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Message: <blockquote data-quote="awesomeocalypse" data-source="post: 5153327" data-attributes="member: 85641">I think video games can definitely provide useful inspiration--video games are probably closer to D&D in terms of fictional tropes and genre conventions than any other media.  Think about it. People always compare D&D to fantasy novels, but for the most part, while they do share superficial similarities like elves and wizards, when you look closer they aren't actually that close, structurally speaking--there are virtually no fantasy novels with anywhere near as much combat as any edition of D&D, for instance. They often prominently include elements which are next to nonexistant in most D&D campaigns, like love stories. Similarly, there are almost no fantasy novels or movies in which the heroes acquire power at the constant and extraordinary rate that they do in D&D. Magic items mean something vastly diferent to characters in novels and movies than they do to D&D characters. Neither do monsters--heroes may face hordes of monsters, but if so they will always be one or two kinds (e.g. orcs and uruk-hai, or trollocs), with maybe one or two dragons, nazgul or otherwise elite monsters, who will always be important to the lore. The menagerie of bizarre and powerful monsters that heroes face in D&D simply doesn't occur in fantasy fiction. So as a DM, if I'm cribbing from my favorite fantasy fiction (which I often do), I will steal setting elements and characters, general plot hooks, etc. But I will never simply try to model my D&D game as if it were structurally a fantasy novel, because the "kill tons of monsters, take their stuff, grow stronger at a ludicrous rate" paradigm that prevails in D&D simply doesn't work for modelling, say, the Lord of the Rings or the Wheel of Time. Most video games, on the other hand, are in many ways exactly like D&D. Even non-fantasy, non-RPGs will generally feature either a lone badass, or a small group of badasses, venturing into hostile locations loaded up with diverse, bizarre enemies, whose indiscriminate murder is incentivized by goodies like items, xp or plot advancement. The plots that show up in video games, and the sort of monsters and encounters that video game protagonists face, therefore tend to mesh very well with the default D&D playstyle. Heroes in books rarely go through dungeons that consist of them fighting different kinds of enemies in each room, solving several puzzles and foiling a couple traps, finding lots of items along the way, before facing an end boss. But Video Game Protagonists, and D&D adventurers, do that kind of thing all the time, which makes cribbing ideas easy. Just look at Gabe's 3d lazer mirror puzzle. You'd never see something like that described in depth as a major challenge to the heroes in a fantasy novel, because reading about someone meticulously positioning mirrors is boring. But anyone who has ever played a Zelda game would recognize that kind of puzzle instantly, because its a staple of the series and 100% guaranteed to appear in the first dungeon you face after getting the mirror shield. And in those games it works, for the same reason it works in D&D--because while reading about solving mirror puzzles is abstract and boring, actually solving the puzzles can be fun.</blockquote>

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