Homebrewers, where do you borrow from?

[Nightfall]

Huh. Thought we get a few more people borrowing from the Scarred Lands. Guess I scare them off!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I tend to pull rules from many of those sources (Dying Suns, Midnight, Scarred Lands, Forgotten Realms, non-Rokugan Oriental Adventures stuff, Nyambe, Gothos, and a few others). Story/Campaign wise, I'm more inspired by movies and literary works than most of the settings available (Black Company in particular, but also LotR for depth of detail and the non-pinanche Conan material for rugged, barbaric stylings), although in the past I have drawn from Forgotten Realms (the first box-set, when magic items weren't being sold by every street vender with a rickety cart), Birthright, Dark Sun, and Planescape.

 

[maddman75]

Huh. Thought we get a few more people borrowing from the Scarred Lands. Guess I scare them off!

Actually, I was thinking of snagging the whole 'titans defeated in a war with the gods' thing from scarred lands. Though I'd put it in the distant past and have them not dead, but imprisoned or sleeping, possibly to awaken at some point.

 

[Nightfall]

Actually not all are dead. Just in various states of incapacitation. But it was recent so go for it.

 

[Dogbrain]

I've found that the very best sources are nothing at all published by any game company. I do much better to loot literature and history. Particularly fertile are the "source materials" for what has now become cliche.

Instead of going for the too-familiar Malory for themes that are remeniscent of Arthur, go to Geoffrey of Monmouth and earlier sources.

 

[Nightfall]

History is just the dead's way of staying alive. And like Egon Spengler said "The printed word is dead."

 

[Orius]

Pretty much anything I find useful.

I probably take the most from Grehawk, technically speaking, given the number of spell and magic items in the core rules are named after people from that setting.

I steal a lot from the Realms too. Lots of good spells, monsters, and with 3e feats and cleric domains I can easily rip off for my own game.

I pretty much take any kind of cruncy bits that look good, and shove it in my game. Stuff like spells, monsters magic items, feats and cleric domains are high on the list, because they take the least amount of adjustment to plop into a campaign, and you only need to put it in a little bit here and there, like a spell here, a monster there, and so on. I don't care what setting it is.

Prestige classes get ripped less. A lot of PrCs are campaign specific, so naturally, they get ripped less.

Now flavor, that comes from just about anything. Books, televison, movies, video game, other D&D settings, and my own imagination/dreams.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I voted "Other" since I get ideas from just about any setting. For fantasy games I pull a lot from Forgotten Realms, Oriental Adventures/Legend of the Five Rings, Iron Kingdoms, Everquest, Diamond Throne, and so on. For my Rifts-like setting, I pull from all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi settings. Plus I get a lot of ideas from books and movies as well. Right now, Stephen King's "Wolves of the Calla" is filling my head to the brim with ideas; probably more than any book I've read in a long time.

Kane

 

[Artificial Life]

Well, from a variety of movies and books, as I would suspect is the case with most. I took a Middle Ages survey course a few years ago, and we read a variety of high medieval literature. Much of that stuff, in particular "The Knight of the Lion," has been an inspiration. Film-wise, movies like Time Bandits, Labyrinth, and Camelot have provided inspiration in one form or another. I rarely look at published D&D settings.

 

[megamania]

Better refraised as where do I NOT borrow ideas from. I voted FR but that is only because with so much support stuff out there, I constantly find useful things to "borrow". I borrow from novels, real life and comicbooks also.