Friday Fun: Your Formative Geek Media

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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Mercer Mayer's world would be a great basis for an all-ages RPG. There's a broad mix of tones in his work, including some extremely dark stuff -- and not in the performative grimdark way, but in the way that talks about despair, loneliness and fear.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

• Oz books - got my first at age 5 or so, read all 13 or so LFBaum's by age 9-10.
• Fantastic Four and X-Men comics. Heavy Metal that I would steal reads of at the magazine store. Teenage me's hormones gone wild. But introduced me to Euro creators like Möbius, Bilal, Tardi, etc.
• TinTin and Asterix. Library had those, read them all through multiple times.
• Wind in the Willows, Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and other anthro type stories
• Manga after my first trip to Japan in 1975. Wish I could remember ANY of the titles, but since I had no idea what was actually happening in them beyond the images...
• Classic SF/F - esp Andre Norton and Isaac Asimov and I loved Burrough's Pellucidar and John Carter books (can't read around the racism or sexism now sadly)
• Hobbit, then LotR
• Godzilla and other kaiju movies sitting around with my brother on Saturdays watching Creature Double Feature

Helped that I come from a long line of English speaking nerds, and then on my mom's side an entire culture of geeks (Japan).

 

[Jeff2222]

Commando comics, Airfix models, 2000AD comics, the Terran Trade Authority books, Doctor Who, Terry Nation's Blake's 7 and Survivors series.

I discovered RPGs when the AD&D and Traveller books started showing up at the back of the local model shop.

 

[DammitVictor]

So, what do you consider your formative geek media. it doesn't have to be the best, or even your favorite, but rather the geek media that had a real impact on your "geekness". Because this is EN World, of course that means your TTRPG preferences, but also your writing, your world view, and the kinds of things you enjoy to this day.

I taught myself to read when I was three or four years old, because my biomom would buy comics for me but wouldn't read them to me.

So Marvel Comics. Bigly. DC not as much, and I didn't get heavily into third-party comics until my late teens.

80s cartoons. Ur-example, of course, was He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Old enough to remember looking forward to the premiere of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. These are lifelong obsessions for me, to the extent that their franchises (less the original cartoons themselves) are among my strongest literary influences. Noelle Stevenson is on my personal Mount Rushmore for Netflix She-Ra.

Conan the Barbarian. Said already, cut my teeth on Marvel Comics, so I got Roy Thomas. Spread out into Robert Jordan and L Sprague de Camp. Discovered authentic Robert E Howard much later. Basically applies to most of what people call "sword & sorcery", with an especial preference for "thud & blunder". Also includes planetary romance and a lot of wuxia/xianxia. REH is another face on the mountain.

Early JRPGs. My first JRPG was Dragon Warrior, from the mail-in offer in Nintendo Power. Final Fantasy I & II. Sadly didn't get into Phantasy Star until much, much later... but I've made up for it since then. Much, much later than this... but Sierra Lee is on my Mount Rushmore.

Star Wars. Had the OT on VHS. Read almost all of the EU novels in the 90s, plus a smattering of the comics. Missed out on WEG Star Wars–and thus the source of almost all of the EU–and didn't start roleplaying in the Star Wars GFFA until Wizards got ahold of the franchise at the expense of my beloved Alternity.

SSI's AD&D and Buck Rogers games.

My formative TTRPGs: AD&D, Rules Cyclopedia D&D, Palladium TMNT, Gamma World (2nd, 4th, and 5th), Alternity, Shadowrun 3e, Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game; major design influences from the 21st century were D&D 3.X/L5Rd20/PF1, SR 4e, HARP and Rolemaster, Fate and Cortex, Barbarians of Lemuria. I am rapidly getting to that point with Sword World. I'm an OSR guy and an NSR guy.