Storytelling and insiprations

Samiel

Samiel

One Thousand Club
It's not always easy to come up with enough stuff to satisfy a full session of gaming on your own, and being an ST is a lonely job in that way. Sometimes one encounters a creative block and worries that there'll be little structure to the next session as a result.


How do you resolve your blocks, or under which circumstances do you get your best inspirations?


Personally, I tend to think of things incidentally when I watch good programs or read good books. I'm expecting a lot of cool ideas out of The Art of War, which I'm getting now as an audiobook.


I also tend to get a lot out of thinking carefully about the status quo; instead of thinking about what will happen, I consider what currently is, and the rest just comes into my head.
 
If I get stuck for imagery, I reset to Exalt0


vlcsnap-84380.png



Believe it.
 
He still looks like the chubbiest ninja ever.


Anyway.


I look into History Channel specials or music randomly gets things brewing in my mind. That's just a very small amount of what I look into.
 
Usually I talk about the current situation in the game with my wife, ponder things over while I'm at work, scan through source material, and if I hit too bad a block, I do something else for a while. Read, watch anime shows, play with my son...do something other than think about things. Whether in a few hours or a day or two, things should come to me.
 
Music.


Classic ska. Old Skool punk. Heck, The Sugar Hill Gang. I get a block here and there, I just put on some tunes, and let my mind wander a bit.


Based entire campaigns around Bring Back My Golden Arm and The Butcher Boy.  Most of my campaigns have a central theme tune, deep down.
 
Writer's block?


What's that?


Oh!


I use my genetic crack-headedness to cover for moments when I'm out of ideas.  In other words, things go to (Anime) Toon Town.
 
YDSB!


I have found that the Battlestar Galactica OST is great listening material for writing epic stuff.
 
Side Quests.


 Having reached several blocks in my story-telling plans in the past, I took to GMing SLA Industries for a bit.  The great thing to SLA, is that there doesn't HAVE to be an overall plan, unless you want there to be one.  For those who don't know (or hate the game anyways), SLA's setup is based on jobs, similar to Shadowrun's philosophy.  "Here's a job, it'll make you money, do you want it?"  From there, they can get as complex as you really want them to be.  So if you reach a block, you can toss together a quick hodge-podge session for a night by providing a simple 'in-out' job to bide some time.  Hell, there were several times I stringed a chain of unconnected side-jobs only to figure out weeks later how to bring about a job or event to tie them into the main 'plan'.  


Applying this kind of idea to ST games like Exalted, isn't very difficult.  It just requires a bit more planning on how to get the group to take the bait.  Plus, while you're brainstorming up simple sessions like a "get this for me" dungeon-crawler, you might stumble upon a new approach for furthering the overall story-arc that you're aiming for...  such as global conquest.
 
Old Fairy Tales often make great story hooks, and occasionally, great adventures.


I also have a habit of using whatever my players hate and putting my spin own on it.  My current successes include dungeon hacks, wire-fu(that one's a given), Scooby Doo, and the cliche of "you were dead all that time!"
 
My wife's currently working on a gem where she got the idea for the basic starting plot from Roanoke. Legends and tales can be pretty good sources much of the time. And who knows...someday people might realize they're fighting the Big Bad Wolf...a wolf totem Lunar with a penchant for eating little girls and pigs.
 
Video Games.  Books I've read.  Movies.  And yes...the History Channel.  Can't write better stuff than history.
 
I read a lot, I watch a lot of movies, and I play various RPG-style console and PC games.  Not just fantasy or scifi - I watch contemporary drama, history shows, biographies, political thrilliers, and more.  Popular culture gives you the vocabulary you need to describe your games, but you must fill in the blanks.


I choose to start with a theme.  For my overall game, Fall of Eden is built around the theme of "self-determination".  That's represented by the Exalted (embodying free will) vs. Autochthon and his Alchemicals (embodying control and order).


For the Alchemicals, the theme was my requirements for them as dramatic devices - they needed to be scary in numbers, they had to be faceless and identical and yet somehow be individual characters, and they had to be more mobile AND more physically capable than the PCs could ever be (in order to be a persistent menace).


What I ended up creating was the Assembled.  They are Essence entities which are capable of traversing the "world of information" called the Lands of Light and materializing over communications links (like a telephone or e-mail), assembling robot bodies out of technology that is found in the area (like a Hummer or a washing machine).  However, if you are "off the grid", they have a great deal of trouble finding you.


The Assembled are often equipped with a symbiote, a combination of human personality and Essence battery, that lets them function on the low-Essence Earth.  The Exalted are also capable of bonding with the symbiotes and interacting with their personalities.  They can also engage their Essence storage ability to transform themselves (physically, even) into a higher-Essence fighting form, which comes at a Limit, Willpower or Health Level cost.


My vocabulary for creating and designing these creatures came from Digimon, the Dirty Pair stories, the Terminator, the Matrix, and more.  They are unique enough (according to my players) that they really succeed as unique creations, even if some of their origins are clear.
 
I read Grimms fairytales, while watching star wars, and listening to swedish tecno-pop. if that don't get your creative juices flowing I have no idea what will.


...or there is always the old stand by, if the game gets slow, or you are out of ideas, have some one kick the door down, say something mysterious and meaningless, then watch the PCs work out your story for you. :wink:
 
Gtroc said:
...or there is always the old stand by, if the game gets slow, or you are out of ideas, have some one kick the door down, say something mysterious and meaningless, then watch the PCs work out your story for you. :wink:
Click to expand...
Ah, a blessed tactic which I still use.
 
Again, straight from the other game I play often, SLA...  A buddy of mine has a completely black sheet he terms his 'Ajax' sheet.  If he's running SLA, and the game slows-down, he throws out his God-of-Snipers known as Ajax (sponsored by a non-existant cleaning company), whose stats and attritbutes are whatever he feels like at the time.  The idea, is to give the players a threat of sizable proportions (i.e. critically wounding one player), and force them to strategize and mount a counter-offensive against this crack-shot sniper.  Regardless, it gives the group a ghost to chase for the night, that they will never be able to catch.  Whether or not they know that, depends on how many times game has gotten dull when he's been running.  As a player on the receiving end of an 'Ajax-strike', I've encountered him twice, and came damn close to catching his ass...   :twisted:


Not quite pertaining to Exalted, but one could easily come up with a pain-in-the-ass NPC who is nigh impossible to catch, and damn good at something.  For example, a crack-shot Wood Caste Archer of Essence 5+, Archery 5, Stealth 5, who's brought in to mess up someone, and cause the group to go batshit mental when things get slow.
 
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