Setting inspiration

[Haltherrion]

Korgoth's thread on a shinto-esque setting got me thinking about sources of setting inspirations.

What inspirations have you used for your settings? Books, movies, games, historical periods, other? Which ones do you particularly like?

Myself, I've tended more to European middle age inspired settings over the years, partly for convenience reasons. But while I haven't done it nearly as much, I've always liked the idea of the Mediterranean Ancient world and northern European pre-Christian Germanic and Celtic regions as well as Brittanic and Eastern Mediterranean Dark Age periods. I like how their polytheism and treatment of spirits, as well as their small scale combat and hero worship, resonate with the typical D&D adventure group. Much of that period wasn't so small scale warfare and the hero focus was usually after-the-fact inflation of someone's deeds but people treated it as if it was so which makes it an interesting model to me. More Beowulf than Crusades.

Just a personal preference, and I've run across the historical spectrum up to high middle ages as well as other settings more like some novels or CRPGs.

How about you? Which inspirations have you used? Which do you get excited about? Which would you like to try?

 

[Argyle King]

Over the years, I've used a wide variety of different influences. I really can't even remember them all, but these are a few I remember right off the cuff.


Halo: While it is a sci-fi based fps, the story was very easy to translate into D&D. Aliens became creatures from the Far Realm, and they used magic portals to invade the material realm instead of using spaceships to invade Earth.


Romance of The Three Kingdoms Era China

Oblivion/Dragon Age: I was able to blend the stories of these two games into something which worked really well, and was also different enough that the players didn't notice the inspiration for a while. The group started in a jail cell, and I pretty blatantly ripped off the first few scenes of Oblivion, but I changed the reason for the emperor fleeing to an invading force of creatures based very heavily upon darkspawn. From there, I just went forward.

R. Howard: one of my favorite authors, so I've been inspired by his works more than a few times

Native American Mythology (some pretty interesting takes on werewolves)

Captain America: pretty easy to translate the concept of the character into fantasy

...there are plenty of others

 

[Shades of Green]

How about you? Which inspirations have you used? Which do you get excited about? Which would you like to try?

My inspiration up until now included the Thief series of computer games (which are excellent, btw) which heavily influenced the way I depicted Dwarven religion (heavily inspired by the Hammerites), Tolkien's works, reading the three AD&D 2E core books, the Baldur's Gate computer games and bits and pieces of real-world early Renaissance history. Another book which gave me some inspiration was Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, which inspired the Lirini religion (matriarchal monotheism). Another computer game inspiring me heavily was Arx Fatalis, which had a lot of inspiration for my goblins.

Up until now I was using worlds with a more or less late medieval/early Renaissance flavor, and with more or less standard D&D assumptions about religion and magic. However, I've grown tired of using the same tropes and inspirations for my 13 or so years of gaming, and I'm looking to try something new.

One thing that I've been considering is to make my Wounded Gaia setting (see my sig) less typical D&D and more unique. in addition to drawing some inspiration from Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World saga, I intend to be heavily inspired by the Shintoesque D&D thread, as well as by various animistic and quasi-animistic religions, from the shamanism of the peoples native to the arctic circle, through Japanese Shinto to the Fey world of Slavic, Norse and Celtic mythology. I might also include ancestor worship. I haven't decided how far to go with this animistic world-view, but it might go as far as declaring Dragons, Aboleths and similar creatures - indeed, maybe even goblins - to be "gods"/spirits/Kami rather than "natural" animals, and replacing the Elf character race with a Changeling (a Fey raised by mortals, or maybe the result of a spirit mating with a mortal).

Another thing I'd love to do is semi-pulpish, high-adventure exploration on strange tropical islands, inspired by all these cool pirate and age-of-sail books I've read as a child and adolescent. Humans, and maybe Dwarves, coming from "typical" fantasy lands that have progressed into an equivalent of the early 17th century AD exploring the weird lands of the Lizardmen on remote islands, finding the vine-choked ruins of the dead Serpentmen empire and engaging in piracy! The Lizardmen culture would have some inspiration by Aztech/Inca/Maya myth, complete with pyramids and, sometimes, human (or lizardmen) sacrifices to placate angry, Lovecraftian gods; the Gecko-Men culture would be more Asian-inspired, with a Shinto-style religion. And, yes, the explorers and pirates WILL have firearms. The genre demands it!

I'd also like to explore an ancient Near East setting and a Stone Age/ice Age setting...

 

[Cyronax]

Over the years, I've used a wide variety of different influences. I really can't even remember them all, but these are a few I remember right off the cuff.

Romance of The Three Kingdoms Era China

Captain America: pretty easy to translate the concept of the character into fantasy

...there are plenty of others

Three Kingdoms -- great inspiration.

Some of my older campaigns were took inspiration from a variety of sources:

- Journey to the West (Monkey King and his friends help a Buddha).
- Tailspin (old Disney cartoon) -- minor inspiration for a an airship-heavy campaign I ran.
- 13th Warrior.
- Song of Fire and Ice.
- Inuyasha.

To name a few.

C.I.D.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Coffee stains on graph paper - just saw them and made a map from them.

What if statements -

• What if dwarves took in cavemen to help work their mines but yet elves saw them as animals, that they drove off there lands...now skip foward 2000 years.
• What if the only road builders were dragons and they collected toll for the use of those roads.
• What if Halflings were the mafia controlling all trade and transportation of goods. (WFRP)

 

[Sunseeker]

Generally, my gaming world, which I recycle often(since any game I run rarely explores enough of it to find it dull), takes from pretty much all the quasi-history of the real world. You've got everything from classical Greek and Roman socities and your traditional "dark middle ages" to your high-dynastic asian cultures.

I throw in a variety of tribal socities as well, though I tend to take more from myth and make-believe than history for those as I find it's much easier for people to get touchy about them than the "traditional" classics.

Beyond that, I generally throw in other things I'd enjoy seeing in this mid-fantasy classical setting I create.

Oh, and my dwarves are black.

 

[Mallus]

What if statements -

"What if..." statements are great! I had a city-state in my old 3e homebrew based around: what if the God of Abraham revealed himself to the Aztecs, and the Aztecs lived in a dinosaur-infested jungle.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

For my Earth sources I like to draw from fantastic adventure stories like you find in places like the Arabian Knights.

But I've drawn a lot more from fictional sources: things like He-Man (2002 version) and the Legend of Zelda series. Also I get a good deal from pictures I find online.

And one big source is just "What would this thing be like if I did it different?" It's a "What if...", but the starting point isn't a question hanging on its own but is another idea you've seen somewhere and want to be opposite of.

Example:
The way "prime elements" are done in fantasy is usually as these unmixable pieces from which all other things are derived. So I decided I wanted to design an "elements" system where the primes are things we might normally think of as mixed in the other system and the "pure" elements are derivatives.
This lead to such elements as: Mud, Civilization, Herd, Forest, Desert, Mountain, Night, Storm, Ocean, Bone, Cave, Grass, Plains, River, Sky, Swamp.

 

[kitsune9]

What inspirations have you used for your settings? Books, movies, games, historical periods, other? Which ones do you particularly like?

I just finished the 13th book of the Wheel of Time series and I'm currently reading the Butlerian Jihad which is from the Dune series of books. These series offer elements that I enjoy incorporating into my campaigns.

For the WoT, I've taken some characters and adapted them into my own campaigns and some of the customs too and from Dune, I love the whole Nobility / Guild / Church relationship and the politic ramifications that are involved in it. My current Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign has a lot of this political relationships in place.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Long past campaigns were mostly straight up pseudo-medieval, plain vanilla.

More recently, I like basing a setting on "what ifs" or "whys", as well. I'm re-vamping an old one that ultimately boils down to the question "Why doesn't the moon turn?"

For grins, I also like to generate a completely random list of creatures; their scope in the world (powerful individual, large organization, secretive organization, race, etc); and their relationships to each other (rivals of, allied with, hates, hidden from, etc). The resulting list defines the power centers of a world. Then I try to shoe-horn those (often bizarre) results into a viable short-term campaign setting. I've never gotten to run such a campaign, but it's still a fun little exercise that forces me to think a little outside the conventions that I often get trapped in.