Honestly, just practice.
I carry a notebook around with me everywhere, and I'll jot down ideas as they occur to me - this is more important than you'd think! Try to remember all the times you had a good idea and then forgot it. Now imagine having all those ideas written down for you to use later.
I'll get ideas from pretty much anything. Stories, books, movies, plays, operas... If I'm playing in someone else's arc and I see something that's cool, it goes into the notebook. Dreams. anything.
A good creative exercise is to take a story you like and try to alter it as a RP premise. For instance: A small caravan is traveling along a dusty road in Thanalan, when it is attacked by a large force of Brass Blades. The caravan guard at first attempt to resist, but eventually surrender. One of the travelers in the caravan is a minor noblewoman who's accused of conspiring against the Sultana. The captain of the Blades is convinced that she's carrying details of a plot, but he can find nothing on her. He brings her in, figuring that a few weeks in the gaols might loosen her tongue. Meanwhile, two of her servants have snuck away in all the confusion, and one of them is in fact carrying the details of the plot. The noblewoman, you see, had given her servant instructions to carry the details to an old man who'd once been a knight under her father's command...
Sound familiar? It should. Now I'm not saying you should make a story based on Star Wars, but you can see how any portion of this could make an interesting event. What if your characters stumble upon the servants? What if they're on the caravan as innocent travelers? Maybe they're Blades, or maybe they've been hired by the Syndicate to help the noblewoman...
The more you do this, the easier it'll get, and pretty soon you'll be in the enviable position of having simply too many ideas to actually play out. Keep at it!
I carry a notebook around with me everywhere, and I'll jot down ideas as they occur to me - this is more important than you'd think! Try to remember all the times you had a good idea and then forgot it. Now imagine having all those ideas written down for you to use later.
I'll get ideas from pretty much anything. Stories, books, movies, plays, operas... If I'm playing in someone else's arc and I see something that's cool, it goes into the notebook. Dreams. anything.
A good creative exercise is to take a story you like and try to alter it as a RP premise. For instance: A small caravan is traveling along a dusty road in Thanalan, when it is attacked by a large force of Brass Blades. The caravan guard at first attempt to resist, but eventually surrender. One of the travelers in the caravan is a minor noblewoman who's accused of conspiring against the Sultana. The captain of the Blades is convinced that she's carrying details of a plot, but he can find nothing on her. He brings her in, figuring that a few weeks in the gaols might loosen her tongue. Meanwhile, two of her servants have snuck away in all the confusion, and one of them is in fact carrying the details of the plot. The noblewoman, you see, had given her servant instructions to carry the details to an old man who'd once been a knight under her father's command...
Sound familiar? It should. Now I'm not saying you should make a story based on Star Wars, but you can see how any portion of this could make an interesting event. What if your characters stumble upon the servants? What if they're on the caravan as innocent travelers? Maybe they're Blades, or maybe they've been hired by the Syndicate to help the noblewoman...
The more you do this, the easier it'll get, and pretty soon you'll be in the enviable position of having simply too many ideas to actually play out. Keep at it!
