I’m always looking for ideas, concepts and techniques from domains outside of games or storytelling that I can steal.

I call this “off label use.” Pharmacists call certain applications of drugs “off label” to describe the use of a drug for a condition without the approval from the relevant government agency. Prazosin is a drug used for hypertension. It is also used “off label” for nightmares. The FDA has approved Prazosin for hypertension but it has not approved it for nightmares.

Here are five tools I use when I’m working on gaming material that are “off label.”

Cognitive Distortions from Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

One of the exercises used in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is for the patient to write down unhelpful thoughts, identify the type of distorted thinking category thought falls into and then consider a different thought that is counter to it.

In many stories, the protagonist believes something…