Spells not on scrolls

During our BX game last night, we had a brief discussion about spell scrolls and house rules.  Generally speaking the DM "grants" the spells for a wizard thru scrolls that are found as part of treasure.  What I realized is that it would be SUPER funny and entertaining to grant these spells but in a way that isn't as clear as a scroll.  Here are a few examples.

1.  Behind the gygaxian tapestry written on a wall

2.  On a lit torch 

3.  On a treasure chest key 

4.  On the side of a healing potion bottle

5.  On the back of a treasure map 

6.  Not on the dead wizard the PCs just defeated, but safely stored on the Wizard's hireling (likely in a backpack).

7.  On a staff 

8.  A message in a bottle

Sticky heroic situations

While rewatching game of thrones I realized that I need to incorporate more sticky situations for PC's.

In one moment in season two the assassin is in a wagon surrounded by fire.  He's asking Arya to let him out.

Id like to incorporate more of those types of situations in games.  Gandalf hanging by one hand and needing to be pulled up.

Here's a few ideas:

Walls closing in (star wars)

Scaling a flat wall 

Someone falling off a cliff needing a hand up.

Surrounded by fire 

A rope bridge that is falling apart

Large boulder in dungeon tunnel (Indiana  Jones).

Using a rope to get out of a window to escape.  Rope not long enough.

Obviously these types of things happen organically.  Design wise there usually needs to be one other alternative that is less dangerous.  Usually the PCs will take that route.

Another thing I want to incorporate more are chases.  Of course this depends on the PCs actually attempting to flee.  That said the bad guys can always try to flee.

A lot of dnd is straight up fight to the death combat.  Which is fine, but it reminds me to check morale! Which goes for the monsters and hirelings.

Just some random thoughts today while I wait to go to work.

The google drive of unfinished projects

 You maybe like me? You may have a pile of half started unfinished projects on google drive.  It seemed like a good idea, you got 8 pages, then moved onto the next thing.  It's totally fine! What I'm doing is reorganizing my drive, purging things and saving actual good ideas for later.

I've come to the conclusion that I will likely not finish the gygax challenge, I've started and quit 3 times.  I've often wondered about working backwards thru the booklet.. What I have realized is that I every time I run a game I never have anything really ready to go.  I get bogged down in the minutiae. Sometimes I create a map thinking about possibly a future release.  Or start self editing. This is unproductive. What I am going to do is use all of the awesome content generation tools available to me and actually get a concrete world and adventure locations ready to go.

https://watabou.itch.io/ is one such amazing tool.

Matt Jacksons maps are another great resource http://www.msjx.org/

I don't think it's worth making a list of the unfinished projects, suffice to say it's a lot.

When I get this done, the next step is to run it and tweak.  Then keep running it.

Long term goal is to have it ready to go.