Your players are about to arrive to a new city you haven't fully built/designed yet. You realize the dungeon you built for your players lacks some palpable atmosphere or is pretty boring. Travelling from one place to the other seems more of a “get from point A to point B” than a real adventure. Your new NPC looks and feels exactly like the other one you introduced last session.

If you are encountering any of those things, you probably are experiencing what some of us DMs like to call “DM’s block”, or just Writer’s block. You can lay on your bed for multiple hours or keep thinking about new things but you will probably not find anything useful to complete this week’s activity on the table. Having experienced this a bunch of times, I’m here to teach you the useful techniques I found work for getting some inspiration and continue creating new worlds/experiences for your players’ next session:





Read, watch, listen





This one is a classic tip everyone gives when asked how to find inspiration when your mind is completely blocked. This isn’t something we DMs do, but also musicians, artists, writers and many, many others. Watch movies and TV series, doesn’t matter if they are recent, really old or released just a few years ago. You don’t even need to care if it is set in a fantasy setting (a la Lord of the Rings), a totally technologically fueled sci-fi, or set in our real world.

As a DM you need to learn to pay attention to every single detail you can see. That French accent that character is making could work perfectly well for the townsfolk living on the far eastern region from your continent. The dress the bride is wearing in that other movie has some nice details that could fit in a character’s description. The quest the protagonists are following during these chapter (with some tinkering from your part) could suit what the hermit druid is going to ask your PCs to do on the following session.

“Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother's side. Tyrion Lannister, the youngest of Lord Tywin's brood and by far the ugliest. All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his brother's height, struggling to keep pace on stunted legs. His head was too large for his body, with a brute's squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow. One green eye and one black one peered out from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon watched him with fascination.” Game of Thrones – A song of Ice and Fire

Reading is almost vital for you as a creator of your multiverse too. While being able to do most of the things mentioned above, you can steal characters, movements, or landscapes descriptions and use them on your table. If you are using already established settings you can also read their respective books/comics (like the Drizzt series if you are using Forgotten Realms). Books are also extremely important to improve your knowledge of the language, or teach you how to speak in a manner that could leave your friends speechless. Some of the best phrases I’ve based my NPCs in are from books.

As of audiobooks, I have never experienced them, but I guess that the narrations’ pronunciation of different terms and words could also be useful, or even the way they set the tone of the story with their voices.





Look for images on the internet





I was planning to talk about this in a future post, but being so important for me to find inspiration, I had to add it to the list. Artwork can help you create thousands of different stories just by looking at them. What I use the most for this is Pinterest. Set it up for your DM’s needs and you’ll end up having an endless supply of landscape images, characters appearances and different actions taking place. Look at the images for a while and try to guess the stories behind them. Sooner or later you’ll end up with lots of ideas that if they are not to be used right now, can be used in a further date.

As an example. Look at this image for about 40 secs and try to think about the story behind it. After doing that compare it to my thoughts below (and if you are willing to, write your own opinion on the comments below):









Artist: Kou Takano

What I see is a girl (probably a lich) from a long passed era. After being accused of being a witch and exiled from the city she lived in she came back to take revenge. 12 years of living in the shadows passed and by learning the darkest of spells she was able to learn how to shape time and matter to her will. She came back and started preparing from afar, start with the duke’s castle as a warning for the rest of the municipality. Those who were to remain would lay under the command of their new leader, and those who didn’t would become serviceable minions in the new floating fortress being built atop the city, from pieces of the castle itself.

Do this for a while with different pictures and sooner or later you will find something that can help you get inspiration for the plot point you are in right now in your game.





Videogames





There are videogames that shine because of their gameplay mechanics, others for their amazing visuals and graphics, or their hooking story. If you are like me and love videogames, you can play different genres of them and try stealing portions of some quests. Even a quest from Call of Duty could be changed to suit what you need for your table. Puzzles are also something that you find in lots of games nowadays. Steal them and use them in your next dungeon! A personal recommendation is using the simple but effective ones from the Professor Layton’s series from Level 5. Other games like Tomb Raider and Uncharted also have dungeons aesthetics or backstories you could use for inspiration.





Getting inspiration from your daily life





The best ideas for my table always occur to me when I am taking a bath, on the toilet or getting ready for sleep. Just like these, there are lots of things you can use to relax and find some interesting ideas.

Going for a walk or jogging is a really good idea. Look at the people surrounding you. How do they behave/walk/speak? Which clothes are they wearing? How do the buildings around you look like? Who do you imagine could live in them? Everything is an excuse to gather some ideas for your game. Just remember to write them down so you don’t forget!

Maybe get a pamphlet from a travel agency or use Google Maps to see how the constructions from other places look like, or what that people from other totally different regions venerate. I’ve used this technique to create an Asian-themed town in my game. TripAdvisor works for this too!





Watch other people play





This one isn’t for everyone. Not everybody likes to see other people playing. However, being this a roleplaying game, if done well, it could end up feeling more like watching a TV series than watching a bunch of people play a game.

I don’t think I need to mention the gargantuan success of Critical Role (one of the best games, played by professional voice actors), but if you want to see some other awesome streams I can pretty much recommend most of the ones in DnD’s Youtube/Twitch Channel (I haven’t tried all their shows). What can be a better place to steal ideas from and get inspired than from your favorite DMs?



