I guess there are many sources and suddenly ideas just come to you, often at some inconvenient point, but as with all fantasy you feel excitement and imagine "What if...?"
Xaer
10-07-07, 10:40 PM Believe it or not, work.
I'll be walking down the aisles, stocking them with plan B(muffins), and my mind will wander. An hour later, my mind will be swimming with both epic thoughts, and confusion at how it's already time for lunch.
Delfedd
10-08-07, 11:02 AM Well, listening to "Alexander the Great" (Iron Maiden) followed shortly by "Enter Sandman" (metalica) caused me to think of a subplot for my campaign involving a man who wished to conquer both the material plane and dreams.
Averroes
10-08-07, 11:22 AM The trip to england was really handy. For raw ideas.

But when I'm not in England, boredom is my primary inspiration. I don't like being bored and since I had a paperoute when I was a kid I told myself stories as I walked around in the pre-dawn.
The habbit stuck. So now when I'm bored (like right now at work) I work on campaign ideas.
I'm currently flushing out the econmy of the region, and the economic history as well.

I've been running in the same campign world for like 7 years or so now. Alot has been figured out,and I draw on the past campaigns to figureout current state of things in this location.
To start I drew alot from any number of sources, but now the world itself is the source of the ideas.
fodigg
10-08-07, 12:56 PM It seems like people are going in three different directions:
Inspiration from other work (movies, music, writing, and I would suspect visual art although it hasn't been said)
Placing self in a new environment (vacation, or just travelling out of the ordinary)
Idle daydreaming

I think all authors experience a combination of these influences. We all put some of the art that we enjoy into our own art (conciously or unconciously), new and exciting locales can inspire us just for the sake that we are being placed out of the ordinary, and who hasn't had the random flash of insight from time to time?

I think the most interesting moments as a writer are when you force yourself to produce and find something valuable in that. Forcing writing often will just fill pages, but occassionally you'll come back to something and be struck by it, or see it from a new angle and literally inspire yourself. That's fun.
Mookie37
10-08-07, 01:19 PM I get ideas while mowing the lawn. We have a very trim grass line.
Artifact
10-08-07, 04:51 PM I get ideas while mowing the lawn. We have a very trim grass line.

I often get ideas while I should be mowing the lawn ;).

I enjoy taking walks in my free time. Day or night, afternoon or evening, far or near, I'll walk.

On these walks I'm able to easily observe the people and places around me. Sometimes I can shape certain ideas into actual campaign settings, but usually (if I don't force it), the idea shapes itself. Usually it takes the form of people (either individual or group) or places, which aren't tied to any particular imaginary setting.
Kezot
10-08-07, 08:56 PM Well, suffice to say that I was not expecting such varied responses. Existing works I could believe, and obviously bordom, but mowing the grass. . . not so much. I even got a lot of ideas from a piece of art that I was using for a background on my desktop. I am surprised that nobody mentioned this very forum as a source of inspiration. Whenever I see all the "campaign ideas" threads, at least 10% get filed into memory for future usage.

Surprised to see someone else mention Iron Maiden as an influence. I believe that Delfedd said that? I guess that metal has a lot of connections to fantastic worlds (see also: Dragonforce). If anyone has any specific sources to present, it would be interesting to see them. I have shamelessly stolen ideas from Myst, for example. Gotta love those linking books.
Deadlypudding
10-09-07, 01:27 AM Everything inspire me. I'm always brainstorming, and I see inspiration in any random thing that happens to inspire me. Its also been so long since I concieved my universe I couldn't remember exactly what inspired me... wait I just did. It was some mysterious symbol in that in China they believed it held the secrets of the universe if one could solve it. So my story was about an artifact that once solved would end the universe. From that grew a great war over lost technology from an ancient time. This ancient time was really a mass migration of humans from Earth to escape the fate they had wrought themselves there. And this stemmed from an intense second cold war that began with the U.S. president announcing suprememe dictatorship after a large scale terrorist invasion/attack.

Oddly enough, I actually created the whole history in that same order. But that really doesn't do my world justice to sum it up as so.

So to stray myself back on topic, it was mahjong that inspired me.
ssvegeta555
10-09-07, 03:25 AM Sometimes when I post new content for my campaign setting I do give some insight where I got my ideas from, what my inspirations were etc.
But that only really explains some bits of my inspirations. My main ones are the ones I rely on the most everyday. My ideas best come when I'm in the shower, walking around the house aimlessly, zoning out on the Bus or the Max train, or about to go to bed. However, My best ideas I have to say are spontaneous. They just come out of nowhere catching me off guard.
Oh and I also get inspiration from dreams, but that's a rare event. Once in the blue moon rare.
Suzu
10-09-07, 11:34 PM Like everyone else in creation, I get my ideas from no specific source, they just pop into my head in response to certai stimulus. That's what inspiration is for Crist's sake...
Danahan
10-10-07, 11:18 AM I often find myself plagued by writer’s block, but instead of taking a break and hoping that my imagination will return, I will maul over the situation until I come up with a crude idea. Then its only a matter of refining and cultivating.
Eldritch_Lord
10-10-07, 10:47 PM Trying to sleep. I keep a pad of paper next to my bed just in case I think of something cool before I fall asleep. I know if I don't hop up and write it down then, I'll forget about it.
I know what you mean; I have a really horrible memory, so I always keep pens and scraps of paper in my pocket in case I come up with something.

My ideas come from three things, generally:

1) Reading splatbooks--"Man, this is a dumb idea. It would be so much cooler if...hey, there's a thought...."
2) Star Wars books--"That is completely impossible. If they're going to make a planet that's completely ocean, they might as well say X...and add this detail here, and maybe...hmmm, that'll work...."
3) Stream-of-consciousness ramblings--"This is the most boring class ever...the teacher obviously doesn't have to worry about the HD cap for deep slumber...he knows his stuff, though; he rivals my priest for sheer volume of rhetoric...the schools and the church are competing to see who can brainwash me first...Hey! Clerics vs. wizards to mind-control an unsuspecting population...*scribble scribble scribble*"

I've had my share of completely-out-of-the-blue ideas or wake-up-and-write-down-a-dream ideas, but they've been comparatively rare.
Artifact
10-11-07, 12:28 PM Oh and I also get inspiration from dreams, but that's a rare event. Once in the blue moon rare.

The mind operates on such a different level in the dream state. I've often wondered where our dreams take us exactly. Try lucid dreaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming) sometime ;). Its harmless (most dreams are) and kinda cool.

Is the subconcious mind able to access and decipher things that the concious mind isn't? Psychic powers, anyone ;)? Seen future events? Talk to the deceased in "vision"? (I've done this myself). I've always found it fascinating, but I can't even be considered a hobbyist on the subject.

I failed to mention it in my first post, but like Ssvegeta555, I also get inspiration from dreams, and its a rare event as well. Most dreams can be dismissed as nothing more than aimless wanderings. When somethig does click however, its almost an epiphany its so powerful. Unfortunately, its also very easy to lose upon the waking; most dreams fade in the concious mind like a rainbow into mist. I keep a writing tablet by the bed just for this reason. I thought I was wierd for doing this, until I found out (later) that lots of people do the same thing.
legolizard
10-14-07, 04:33 AM Well, I get much of my ideas from looking at works other people have done and compareing them side by side too see if I can attapt one to the other. Its kinda a game I have to see if I take one thing and make it follow another things history (with some original ideas of my own offcourse) how much of the origianl thing is reconizable and can anyone else tell what I compared it too.
For example. Kahlastar and Inspired in my world work diffrently. They both are decentents of outcast of the dreamplane, Kahlastars decended from dream creatures (neutral good) and Inspired decended from nightmare creatures (chaotic neutral), both haveing the original fleeing outsiders fuse their essences with that of human hosts. Their races fled the dreamplane together in a joint effort and closed all access, other then actual dreaming, to the plane of dreams to keep in what had pushed them out in the first place. Eventauly the two races and their mortal infused decendants seperated due to diffrences in whether they should all be mindlinked, the Kahlastar wanted to mindlink everyone together and the inspired thought it would lessen their individuality. While not a violent seperation it was far from friendly as the isnpired were exiled to the underground. While Kahlastar built a lawful society based on fighting evil and building a giant cosntructs and using knights ti do it. Isnpired lived underground and adpated to use stealth and supterfuse to become skillful theives and cunning warriors in their own right.

If you can quess what I used as a historical template to place on these two dnd races i will give you a cookie.
Smerg
10-14-07, 01:52 PM My latest campaign idea called The Eternal Struggle came from me starting to ask myself some questions.

I knew that I wanted to come up with something for when the new 4e comes out.

I then thought to myself of what I wanted. I decided that I wanted a way to bring varied players together and send them on possibly unrelated quests. I thus needed to create a way to move players from a story set in a jungle to a story set in a desert, to a story set in a city without wasting plenty of time on travel between location.

The answer to that problem was creating an idea of gods holding a series of contests or challenges that they kept throwing players into. This would have a episodic feel to it then like Star Trek, Stargate SG-1 or Sliders where every new episode is a new planet and challenge.

The creation of the gods having a war reminded me of the Runequest/Glorantha which had an eternal whirlwind left over from the gods battling. This idea produced the concept of the cyclone that is a hole in space and time. Really, it serves as excuse to send the players where ever I feel like setting the next story.

Player's though need some sort of base where they can rest, restock, and do some non-adventure roleplay. This is where I created that there would be a place called the Carnival. The Carnival is inspired by shows like Prisoner, Carnival, and Deadwood. It is possible to live and is somewhat comfortable but it is alien enough that it is never home. This creates a feeling that it is really another form of prison from which the players will likely want to try and escape.

Liking shows like the Prisoner, I decided there should be the equivelent of a Number 2. The Ringmaster became the natural outlet for this idea. A person that could be killed off and yet replaced without actually changing the story or affecting the plot. Killing the Ringmaster will likely only provide the players with a personal satisfaction as a way to vent their anger. The Fortune Teller is the equivelent of the Oracle in the Matrix. Someone the players may choose to turn for benevolent assisstance but not necessarily aid that the players will understand.

The Carnival also serves the purpose of the eternal onion. Pull back layers to try and get to the centre of the mystery and you may seem to make progress but whether it is true progress will keep the players working and guessing between adventures.

The above shows how questions created answers that created new questions and further answers.

If you want to look more on the Eternal Struggle it is under Cool World concepts in 50 words [my quick overview is 50 words but I provide more detail after that]
stellarguy1138
10-22-07, 12:54 PM I would have to say I get most of my ideas from the history channel. Was inspired by current campaign alot by the Dark Ages special. Alot of my characters in my campaign are based of actual people in history and then I put a D&D spin on them. Also from books of movies I have read usually from sci-fi, fantasy,horror genre.Most notably Star Wars, Kentaro Miura's berserk, The Wheel of Time,Dragon lance,the Dark Tower,Grimms Fairy Tales. Music has also been known to inspire me. Everything from Led Zeppelin, and Tool to Bob Dylan has given me ideas to add to my campaigns.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Kezot 10-07-07, 10:05 PM	I've spent a fair deal of time lurking on these boards, and despite all the amazing campaign ideas I find, there is always something missing: an origin. Ideas like a world set on a d20 or a setting with basically every concept turned on its head are all over the place, but I have never seen anyone say where they get their ideas. I got the idea for one campaign (which I never ended up using) during a vacation to Italy, for example. While we were driving through Tuscany, I was listening to Iron Maiden, and one of the songs made me think of a battle happening on the vast plaines and beautiful hills. By the time we reached our hotel, an entire epic campaign had lept into my mind, full of nations, religions, gods, and powerful artifacts. Another time, I was walking home from a party, and I looked at the full moon, and a thought popped into my head: "What if the moon was the size of Earth?" End result, a setting with a double planet, and the psionic, technologically advanced inhabitants of one world invading the pastoral, magical land that the PCs inhabit. So, Iron Maiden + Tuscany = Epic War Campaign Full moon + 15 minute walk = Twin Worlds Campaign This led me to wonder, where do you get YOUR ideas? Do you sit down and try to think them up? Do they just come to you? Or does some other method lead to your campaigns? P.S. The name of the Epic War campaign is "Gates of Tomorrow", and the song directly responsible is "Monsegur". If you recognize the album, good job.
Darth Syntax 10-07-07, 10:17 PM	I've been building fictional worlds sense I was quite wee and as a result I can get ideas from all manner of things. I also read voraciously and have drawn many ideas from books. The writings of Jorge Luis Borges have been particularly good for ideas. I've worked on worlds that owe their genesis to particular pieces of music, to the sound of an unusual word, to the particular phrasing of a passage in a novel. And, as is more often the case, an idea will simply spring into my head. Of late I've been plagued by the following sentence: "At the head of the Stair of the Ten Thousand Herons, where traitors are thrown to their deaths, there is a melon vendor." I have no idea where this place is, other than it is in a city upon a cliff overlooking the sea. I can't explain where the idea came from, but this is the sort of seed from which worlds can grow.
LefferDP 10-07-07, 10:18 PM	Trying to sleep. I keep a pad of paper next to my bed just in case I think of something cool before I fall asleep. I know if I don't hop up and write it down then, I'll forget about it. I've been building fictional worlds sense I was quite wee and as a result I can get ideas from all manner of things. I also read voraciously and have drawn many ideas from books. The writings of Jorge Luis Borges have been particularly good for ideas. I thumb my nose at your Modernist author! Of late I've been plagued by the following sentence: "At the head of the Stair of the Ten Thousand Herons, where traitors are thrown to their deaths, there is a melon vendor." I have no idea where this place is, other than it is in a city upon a cliff overlooking the sea. I can't explain where the idea came from, but this is the sort of seed from which worlds can grow. I blame the melon vendor, mostly.
GoriceXII 10-07-07, 10:32 PM	My ideas came to be in a series of events. First of all was a conversation I had with a friend of mine years ago about a small nation that was trying to build up a civiliztion in spite of alarming odds. I got my other ideas from: Sharpe George R.R. Martin E.R. Eddison's the Worm Ouroboros George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin David Gemmell's books Rhapsody of Fire's music Plato's Republic But other things come to mind...the Tower of Glass that is so important in my game came from a long held fascination with seeing a small castle made of glass bottles in British Columbia. I guess there are many sources and suddenly ideas just come to you, often at some inconvenient point, but as with all fantasy you feel excitement and imagine "What if...?"
Xaer 10-07-07, 10:40 PM	Believe it or not, work. I'll be walking down the aisles, stocking them with plan B(muffins), and my mind will wander. An hour later, my mind will be swimming with both epic thoughts, and confusion at how it's already time for lunch.
Delfedd 10-08-07, 11:02 AM	Well, listening to "Alexander the Great" (Iron Maiden) followed shortly by "Enter Sandman" (metalica) caused me to think of a subplot for my campaign involving a man who wished to conquer both the material plane and dreams.
Averroes 10-08-07, 11:22 AM	The trip to england was really handy. For raw ideas. But when I'm not in England, boredom is my primary inspiration. I don't like being bored and since I had a paperoute when I was a kid I told myself stories as I walked around in the pre-dawn. The habbit stuck. So now when I'm bored (like right now at work) I work on campaign ideas. I'm currently flushing out the econmy of the region, and the economic history as well. I've been running in the same campign world for like 7 years or so now. Alot has been figured out,and I draw on the past campaigns to figureout current state of things in this location. To start I drew alot from any number of sources, but now the world itself is the source of the ideas.
fodigg 10-08-07, 12:56 PM	It seems like people are going in three different directions: Inspiration from other work (movies, music, writing, and I would suspect visual art although it hasn't been said) Placing self in a new environment (vacation, or just travelling out of the ordinary) Idle daydreaming I think all authors experience a combination of these influences. We all put some of the art that we enjoy into our own art (conciously or unconciously), new and exciting locales can inspire us just for the sake that we are being placed out of the ordinary, and who hasn't had the random flash of insight from time to time? I think the most interesting moments as a writer are when you force yourself to produce and find something valuable in that. Forcing writing often will just fill pages, but occassionally you'll come back to something and be struck by it, or see it from a new angle and literally inspire yourself. That's fun.
Mookie37 10-08-07, 01:19 PM	I get ideas while mowing the lawn. We have a very trim grass line.
Artifact 10-08-07, 04:51 PM	I get ideas while mowing the lawn. We have a very trim grass line. I often get ideas while I should be mowing the lawn ;). I enjoy taking walks in my free time. Day or night, afternoon or evening, far or near, I'll walk. On these walks I'm able to easily observe the people and places around me. Sometimes I can shape certain ideas into actual campaign settings, but usually (if I don't force it), the idea shapes itself. Usually it takes the form of people (either individual or group) or places, which aren't tied to any particular imaginary setting.
Kezot 10-08-07, 08:56 PM	Well, suffice to say that I was not expecting such varied responses. Existing works I could believe, and obviously bordom, but mowing the grass. . . not so much. I even got a lot of ideas from a piece of art that I was using for a background on my desktop. I am surprised that nobody mentioned this very forum as a source of inspiration. Whenever I see all the "campaign ideas" threads, at least 10% get filed into memory for future usage. Surprised to see someone else mention Iron Maiden as an influence. I believe that Delfedd said that? I guess that metal has a lot of connections to fantastic worlds (see also: Dragonforce). If anyone has any specific sources to present, it would be interesting to see them. I have shamelessly stolen ideas from Myst, for example. Gotta love those linking books.
Deadlypudding 10-09-07, 01:27 AM	Everything inspire me. I'm always brainstorming, and I see inspiration in any random thing that happens to inspire me. Its also been so long since I concieved my universe I couldn't remember exactly what inspired me... wait I just did. It was some mysterious symbol in that in China they believed it held the secrets of the universe if one could solve it. So my story was about an artifact that once solved would end the universe. From that grew a great war over lost technology from an ancient time. This ancient time was really a mass migration of humans from Earth to escape the fate they had wrought themselves there. And this stemmed from an intense second cold war that began with the U.S. president announcing suprememe dictatorship after a large scale terrorist invasion/attack. Oddly enough, I actually created the whole history in that same order. But that really doesn't do my world justice to sum it up as so. So to stray myself back on topic, it was mahjong that inspired me.
ssvegeta555 10-09-07, 03:25 AM	Sometimes when I post new content for my campaign setting I do give some insight where I got my ideas from, what my inspirations were etc. But that only really explains some bits of my inspirations. My main ones are the ones I rely on the most everyday. My ideas best come when I'm in the shower, walking around the house aimlessly, zoning out on the Bus or the Max train, or about to go to bed. However, My best ideas I have to say are spontaneous. They just come out of nowhere catching me off guard. Oh and I also get inspiration from dreams, but that's a rare event. Once in the blue moon rare.
Suzu 10-09-07, 11:34 PM	Like everyone else in creation, I get my ideas from no specific source, they just pop into my head in response to certai stimulus. That's what inspiration is for Crist's sake...
Danahan 10-10-07, 11:18 AM	I often find myself plagued by writer’s block, but instead of taking a break and hoping that my imagination will return, I will maul over the situation until I come up with a crude idea. Then its only a matter of refining and cultivating.
Eldritch_Lord 10-10-07, 10:47 PM	Trying to sleep. I keep a pad of paper next to my bed just in case I think of something cool before I fall asleep. I know if I don't hop up and write it down then, I'll forget about it. I know what you mean; I have a really horrible memory, so I always keep pens and scraps of paper in my pocket in case I come up with something. My ideas come from three things, generally: 1) Reading splatbooks--"Man, this is a dumb idea. It would be so much cooler if...hey, there's a thought...." 2) Star Wars books--"That is completely impossible. If they're going to make a planet that's completely ocean, they might as well say X...and add this detail here, and maybe...hmmm, that'll work...." 3) Stream-of-consciousness ramblings--"This is the most boring class ever...the teacher obviously doesn't have to worry about the HD cap for deep slumber...he knows his stuff, though; he rivals my priest for sheer volume of rhetoric...the schools and the church are competing to see who can brainwash me first...Hey! Clerics vs. wizards to mind-control an unsuspecting population...scribble scribble scribble" I've had my share of completely-out-of-the-blue ideas or wake-up-and-write-down-a-dream ideas, but they've been comparatively rare.
Artifact 10-11-07, 12:28 PM	Oh and I also get inspiration from dreams, but that's a rare event. Once in the blue moon rare. The mind operates on such a different level in the dream state. I've often wondered where our dreams take us exactly. Try lucid dreaming (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming) sometime ;). Its harmless (most dreams are) and kinda cool. Is the subconcious mind able to access and decipher things that the concious mind isn't? Psychic powers, anyone ;)? Seen future events? Talk to the deceased in "vision"? (I've done this myself). I've always found it fascinating, but I can't even be considered a hobbyist on the subject. I failed to mention it in my first post, but like Ssvegeta555, I also get inspiration from dreams, and its a rare event as well. Most dreams can be dismissed as nothing more than aimless wanderings. When somethig does click however, its almost an epiphany its so powerful. Unfortunately, its also very easy to lose upon the waking; most dreams fade in the concious mind like a rainbow into mist. I keep a writing tablet by the bed just for this reason. I thought I was wierd for doing this, until I found out (later) that lots of people do the same thing.
legolizard 10-14-07, 04:33 AM	Well, I get much of my ideas from looking at works other people have done and compareing them side by side too see if I can attapt one to the other. Its kinda a game I have to see if I take one thing and make it follow another things history (with some original ideas of my own offcourse) how much of the origianl thing is reconizable and can anyone else tell what I compared it too. For example. Kahlastar and Inspired in my world work diffrently. They both are decentents of outcast of the dreamplane, Kahlastars decended from dream creatures (neutral good) and Inspired decended from nightmare creatures (chaotic neutral), both haveing the original fleeing outsiders fuse their essences with that of human hosts. Their races fled the dreamplane together in a joint effort and closed all access, other then actual dreaming, to the plane of dreams to keep in what had pushed them out in the first place. Eventauly the two races and their mortal infused decendants seperated due to diffrences in whether they should all be mindlinked, the Kahlastar wanted to mindlink everyone together and the inspired thought it would lessen their individuality. While not a violent seperation it was far from friendly as the isnpired were exiled to the underground. While Kahlastar built a lawful society based on fighting evil and building a giant cosntructs and using knights ti do it. Isnpired lived underground and adpated to use stealth and supterfuse to become skillful theives and cunning warriors in their own right. If you can quess what I used as a historical template to place on these two dnd races i will give you a cookie.
Smerg 10-14-07, 01:52 PM	My latest campaign idea called The Eternal Struggle came from me starting to ask myself some questions. I knew that I wanted to come up with something for when the new 4e comes out. I then thought to myself of what I wanted. I decided that I wanted a way to bring varied players together and send them on possibly unrelated quests. I thus needed to create a way to move players from a story set in a jungle to a story set in a desert, to a story set in a city without wasting plenty of time on travel between location. The answer to that problem was creating an idea of gods holding a series of contests or challenges that they kept throwing players into. This would have a episodic feel to it then like Star Trek, Stargate SG-1 or Sliders where every new episode is a new planet and challenge. The creation of the gods having a war reminded me of the Runequest/Glorantha which had an eternal whirlwind left over from the gods battling. This idea produced the concept of the cyclone that is a hole in space and time. Really, it serves as excuse to send the players where ever I feel like setting the next story. Player's though need some sort of base where they can rest, restock, and do some non-adventure roleplay. This is where I created that there would be a place called the Carnival. The Carnival is inspired by shows like Prisoner, Carnival, and Deadwood. It is possible to live and is somewhat comfortable but it is alien enough that it is never home. This creates a feeling that it is really another form of prison from which the players will likely want to try and escape. Liking shows like the Prisoner, I decided there should be the equivelent of a Number 2. The Ringmaster became the natural outlet for this idea. A person that could be killed off and yet replaced without actually changing the story or affecting the plot. Killing the Ringmaster will likely only provide the players with a personal satisfaction as a way to vent their anger. The Fortune Teller is the equivelent of the Oracle in the Matrix. Someone the players may choose to turn for benevolent assisstance but not necessarily aid that the players will understand. The Carnival also serves the purpose of the eternal onion. Pull back layers to try and get to the centre of the mystery and you may seem to make progress but whether it is true progress will keep the players working and guessing between adventures. The above shows how questions created answers that created new questions and further answers. If you want to look more on the Eternal Struggle it is under Cool World concepts in 50 words [my quick overview is 50 words but I provide more detail after that]
stellarguy1138 10-22-07, 12:54 PM	I would have to say I get most of my ideas from the history channel. Was inspired by current campaign alot by the Dark Ages special. Alot of my characters in my campaign are based of actual people in history and then I put a D&D spin on them. Also from books of movies I have read usually from sci-fi, fantasy,horror genre.Most notably Star Wars, Kentaro Miura's berserk, The Wheel of Time,Dragon lance,the Dark Tower,Grimms Fairy Tales. Music has also been known to inspire me. Everything from Led Zeppelin, and Tool to Bob Dylan has given me ideas to add to my campaigns.