For this one you have to think with portals.

RPGaDay is for me a portal to creativity. I know this year I went a bit crazy and stretched the prompts and subjects way too much. But this is another creative way, in my opinion.

This year’s RPGaDay gave me a ton of things. I have a layer based worldbuilding design I must work on. I realized how small my TTRPG collection is, especially width wise, meaning I don’t have a lot of variety. I asked questions to myself about the way I approach certain aspects of GMing and worldbuilding. I even talked about my day and stuff that happened!

And all these things RPGaDay gave to me are portals to creativity themselves! I can pick each one of them and do something with it. Whether that something will be just a one time post or a long series or even a publication, that’s left to be discovered. And that’s the beauty of it.

But let’s talk a bit about other kinds of portals as well.

Portals in TTRPGs can make travel easier. They can also make things much more complicated and weird if they’re used in the context of a dungeon. Imagine having to traverse a dungeon that’s broken into pieces that float into the aether and are only connected through unstable portals, that sometimes take you to the wrong dungeon part. Now add a bit of planar creatures that are hungry for inhabitants of the Prime Material Plane, and a few traps that somehow manage to survive, and even get weirder through the chaotic energies of the aether, and I believe you have something here you can work with.

But back to travel. Portals pretty much can take you instantly from one side of the world to the other. At least, if they work this way in your world. It’s a practical means of transportation but can also be an annoyance based on the setting. If you’re playing a strictly structured Grey Marches style campaign, portals (and long distance teleportation in general) may be a negative thing in your game. Travel plays an important role in this kind of campaign and being able to bypass it takes something from it. Because even if you have traveled through an area before, it can still be dangerous and hold more hidden secrets. Plus, it may remove the tension when time is of the essence.

And that’s all for this one. This post was kinda like a three hit combo, because I like the concept of portals a lot. Tomorrow is the last day of RPGaDay 2020 and the closing word is “experience”. See you tomorrow!

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