***ANYTHING CAN BE A D&D CAMPAIGN***
Yes, you read that title right. Anything, and I do mean
anything, can become a D&D campaign no matter how ordinary or extraordinary
the inspiration is. D&D campaigns are just stories you tell to a group of
friends. Novels, on the other hand, are D&D campaigns that you play by
yourself. Whether you’re playing with yourself or you’re doing it in a big
group, there’s a story deep within you. Deep within the cock, cock, cockles of
your heart. If you’ve got a mind for fantasy, you’ve got a D&D campaign.
Let’s take something ordinary for our first example. Let’s
say you’re going to the supermarket for some groceries. Nothing special, just
some eggs, milk, cheese, bread, lunch meat, god knows what else. You can take
this ordinary creative fuel and make it extraordinary in a heartbeat. Perhaps
the supermarket is being robbed by a gang of orcish thugs. Perhaps the lunch
meat you purchased came from a slain dragon. Perhaps the eggs have snake
fetuses inside. All you have to do is take one element of this simple story and
twist it into a fantasy setting with some hot action for the characters.
Congratulations, you’ve got a D&D story! A trip to the supermarket will now
be a glorious adventure.
Now let’s up the ante a little bit with a computer game of
Solitaire. Still an ordinary situation, but now it’s in the confines of an
extraordinary piece of machinery. Can we make a D&D campaign out of a game
of solitaire? Abso-fucking-lutely! The goal of the game is to get every card
from the aces to the kings situated in four cells. What if those kings, queens,
jacks, and jokers were real people? What if they were being locked in real
cells by the joker and held hostage? What will the joker do with his newfound
hostages? Ransom them? Beat them? Torture them? Fuck them? Is there any chance
at all of saving the royal hostages? Would the two of diamonds or three of
clubs even want to save them? Would a four of spades be able to use a shovel as
a weapon, like the spade suggests? So many possibilities. The world is yours to
unlock and unravel!
And once again, we’ll up the ante with something a little
more glorious than a trip to the supermarket or a game of solitaire. Let’s say
you want to make a D&D campaign out of your old Final Fight SNES cartridge.
You certainly can do that! For those not old enough to remember, Final Fight is
a videogame where you take a beefy brawler of your choice and beat the living
hell out of the Mad Gear Gang until they give back their pretty young hostage. The
creative fuel from such a game is endless. Mike Haggar, a muscular professional
wrestler in the game, could be a dragon-born barbarian that breaths fire and
chops shit down with battleaxes. Guy, a skinny little ninja, could be an elf
with magical abilities to make up for his lack of physical strength. Cody
Travers? He could wear gauntlets as he punches through armies of half-orcs on
his way to save his girlfriend Jessica Haggar. The possibilities are literally
endless!
Of course, the creative alterations you make to any source
of creative fuel don’t have to be purely cosmetic, nor should they be. Badass
non-human characters are nice, but without a concrete story, they’ve got no
reason for doing the things they do and they’ve got no reason to develop beyond
their archetypes. So how do you take a game of Vegas Stakes for the SNES and
develop it into a, pardon the pun, high stakes situation? For those who don’t
know, Vegas Stakes is basically a gambling game where the object is to win…(lifts
my pinky to my face) one million dollars! There could be many wrinkles you
could add to a seemingly shallow storyline. What if you cheated to win that
money and now have to face the wrath of beefy bouncers? What if you spent your
winnings on prostitutes and got one of them pregnant? What if you lost all of
your money and have to do some unsavory things to get it back? And of course,
there’d be dragons flying around everyone and half-orcs losing their shit every
which way. It just wouldn’t be a D&D campaign without those things happening
every six seconds.
Do I have your attention now? You don’t have to look very
hard to find a multi-layered story in the most ordinary or extraordinary
things. When you build your story, make sure the characters are the ones
driving it. We like character-driven stories, because without the characters,
there’s nothing to develop and without anything to develop and cultivate, your
story is boring as shit. There are authors out there who still get this wrong.
It’s forgivable during the first draft stages, but once your book is out there
on the market, you’re fresh out of excuses. Find your story. Build your
characters. Make those two things interact with each other. Find friends who
are willing to play your new D&D campaign. But if you don’t have friends,
write the novel yourself. The world is yours. What you do with it is up to you.
I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!
Holy shit! I just found another source of creative fuel,
this time from my sign off phrase, which is stolen from a Three Days Grace
song. Climbing mountains even when you’re dying? Why are you climbing the
mountain? What’s on the top of it that’s so special? What obstacles will test
your mettle? Are there dragons, barbarians, and wizards who want that special
prize as much as you do? Do I still have your attention, motherfuckers?
***BEAUTIFUL MONSTER***
Speaking of three-dimensional stories, this new edition of
Beautiful Monster is drawing to a close with just three more chapters and an
epilogue to write. So close, yet so far away! I can do this! All I have to do
is guide Windham
***JOKE OF THE DAY***
Q: What do you call an ordinary Shrek character?
A: Medi-ogre.
***POST-SCRIPT***
What’s this? I have another piece of creative fuel to work
with? A Shrek-based D&D campaign? Hell yeah!
