Did you know? (And other crazy ideas)

Did you know that there were female gladiators back in good ol' Rome? Gladiatrices, they were called (from the singular Gladiatrix) and they fought dwarves. Yes, dwarves.

Did you also know that giraffes are crazy ninjas? Its true

Do you know where I get a lot of my gaming ideas?

From crazy stuff like that. Observe:

(Please excuse the low quality. My scanner isn't working and so these are taken with my phone's low-rez camera)

And what from this can I use?
Giraffe-men as a new monster?
Perhaps some arena games?
A band of female warriors?
A band of dwarves?
Female dwarves?
Could the dwarf-eraffes be intelligent and have a city?
Are we dealing with a whole new race?

In truth most of these ideas may never amount to anything, but its a nice exercise: just jam a few things together (I usually do three) and see what ideas you can get out of it.

Here are a few examples:

A flying mermaid. That eats shoes. Why?

My players wanted some hints as to what they might expect. Simply as an example of something ridiculous I blurted out the first thing to come to mind. A ____ ____ that does ____? A flying mermaid that eats shoes.

One of these days I'm probably due at the psychiatrist's.


Other sources of inspiration?

This one came from staring at Iron & Wine's Shepherd's Dog album cover. If you haven't seen it, I'll let you know it is a little creepy. So what better to do with an unnerving picture than to make it even more disturbing?

"More disturbing" should be my DM's motto...

Some sketches that work their way into my game aren't even intended for the table. Here I just wanted to draw some robots.

And these ended up as the dwarven automaton my players had to deal with last session. (Did I say deal with? I meant avoid in terror)

Oh, and the dwarf that came along with that dungeon:

So what may seem (or may be) an excuse to throw some pages of my sketchbook out there I really mean as an exercise in generating ideas, however absurd. So go and draw, or just pin words to a board and hurl some darts. Blurt out nonsense, or write down that disorganized gibberish that pours out of your brain when you first wake up.

Have ideas, people. You're free to steal mine but I'm afraid I can only manage to squeeze so many through the crack under the door of this homework dungeon.

Good luck and keep rolling.