As a DM, you face many challenges on a day to day basis. One of the biggest challenges is finding what drives your players, and doing it well session after session. But what happens when you're really too busy to come up with some sweet new plot line? Or maybe your creative character creation has been weak of late? Perhaps you can't think of any new and exciting encounters to throw at your players?
These are all good questions. And the answer to all of them is simple. Recycle. Regardless of whether you're making a D&D campaign, writing a novel or short story, or even designing a video game, you're aloud to reuse your best ideas! To an extent.
There is a catch though. You can't simply take an idea you used earlier and stick it in somewhere else. It has to be modified, it has to be reconstructed, and it has to make sense! For example: Let's say you have a group of adventurers looking to kill a dragon and take its treasure. A very Tolkien-esque plot line. A great idea, and a grand adventure. The first time. But there are details to this plot that you may have fleshed out during the actual storytelling. The details are the important part.
Possible Details
The terrain in which the dragon was fought.
Possible friends/allies along the way.
Was the dragon ever fought?
Was there a dragon at all?
Was there even a horde to claim?
Who found who first?
These are some very obvious concepts during the actual story. But what would happen if you simply took the same adventure, and changed the details? Maybe the heroes are now looking for a dragon in the snow, or perhaps in a swamp. This can change things dramatically in terms of encounters and challenges, but is still the same plot at heart. However, if instead of a legion of soldiers offering aid, the protagonists stumbled upon a band of dragon-worshiping kobolds, things would go a bit differently as well. Still the same plot though. But what if there was no dragon at the end of the journey? Perhaps the heroes were tricked by a well-intentioned sage to find the hideout of a merciless warlord. It could even be the case that his evil nickname is "The Dragon of Kashim"! Or what about an entire lack of treasure once the dragon was defeated? That could certainly put a damper on the day of the adventurers, and perhaps the real adventure is the trip back home on a lost investment. And finally, it may be the case that the dragon finds them first! And the quest is not a mission of violence, but a treasure hunt across the realms of many different kings and warlords!
Some of these suggestions are a lot more extreme than others. But as you can see, taking a plot detail and tweaking it can do wonders on rekindling a previously overused idea. And don't be afraid to let one detail change another in the course of your plotting and planning. Sometimes the best ideas are completely indistinguishable from the original thought!
2 comments:
Oddly enough, I only remember you putting us against a dragon once...
What about recycling other people's ideas: ;) Nah, I don't mean like just grabbing an idea somewhere and using it, but instead changing it to something of your own (and hey, it's not like us DMs thought of things like the Leviathan on our own). Let me give an example: after watching the movie, The Fountain and checking out some info on the Mayan underworld, Xibalba, that is mentioned in the movie, I thought it could be used on an adventure. Wikipedia says it decently enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xibalba
Basically, a party could enter a cave (for whatever reason--so stop a plague, or anything) as one of the entrances to Xibalba (another being the nebula where the sword of the constellation of Orion is (to give you context as to what this realm might look like). Basically it's a place where the Lords subject visitors to a kind of vile, nasty system of obstacle courses (like going through a river of scorpions and another of pus ;p). Anyway, when I read the article I thought it'd be the coolest thing (so OK, most of me is just asking if you think this would be a cool module). It could be occidentalized, or modified to fit any setting and since Mayan mythology is so little know, I think it'd be perfect. I guess it's just an example of how to find material and 'recycle' it in your own "image."
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