Searching for a little inspiration to reinvigorate my projects: I've been away too long.
Play some inspiring music and reread some of your older stuff.
Jade Stage is awesome - one of the most fascinating worlds on this site. Beautifully realized cultures and peoples, evocative descriptions of place, endless adventure opportunity.
Or, start something totally new and nevermind old projects for now. They won't go anywhere. Sometimes I get tired of writing and thinking about one setting and jump over to another.
I played an online version of an RPG for a few hours and it made me hate other games enough to get working. But I'm an outlier.
A lot of people use movies and books as inspiration. I tend to listen to music a lot.
I often take something, a little project, just outside the realm of my normal work, a guild or a group of skills...and it brings me back to my path.
Hmm, I often have long pauses between writing. I often attempt writing in these periods, but if I'm not in one of my "creative rushes" it will rarely be something I keep.
A process I have taken up recently so that I can continue with my creative work is to simply write down ideas; either general ideas or ideas for some element that I'd like to create. These become lists that I can later draw on.
Talking about your world with someone else is obviously also a huge help.
Lastly, you can accept the block for a while and use the time to sample the works of other writers. And here I'm not only thinking about us, but also about reading books and watching television shows and the like to get those creative juices flowing again.
I tend to look at different media that I love but have conflict with because of certain elements I don't like, i.e. scientific realism in a lot of sci-fi, and that can be enough to get me to want to write to "improve" on this stuff.
Listen to some new music while driving. Driving is great (for me at least) in thinking of stuff. I'd bet 80% of my stuff has started from things I've thought of while driving.
Oh yeah, menial routine work can sometimes trigger a creative trance! And walking is also very good.
listening to albums and drinking seems to work here.
Quote from: Leetzlistening to albums and drinking seems to work here.
Drinking?
Perish forbid.
I get my best ideas outside - hiking always helps me think about things, both campaign related and otherwise. Find a new place and walk around in it.
Alternately, I read that Martin Luther came up with all his most groundbreaking theology while on the toilet, so maybe what you really need is some fiber.
I come to the CBG and trawl through old posts for something to plagiarise, particularly stuff by Steerpike and Luminous Crayon! Failing that I go over my old stuff: the endless allusions and half-finished thoughts are invariably enough to infuriate me into action.
The ideas always seem to flow when I take my dogs for walks, I definitely suggest it!
Another way to inspire yourself is to approach your setting from a different angle. Get down a dirty and think about how a peasant boy from a rural farm would feel if he ever went to the big city. What kind of food would he eat, where would he pray, where would he sleep, how would the locals interact with him, etc. Then write those thoughts down and try to craft a more micro-on your setting rather than a macro-perspective :)
I think about setting stuff while driving a lot. I fleshed out the more intricate bits of the Goblin campaign and some of the stuff for the CE game while driving. I find this works better for stories than settings though, but that may just be me.