ivocaliban
First Post
I'm not certain this is the right place for such a thread (and feel free to move it if it's not), but after being up all hours of the night and watching several Ed Wood films I'm left wondering about the strange places inspiration can come from in regards to creating D&D adventures. Sometimes the connections are easily made...films like Excalibur, The Princess Bride, or The Lord of the Rings are obviously going to inspire DMs (and the books they're based on helped inspire the entire roleplaying industry), but I'm curious about other movies that give rise to concepts, adventures, or characters that appear in your games.
Anticipating The Fifth Element's re-release on dvd, I'm reminded of how much like a roleplaying adventure that film seemed when I first saw it. With costume changes and a few changes to the story and script...it could very well be a medieval film (albeit one with a bizarre sense of humor). When that film was first released on dvd near the end 1997 I was no longer playing D&D. I was hardly roleplaying at all, in fact. But when I saw it, I immediately thought "I want to run a game!" Not some cautious, meticulously plotted masterpiece, necessarily, just a fun romp filled with action, adventure, humour, romance...all those things that make gaming fun.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I'd been out of D&D for a while back then. I'd played a few other games in that time but nothing that really gave me the same thrill. I was left wishing I still had the old books and a group of friends around me that was still interested in the game. I wasn't deeply entrenched in the sidelines of the hobby (I'd never bought an issue of Dragon magazine, I'd never gone to a gaming convention, and so forth), but I could see from what was on the shelves that TSR was in trouble. It looked like I might be saying good-bye to that part of my youth forever.
Cut to three years later and the birth of the 3.0 edition (or as it was known before the need for a decimal: 3e). I didn't know enough people into gaming to hear the clamour from the traditionalists regarding the blasphemy of the new edition. All I knew was I had before me three volumes of resurrected goodness and I was elated to wolf it down. I was also suprised at how my old gaming friends came out of the woodwork when this edition was released. It seemed to have revived something of the spirit I'd known when I was 14 running my first adventure in my bedroom.
The first thing that came to my mind at that time was The Fifth Element. While the resulting (and on-going) campaign bears virtually no resemblance to the movie itself (except for an important NPC who was strongly tied to an apocalyptic prophecy) it still served as a film that kept my roleplaying spirit alive. My games tend to be character driven...and The Fifth Element has some of the most bizarre and memorable characters I've ever come across in any medium.
I've rambled far beyond need or purpose, but I hope you'll indulge me with similar stories. There are many others I would mention here (I have an NPC based on Brock Samson of The Venture Bros., three based on characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and I won't say how many Twilight Zone episodes I've borrowed from over the years...), but I feel I've gone on long enough. So, if you have any such experiences...please let me know!
Anticipating The Fifth Element's re-release on dvd, I'm reminded of how much like a roleplaying adventure that film seemed when I first saw it. With costume changes and a few changes to the story and script...it could very well be a medieval film (albeit one with a bizarre sense of humor). When that film was first released on dvd near the end 1997 I was no longer playing D&D. I was hardly roleplaying at all, in fact. But when I saw it, I immediately thought "I want to run a game!" Not some cautious, meticulously plotted masterpiece, necessarily, just a fun romp filled with action, adventure, humour, romance...all those things that make gaming fun.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I'd been out of D&D for a while back then. I'd played a few other games in that time but nothing that really gave me the same thrill. I was left wishing I still had the old books and a group of friends around me that was still interested in the game. I wasn't deeply entrenched in the sidelines of the hobby (I'd never bought an issue of Dragon magazine, I'd never gone to a gaming convention, and so forth), but I could see from what was on the shelves that TSR was in trouble. It looked like I might be saying good-bye to that part of my youth forever.
Cut to three years later and the birth of the 3.0 edition (or as it was known before the need for a decimal: 3e). I didn't know enough people into gaming to hear the clamour from the traditionalists regarding the blasphemy of the new edition. All I knew was I had before me three volumes of resurrected goodness and I was elated to wolf it down. I was also suprised at how my old gaming friends came out of the woodwork when this edition was released. It seemed to have revived something of the spirit I'd known when I was 14 running my first adventure in my bedroom.
The first thing that came to my mind at that time was The Fifth Element. While the resulting (and on-going) campaign bears virtually no resemblance to the movie itself (except for an important NPC who was strongly tied to an apocalyptic prophecy) it still served as a film that kept my roleplaying spirit alive. My games tend to be character driven...and The Fifth Element has some of the most bizarre and memorable characters I've ever come across in any medium.
I've rambled far beyond need or purpose, but I hope you'll indulge me with similar stories. There are many others I would mention here (I have an NPC based on Brock Samson of The Venture Bros., three based on characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and I won't say how many Twilight Zone episodes I've borrowed from over the years...), but I feel I've gone on long enough. So, if you have any such experiences...please let me know!
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