Prompt ideas
General
- What would you do, and how might that same action be different if done by your character?
- Take your moonshot. What’s something you want to try that should never work?
- Take a mundane idea from everyday life and recontextualize it in the game’s setting
- Do the boring, expected thing (and that’s OK)
- Take inspiration from your favorite media — a movie, book, comic book, TV show, or similar
- Smash two great ideas together
- What’s the most unexpected thing that could happen right now?
Social
- Which other character in your party would be particularly helpful right now? Have you character ask them for help.
- Push an existing relationship forward in some way
- Evolve an existing relationship in some way
- Push an antagonistic element of a relationship forward… or create a new one!
- How can you focus your actions on helping someone else, whether they’re in your party or an NPC?
Character development
- Lean into a character’s quirk
- What has happened recently to change your character in some way?
- Have your character do something uncharacteristic that still makes sense in context.
- What does your character want to achieve, long-term or short-term?
Investigation
- Survey your surroundings if you haven’t already
- What specialized knowledge or experience your character has could help you find out more?
- How does the current situation relate to something that happened before?
Combat
- Use a weapon, item, or ability in an unexpected way.
- What in the environment can you use to your advantage?
- What non-combat ability could you use for a combat advantage?
- Do something heroic
- Can you short-circuit this encounter, or even just part of it?