D&D 5E Homebrew campaigns based off of media?

[Draegn]

We once played in a realm set in the Castle Perilous novels. Another group ran a campaign with the deities based on the Cry for Dawn comics.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Oh jeez. BITD what didn't I borrow to all out steal from other media to use in my D&D campaigns.

He-Man/Superfriends/GI Joe/pretty much any cartoons, "the Barbarians" (Conan and Thundarr, respectively) , comic books (mostly X-Men), world mythologies, movies (particular scenes, character concepts, and/or plot devices from Flash Gordon, Time Bandits, and Legend immediately come to mind), ancient-to-romantic-to-modern literature,... you name it, I could glean anything from general (or specific) inspirations to all out full content plagiarism (with names and places changed to protect the innocent, i.e. me).

In other words, "Ch'yeah. Of course!"

It certainly is a wealth of information and inspiration to pull from. Being on old school guy, I've always liked to make up my own stuff, but every DM goes through creative writing blocks. SOOOO many things to pull ideas from. In my OP, I mentioned the Adventurers comic book from the 80s. I swear, that WAS a D&D campaign that they turned into a comic lol. So it will be super easy to use, and since it's 30 years old, I'm pretty sure none of my players know or remember the storyline. It's just begging to be a D&D campaign.

 

[Guest 6801718]

I ran a 4E game based largely on The Walking Dead. I took the Open Grave source book and did a zombie apocalypse. I threw in some old school D&D references, like Atropos the undead afterbirth of universe, and mixed it up with the societal collapse of TWD. Had plenty of twisted villains and a world overrun by the undead. Though I learned that apparently I'm too good at horror. The party was legitimately afraid to strike out and do things. They wouldn't even go out after dark at one point. So the campaign eventually fell apart.

I just finished reading the comic series Planetary, by Warren Ellis. I may borrow that for a D&D campaign. It deals with the secret history of the world, shadowy conspiracies by secret organizations and bizarre incidents in the world usually discovered through archeology. That kind of thing would be perfect for a homebrew D&D game. Gives the party plenty of reasons to go explore old ruins. Have other dimensions bleed into the world. Give them a big organization with nefarious goals at the heart of it. It would be great fun and you can essentially throw in whatever you like.

 

[Gwarok]

How many of you have created and played homebrew campaigns that were pulled from another source, like a book, movie, etc?

I broke out my old comics, and I'm really thinking about running a campaign based off the the Aircel comic: The Adventurers from the 80s. Anyone else do something like this?

I borrow ideas and NPC concepts quite liberally from "The Dresden Files". Unfortunately my players have all started reading them now so I have to start being a little more circumspect with the new material. But still, great series, if reading it doesn't inspire your DND creative juices at all, you're a little bit dead inside

Also, the Glenn Cook "Black Company" series, at least the first 5 books, are pretty awesome too. We once had a campaign where the party was a squad in a large mercenary company called the 13th Legion, basically we kept getting sent out on speical ops missions and stuff. If your PC's are ok with not being completely in charge of their every action it can work. Also, makes steering the campaign easier when as DM you are also their in game commanding officer. We actually had one adventure that was a mass combat with the party holding down the flank of a much larger battle the company was engaged in. Worked really well, got to use siege equipment, walls, all that stuff.