Sourcing Inspiration

I recently talked about creativity, now for inspiration. Inspiration is, “the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.” (oxforddictionaries.com).

In a previous post I stated, “The point of this is to relay that you already are creative, just like K. is.” (Townsley). Everyone is the sum of their experiences, even the greatest of fiction makers spliced things together. J. R. R. Tolkien defined what we now call the high-fantasy genre. He didn’t make everything up though.  Drawing off a documentary series called Clash of the Gods, Tolkeien took inspiration from ancient mythologies, his religious upbringing, and from his experience in the trenches of WW1. (Tolkien's Monsters). Mixing ideas together doesn’t make a piece unoriginal; it is a crucial aspect of creativity.

How do you become inspired? Simple, take out a pencil, some paper, and jot the first few things that come to your mind. Deceptively easy? Not really, we’re focusing on the first step, which is getting ideas down. It is normal to view the first step with trepidation. This hesitation is known as writer's block. Everyone has their own ritual to get past it, but mine is to simply start vomiting words onto a page and edit later. Chances are you aren’t looking to become the next Tolkien, Pratchett, Lewis, or Martin for a Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) gaming session. For now, let us work together on inspiring ourselves to become accustomed to the act of inspiration.

With me, inspiration is a slug, slimy and slow. What I do is keep my phone’s memo app on standby at all times. Once an explosion of ideas hit me, I can contain the conflagration where the heat of creativity cannot escape. Fanciful words aside, any form of journal or record keeping helps. Before switching to the memo, I would throw ideas in texts at my girlfriend. Not just for D&D but anything worth writing or making.

Figure 1: Ideas and Inspiration

The above figure should show that what is written doesn’t have to be elaborate. It should also indicate where one can look for inspiration, anywhere. Want a villain? Why not have them be like your favorite one from a book, or base them off a person you don’t like? Need a setting? What about a world other than D&D's Faerûn?

Speaking of, should you have the Dungeon Master’s Manuel for D&D, you will be delighted by their numerous charts to assist in world and adventure creation, chapter 3 on page 71. I didn't use those aids for my homebrew [custom] world Akura, but I have glanced through the parts on adventures for sidequests to keep my players distracted.

Figure 1: The Dungeons Master’s Guide. Charts from page 73.

My Saturday group mainly cares about killing things rather than story, which allows me to guide them down a linear path without them feeling restricted, so long as fights are plenty and hard. The campaign I’ve started with my friend K. is far more free form. It’s what we in general gamer jargon call a ‘sandbox,’ which means there I no clear goal or path. Maybe minor goals but most are set by the player. That leaves a lot more open, but I did it to get her used to certain other aspects of the game. Specifically, that she has dice to roll, when to roll, and with dice can try anything.

As K. played, I had a journal where I tacked down what she had done and who she met. For instance Thursday 11/24/2016 she ran into a Dryad. K.'s character, Chandra, actually spoke that creature's language. They ended up having a conversation where I made up a personality and an easy quest. I wrote down the highlights of the session incase Chandra was in the area again. The reason was both so I don’t forget, but to work that into an actual narrative later.

I've digressed toward the end with those examples of note taking but let us recap. Inspiration is to be mentally stimulated; more so, gaining it takes some practice. It also helps you gather individual puzzle pieces from past experiences and personal knowledge which can be used to create something later.

Inspiration takes practice; take notes whenever you get an idea.

Works Cited

Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

Oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/inspiration>. Accessed 11/25/2016.

“Tolkien’s Monsters.” Clash of the Gods: Episode 9. written by Christopher Cassel and Ted Poole. directed by Christopher Cassel. History Channel. 2009.

Townsley, Geoffrey. “Intro to Creativity”. Evitable Boredom. Blogspot, November 19, 2016. Web. <http://evitableboredom.blogspot.com/2016/11/intro-to-creativity.html>. Accessed 11/22/2016.

How to Dice

I have a class about document design. In it I needed to create an infographic, so why not one for the blog? This blog has me thinking more about D&D, and the new players I deal with have trouble coming to grips with how dice rolls work and why we even bother with it. Hopefully this helps you some as well.

Intro to Creativity

What is creativity? You have to ask yourself that when dealing with role playing-games—such as Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). The Player's Handbook for the game even states, "Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again. ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff of legend." (Crawford Preface).

Oxforddictionaries.com states that creativity is "the use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work." (oxforddictionaries.com). Well that is a nice broad definition, which one can expect of such a subjective topic. Now, what does dictionaries.com say?

"1. the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination:"—dictionaries.com

The above is a tad bulkier, but we have more to work with it. Without having to break out ancient tomes or pdfs on philosophy we can see that creativity by definition is related to imagination. Now since we understand creativity deals with imagination, how do you even be creative? What's the difference between Mozart and a child banging pots together in rhythm, or Monet and doodles during a boring meeting? Skill.

Creativity is a means of molding what is before you. Taking that simple wooden stick with a core of graphite to paper and making a smiley face, then drawing an outline of a head around it, adding ears, hair, shadows, and so on until satisfied. The creativity adored in galleries is due to its quality, something derived from skill. Have you not sat and imagined what you could craft? That was the act of creativity; it falling short of the vision was an issue of skill—something that can be trained.

The same works for those both playing and definitely creating campaigns and scenarios for table-top-roleplaying-games. I wanted to start a campaign with a friend (K.), as I love being a Game Master. Being a closet nerd, I thought she might like to play D&D. One night we sat down together, printed out character sheets, and she did this

Figure 1: Backstory

She ignored going through the slough of crunching numbers for Ability Scores; I don't blame her. More interestingly, she forsook the quick build.

"Each class description in chapter 3 includes a section offering suggestions to quickly build a character of that class, including how to assign your highest ability scores, a background suitable to the c1ass, and starting spells."—Crawford page 11

K. took over an hour to create an elaborate backstory for a character. Whenever we talked about anything remotely related to D&D the following week, she got excited and stated new ideas and revisions to Chandra Galanodel—her character. That's what roleplaying-games are about, jumping off the ravine of reality into the bright abyss of swirling possibility that is your character.

Creativity doesn't just need to be with writing for D&D. Below is a map I created with K. because both of us like drawing.

Figure 2: Aelfland Map

I want to point out how one may be creative without realizing it. For instance, I drew the map but the initial map wasn't good. To build up my skill, I watched videos on map creation and examined real world maps. Though the map never became what I wanted it to in my head, it got closer because I practiced building the necessary skills. K. assisted by providing most of the town names and coloring.

K.'s main concern about doing a D&D game with me was less that she thought it'd be boring and nerdy, but more her fear of not being creative enough. I was already making maps for a homebrew (my own created world) campaign. To allay her fears, I texted her one dreary night. "Bae do you have any town name suggestions?" My phone blew up with, "Kugarstein,  Sikhander, Beaurco, Madnuble, Vatry, and Jogan."

I initially thought those humans around Sikmland would be more Russian, but she gave an Indian vibe to them, due to her love of Bollywood movies, yet she added, "stein," and, "ander," at the end of some names. Most likely due to a class she was taking at the time that examined English's Germanic roots. I adapted and Sikmaland was fleshed out [outlined] into an Indian-Deutsch culture.

The point of this post is to relay that you already are creative, just like K. is. I'll make a post about inspiration at another date, but inspiration and creativity are cousins that work well together. So throw out the self-question, "am I creative enough," you are. The better questions is what does being creative mean?

For the game, it means you can play as intended. Rather than rolling a twenty sided dice and stating, "I hit it." You can increase your own fun by announcing "I pull out my bloodstained gladius and stare down the goblin.  With a mighty roar I lunge and stab him through the gut ending its miserable existence." More entertaining to do and listen to, as there will be other people present.

It also will allow you to do more inventive thinking. D&D is a game where anything is possible—so long as the core rules and the present DM allow it. Remember the first quote I showed you, "Your collective creativity will build stories that you will tell again and again. ranging from the utterly absurd to the stuff of legend." (Crawford Preface).

Figure 3: Gang Hideout

Final example of creativity, I GM for a group of four players every other Saturday. Now, I had made a scenario where they would be attacking a large gang. The scenario was set up for the players to either sneak up and kill most of the gang, or would be ambushed in the main building, if they had bad stealth rolls or simply charged in. After killing three bandits in the courtyard the players stood before the entrance to the main gang building. The player Bruce Nightvale, and I will use character names for anonymity, asked, "What's the building made of?"

My bemused reply was, "wood with a thatched roof."

It was at this crucial point in the scenario where the players would, unknowingly to themselves, have walked into an ambush of twelve enemies. Bruce turned to the Halfling Thief and commanded ",use scorch hands!"

Character	Race	Gender	Class	Alignment	Level
Bruce Nightvale	Human	Male	Fighter	Chaotic Evil	2
Father Marks	Human	Male	Cleric	Chaotic Good	2
Olga	Human	Female	Barbarian	True Neutral	2
Sharp	Halfling	Female	Rogue	Chaotic Neutral	2

Sharp agreed. She walked to the other side of the building as Bruce and the other two players used a nearby picnic table to barricade one of the doors. Sharp eventually made it to the back of the building where most of the windows were and used her one magic spell to immolate that side of the building. Then they all waited and did rolls to keep the gang members from knocking down the makeshift picnic table barricade.

Being creative myself, I figured the gang would try to rush out, and loose considerable health as they remained inside the burning building. What would have been a tooth and nail fight, became the players killing the gang members one at a time as they coughed out of the only remaining exit.

Creativity its imagination plus the skill to realize the vision.

Works Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Player's Handbook: 5E. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.

Dictionaries.com. Dictionary.com, LLC. 2016. Web. <http://www.dictionary.com/browse/creativity?s=t>. Accessed 11/19/2016.

Oxforddictionaries.com. Oxford University Press. 2016. Web. <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/creativity>. Accessed 11/19/2016.