How to be Creative, also Blobbins

Or at least, this is how I think I think creatively.  Your mileage may vary.

1

Keep a slush pile. This is where you put all of your incomplete ideas, or ideas that don't quite meet your criteria for quality control. Odds are good that you have tons of ideas that are aaaaalmost good enough. Sometimes you can frankenstein two sorta-good ideas into a brilliant mongrel. Sometimes you can read over an old idea and think of a way to improve it.

And don't just ignore your slush pile until you've run 100% dry of ideas.  Refer back to it often, maybe before you start thinking of anything at all.

Your slush pile can be a file on a computer or a small notebook. Maybe you're watching a movie and the people on screen realize that the stillborn calf is pregnant with something that is not a cow and you're like, “That's a fucked up idea and I like it”, then that goes into your notebook. It is the fertile, messy mulch beneath the shrubbery of your brain.

Ex: “blue goblins” + “boneless and they live in jars” = “boneless blue goblins that live in urns”

2

Use your ideas. If you use your blue, boneless goblins in a module, I guarantee you'll have some more ideas about the goblins while you are roleplaying one, or after a player asks you what's in the goblin's pockets.

Basically, you are just asking yourself "What are the implications of what I have just written?  What does this stuff imply?"

This works for writing, too. Expanding a small idea into a paragraph will usually involve answering some more questions that crop up. How do these boneless urn-goblins feel about their urns? How do they feel about skeletons, especially given that they don't have any? If you can't turn a boneless goblin into a skeletonized undead, is there a different kind of undead that you can turn them into?

Of course, if you ever find yourself writing boring facts (the average blue goblin burrow contains 20-400 individuals, who are ruled by a chieftain of level 3, blah blah blah) then you must STOP IMMEDIATELY. That sort of square noise takes 3 seconds to invent at the table, and 3 seconds to invent at the computer.  There is no need to predecide how big the average blue goblin burrow is when you can decide it during a session just as readily.

3

Don't let "creativity" just be something that you do when you sit down to fill out the rest of your 50-room dungeon. 

Constantly revisit your old ideas when you are taking a shower, taking a shit, taking a break at work, trying avoid premature ejaculation, etc. These events will give your brain a richer and more varied texture, which will inform your ideas. Like, when you're taking a shit, your brain will wrinkle up more because it smells bad. This will make you approach the whole boneless blue goblin conundrum from a different angle than if, say, you were frolicking with some baby deer and thinking about boneless blue goblins.  

Plus, if you're sculpting an idea while you are driving, walking, jogging somewhere, you'll be constantly receiving a procession of images and places. I was driving down Highway 5 and drove past Harris Ranch (like, billions of cows) and the smell alone gave me ideas.  Or maybe the methane was just getting to my brain.

When you see an interesting post on the internet, you must ask yourself "yes, but is it gamable?"  When you are chillaxing with your bros, and one of your bros tells a cool story you must also ask yourself "yes, but is it gamable?"  When your crazy uncle sends you an email about how contrails are turning all the Mexicans into lizards, you must ask yourself "yes, but is it gamable?"

4

Steal shamelessly. That awesome thing in Princess Mononoke? Steal it. Repaint it. It's yours now.

BUT also pay attention to why you like the thing in the first place, because that's the element you want to steal, not necessarily the whole enchilada. Like, when the severed wolf's head bites the giant boar, why is that so cool? Is it because it's a head? Is it because its a wolf? Is it because it was a dead body part that just attacked someone? Figure out which part of the DNA contains the awesome, and then just steal that part. It'll make it easier to recombine with the rest of your slush pile.

(Although I have bunches of inspiring pictures on my computer, I don't consider them part of my slush pile.  I try to extract the part of the picture's DNA that I really like, and add that to the slush pile.  And also, I find a bunch of brief word-concepts easier to parse than a folder with a thousand images in it.  "one eyeball shared between both sockets", "strength proportionate to colorfulness", "hot chick with huge, grafted muscle-arms", etc.)

Like, a lot of the city encounters in Vornheim are powerful good because they force players to deal with something. You could just take the kernel (the "how is this forcing a PC to deal with it?") at the center of a Vornheim entry and flesh it out yourself.  “persistent entertainers demand PCs join their cause” becomes "snake charmer guild demands that PCs assist in reclaiming/repairing the giant snake sanctuary in Central Park".

5

Stealing names can be fun. Figure out what part of the name you like the most. Is it the vowels/assonance? The consonants/alliteration? Can you transform the consonants into something similar? K=G. T=D. S=Z. P=B=V. L=R. M=N. J=CH. 'crocodile' = 'grogotyr' = 'gorgodile'. 'jerusalem' = 'cheluzaren'.

6

Turn normal animals into unlikely chimeras. This is how you shed tropes.

My favorite way to make a chimera by giving one animal the biology or lifestyle of another. Like what if there were some wolves that were 100% marine and never left the water? What would a giant land-dwelling starfish eat? What if there were people that lived like ants?

The laziest kind of chimera is just to remix body shapes. Sure, if you combine a bird with a horse you get a pegasus, and that was the pinnacle of creativity 1000 years ago. If you mix an octopus and a dog you get an octodog, and I suppose that's sort of creative, too. The laziest of this lazy method is just to make it an intelligent humanoid. Jellfish people. Kangaroo-folk. Giraffo-morphs.  Even that can sort of open up interesting avenues of thought.

(There's nothing wrong with lazy creativity like this, but if you are going to invent some kangaroo-folk, don't just stop there.  You can't smash kangaroo and Australian stereotypes together and expect to transport your players to a fantastic realm of fantasy.  If you include only the things that come easily to mind when you cross kangaroos and Australians, then your kangaroo-folk have no more surprises for your players, beyond the initial concept of kangaroo-people.  Which means you need to add more.  This is why cat-people almost always suck.  People just apply cat stereotypes (playful, curious, fierce, hunters) to a race of humanoids and call it a day.  So if you want to make cat-people that aren't boring, you need to add something else to the mix.  Columbian catnip druglords.  Ruled by black cat bad-luck warlocks and a storm giant witch.  Ecology of cuckoos.  Worshippers of Nyarlathotep but also of themselves.  Masters of engineering and fire magic.  Literally, anything but just cat tropes.  Please.)

7

Inversions are fun. You can invert tropes. Write an adventure about saving a dragon from a princess. Write about a type of fey that gives people babies instead of stealing them. Write about dwarves that hate gold. At the very least, these will get you asking questions. What's up with these dwarves? How'd they get this way?

Or just ask yourself open ended questions. What's the opposite of a dragon? What's the opposite of a bar mitzvah?  What's the opposite of sex?

Exaggerations are fun. Write about a dragon that was just way, way, way into stealing princesses, not even imprisoning them—just stealing them like princess catch-and-release. Write about fey that are so into-baby stealing that they steal bee larva and only eat baby fruits. Write about dwarves that are so rigid and uncreative that they need a king from a different race.

Reskins are fun. Reskin Lincoln assassination or the plot of Master of the Flying Guillotine. The ninja turtles are now barbarian berserkers who want you to help them fight a ninja and his demon rat. Remix and rearrange.  Your slush pile can help you with this.

Change scope. Tsunamis make sense, but why would a small pond suddenly smash the canoes and flood the town? (Big phenomenon → small.) People get pregnant all the time, but why would every woman in town suddenly get pregnant at exactly the same time? (Local phenomenon → regional.)

8

When you're writing stuff down, keep it fluid for as long as you can. Sometimes you'll write a story and you don't know what it's about until you finish it. Sometimes you'll write a dungeon and not realize what the treasure is at the center until you finish it—the it's obvious.  Write all the interesting things down first, and then fill in all the logical considerations later.

(If you write down so much cool stuff that there's no way to mesh it all together into a coherent adventure/dungeon, that's okay.  Just remove a few conflicting parts and put them back into your slush pile.  You'll use them later, and they'll be just as awesome then, too.)

Before you draw a single room in your dungeon, figure out what the theme is and then write down all of the Coolest Things Possible involving that theme. Like if your theme is “cloud castle that imprisons powerful dwarven geomancers”, sit down and brainstorm the coolest possible rooms in that dungeon. A room where terramantic criminals are forced to levitate in the center of their cells, while their jailors drag them around like balloons. Air elemental guards living inside a giant bagpipe that also doubles as the alarm system. Gaseous, floating rust monsters trained to sniff out metals and stones, because terramantic dwarven criminals can pull a Magneto. Dragnets used to harvest water out of clouds, like a trawler.

By the time you finish your idea list, you might also realize that there is also a flumph masterminding the whole thing. Or that this is actually a jail for fire elementalist elves as well, because you've been watching to much Last Airbender.  And because you've kept your outline as fluid as possible, you don't have to redraw your map or rewrite the motivations for the warden.  (Full-detail maps and necessary-but-mundane NPCs are good examples of things that you should do late in the process.)

THEN you draw out your dungeon. THEN you flesh out all the extra rooms so that the things is complete.

9

Creativity is a muscle.  There's only so much you can do in a day.  If you are frustrated, or you absolutely can't come up with anything, or you've already read through your slush pile twice and can't come up with anything--STEP AWAY FROM THE COMPUTER and go do something else.  You can't force it.

Also, there are going to be days when your brain is going to be dry.  That's okay; don't sweat it.  Spend the time organizing your slush pile or go read some interesting stuff elsewhere.

JOESKY TAX: BLOBBINS

Blobbins are blue, boneless goblins. Each goblin lives in an urn, each exactly the size of the blobbin. They make their urns out of clay and fingernails. Parents make their baby's first urn, and then they trade up as they grow, like hermit crabs. Urns are never re-used, but are instead filled with fingernail clippings and lost teeth and then used in construction. They do this because a blobbin considers their urn to be part of their body, and crawling inside another blobbin's urn is akin to crawling inside their skin. When a blobbin dies, the body is discarded like trash (fed to cave pigs) while the urn is revered.

Blobbin graveyards are just caves filled with urns. For reasons not understood, nearly every blobbin goes on to become a pale blue ghost that resides inside their urn. Blobbin urns are sometimes filled with some amount of treasure that they valued in life, but blobbins make for vengeful ghosts. The trick to robbing blobbin urn-graves is to get the blobbin to blame someone else. The traditional method is to throw a weasel into the urn, and then replace any gold coins with an equal number of copper ones. By the time the blobbin ghost has finished shriveling the weasel, the tomb robbers are gone and the blobbin ghost is none the wiser, since they cannot tell copper from gold (at least, their ghosts cannot).

Blobbin urns also make handy weapons if thrown, since they tend to blame the nearest creature, and blobbin ghosts are furious if their urn is smashed.

When they run, it looks like a deflated tire rolling down a hill.

Blobbins revere a god called the Great Blue Smoke Monster. Blobbin clerics are easy to spot. They carry a gigantic urn on their back, painting with blue and black triangles. Inside each of these urns is a Blue Smoke Monster which obeys the cleric and is regarded as a divine manifestation of the true Great Blue Smoke Monster.

Blobbins fear skeletons. Even smiling at them will cause them to recoil in disgust from visible teeth, and even the bravest blobbins warriors will flee from an animated skeleton.

Although blobbins cannot be made into undead skeletons, they are sometime animated into highly malleable zombies. Able to squish under doors and hide themselves under saddles, blobbin zombies are feared as assassins. They prefer to strangle their prey. Necromancers are also sometimes fond of stuffing them into chests, in order to guard treasure. Additionally, Blobbin zombies can also cushion fragile materials in a chest, protecting it from bumps and bangs.

Blobbins are hunted for the rich blue dye that can be harvested from their gallbladders. It is a deep, rich blue, and is very popular. However, the price ensures that only the aristocracy will be able to afford silk dyed Blobbin Blue.

Unlike their green-skinned relatives, blobbins are very clean. They frequently wear armor made from cave tortoises or giant snails. By using their elasticity of their heads, they are able to throw spears with great accuracy and power. They favorite weapon is a short-hafted trident (very effective against the squishy bodies of fellow blobbins). 

 Their favorite forms of recreation are spear-chucking, moshing, and naknak (sort of like spoken word poetry but with lots of sound effects). They are sometimes accompanied by clay golems shaped to look like small rhinos, painted blue with white triangles. Blobbins are sometimes valued as mercenaries because of their usefulness in breaking sieges (they can survive being launched by catapult).

Stats as goblins, except that they don't take any damage from bludgeoning. Also, they value their urn as highly as their life, and so they are quite easy to blackmail/bully once a PC has their urn.

TAKE A BATH YOU DAMN DIRTY MURDER HOBO

UPDATE: FANCY MAPS EDITION

JUST CLICK THE THING BELOW

This is my entry into +Joey Lindsey's contest over at metalvsskin.blogspot.com, whereby normally decent people smash our forebrains into each other until one of us is decided to be the most good brain, this time.

I wrote it because I ran it, but I forgot that the difference between "good enough to run a session" and "good enough to show people on the internet" is about 6 hours of work.

And also I really want that Doom Cave module from Free RPG Day.  It'd look so cute next to my Better Than Any Man, I just know it.  I guess I'm curious about what's inside it, but cuteness is a factor, too.

Anyway.

BEHOLD MY BATH HOUSE

The top half is sort of boring unless you're interested in bath houses, but hopefully the PCs will be bopping around and scheming about how to kill a naked, soapy wizard, so maybe that's okay.

The stuff in the basement is more like the dungeons you know and love.  There's a few high HD enemies down here, but I figure lower level parties can just run away and higher HD parties will have an option to kill them.

Three and a Half Extradimensional Adventurers

These are all humanoids.  Or at least, they have have two legs, two arms, and a head in the usual place, unless otherwise noted.

red lotus
not even once

Krulhir the Sublimator

He is nine feet tall, six feet wide.  Skin is thick and puckered, like an abused lemon.  Not so much corpulent as he is full.  Arms and legs have atrophied, and resemble stretched out baby-arms poking from his body.  Talks in a falsetto.  Starmetal skullcap is bolted over his eyes, with a pinhole in the center that is actually a portal to black space near canopus.  Negative pressure--air is constantly being sucked into his head, a quiet but shrill whistling sound. 

From his bolted-on helmet hang a bunch of black twine (or at least it looks like twine).  This twine is woven into a net that supports his body.  It keeps him pear-shaped.  Can you picture a 100-gallon water balloon wrapped up snug in a fishing net?  It's like that.

Krulhir is a wizard, sort of.  Where he comes from, he is not considered a wizard, merely a dabbler, but he has a powerful tolerance for gravity and dense atmospheres.  He sweats ammonia.  He is looking for a unicorn to bring back with him.  He is actually very humble, naive, and fearful.  He's like a 7 HD wizard, worst possible AC, with a hover speed equal to a walk.  If he is injured, his mercurial ioun stones will accelerate to fantastic speeds, orbiting body like bullets.  He bleeds milky water from which will sprout pale cilia that will thrash for a day and then die out.  In addition to the stuff in the next paragraph, he knows the spells animate teeth, infectious starlight, reverse object's gravity (permanent), and ultra-magnetokinesis.

From the solar pinhole in his forhead, he can shoot fireballs.  Except they don't look like fireballs.  They don't look like anything at all.  They don't even make any noise, just things start to blacken, evaporate.  It's pyrolysis--slow combustion in the absence of oxygen--but it functions like a fireball spell.  No flame, nor ashes.  Charcoal.  There is also a silence effect in there, too, so there is no noise.  Stealth explosions.  If you watch a bunch of peasants get hit by it, you'll see them be swallowed up by a superheated-but-gently-wafting cloud of steam, which will reveal charcoal mummies frozen in various poses of disbelief.

He is travelling with a quartet of bald, blue-skinned, elephant-nosed space orcs who intend to kill and rob him as soon as possible.

honey, did you remember to feed the dog?
we have a dog?

Malala Kurema Kazhonn (emphasis on the second syllable of each word)

Seven feet tall, looks like an albino python out of the corner of your eye.  Then you get a better look at her, and realize that she actually is human.  Or at least she looks human.  Her eyes are pink pearls, and she moves like a bag full of snakes.

Because that's what she is.  Malala Kurema Kazhonn is a member of a moon-dwelling species of necroparasitic metacnidarians (relative to the freshwater, microscopic hydras).  She has spend her whole life worshipping humans (which are rare on the moon) and ensuring that the humans (sacred pets of the temple) are protected against those who would injure them.

When one of the sacred human-pets died, she was given the great honor of being allowed to inhabit its body.  She lost 880 lbs in 24 hours in order to fit into the dead human's body.  It was a painful process, and she had never been so honored.  Now that she has left her polyp life stage and entered her medusa stage, she has finally become an adult.

She's here to obtain some fresh breeding stock for the holy temple-humans in her lunar enclave.  When she first encountered humans "in the wild", she was at first shocked, then disgusted, then resigned.  These planetary humans are unhealthy, uneducated, cruel, boorish, and filthy.  Still, it's her duty to capture a few of the less offensive specimens.  Paladins are good.  So are scholars and nobles.  She's captured six suitable specimens so far (which she keeps inside a specialized bag of holding, which looks a bit like a fanny pack) and has been able to bargain for another dozen sperm samples from suitable males (paying for them with uncut rubies).

She is accompanied by a pack of loyal displacer beasts, and rides atop a giant jellyfish.  She wears a breastplate filled with stinging cnidocysts.  On her belt she has an infinitely sharp dagger, which can cut anything, even space.  (Cutting space is a bit like hanging a mono-molecular wire in the air.  You know immovable rods?  It's like that, except really, really sharp.)  But that's just a novelty, really.

Her real weapon is an amberglass electro-scimitar-whip that she stores in her dead human's throat.  In combat, it looks like the woman is wielding it with her tongue, but really that is just Malala's tentacle (part of her real body) waving it around.  It's a long tentacle, and the electro-scimitar-whip also has a lot of reach, so she'd prefer to go quadrupedal, scuttle up on to the ceiling, and lash out with the electro-scimitar-whip (20' reach, all in all).  She has 6 HD, breastplate AC, and would rather bargain than fight to the death.  She views her mission as noble, good, and sacred, but she's no fool.

If her human body is killed, her real body will spill out and begin screaming as she exsanguinates in our harsh atmosphere.  She will attempt to take over another human body, but this is a feeble attempt that will only succeed if there is an unconscious or recently dead human nearby, and no-one molests her for a full five minutes, since she is so fragile in our atmosphere (-4 to hit, unarmored AC, 3 HD, can only crawl).

Fond of spouting incomprehensible alien parables (The Tale of the Man Raised by Jale Beans, The Priest Who Was Three Babies, The Man Inside the Man Inside the Sun, etc) in an attempt to educate the boorish races around her and make the more moral.  Has excellent maps of the world, seven hundred years out of date.  Has absolutely zero regard for children and babies, since personhood is intrinsically linked to sexual maturity.  

Has a paladin's morality, but it is an alien paladin.  Thinks that she is doing a good thing by kidnapping humans, and in a way, she's totally right about that, since the humans on the moon are treated like rich people's favorite dogs.  Good food, lots of sex with lisping moon beauties, great medical care.  The moon-priests will try to avoid the claustrophobia, but the oxygenated crust-cysts are only so big.

whatever.  you get the idea
fuck you for judging me

Vladimir and Estragon

Vladimir (or Estragon) looks like a perfectly normal naked man who is wearing a crown of fetuses.  A closer look reveals that the fetuses' skulls are conjoined with his.  Conjugated hextuplets?  That happens, right?  In truth, this is exactly what he is.  Or at least, he's was one member of conjugated hextuplets when he was born, but he's gone on to become so much more than that.

Vladimir (or Estragon) is a friendly man, although hairless and a bit too pink.  Only one of the fetuses is awake.  The other four fetuses (Nibellen, Walpurgio, Sothric, Thulotes) appear to be deeply asleep.  The six brothers are a bit like six people that share a body.  If Vladimir is the full-size human, he can squeeze his mass into Estragon (the other awake brother).  Vladimir will shrivel away into a tiny fetus, while Estragon will swell up into a full-size human.  Since they are naked twins, the only difference is which side of their head the awakened fetus is.

They are pleasant enough.  They'll chat amiably and share news as long as they aren't approached with any hostility.  If asked, they'll share that they're waiting for someone.  They're waiting for God.  Polytheism?  No, there is only one God.  He is a good and kind God.  He told them to wait here personally, but they don't remember how long ago, or how much longer until he arrives, exactly.  They don't mind.  Nothing wrong with waiting.  They're quite good at waiting.

It'll be nice when God gets here, though.  The whole world will merge with him, and everyone will be happy.  No more sadness, no more war.  No more beaten dogs.  Just bliss, just unity.  It'll only take a second, and then poof--everyone will understand everything and be happy forever.  Ecstasy.  And because we'll all know everything that everyone else knows, it's like we'll all be one person.  Vladimir and Estragon know something about being one person.  It's quite nice.  Never lonely.  You always have a sympathetic ear, right Estragon?  Right.

Oh yes, there will be so much rejoiced when God arrives to devour the sun and everything else.

THE CATCH is that Vladimir and Estragon are sitting somewhere awkward.  The PCs need to use the summoning circle that Vladimir and Estragon are sitting in.  Or they need to retrieve that throne.  Or they're sitting on part of the inscription that needs to be translated.

Under no circumstances will Vladimir, Estragon, or their brothers budge from the spot.  God ordered them to stay here.

Their special ability is theft.  Attack them with a sword and suddenly the sword is in their hands.  And suddenly your armor is gone, too.  The hextuplets are wearing it.  They cast a spell, and the party mage forgets it.  They drink a potion and suddenly it is gone from their inventory.  How strong are they?  How strong is the strongest person in your party?  

If they feel sincerely threatened, they'll also drain party members, usually starting with the strongest ones.  People who get drained will shrivel into fetus-things, only 1' tall, with a 3 in all of their physical stats.  And another of the hextuplets will inflate into a full grown person, until there's just a cartwheel of six full-sized men, joined at the head, spinning like a ferris wheel made from stolen weapons, laughing and apologizing and praying and chatting.

Honestly the best tactic would be to take off all of your equipment and charge him en mass while naked and without any spells memorized, then just headbutt him into submission.  Of course, the PCs might be dead before they realize this.

Okay, he wasn't really an adventurer.  I guess I owe you guys another one.

Lady Molassah, a.k.a. the Stain

Molassah is a woman who is also a sentient tattoo.  She is also an assassin.  She looks like something that a sailor would get tattooed in a seedy tattoo parlor, and in fact, that's exactly where she was born. 

Here's how it works: Lady Molassah is trapped on the skin of whoever she's on.  It's a bit like being marooned a smelly, hairy island (she's fond of that analogy).  But whenever that person has sex, she's able to cross over at the point of penetration.  It's like a temporary isthmus between two islands.

She can slide around quite quickly on skin, and disguise herself as any kind of lady she chooses.  She can hide in an armpit, or take a hostage by standing atop a jugular.  

Every morning, Lady Molassah makes an opposed Charisma check with her "island".  She has 18 Charisma and is a level 9 Thief.  If she wins, she gets control of the body for the day.

Did I mention that she's an assassin?  She's usually going somewhere to kill someone, in exchange for a fat wad of cash.

The PCs will meet her after one of the PCs has sex.  She'll just show up on their bodies the next morning, trying to take control of their minds so she can hope on a ship to Meltheria (or wheverever her contract takes her).  She might pose as an innocuous tramp stamp, so it might take the PCs some time to discover why one of their members has suddenly turned into an NPC and run away.

She's impatient, but she's not unreasonable.  She doesn't like unnecessary violence (but necessary violence is another story).  If she is discovered and threatened, she may try to hide (on an inner thigh or something) or take her island hostage (by sitting on a jugular and refusing to budge).  Or she might negotiate, offering to help the party in exchange for them helping her.  Or she might just demand that the tattooed PC sleep with a sailor immediately so that they can both be rid of each other.

Okay, she's not really extradimensional, but fuck it.