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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8792872" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>Interesting question!</p><p></p><p>I think one of the biggest influences, for me, would be Claremont X-Man. It's my ideal of reconciling team-oriented character expression and development with fisticuffs as the main domain of action. It also has wild supernatural (sorry - super-scientific) phenomena, dangerous places (I know Madripoor better than I know Lankhmar), and personalities (= NPCs) that can turn on a dime as needed to drive the action.</p><p></p><p>When I RPG it's mostly fantasy (with a bit of MHRP and Traveller in recent years). My fantasy tropes come from D&D itself (Gygax's AD&D, and to a lesser extent 4e), from REH's Conan and Kull (and also the 70s and 80s comic versions of these), from Earthsea, from JRRT, and from film: Excalibur, and a host of 90s-ish Wuxia films with Ashes of Time and Hero as my peak for bitter-romantic and redemptive-romantic fantasy respectively. I like to incorporate these tropes into my RPGing, and sometimes succeed. They've vulnerable to being steamrolled by the Claremont X-Man vibe.</p><p></p><p>I don't think of music as having influenced my RPGing that much - my identity-forming artists included The Church, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, The Smiths and Depeche Mode, but while I might think of Under the Milky Way or Metropolis while putting together a scenario, the only time I can think of actually using a song to inspire a RPG idea was Dylan's Isis, and especially the line "We came to the pyramids, all embedded in ice": I've used pyramids embedded in ice twice. In Rolemaster it was a bit of a fizzer for various reasons, but in Classic Traveller it was a lot of fun.</p><p></p><p>I also love Wagner's Ring Cycle, including the key conceit that Wotan can only resolve his predicament by way of a hero who does what he (Wotan) wishes but is entirely free, and in no sense Wotan's agent. (One could see this as a curious intersection of REH's and JRRT's conceptions of their respective heroes.) This idea has informed my thinking about the PCs and cosmology in two campaigns: a different RM one, and 4e D&D.</p><p></p><p>The other thing that affects my RPGing is my interest (both personal and professional) in history, sociology, politics, philosophy, etc. When I was a younger GM and still under the spell of worldbuilding, I would conceive of histories and religious movements and theologies that reconciled published material that I liked (GH, OA) with real-world philosophical and historical tendencies. Today I tend to treat these things as a well to draw from for images, tropes, vignettes, and possibilities. I like to think that I've become intellectually more mature!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8792872, member: 42582"] Interesting question! I think one of the biggest influences, for me, would be Claremont X-Man. It's my ideal of reconciling team-oriented character expression and development with fisticuffs as the main domain of action. It also has wild supernatural (sorry - super-scientific) phenomena, dangerous places (I know Madripoor better than I know Lankhmar), and personalities (= NPCs) that can turn on a dime as needed to drive the action. When I RPG it's mostly fantasy (with a bit of MHRP and Traveller in recent years). My fantasy tropes come from D&D itself (Gygax's AD&D, and to a lesser extent 4e), from REH's Conan and Kull (and also the 70s and 80s comic versions of these), from Earthsea, from JRRT, and from film: Excalibur, and a host of 90s-ish Wuxia films with Ashes of Time and Hero as my peak for bitter-romantic and redemptive-romantic fantasy respectively. I like to incorporate these tropes into my RPGing, and sometimes succeed. They've vulnerable to being steamrolled by the Claremont X-Man vibe. I don't think of music as having influenced my RPGing that much - my identity-forming artists included The Church, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, The Smiths and Depeche Mode, but while I might think of Under the Milky Way or Metropolis while putting together a scenario, the only time I can think of actually using a song to inspire a RPG idea was Dylan's Isis, and especially the line "We came to the pyramids, all embedded in ice": I've used pyramids embedded in ice twice. In Rolemaster it was a bit of a fizzer for various reasons, but in Classic Traveller it was a lot of fun. I also love Wagner's Ring Cycle, including the key conceit that Wotan can only resolve his predicament by way of a hero who does what he (Wotan) wishes but is entirely free, and in no sense Wotan's agent. (One could see this as a curious intersection of REH's and JRRT's conceptions of their respective heroes.) This idea has informed my thinking about the PCs and cosmology in two campaigns: a different RM one, and 4e D&D. The other thing that affects my RPGing is my interest (both personal and professional) in history, sociology, politics, philosophy, etc. When I was a younger GM and still under the spell of worldbuilding, I would conceive of histories and religious movements and theologies that reconciled published material that I liked (GH, OA) with real-world philosophical and historical tendencies. Today I tend to treat these things as a well to draw from for images, tropes, vignettes, and possibilities. I like to think that I've become intellectually more mature! [/QUOTE]
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