Where do your adventures come from?

Just a little poll to know what is your MAIN source for designing adventures...

I do it all (sometimes at the same time) and probably no one more than any other... I sometimes use prepublished, sometimes I borrow stuff from other games (I love raiding Call of Cthulhu - which is therefore also a series of novels/short stories), and sometimes I make things totally up on my own.

Well I voted "make my own" but it might have been a good idea to allow people to vote for more than one option :)

Myself, I make a lot of my own, usually fitting them to a buffyesque season long plot arc. Into that arc I'll usually work some published adventures, be they FASA, ICON, from a magazine, Traveller or whatever. Occasionally I'll be inspired by something from film or tv, though usually not something I've seen on Trek.

I like the "Old Trek" notion of taking more or less current events, boiling them down to a morality play, and then serving them up as adventures.

So most of them are "I make them up", but using news, tv, and magazines as my point of inspiration...

Most of them are of my own, with sometimes inspiration from the "plot ideas" in the LUG books. I also adapted one episode the players had not seen once (maybe I'll do that again... they haven't seen all of TNG :D). And I fish sometimes ideas from the novels.

Cant possibly vote for a single option...

I make my own, convert RPG adventures from different systems, follow-up on old TV episodes, re-write old adventures that I had created, re-hash TV, Film and Book plots (Altered to suit), Take single sentence ideas from said TV, Film and Book, and follow more interesting plots that were not followed in the original material... And my patented 5 card draw.

ie; Draw 5 Decipher CCG cards and build a plot from those elements...

All of the above. :)

Gotta agree with the rest of the crew, there should have been multiple-choice....

I chose "make my own," but I tend to make my own using all the other methods mentioned in the poll. :)

I say "make my own", but really my brain just acts as a collector for evil thoughtwaves, trapping them as they go by...:eek:

They come from my Butt!:D

Seriously, I get my ideas from all of the above sources.


Karg

I think we have a trend forming there ;).

Actually, most of the scenarios I've run for Trek are at least based on the old FASA modules.

Can't possibly pick a single one. My last campaign (season) had the following:

1. Converted/stolen old FASA adventure
2. Published adventure from "Planetary Adventures"
3. Adventure from TrekRPGNet submission online (yea!)
4. Totally made-up character-driven adventure
5. Adventure concept stolen from another source.

My two favorite sources of adventure ideas are old Dr. Who episodes (bwahahahaha!) and Stargate SG-1. Don't be fooled: Stargate SG-1 is Star Trek without the starships, cooler guns, better acting, and continuity. You can take a story from Stargate SG-1 into a Star Trek adventure and almost no changes are required.

It's a Beautiful Thing (TM). :D

Can't really pick one specific source.

I'm not big on published scenarios mainly because PCs have a tendency of reading published material off the shelves.

I usually get my inspiration from:

1. Trek episodes - usually they are sequels to tie up loose ends or to solve unforeseen consequences of the actions in the episodes.

2. Other sci-fi TV series - I prefer old British sci-fi, Dr Who, Space 1999 and Blake's 7 are excellent sources. For disaster relief missions you can get inspiration from Thunderbirds. Stargate SG-1 has some good ideas, as does Farscape, Andromeda and of course Babylon 5.

3. Books - this is usually a jig-saw puzzle taken from techno-thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy novels in my collection.

4. Modified published material - but rarely used.

5. Player inspired stories usually based on stuff the PCs put in their character backgrounds which can be mined for character development stories.

6. Scenarios gleamed from this Forum.

7. Scenarios stolen from my old FASATrek days. None of the current PCs were in the old group where I was a PC. My old GM has "retired" from gaming but helpfully gave me all his old notes - those he could find at any rate.

8. News stories - current affairs turned into a Trek scenario.

There are other sources but usually the above form the bulk of my scenario ideas.

I use the "Roddenberry" Technique...I borrow from the news. Of course there are only so many "Starbucks" for Romulan terrorists to blow up.

Books, episodes, movies (Trek as well as non-Trek) & current/historical events

The news is always a good source of ideas, and even better are news perspectives other than the usual. Consult foreign reports of the same news incident to get a different spin on the events. Choose one viewpoint to represent "our side of the story", another to represent "their side of the story", then mix and match until you have something which satisfactorily approximates the truth you want. Sand off the serial numbers, add /Trek/ elements, and there you have it! :D

Thanks for all your input guys! And sorry for answering a bit late. I chose the single option to reflect the major source of adventures. Otherwise I would have expected to see almost all options ticked everytime, since I suppose we all do a combination of the above.

I find it interesting that there is an overwhelming majority of self-designed adventures. Maybe the results are a bit biased - since I think most of the narrators browsing these boards are more experienced and knowledgeable about ST than the average - but very interesting none the less.

Anyway, that's a surprise for me :)

Well geez, where would I start?..

I voted "Other" for lack of an "All of the above, and THEN some" option.

I've borrowed from all my favorite science fiction shows; ST (any), B5 (great stuff), SW (not as much), Dr. Who... that list alone could go on and on... Movies, too, naturally.

More books than I can easily recount (fiction or otherwise); cripes, when I moved from NM to AZ I donated almost 2500 to the local library!

The real world... heck, sometimes my life seems more like science fiction than science fiction does...

The BEST scenario I ever came up with (and never got to run :( ) literally popped into my head from nowhere while I was driving to the local mall. Go figure.

Most of my episodes come from a mood set by an actual episode that I try to recreate in my game. For example the feel of freedom. I tell the players they are on leave and play it out. I remember watching the episodes of O'Brian and Kako as they relax. My players would get into the mode of screwing around when I tell them the whole ship goes dark. It sets that mood of "Always when I'm having fun!" This continues and the plot may be the stupidest boring plot, but somehow they make it interesting. They Love it.