Oblique Strategies for GMs

So, as people know, Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt once created a deck of cards called "Oblique Strategies" to serve as prompts for creativity. Although mainly intended for use by musicians, the ambiguous nature of the cards' contents can often be applied to other artforms, including painting, dance, and - to a lesser degree - story-weaving.

That's where we come in. Below I've listed the contents of the original Oblique Strategies deck. Some of these cards work just fine for GMs, requiring neither modification nor translation. But some of em need work. Let's address those.

How to Play: Select a card that seems difficult to apply to GMing, and then - using metonymy or metaphor, complex conceptual Fourier translation or sudden flash of irrational insight - rewrite it. If we rewrite all of those "problem cards", we'll be left with a GM's Deck we can print out and use to test the limits of copyright law. Yay Hegemony!

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES - by Eno & Schmidt

1. A line has two sides
2. Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
3. Don't be frightened of cliches
4. What is the reality of the situation?
5. Are there sections? Consider transitions
6. Turn it upside down
7. Think of the radio
8. Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)
9. Simple subtraction
10. Go slowly all the way round the outside
11. Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
12. Into the impossible
13. Ask people to work against their better judgement
14. Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
15. Infinitesimal gradations
16. Change instrument roles
17. Accretion
18. Disconnect from desire
19. Emphasize repetitions
20. Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do
21. Don't be frightened to display your talents
22. Breathe more deeply
23. Honor thy error as a hidden intention
24. Only one element of each kind
25. Is there something missing?
26. Use 'unqualified' people
27. How would you have done it?
28. Emphasize differences
29. Do nothing for as long as possible
30. Bridges -build -burn
31. You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
32. Tidy up
33. Do the words need changing?
34. Ask your body
35. Water
36. Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate
37. Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
38. Use an unacceptable color
39. Humanize something free of error
40. Use filters
41. Fill every beat with something
42. Discard an axiom
43. What wouldn't you do?
44. Decorate, decorate
45. Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle
46. Listen to the quiet voice
47. Is it finished?
48. Put in earplugs
49. Give the game away
50. Abandon normal instruments
51. Use fewer notes
52. Repetition is a form of change
53. Give way to your worst impulse
54. Reverse
55. Trust in the you of now
56. What would your closest friend do?
57. Distorting time
58. Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
59. Ghost echoes
60. You can only make one dot at a time
61. Just carry on
62. (Organic) machinery
63. The inconsistency principle
64. Don't break the silence
65. Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
66. Cascades
67. Courage!
68. What mistakes did you make last time?
69. Consider different fading systems
70. Mute and continue
71. It is quite possible (after all)
72. Don't stress one thing more than another
73. You are an engineer
74. Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
75. Look at the order in which you do things
76. Go outside. Shut the door.
77. Do we need holes?
78. Cluster analysis
79. Do something boring
80. Define an area as 'safe' and use it as an anchor
81. Overtly resist change
82. Accept advice
83. Work at a different speed
84. Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
85. Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic
86. Emphasize the flaws
87. Remember those quiet evenings
88. Take a break
89. Short circuit (example; a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
90. Use an old idea
91. Destroy -nothing -the most important thing
92. Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
93. The tape is now the music
94. Be dirty
95. What are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving
96. Intentions -nobility of -humility of -credibility of
97. Imagine the piece as a set of disconnected events
98. What are you really thinking about just now?
99. Assemble some of the elements in a group and treat the group
100. Shut the door and listen from outside
101. Is the intonation correct?
102. Look at a very small object, look at its centre
103. Children's voices -speaking -singing
104. Feed the recording back out of the medium
105. Towards the insignificant
106. Simply a matter of work
107. Not building a wall but making a brick
108. Revaluation (a warm feeling)
109. The most important thing is the thing most easily forgotten
110. Idiot glee
111. Be extravagant
112. State the problem in words as clearly as possible
113. Disciplined self-indulgence
114. Always first steps
115. Question the heroic approach
116. Lost in useless territory
117. Always give yourself credit for having more than personality
118. Faced with a choice, do both
119. Tape your mouth
120. Get your neck massaged
121. Do the washing up
122. Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
123. Spectrum analysis
124. Twist the spine
125. Left channel, right channel, centre channel
126. Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff
127. In total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
128. Would anybody want it?
129. Retrace your steps
130. Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place
131. Once the search is in progress, something will be found
132. Only a part, not the whole
133. From nothing to more than nothing
134. Be less critical more often