Fueling Imagination By Exploring Your Own Backyard
This past weekend I spent locked away at the top of a mountain overlooking the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. Being isolated is something that doesn’t happen very often in our day and age. We have technologies that allow us to communicate almost wherever we are. We take it for granted. We are accustomed to such ammenities. I know this because while my little secluded cabin was beautiful it was terrifying to have my only phone access be a pay phone about a 1/4 of a mile down the road… eek!
What does this have to do with RPG’s? Quite a bit actually. Isolation fuels imagination. Looking out the window and seeing mysterious tracks show up where there were none a few minutes ago inspires all sorts of ideas.
While looking through the snowy woods from my little vantage point I felt as though I could almost realize another world. I had all sorts of grand ideas for adventures: A rogue tracking through the forest or an adventuring party battling the elements to get to a Frost Giant’s Cave.
I really enjoy the campaigns we run and play but actually being out in a secluded part of the world made me feel like the next time I play I may have a better image to fall back on. If I were to close my eyes and listen to the GM’s description I would have better visuals and memories of senses to use.
At one point in our trip we visited Stalagtite/Stalagmite caverns. They were incredible. It really was a world apart. It felt entirely alien. You could almost quite forget that you were on Earth. Everything looked so foreign. Nothing was quite what it looks like on the surface. Even the water wasn’t the same. I would like in some further adventures to incorporate the use of caverns. I think a lot of times when we are playing I imagine more of smooth rock faces hewn from stone but the truth is cavern’s are bumpy and crowded and cool and moist and the paths are definitely not smooth!
In the near future I am looking forward to beginning to run a campaign of my own. I will definitely be taking my experiences from the past weekend and incorporating them into my descriptions and adventures!
So… go ahead, explore the areas in your own ‘backyard’ and see what kinds of new things you can add to your games.
This post was written as part of the RPG Bloggers Blog Carnival. This month’s topic is Travel in Gaming as suggested by Daniel Perez of the Gamer Traveler.
Great post! You hit exactly on what I experience every time I go on a trip, or even just to a new part of town: that sense of “Wow, I can totally steal this” and “Whoa, that just gave me so many ideas!”
Thanks for adding your voice to the blog carnival.
Daniel M. Perez´s last blog ..Ierne: The Raid
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