Getting Ideas for your RPGs

by Mike on 15 July 2024

Over at the Sly Flourish Patreon I get asked where ideas for our games come from. For me, great ideas come from great fiction.

Chapter 25 of Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master offers a list of fiction I found fueled my own GM's brain attic. It's been a few years so I extended the list with the one below.

These books, TV shows, movies, and games are sources of fiction that spoke to me. They may not speak to you. Instead, write up and share your own list.

Books

Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames
East of West by Jonathan Hickman
Fairy Tale by Stephen King
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

TV Shows

Andor
Book of Boba Fett
Castlevania
Dark
Dracula by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat
For All Mankind
Good Omens
Locke and Key
Love, Death, and Robots
Mandalorian
Midnight Mass
One Piece
Peaky Blinders
The Expanse
The Outsider
The Witcher

Movies

American Werewolf in London
Avengers Infinity War & End Game
Blade Runner 2049
Clash of the Titans (the old 1981 one)
Color Out of Space
Doctor Sleep
Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves
Dune part 1 & 2 (Denis Villeneuve)
Eternals
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Hereditary
It Chapters 1 and 2
John Wick 1-4
Midsommar
Nope
Pan's Labyrinth
Prey
Snowpiercer
Tenet
The Endless
The Green Knight
The Witch
Thor Love and Thunder
Wakanda Forever

Games

Baldur's Gate 3
Diablo 4
Elden Ring
Horizon Forbidden West
Remnant 2

Other RPG Products

The amount of material published for fantasy RPGs is tremendous and it's all useful to fire up your imagination. Borrowing ideas for your game from published RPG material is a time-honored tradition. Wolfgang Baur, lead kobold at Kobold Press, said that people stealing ideas from Midgard and bringing them into their own world was his greatest hope for the setting.

For some excellent 5e-based products to boost your creativity, check out Notable 5e Products and Ten Notable 5e Products for 2022.

Shaking Up Your Brain with Random Tables

Another great tool to shake up your brain and generate some great ideas are random tables and generators. Whether it's a random monument, NPC generator, magic item, or something bigger like a whole world; random tables get your mind out of a groove and push it in a new direction.

I built the Lazy DM's Companion with this need in mind. It offers story-based adventure ideas, each with lists of twenty options for several variables to give you all new ideas.

It's Jaws but with a chaotic chimera awoken from a long slumber that sprays acid living in a volcanic cave protected by hags and hunted by greedy bandits.

Raging Swan has some awesome random tables if you're looking for random tables beyond those in the Companion.

Fill Your Mind Palace

Generating good ideas comes from all of the sources you let into your brain and the practice of transforming them into new ideas. Our favorite RPGs let us do this transformation every week if we exercise it. Watch some great shows, play with some random tables, and draw upon your own list of awesome ideas for your game.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted a couple of YouTube videos on Excellent Short-Form 5e Adventure Publishers and Ulgar – Champion of Ramlaat – Shadowdark Gloaming Session 36 Lazy GM Prep.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Give two or three paths for longer journeys to adventure locations.
Break up travel with interesting encounters at fantastic locations.
Add interesting lore to typical random encounters.
Stage random encounters at notable locations.
Give the characters the latest news through town or city heralds.
Let the characters see the long term results of their heroic actions.
Give the characters a nice coffee shop they enjoy hanging out at between adventures.