Say Anything

 

Now, that the Cha'alt campaign is on hiatus, I'll probably go back to blogging about TTRPG ideas that I've been thinking about lately.  

Today's blog post is me recommending the occasional blurting out of whatever nonsense enters your head before your rational thought can veto it.  Yeah, sometimes you gotta let loose and say the first thing that comes to mind, no matter how stupid, insane, or juxtaposed. 

Some of my best names for things, concepts, random tables, lore, etc. resulted from my not censoring myself, just letting words and phrases fly.  If you think too much, if you're too self-conscious, you start to second guess your initial burst of verbal energy.  

I've found that because something comes out sounding bizarre, that's what players lock onto, that's generating the power, and so it creates reactions which makes more content, the game progresses in a deeper way, drilling down into what that thing you said is about.  

Anyone can go from the tavern to the blacksmith to the dungeon to individual rooms, and back to the town with maybe a wilderness encounter to spice things up.  How many GMs can off-handedly comment that this is the year of the infernal jackal-pear and that leads to a half-hour of social interaction where the story stops being about getting to the next thing and starts savoring the narrative that already surrounds us?

The next time you have to come up with something creative in a hurry, say out loud... "Maybe it's a ___________?"  And fill-in that blank with whatever string of words your mouth utters before rational thought urges discretion.  Using "maybe" does two things.  

First, it gives your mouth permission to go nuts.  After all, you're not 100% serious about what you wind up saying because you prefaced it with maybe.  Second, it doesn't lock you into anything.  The players can't hold you to whatever you just said.  Maybe it's a peanut-brittle octopus handler... maybe it's a peanut-man with a tentacle allergy?  First impressions are often wrong, and you're just being playful... mischievous... descriptively overzealous.  What looks like a dragon's tail could just as easily be a reptilian cyclops penis.  You just never know. 

Practice saying things off-the-cuff without that critical editor's eye... there's a good chance that whatever you come up with might be the centerpiece of the session, perhaps the entire campaign.

Enjoy,

VS

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