hawkeyefan
Legend
Oh damn I thought of another big one. The Wire. Especially useful for stuff related to crime and/or law enforcement.
Interesting question!So the question is what are your artistic and cultural influences from film, music, art and comics, and what themes and patterns from them have you noticed in your roleplaying?
Oh damn I thought of another big one. The Wire. Especially useful for stuff related to crime and/or law enforcement.
When I think about it this way, what did we have in common? We'd all watched The Goodies, Kenny Everett's Video Show, the Young Ones and Black Adder. And had read LotR. Beyond that we were a bit more diverse - mostly science/tech guys, but one a nerd, one a musician, one a hiker who now lives in Alaska and runs marathons and does volunteer snow rescue. And me, the perennial GM and only humanities-oriented guy.The OP was particularly around formative influences as well - it's not comprehensive and there was a lot of stuff I was individually into - but I was trying to think about shared music, film, graphic novels - and the attitudes in them - that helped glue my groups together. For me the timescale was a time between, say, 1982 and 1992, although it's purely illustrative to get to the question.
I really like this point.I love The Wire. Stunning characters, great integrity and observations in the writing, wonderful and subtle performances. But I think I'm the only one in my group who is (was) into it, so there wasn't that shared overlap with friends. And it's almost too good, too sophisticated, to aim for in an RPG! So in that sense we used Firefly more as a template - nowhere near as great as a show (in my opinion), but a viable template for 'troupe' type play and something everyone had seen.
- '80s Science-Fantasy: Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Visionaries, Thundarr, Star Wars, Nausicaa, etc.
- Video/Computer Games: Blizzard (Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft), Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Legend of Zelda, Guild Wars 1 & 2, JRPGs
- Anime: Vision of Escaflowne, Record of Lodoss War, Princess Mononoke, Nausicaa, Berserk, Twelve Kingdoms
- Speculative Fiction Novels: Elric of Melniboné and the Moorcock Multiverse, The Silmarillion, Earthsea, Dune, Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Chronicles of Prydain, Lies of Locke Lamora
- Other Fantasy: The Dark Crystal, Pirates of Dark Water
I listen to a lot of music, but I'm not sure if I could diagnose how my musical tastes have influenced my gaming. In terms of graphic novels or manga, that would also include Berserk and Nausicaa. I do enjoy superhero comics and other media, but I do not find myself looking back at them for inspiration. And at times as of late, I feel so supersaturated by superhero media that I don't really feel inspired them. Instead, it's an almost claustrophobic feeling.I found this list interesting, both its inclusions (computer games) and omissions (music, graphic novels).
I don't know much of what's here - certainly none of the Anime.
Essentially "Order vs. Chaos." The concept refers to a motif found in a number of ancient religions and mythologies, particularly the Ancient Near East and even Indo-European cultures, that essentially involves gods representing order defeating forces of chaos, often preceding the creation or ordering of the world: e.g., Olympians defeating the Titans, Marduk defeating Tiamat, Baal defeating Yam, Horus vs. Set, etc. Chaoskampf is also an incredibly common motif in Biblical literature, where it is at times subverted (e.g., a non-violent creation and ordering of primordial chaos by the deity in Genesis 1).I'm not even sure I understand ChaosKampf as a concept!
It might take awhile to unpack these influences. In some cases, the themes are an underlying part of my influences. In other cases, these works have drawn me towards certain RPGs or even the sort of characters I like to make. I will unpack one theme for now: Ecology and the Land.Would you care to unpick how these interact together to lead to your themes?