Help!

As a GM, you often feel like you have to plan everything for your players. Sometimes you have a block in your creativity and cannot come up with the next thing. When this happens, what do you do? Ask for help!

In planning a game for a local event, I had wracked my brain for ideas…the theme was 80’s. Although I remember a lot from the decade, putting it into a role playing game (specifically D&D) was taxing my creativity. I thought about all the great things from my younger years, but struggled at getting them into some sort of logical scenario.

Talking this out with some others, I finally settled on a popular movie that introduces some very unique creatures. Now I just had to come up with the game plan. This was proving more difficult than I anticipated. How do the characters encounter these creatures? What do they know about these creatures? How do they “win” this game, what outcome did I want?

I messaged a friend of mine who’s game mastering I admire for reinforcement. He suggested a couple of things that could happen and a light bulb flicked on in my imagination. In a matter of an hour, I had taken his basic layout of the game and began to fill in the gaps. At this point, it is just creating the details, monster stats, and pregenerate the characters.

If you find yourself stuck and unsure how to move forward with the campaign, ask for help! Talk to other GMs, chat with the local game store employees, check out the numerous YouTube and Discord channels. Don’t keep banging your head against a wall thinking you have to come up with it yourself.