Do you watch TV shows and movies to get ideas for your campaign world?

[Calithorne]

Do you watch TV shows and movies to get ideas for your campaign world?

I do. I watch a lot of TV, and I see it as research. I see the stories as inspiration to give me ideas for my own worlds.

I just finished White Princess, which is a show about the War of the Roses. Basically, two rival families are fighting a war over control of the throne of England, and it's amazing how stubborn these people are in going to war over who gets to be king. White Princess is a sequel of White Queen, and I recommend you start by watching that.

I have also been watching a Turkish show, which is about the conflict between the early Turks and the Crusaders. Most of the trouble, however, is within the tribe, as different factions compete over who gets to be in charge.

What's amazing to me is how many stories you get if you make up a bunch of NPCs who are related to each other, or in a rival noble family, and then just figure out who's king and who wants to be the king, and shazam, you have a major conflict that involves all the other characters.

Player characters can get involved in all this, and choose sides, and then they have to watch out for court intrigue, assassination attempts, outright battles in the corridors of the castle, and/or getting arrested for treason.

I think all this is much better than a simple hack-n-slash to go out and kill a local orc tribe. I mean, you could have that, but why not have the orcs working for the evil uncle of the king who wants to overthrow him?

Any way, that's just my idea.

 

[cmad1977]

More just for adventures instead of whole campaigns.
Used the last scene of Jaws as inspiration and the Lion scene in gladiator for a couple cool scenarios. Both involved Bullettes.


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[Hand of Evil]

No, I mostly check out art sites or real world locations.

 

[Calithorne]

Then you can throw in religion, a conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism, or Christianity and Islam, or your world's imaginary equivalents. What's great about religion is that it inspires real fanaticism in some characters, and a willingness to do anything in its name, even throwing out the basic concepts of that religion to gain an advantage for it. Modern people don't understand this, I think, because they see religion as something that's done one hour on Sunday. In a fantasy world, at least one based on how people used to think, religion is the most important thing in life, even above family and nation. There are powerful stories that can come from this.

 

[Calithorne]

Real history is even crazier than fiction. There was a woman named Princess Maude who had all kinds of crazy adventures because she would not give up her claim to the throne of England for herself and her son. One time, she was kept prisoner in a castle, and she managed to climb down out of the tower and escape across the cold of winter to get away, and continue her war.

 

[Eltab]

I had to stop reading Axler's Deathlands series because his bleak desert environment was polluting my Gamma World's untamed jungle.

I also ... erm, borrowed ... two pages of fluff from Han Solo at Star's End to describe a blaster that I did want to use in Gamma World.

If I find a scene I want to use later, I re-watch the movie or re-read the book and take copious notes. Sometimes it works - I get the tone and atmosphere right.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Anything that bounces off my retinas or eardrums is fair game for inspiration. ANYTHING.

My original Champions 1900 campaign was initially inspired by Space:1889 and all the influences and fiction from that era: Verne & Wells, of course, plus Wild, Wild West, Kung Fu, and The Legend of Briscoe County Junior, to name but a few. Then I threw in elements of Alien Nation and the American Indian Movement for giggles.

Adventure plots, devices & NPCs were inspired or damn near stolen from Moorcock's Edward Bastable novels, circus side-shows, The Difference Engine by William Gibson, Marvel Comics' stories about Iron Man and Namor, giant robot anime, Archimedes' Death Ray and The Man with the Golden Gun.

 

[Eltab]

I just finished White Princess, which is a show about the War of the Roses. Basically, two rival families are fighting a war over control of the throne of England, and it's amazing how stubborn these people are in going to war over who gets to be king. White Princess is a sequel of White Queen, and I recommend you start by watching that.

What's amazing to me is how many stories you get if you make up a bunch of NPCs who are related to each other, or in a rival noble family, and then just figure out who's king and who wants to be the king, and shazam, you have a major conflict that involves all the other characters.

Shakespeare's Richard III is exactly this.
The future King Richard is the youngest son of the youngest son of the King. To become King himself, he has to kill all his brothers, all his uncles, all his nephews, and all his cousins. Plus his grandfather and his dad. And a few women who think they can inherit or marry their way to the crown. "Fortunately, they all hate each other anyways and will do most of the work for me."

But I think trying to keep DM notes for the plot (and plot twists) would give me a headache.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

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[Dannyalcatraz]

Some readings in botany gave me an idea I built a campaign around. I posted the seed of it here a few years ago:

Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners. One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

No Man's Land:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space. At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life! He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own. He trained it in the ways of the druids.

Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on. Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself. First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right. They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.

As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.

1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found. The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants. The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.

The Counci's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back. Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island. The Council did much the same.

Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals. Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.

And they are leery of Mankind's intent.

(In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's Savage Species); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's Eberron, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's Monster Manual III).