Traveon Wyvernspur
First Post
Scooby...did your players get to eat Scooby snacks and get a temporary power-up along with the munchies?
Movies/books/tv that've inspired your D&D/RPG games?
- Thread starter Traveon Wyvernspur
- Start date
Scooby...did your players get to eat Scooby snacks and get a temporary power-up along with the munchies?
Barastrondo
First Post
D&D in general: Leiber's Lankhmar, Clark Ashton Smith (Zothique, Atlantis & Averoigne in particular), Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Outlaws of the Marsh, Middle Earth, Prydain, Hyborian Age, mythology in general, Orlando Inammorato/Furioso, 13th Warrior, Red Cliff, the Harryhausen Sinbad movies and Jason & the Argonauts, Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven, Escaflowne, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Mark Smylie's Artesia series, and all manner of non-D&D games and online discussions.
Swashbuckler game: Sabatini, Dumas (Count of Monte Cristo in particular), Brust's Phoenix Guards saga, Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, Plunkett & MacLaine.
Gothic Fantasy game: Ravenloft, Castlevania, Edgar Allan Poe, Averoigne (again), lots of Ray Bradbury, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Brotherhood of the Wolf, some Tim Powers, the usual Stoker and Shelley and so on.
All of this is amped up by frequent diversions through Wikipedia or other sources of history. For instance, I'm finishing up MacKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and anyone who doesn't come away with adventure ideas from a chapter on alchemy, slow poisoners, popular admiration of thieves or duels & ordeals is just not paying attention.
Swashbuckler game: Sabatini, Dumas (Count of Monte Cristo in particular), Brust's Phoenix Guards saga, Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, Plunkett & MacLaine.
Gothic Fantasy game: Ravenloft, Castlevania, Edgar Allan Poe, Averoigne (again), lots of Ray Bradbury, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Brotherhood of the Wolf, some Tim Powers, the usual Stoker and Shelley and so on.
All of this is amped up by frequent diversions through Wikipedia or other sources of history. For instance, I'm finishing up MacKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, and anyone who doesn't come away with adventure ideas from a chapter on alchemy, slow poisoners, popular admiration of thieves or duels & ordeals is just not paying attention.
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Traveon Wyvernspur
First Post
Very cool, thanks for breaking it out by genre, I'd give you XP for it, but apparently I gave you some recently and have to spread it around more!
My biggest D&D influences by far are Michael Moorcock & Fritz Leiber. Tolkien & RE Howard have less inpact. One campaign was influenced by CS Lewis' Narnia + The Song of Roland; which probably had more Tolkien influence than usual too. My current Wilderlands campaign is consciously influenced by 'pastiche Conan'; I find the real Conan stuff generally too dark & slightly intimidating. Likewise I find Tolkien hard to use thematically, whereas Moorcock is more of a fantastic hack writer than a genuine genius like Howard, this making his stuff far easier to rip off.
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
That's how it works for me, too. I'd also add the Thieves World anthologies, along with Moorcock and Leiber. I might steal isolated elements or ideas from REH or Tolkien, but the overall approach and feel is much more Moocock/Leiber.
Philotomy Jurament
First Post
Nice list of swashbuckler influences. Stanley Weyman is another good author to add to Sabatini, Dumas, et alii. I've been dying to run a game of Flashing Blades.
Oh, check out The Shaman's Flashing Blades campaign wiki.
jodyjohnson
Adventurer
The videogame Shadow of the Colossus valley, tower, and colossi combined with the plot elements and factions of H3 Pyramid of Shadows.
Sure someone is imprisoned in the Pyramid, but the original purpose was to imprison something much more powerful.
I'd like to incorporate some ideas from Final Fantasy XII as the core of a future campaign.
Sure someone is imprisoned in the Pyramid, but the original purpose was to imprison something much more powerful.
I'd like to incorporate some ideas from Final Fantasy XII as the core of a future campaign.
Oh, Flash Gordon has been a big influence recently! Especially the 1981 movie with Brian Blessed - I use the Wilderlands' Windriders as Flash Gordon style Hawkmen. Running the Wilderlands in general I reference a lot of '70s and early '80s sword & sorcery... 
the Jester
Legend
Star Wars
Star Trek
Three Musketeers
The Amber Chronicles
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Jhereg novels
The Xanth books
The Blue Adept books
There are probably hundreds more.
Star Trek
Three Musketeers
The Amber Chronicles
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Jhereg novels
The Xanth books
The Blue Adept books
There are probably hundreds more.
Barastrondo
First Post
Been looking on and off at that one for some time; although I admit my game is far more D&D than historical (one of the two swashbuckling PCs in tonight's back-alley fight is a necromantic scion of a Sorcerous House), there's plenty of ideas tied up in The Shaman's exacting research for sure.
And thanks for the Weyman reference! I'll take a look.
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