Building a New D&D Campaign Diary - Entry #8: Inspiration

February 14, 2008 · Filed Under Building a New Dungeons and Dragons Campaign Diary

Note: Today’s task is big, so I’m giving you four days to work on it. Come back to the Diary on Monday to see where we land. Regular blog posts will continue, however.

I know I’ve talked about sources of inspiration here before, but I think it’s worth spending a day (or a weekend, if you’ve got it) thinking about the things that inspire us in terms of building our new D&D Campaign worlds.

The fact of the matter is that there are a finite number of dramatic archetypes in literature, movies, and other forms of story-based entertainment media. These are the ideas that we, as human beings, keep going over and over again. They are the ones that hit us deep down, that connect with something very basic. Something in the ground of our being. Something psychological, spiritual, or sociological, or perhaps all three.

So, what’s this got to do with building a new D&D campaign? Plenty.

A good D&D campaign is good, at least in part, because it incorporates those dramatic archetypes effectively. Raistlin rescuing Caramon, for example, is really just #8 - Daring Enterprise. I say “just,” but there is nothing small about the story. In fact, the opposite is true. Raistlin’s story strikes us so deeply precisely because it fits on the list of dramatic archetypes.

So, let’s get practical, then. I could send you out to read about the 36 archetypes, have you make examples that you’ve found in literature, TV, movies, or whatever. But, honestly, you’re not interested in learning to write dramatically (at least, not yet). Right now you need to be interested in experiencing those dramatic archetypes. So, here’s what I’ll be doing this weekend in order to do that:

Watch Rio Bravo;
Read Poe’s The Telltale Heart;
Listen to my Phantom of the Opera soundtrack;
Read a chapter of The Spine of the World;
Read a story or two from Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Science Fiction and Fantasy;
Flip through Worlds and Monsters;
Talk with my friend Randy about his new campaign setting.
Read through Rich Green’s excellent blog about creating his new campaign setting.
Read through Shamus Young’s campaign journal at Twenty Sided.

Now, I may or may not get them all done. Really, though, we’re only talking about 3 hours of reading, an hour of listening to music, 2 1/2 hours of watching a movie, and a having a conversation I was going to have anyways. At any rate, after each, I’m going to take 5 minutes, take some notes.

Your assignment for the next three days is to do the same. Pick a couple of movies, books, or whatever it is that inspires you, and experience them again. After you do, ask yourself, “How can I use the dramatic archetypes in this movie for my new campaign?” I promise you’ll find at least one good nugget there.

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