Monthly Archives: November 2010

Last week, we discussed a mind map. Today we’re continuing with an example of a mind map I created just for these blog posts. Now comes the fun part. Just take the first thing that comes into your mind when you see your starting word. In this case, the first thing I thought of was “rogue”. Don’t censor your idea—just write it down near the first word and circle it:

Now draw a line between the two words, like so:

Now, write down the next idea that comes to you. For me, it’s “pickpocket”. Since that was triggered by the word “rogue”, I’ll put it coming off of the “rogue” circle:

Now you just keep going like this. The next word I thought of was “winter”. Since that was triggered by the word “adventure”, rather than “rogue”, I’ll put it off the “adventure” circle. Here’s the map after a few more ideas:

You’ll notice that in some places I’ve connected a word with more than one circle. If an idea seems to relate to more than one idea already in the map, I’ll connect it to all of the ideas that seem relevant.

That’s how you do it. Just keep writing down and connecting ideas. Eventually, the single phrase ideas will start connecting together to form a larger idea and blam: you’ve got your adventure.

There are several theories on mind maps. Some have specific rules like each new idea can only connect to one parent, but I find those rules too limiting. Since my whole point here is simply to get my ideas flowing, like game rules, I keep what works for me and change or drop what doesn’t. I think technically what I’m creating here is called an idea map, but I don’t want to get bogged down in terminology and rules. This is simply a tool to generate ideas; use it as you see fit.

Next time, I’ll cover the adventure idea drawn from this map.

Other Posts in this series

• Before You Write an Adventure: Finding Inspiration–the Mind Map

Articles Zemanta thinks may be related

• Game Master Tool Illustrated: Plot Flowcharts (campaignmastery.com)
• The incredible value of the mind mapping “two-step” (mindmappingsoftwareblog.com)
• Using Mind Mapping for your RPG Planning from RPG Circus – RPGBlog (rpgcircus.com)
• Unstuck: An Overview of Mind Mapping by Mark Dykeman (nowsourcing.com)
• Mind Map Your Way to Creativity and Success with SimpleMind for iPad – The Photoletariat (thephotoletariat.com)

Where do you find inspiration? You’ve heard the old saws: “ideas are everywhere, you just have to look for them”, “write what you know”, “there aren’t new ideas”, etc. While each of these are true, they may not be all that helpful and when it’s Tuesday night and you still don’t have a clue what you’re going to run your PCs through on Thursday, these old saws just don’t cut it. You need some concrete advice and you need it fast.

One way of coming up with ideas is to use a mind map. Every successful GM has their own quick idea generating method and this is mine. A mind map (for those few of you who’ve never heard of it) is a diagram of your ideas. You can get fancy mind-mapping software (some free, others…not), but I prefer to create mine in hard copy, using common tools lying around the home: a pen and a sheet of paper. This is the method I’ll describe. As for electronic versions—RTFM is your best option to obtain quality results.

A mind map is extremely simple. Take your pen and in the middle of the paper, write what you’re trying to find or work on. The more descriptive the idea, the better your mind map will work. But don’t worry if you’re so stuck you can’t come up with a descriptive term. I’ve started more than one mind map with just the word “adventure” in the middle of the page.

[This is an excerpt from the upcoming Adventure Creation Handbook. We'll continue the mind mapping lesson next week ].

Articles Zemanta thinks may be related

• Brilliant mind mapping tips (mindmappingsoftwareblog.com)
• Using Mind Mapping for your RPG Planning from RPG Circus – RPGBlog (rpgcircus.com)
• The Very Basic Guide To Making A Mind Map (broadcasting-brain.com)
• 23 mind mapping software programs – compared side-by-side (mindmappingsoftwareblog.com)