Writing Every Day 29: Out of Ideas

What do you do when you're out of ideas? When you have a game session scheduled, everyone's ready to sit down and get some gaming in, and you the Game Master have no clue of what to do?

I've been in this position a couple of time. Often it's because I don't want to advance the plot of the campaign, usually due to a player being absent who I'd really like to have participating in the session. Rather than bail on the game, if possible I like to run a one-shot session with everyone in attendance.

When I'm really, truly out of ideas, I'll often let the players do the driving, so to speak. I'll remind them of where they are and what their present goals are, and then sit back and ask them what they're up to. Occasionally their responses will be enough to spark an idea and I run the game based on their ideas and the consequences of their actions. Some of the best sessions I've ever run are based on giving the players enough rope to hang themselves; listening to their theories and suspicions can give you great material to work with. Just be sure that they don't realize how much what they're saying influences what's happening at the table.

If that doesn't work, I'll steal and remix ideas. I'll grab concepts from whatever book I'm reading, scenes or characters from TV and movies, and mash them up until I have something that's familiar but still new. Some of my favorite game sessions have taken heavily from movies like The Thing, or interesting quests from Skyrim, or something. So long as it has the veneer of the campaign world and isn't a direct ripoff, it works perfectly.