DMing. How do YOU do it?

[d13]

So, hi forum. Been forever since I came here :3

I've been away from the game for a couple of years now, didn't have it in me to start new games/groups when the last ones died suddenly (damn people and their (our) responsibilities).

A couple of weeks ago, a group of tabletop-rpg-friendly friends lost their DM (family moved abroad and he had to tag along), and they've been asking me to go back to the rodeo.

As of me, I've been really wanting to go back to the game. D&D 3.5 was my forte, so I have no interest (nor reason) to change it up; but I've been struggling to come up with cool and interesting adventures/encounters/NPCs to drive the campaign (hopefully) around.

Which brings the question...

How do you guys do it? Where do you find your inspiration to create something memorable?
Sharing stories/ideas is always welcome too.

Thank y'all, and it's good to be back :smallbiggrin:

[hymer]

Well, you can't force inspiration. You can encourage it with reading, walking and talking to your players, though.
Starting a new campaign, I usually start somewhere, anywhere. Often a topographical map. When it's done, or in the process of designing it, questions start to present themselves, and I answer them. And suddenly I'm on a roll, and a few hours later I have the outline for a campaign.
I find a good thing for me to get thinking about campaigns is to look in my Rules Cyclopedia (you know, D&D before AD&D) chapter 17: Campaigning. It gets me in the mood, and it reasks some questions and helps me start asking my own.

Then you make an area sufficiently detailed that the players can walk around and explore and come across some hooks, simple stuff (at least on the surface; bandit raids, goblin infestation, quarrel over a will, mysterious burglar, etc. Of course, the mysterious burglar is a goblin, who is after something that's in the will, so he can sell it to the bandits, who really are religious fanatics, etc.* - Whereever they choose to enter the adventure, it should be interesting). And after that first session, you ask the players where they want to go and what to do in the next session, and you prepare that. Hopefully, inspiration will continue to strike, so keep a notebook or some such, and write down your ideas that occur when you're offhandedly thinking of your campaign.

*I literally made that up as I was typing it. It's just a starting point, but could easily be turned into a memorable plot.

[jedipotter]

How do you guys do it? Where do you find your inspiration to create something memorable?
Sharing stories/ideas is always welcome too.

Often I will watch a movie or TV show and see something intresting. But so often it is disapointing. The plot has a nice twist, that is done in the worst possible way. It is horrable to watch. They take a good idea, and utterly ruin it. Or just let it drop and fall apart. I look at it and think, I could do better.

Of course, movie/TV plots are made that way. They have to show danger at the start of the story, a struggle against the odds, and the hero that wins in the end. But a game plot does not need to be that way.

[Amphetryon]

My method:

1. Make a small map: Assuming I haven't opted for a published setting, I just create a small section of the world where the PCs are going to start, and populate it reasonably, based in part on input on Character Level, and what Races and Classes the Players say they want to be.

2. Consider how resources and Racial composition in that small region are likely to interact.

3. Compare party composition and individual backstories against the map to extrapolate party dynamics and likely adventure paths the PCs would be willing (and unwilling) to follow.

4. Seed 4 - 6 Plot Hooks within the region of the world that I've mapped, including reasons why the PCs might head out exploring Parts Unknown.

5. Start the campaign in the sure and happy knowledge that the PCs are at least 50% likely to choose the 9th option from among the 6 I've considered, and wing it based on what's already established.

[Dromuthra]

I read through my library's fantasy section at an alarming rate, so that's one place I draw inspiration from. I also plan, write, organize, run, and play in LARPs, the plots of which are inspired from many sources, giving me even more obscure material. One thing I like to do is to make one statement (broad, like, there are no naturally flying creatures, or magic is common/uncommon/rare/everywhere etc.) and extrapolate a world from there. Alternatively, just think about what kind of businesses would exist in a fantasy setting where adventures were common. One campaign I ran began with the heroes placing applications with the Monster Board (in-game and out-of-game name for the same thing), and organization that (for a price, paid by countries) connected heroes with problems of appropriate level. If you're really stuck, pick something you like and make that the focus of an adventure - it'll guarantee that you're interested, so you should be able to create an interesting world.

[BWR]

It depends on what you mean by 'campaign'. Do you mean a collection of adventures shared by the PCs without any necessary connection between them or a big, overarching plot or theme to tie it all together?

In the latter case, don't feel the need to start a campaign big. Heck, don't even feel the need to start a campaign. Start with a single adventure and see how it goes from there. Find some adventure someone else has written, either freebie online or something published and just run through that. Then find another adventure and run that. Things will often frow from that. And if not, so long as everyone is having fun,

For instance after my Star Wars Mandalorian Wars came to a rather unsatisfying conclusion after being badly managed by me, I decided to go back to basics, pretty literally. I dug out my old Thunder Rift module and put in a few restrictions, then just threw caution and planning to the wind. I literally had no plans for any sort of coherent connection between the players and the adventures or plot lines. I just ran all the old TR adventures and used some of the many seeds in the TR module. This worked beautifully. No pressure to do anything but have a well-run dungeon or wilderness adventure. The players liked it too. Two years later and I'm still running mostly old BECMI adventures (having just graduated to M from C/M). Some personal stuff has crept into the game, and they are thinking about Immortality, but all such goals were background nuggets the players added to their characters and have later, during play, been adopted and explored. Some of the most memorable and long-lasting campaigns I've played in started off as just a bunch of people killing things and taking their stuff with no real goal before evolving into something more.

In the former case, if you just can't think of anything interesting worth running, read through campaign settings. Just read through them and if they are well-written there will be a wealth of ideas and adventure seeds to tempt you with. Hymer mentioned the Rules Cyclopedia, and that's always a good choice, but Pathfinder's "Game Mastery Guide" is also very useful for just about everything related to running a game, including how to find inspiration and how to develop it.

Lastly, if you can't think of anything, ask your players what they want. You can sit and wait for inspiration til the cows come home and get nowhere, lost either in the lack of ideas or the overabundance of possibility. If you have a goal, you immediately start thinking about plans and elements.

[Keneth]

I have no trouble finding creative inspiration, but these days I'm pretty much only running modified adventure paths from Pathfinder.

[Hyena]

1) Drop the players in a small blackwater village with a goal of moving somewhere else.
2) Improvise everything else as I go and rip off more movie plot hooks, characters and lines then puny human mind can comprehend.

What? I don't even like DMing.

[Brookshw]

I can't help myself. I swear I'm off dm'ing but a couple of months down the road I'm back to using again. The stories, the concepts, the jokes, I just can't shake them, they call to me, and, and I have a weak will. Hi, I'm Brookshw and I'm addicted to dming.

But that's it really, eventually the creativity builds up and I want to create a world, interesting characters. Soon enough I have some of them rounded out in my head enough a conflict arises. Once there queue players, drop them in the middle of it and see what bizarre things they come up with. I can't help myself, I like telling stories and this is my creative outlet.

[hemming]

I usually look at a new game like a big experiment, and come up with a few things I want to try

Personally, this helps keep things fresh and interesting for me

In my last game I thought it might be interesting to do an urban setting in which the players had one big sandbox megalopolis to play in (never tried this in a D&D campaign) - I had the idea playing in another game in which the travelling party would get influence in an area/town and meet a ton of new NPCs and then move on, possibly only seeing them as a cameo later

Nailing down a couple of big ideas for things you as a DM are interested in trying to work into the game as key aspects (high magic, low-magic, dragon riders, sky cities, Druidic cults, a Mindflayer ruled world, Arabian myths and legends) creates a seedling of inspiration and makes you passionate about further development

[Cikomyr]

You probably heard the expression "Think globally, act locally". It's usually my approach when I have a big overarching plot to my campaign.

I always need 2 things established: 1- What the overall story is about and 2- What my players are gonna do for the next game.

Depending or not if you wanna be subtle or not, #1 may or may not be known, and thus you need to run certain adventures for your players that are seemingly independent of one another (addressing #2), but should always tie back to the overall plot one way or another. Even if it's only "the players need to find a place to stay and a minimum amount of money to survive", that's acceptable tie-in to the overall plot, as the players are establishing themselves.

Don't be afraid to throw the players curveballs, hard times or reward, as long as it somehow ties to the overall plot. Read your players to understand their character motivation, and find ways to give everyone their little side-story/personal quest based on their ambition or desires, and find a way to tie all of this into your big overall plot as well.

Ultimately, your game will be nothing more than a succession of sessions, and you have to make sure each single session are pleasant in of themselves. I prefer to cut a session short when I see the players are starting something (infiltration/attack/social event) that I know will probably have to be interrupted because of lack of time, and will thus have more time to better prepare.

I learned a lot from watching the best modern tv series. It's important most episode stand on its own, yet is part of the whole. If you can do away with an episode because it's not tied it with the rest of the plot, then it's better be a damn fun episode.

[SiuiS]

Poorly!

Or well, that's how it seems now. I usually do sandbox systems, worlds with politics and happenings that players can interact with at leisure. After a few years hiatus, I'm trying a directed sort of story and bungling it so bad it's not even funny. If I hadn't games with these people before I would swear they would be on the verge of walking!

Figure out what's fun for you, fun for them, and play to those strengths. Things you enjoy, you do well.

[TheDarkSaint]

I guess I do it a bit differently.

I start looking at what my players want to build. I try to find underused, under rated powers that come with their class and weave those powers into the story.

Currently, I have a player who wants to run a straight bard.

So, I take a look at the bardic abilities and I see the counter-songs. When I'm planning encounters and nemisis's..nemisi...BBEG, I put in sonic effects. Siren's, sonic traps, cacophony....it's all in there. Now, his counter-song is very valuable and he feels important using it. He's starting to use counter-song more often than his regular boost songs and loving it. I'm looking at his other musical abilities to see what else I can add.

My crusader wants a real tank, something that draws enemies in for him to pound. He wants to protect the other members. So, I plan tight encounters in dungeons where he can stop up traffic and suffer abuse as his team mates pour on the damage. I give him dazzling armor which draws attention of the mooks. I have a running tally of how much damage he has taken over all and at certain points, it ups his renown with the common folk, making him a hero.

My cloistered cleric gets the Index, a magic item that I stole from the forum earlier that allows you to cram thousands of books into it. His knowledge checks come with detailed histories that are quickly emailed to him and he chooses what the others get to hear. I give him secrets that the others don't get, some that are relevent and some that aren't.

My sorcerer thinks of himself as a ladies man and makes bad decisions when it comes to the fairer sex. That would explain his current trouble with the succubus tormenting the group, but he finds himself very persuessive with women, often getting the groups deals or out of trouble if talking to a woman.

We play just out of the box moduals that I modify, but the PC's have said that they really enjoy their characters, that they seem more real and they care more.

[BrokenChord]

For starters, if your players are experienced, you need to murder and burn everything they thought they knew about the Monster Manual(s). Change up feats, maybe shift around abilities entirely, make new monsters. Do not allow metagaming to solve their problems.

As for the question of hooks and stuff, the key here is to start with fulfilling the players' desires and then expanding outward of your own volition so you can surprise and engage them in things they don't expect while simultaneously giving them something that you can be almost certain that they'll enjoy.

Just ask them for a few words or phrases about what they like in a game. If they say "strong story" and "lots of magic", you probably don't want to build a sandbox-y low-magic politics-heavy world. Common sense there. But it gives you a lot of room to maneuver with their desires.

Perhaps nobody else cares about magic and one person says, "I like lots of psionics, dragons, and PC heroism." You can take that much in unfathomable directions even though it seems rather specific. Depending on what the other players want and your own creativity, you could, say, make the setting a giant floating continent ruled over by tyrannical dragons who viciously hunt users of Psionic power, or you could flip the switch and make a world with 100% Magic-Psionics transparency and make the world a giant desert with scattered villages and stuff but few NPCs above level 1, with literal hordes of magic treasure to be found in old ruins which are being guarded by blue dragons with racial Psion manifesting instead of Sorcerer casting.

If you'd like specific ideas to work with what your players say once you ask, I'd be more than willing to throw some ideas at you over PM to get your brain juices flowing.

[d13]

Thank you for the answers! A lot of helpful stuff in here.

It's funny what a good night's sleep and some book digging do to some people. I already have a couple of pages worth of random ideas I could put together.
I really want to use Kythons :smallbiggrin:

About the players...

Player 1 is obsessed with dragons and magic and stuff (which is funny, considering the others all prefer Eberron over other settings, considering what I've told them, and dragons in Eberron are... Interesting), and has an already developed concept of what she wants to play. Has played before, but overall new to the game.
Player 2 doesn't care much about the setting, he just wants to play a bard and be an overall annoyance. Most experienced player.
Player 3 just wants to roll some dice and hit stuff in the face. Completely new to D&D, not much experience with tabletop RPGs.
Player 4 has about the same experience as #3, but is a little better at the whole thinking-thing :smalltongue:

Murdering the Monster Manual is a thing I do frequently. I need to check my gDrive, but I should have a document with like... 3 or 4 variations of almost every "common" monster in the MMI. It keeps players off the books and more in the game.

Again, thank you for your answers, and keep 'em coming. One can definitely use extra opinions on the matter :smallsmile:

[Captnq]

1. Get four fans. Make sure your have them hooked into to different outlets as triggering the breaker before you are finished can be bad.
2. Butter. Not I cant believe it's not butter, but butter. Because I can believe that *bleep* isn't butter. I know what god damn butter looks like!
3. Turn on the fans.
4. Apply butter vigorously. I cannot stress the word, "vigorously" enough. If you do not apply vigorously, then you shouldn't even bother. Look up the word vigorously. Learn what it means to be vigorous. Become one with vigorously. Say it a lot. "VIG-GOR-US-LEE" Out loud. In public. Get people to look at you strangely. If they start to call the authorities and are smiling at you in a patronizing fashion, you have done it right.
5. Then a miracle occurs.
6. Run the game.
7. ???
8. Profit.

Or do what I do. Wing that mother. Ask the players questions. Encourage them to speculate. Pick the best idea. Pretend it was your idea all along.

Or to quote doctor who, "Talk really fast. Hope something good happens. Take the credit."

[paperarmor]

Something that helps me is music. I listen to bands like Nightwish, Beats Antique, and Coheed and Cambria to get my creative juices flowing. Also talk to your players ask what they want to see and what thier expectations/favorite parts of the game are.

[Windstorm]

I have one bad handicap when it comes to DMing, I suck at making things up as I go that stay consistent with eachother. However, one of my semi shared hobbies with gaming is writing, so I've tried to build out a world by following the story of a character, and then fast forwarding that world for a few hundred years and using the result as a world for a sandbox game.

Will the PCs ever know that story I used to create the world? Maybe, maybe not. However that excercise gave me enough consistency to be able to fiddle details divorced of the big picture, provided I keep track of them.

Music always helps me if I'm stuck. I don't know what I'd do without pandora to help get me unstuck!