3G: Ginnifer Goodwin and Gallifrey

Southern Oracle

As a 12-year-old, I spent every waking moment crafting D&D adventures for my friends to play. The older I got, however, the less time I had to devote to creating encounters from scratch. Thankfully, there was a wealth of modules in the early D&D days that presented the DM with the “bare bones” of an adventure that could be tailored to individual campaigns.

Of course, as a teenager, I had little life experience to draw upon for fleshing out those empty holes and giving life to those “bare bones.” I had the fantasy novels of my childhood – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Piers Anthony’s The Magic of Xanth series, and Gary Gygax’s Gord the Rogue series to name a few, and there were a few (short-lived) television series, namely, Wizards & Warriors and later, The Charmings.

The older I got, the less time I had, and the more I relied on the published modules of TSR and Wizards of the Coast, and the adventures in Dungeon magazine. I read everything, compiled my favorites, and reused them with different groups, changing things up as inspiration hit. Time hasn’t gotten any more plentiful as the years have slipped by and, while I’m sorry to say reading as a hobby has fallen by the wayside, the fantasy and sci fi genres have exploded for television, and that’s where I draw the majority of my inspiration these days.

Science fiction has had the upper hand in television programming for a while now – Star Trek the Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Enterprise, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Babylon Five, and let’s not forget Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, or Firefly. Elements from all of the above shows have appeared in my D&D campaigns. You can easily find parallels between the fantasy races in D&D and the sci fi races on television. Warforged equal cylons; kobolds equal ferengi; tieflings equal narns. It doesn’t have to be so cut and dried, but it’s a great place to start when trying to provide your players a reference point. You can even borrow plots and NPCs whole cloth from sci fi shows. Granny from Farscape runs a booth in the Grand Bazaar in my Planescape game. In the words of Arthur C. Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Fantasy shows were few and far between until recently, when the genre surged to the forefront. I’m talking pure pseudo-medieval fantasy, not the modern world with fantastical elements. (Don’t get me wrong – Buffy, Angel, and The Vampire Diaries can all provide inspiration, given the right game, but it’s harder to shape their modern settings to fit the D&D box.) As I mentioned above, Wizards and Warriors and The Charmings were the only ones I can remember from my early teenage years, and they didn’t last very long. I couldn’t tell you the plot of a single episode, but I remember watching them, captivated by fantasy on the television set.

Hercules and Xena made it easy to run D&D – I always thought the writers probably played RPGs, if not D&D itself. Roar (starring Heath Ledger) was another pseudohistorical series, along with Cadfael (starring Derek Jacobi), that provided bountiful fodder for the gaming table. The former two shows dropped D&D monsters into interesting setups you could borrow for the next session, while the latter two provided context for life when not fighting monsters. (As I write this, I also remember Legend of the Seeker, which sat somewhere in the middle.) Cable television has created more opportunities for fantasy, although it’s still not on mainstream television (except for Once Upon a Time). We have A Game of Thrones on HBO and Merlin on BBC America, but that’s about it.

Once Upon a Time is a show that has captured my imagination of late. It’s doing double duty with storylines set in both modern day and the fantasy world, jumping back and forth between the two. It took the basic premise of The Charmings and dropped the cheese, then did the same with the fairytales of our childhood. It’s so easy to pick a character from the show and drop it into a D&D game as a memorable NPC – Mary Margaret/Snow White as a kind-hearted ranger, Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin as a conniving gnome wizard, Regina as an evil sorceress. While it gets sappy from time to time, it keeps away from the camp, and makes for some compelling television (and great D&D inspiration).

Then there are those shows which defy categorization. Lost and Doctor Who are two such series that have elements great for D&D inspiration, and they’ve been my go-to series for the past several years. Besides shamelessly porting creatures into my game (see my version of the weeping angel in 3G: Ghosts, Ghouls, and Goblyns), I like to try and replicate the feel of specific episodes and characters from the shows. The four-horned feathered fowl in my Planescape game tug and tempt the heroes just like Jacob and the Smoke Monster from Lost. Mitchifer and the World Serpent Inn pop in and out like the Doctor, and he always seems to have the right advice for the right occasion.

Time travel features heavily in both series, and it’s about to make its debut in my campaign. Partly due to Doctor Who and partly due to the nature of Planescape, I’ve borrowed the concept of fixed points in time that cannot be altered…and events that repeat themselves endlessly until resolved. Even as the modrons march, the Sigil spell and the Labyrinthine Stone drift ever closer to each other, and Gifad in the Gatehouse screams that it’s all happening again (all elements from Faction War, which I’m working toward). Whenever the game crosses paths with those story threads, I try and evoke that feeling of inevitability and dread as River Song sees the first time she met the Doctor looming in his past (her future).

There’s no Once Upon a Time this week because of the American Music Awards. Doctor Who is on hiatus until the Christmas special. Lost is over, I don’t get HBO to watch Game of Thrones, and the storyline for Merlin has gone WAY off track. I’ve taken to watching reruns of Cadfael and Farscape on Netflix, the former because the heroes in my Age of Worms game are heading to Magepoint and interaction with priests and common folk features heavily, and the latter because my Planescape game is heading to the stars (literally). In both games, the plot and encounters are set – I just need to flesh out the “bare bones.”

From where or what do you draw inspiration? How have the shows you watch shaped your games? In some cases, the shows have games themselves – A Game of Thrones, Farscape, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who all have roleplaying games. Have you played them?
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w

unctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w

oNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w

ontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w

ontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]-->

3G: Ginnifer Goodwin and Gallifrey

Similar Threads

Related Articles