Meepo, about my sig. + Strangest inspiration for gaming

[Mallus]

Meepo, I'm glad my sig. gets you thinking. Its two lines from a Donald Barthelme short story called, strangely enough, "See the Moon". Its in a collection called 60 Stories. He doesn't write fantasy, however he's amazingly funny if you like absurdity...

Which brings up my question. What's the strangest, non-fantasy source of inspiration that found its way into your campaings? I based another whole world around a bunch of poems by W. B. Yeats I had to read back in college. The cosmology was Yeats, and most of the names were from a tour book on Wales {such as Middle Whallop, a town famed for its brawlers}.

So what has sparked your collective imaginations, aside from hobbits and a barbarian or two? Books, films, poems, comics, whatever. And not just worlds or campaigns, characters too... Anybody out there create a medieval Mr. Pink or Willy Loman {in Death of a Merchant, of course...}

 

[RobNJ]

The Pogues' Sickbed of Cuchulainn ( http://www.uni-mainz.de/~cielp005/pogues/pogue041.htm ) got me interested in researching the Cuchulainn myth. I'm reading Lady Gregory's translations of the myths, called Cuchulain of Muirthemne. I'm working on creating a raparee prestige class that will have something like a rage ability called "the hero light."

In point of fact, the idea of feats in D&D may have originated from Cuchulainn. There's a lot of talk of heroic feats in the book. I've begun to compile a list, here's what I got so far:

*The dark feat
*the blind feat
*the feat of nine
*the over-breath feat
*the apple feat
*the ghost feat
*the screw feat
*the cat feat
*the red-whirling feat
*the bared-spear feat
*the quick stroke
*the fire of the mouth
*the hero's cry
*the wheel feat
*the sword-edge feat

 

[Piratecat]

It's odd to say, but my campaign (and my writing style) are tremendously influenced by George Macdonald Frasier's Flashman Novels.

 

[widderslainte]

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.

God help the players in my next campaign.

 

[Mallus]

Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs.

God help the players in my next campaign.

"Why is the treasure always heroin?"

"Why does that kobold keep staring at my behind?"

"We have to find the hidden Shrine of Allen Ginsberg?"

Nice, screw fighting orcs, bring on the Divisionists and the Liquifaction...