Season 2 Episode 9: Believe In The Heart Of The Cards; or How to Kickstart Your Inspiration With Randomness

Have you ever gone to your well of inspiration, whatever mental or emotional place you go to draw up ideas for your stories, and found that well dry or close to empty? Well today I'm joined by Ryan Johnson author of the DMs Guild campaign Wintry Blast to talk about his strategy for forcing inspiration. 

 

Ryan draws random MTG cards and converts them to D&D creatures, encounters, magic items and the like. His campaign on the DMs guild call came from ideas he got out of one booster pack. 

 

In our chat we discuss the challenges of incorporating disparate elements into your stories and how everything doesn't always come together easily. The answer isn't always obvious. Sometimes you have to stew on things and shift them around to make them fit. 

 

Ryan introduces the concept of resonance into our conversation and how, even though we're using random elements we still have to fold each of those elements into the bigger picture to create a story that is unified. 

 

If you are interested in seeing Ryan's conversion process for yourself you can follow him on twitter  @rjquestgiver or check out his blog. You can also support him by buying his adventure Wintry Blast on the DMs Guild. 

Here is a link to the M.T. Black article Ryan references in today's episode  Narrative Resonance and Random Dungeons

 

Thanks again for checking out today's episode, don't hesitate to leave a comment letting us know what you think of Ryan's idea generation advice. And tell 19 f your closest friends. 

As always a huge thank you to Paul Mackie for our power metal theme music, and of course to the lovely Hannah Miller for editing the show together.