The Media That Inspired Your Imagination

[Stormonu]

After reading "Why Grognard", I'm curious what media inspires/inspired how they view or play the RPGs they do.

I've been around quite a while, but I'd say my primary inspiration is actually movies (I haven't read a book since my High School days, even for College book reports).

These are the major inspirations that have formed much of my D&D playing:

#1 - Hawk the Slayer
#2 - Dragonslayer
#3 - Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
#4 - The Hobbit (Rankin Bass cartoon version)
#5 - Fred Saberhagen's Book of Swords (these were the last books I read, BTW)
#6 - Eragon/Eldest/(Brisingr) (the book moreso than the movie; I cheated and listened to the audio books)
#7 - various Sinbad movies
#8 - Conan the Barbarian (Savage Sword comic & marvel version)
#9 - Dragonlance books (Autumn, Winter, Spring & Legends series)
#10 - The Odyssey/Cattle Raid of Cooley (retold in a Time Life books series I had when growing up)

BTW, the movie that has messed me up the most has got to be Jaws. I still cannot go deeper than my ankles in ocean water because of that damn movie.

 

[Corathon]

The mediium that inspired me the most is books. Howard, Lovecraft, Smith, Tolkien, Lewis, Vance and many more. More recent writers like Cook, Mieville, and Wolfe have also inspired me.

Movies are secondary, but have had an influence, too. I'd include many of the same movies that Stormonu did, but I'd add King Kong, Jason and the Argonauts, and a whole lot of monster movies.

 

[jaerdaph]

The Rankin Bass cartoon of The Hobbit got me into Tolkien (when I was in the 7th Grade), which got me into other fantasy fiction, which got me into D&D my freshman year in high school.

Up to that point, I was pretty much into Star Trek TOS and Planet of the Apes, and this new movie called Star Wars.

Also monster and horror movies, especially Universal classics and Hammer Films.

 

[Meek]

Video games, anime/manga and cartoons are my primary inspirations and my mind's eye still sees stuff as video games or anime/manga whenever I play anything. I regularly sift around danbooru and 4chan for images that might make my head click, and have huge folders (and a pretty sizable number of favorites on my danbooru account). I got into D&D 3.5 when I was 14 because my friend sold me on it being like all the JRPGs I've played except the characters are actually customizable, and that we'd be making up events that are cooler. My first character was a Wizard though.

Because I took one look at it and knew .

As I've gone along I've made my own setting out of a lot of different cultural inspirations (particularly my family's religion), most of them asian.

But I get a ton of different ideas for games nowadays. Right now I'm gearing up to run what is basically Invader Zim meets K-On! in Risus, am running Deathwatch (and would like to run a kitbash of Deathwatch's squad powers rules but for Dark Heresy guardsmen) and am working on a homebrew RPG based partly on being like an Etrian Odyssey-esque crawler.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

My primary D&D inspriation is B/X and 1e AD&D, and the products from the late '70s/early '80s.

But (no surprise here) what got me into D&D was F&SF books. First The Hobbit and LotR, then C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, then Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, then Leiber's stories of Lankhmar, followed by Saberhagen, Feist, L. Sprague De Camp, and onward. I bounced back & forth between F & SF then, too, and still do.

Olgar: Part Star Wars, part Hobbit. All Geek.

 

[Heathen72]

All sorts of different media inspired me as a youngster

• Dr Who (TOS) especially Tom Baker era
• Bill Melendez's animated movie of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1979)
• BBC Radio Play of the Lord of the Rings (1981 with Ian Holm as Bilbo)
• Excalbur (1981)
• The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper, Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, and Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin
• Monkey (Dubbed Version) 1979
• Early Fighting Fantasy Gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone got me into the Hobby

 

[jaerdaph]

All sorts of different media inspired me as a youngster

• Dr Who (TOS) especially Tom Baker era

Yes! How could I forget this?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Mostly animu, the vidya, and cartoons. Grew up in the late 80's/90's, after all. I get a bit from movies and books, but most just don't get the creative juices flowing as much.

Biggest one, though? Music. A good song, typically ambiance, gets my creativity moving faster then most anything else.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

As a kid/teenager, my D&D sensibilities were probably most formed by:

- Tolkein, including the books and the animated movies. ("Frodo of the Nine Fingers, and the Ring of Dooooooom"!)
- The Shanara books, Dark is Rising, A Wrinkle in TIme, LeGuin, the Pyrdain books, Chronicles of Narnia, Thomas Covenant, many others
- movies: The Dark Crystal, The Neverending Story, Dragonslayer, Labyrinth, Conan, The Beastmaster, Willow, Indiana Jones, Krull, Star Wars, StarTrek TOS, as well as older movies, especially stop motion animation things like King Kong, Sinbad, and the like.

Later in life:
- Lovecraft, Dunsany, (most recently!) Howard
- King Solomon's Mines, Heart of Darkness, Three Musketeers (etc), Treasure Island, etc.
- Star Trek DS9, Babylon 5
- spaghetti westerns
- various other movies & books that elude me atm.

 

[hayek]

I guess these don't count as 'media', but I find inspiration in reading story hours of actual roleplaying. There's nothing more inspiring than reading a story that came to life in an actual game. Sagiro's story hour kind of got me back into playing d&d.

I would also add as inspiration any nature shows - Planet Earth, Man vs. Wild, etc... immersing myself in the natural world (of course in person is better, but on TV works too) just gets my creative juices flowing.