Breaking through the writer's block: GM edition

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>>52537802

That is a bit too vague, op. What is the setting? What is this "variant human"? Who are the pc's?


If all else fails - ghost ship.

>>52537802
Tell us about the setting at least!

I'll probably complain about my own writers block later.

Raymond Chandler:
"When you get stuck, have two men with guns burst through the door."

Suddenly hostiles swarm onto the ship. Jem Hadar (sp?) star trek combat warriors or vicious space puppies, or floating micro Death Stars are suddenly aboard and trying to kill the crew.
There are enough to take over one part of the ship and cause trouble for 1 or 2 whole sessions. Figure out why later, possibly based on what your players say about them. Make sure they are immune to being flushed out with sudden decompression.

>>52537802
This anon is on the right track. >>52537969

How about a completely abandoned ship that looks like it actually came through the blackhole, a completely impossible feat.
The adventure basically revolving around discovering what happened to the crew and realizing that the crew is still on the ship, and basically has gone completely crazy a la the events of Event Horizon. The PCs have to at least make it back to their ship, and ultimately decide what to do with the ship full of crazy people and an engine that makes them that way.

>>52537969
>>52537970
Setting is SWN. The crew went on an exploration mission with another free trader. The system had weird stuff going on, like 108 satellites around the only planet and 5 black holes orbiting the sun, equidistant from each other. They approached the system while keeping the planet in the sun's shadow, found a space station next to the black hole, no transmissions coming from it. They docked and the variant human can be described, in appearance, roughly as a blue space elf. Said variant was not very friendly at all with the crew. Then, the session ended as the free trader they came to the system with (who were waiting outside the station in their own ship) reported a battleship coming out of nowhere.

>>52538109
Yeah, I'm considering going the space horror route here, but I want things to not be really supernatural, because I've already worked out the greater cosmology of how things work.

That's a good idea, though. I might be able to work with this.

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>>52538401

>>52538207
Just don't make it supernatural. The odd waves the thing sends out when active messes with the human mind, essentially scrambling it.
Maybe the find out that they only have so long before it makes an automated jump, and they need to get to a safe distance.

>>52537802
I'm a brand new GM and I'm preparing my descriptions. The problem is I don't think I'm very good at describing things. How do you guys go about it?

I've tried finding the right module to rip off, but it's jarring trying to fit it in next to my descriptions (whatever I can't find I have to write).

>Here you all are. Sitting in a dimly lit 5x5 room. A rusty cell keeps you all huddled close together and if it weren't for the cell keeping you all pressed together you'd surely be shivering from the cold. At the opposite end, as far as can be from your cage, is a misshapen wooden door--lights peeking from the cracks in the door.

That's just something I wrote in a couple seconds.

>>52541867
Do it a lot, and read a lot of other people's descriptions. Also, if you're making it up on the fly (It's a genuine high-level GM tactic, don't believe the memes) then it helps to breathe, and think. Wax on, Wax off. Breathe, Think.

Not so much writer's block as a background question:

In northern climates, think Scandinavia, how quickly can a woodland area go from the autumn's first snow to "fuck, we're stuck here until spring"?

>>52542152
One bad blizzard can make travel hard for a couple weeks potentially, but for travel to be impossible for a season you need either a mountain pass to collapse or Antarctic cold.

>>52542208
Thanks. It's enough for travel to be hard for my purposes.

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>>52541867
I tend to type up a huge amount of stuff before session begins for things that I know I'm going to describe, which has a twofold purpose: one, I can spend some time describing things a lot better, and two I have more time to type about things that are actually happening as opposed to things that are passively there. This technique falls more into the "heavy pre-session prep" GM school of thought as opposed to the "improvisational" school of thought, each of which have their merits. Either way, try to read high-quality fiction or nonfiction that has a lot of descriptive stuff in it so you get the feel for what you're doing.

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Anyone know of a good list of *ending* ideas? I see plenty of ideas for story hooks, but honestly those are the easy part.