Sources for Great Adaptations

[Umbra]

I just posted to the 'how many campaigns have you completed' thread about one of my campaigns where I loosely based the campaign on Susan Cooper's wonderful series of children's books The Dark Is Rising Sequence which is made up of (IIRC):

Over Sea, Under Stone
The Dark Is Rising (which scared me to death as a twelve year old)
Greenwitch
The Grey King
Silver on the Tree

In the series, The Light is seeking the Six Signs of the Light (Wood, Bronze, Iron, Water, Fire, Stone) and various other items to be used in the final confrontation with the Dark. In my campaign, each sign was kept by one of six races who had each been placed within a protective 'bubble' that kept them safe from the rampaging dark. The party had to find each race and recover the signs (in a way linked to the prophecy rhymes of the books)before the final battle.

What lesser known books, myths, etc have you used to run a successful campaign (not just mined a few ideas from).

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Mostly I crib from noir detective fiction, which is excellent for characters and plots. Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is a personal favorite of mine, and one of the best novels of the 20th century. I've also swiped things from Hammett's other work, Chandler's Philip Marlowe series, James Ellroy's novels, and on occasion a few bits and pieces from otherwise cheap and unremarkable pulp stories.


But once, I tried to work in elements from Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (IMO, his best book by a huge margin) into a Mage game. For various reasons, that game never got very far.

But I've been harboring a secret urge to go all Lot 49 in another game some day. Oh yes, it will happen.

--
we await silent tristero's empire
ryan

 

[Thotas]

Like Simplex, I like to look outside of genre to find my stuff to take, I think it forces me to be more creative. Haven't done any DM for a long time until recently, and I'm using a published adventure to get my feel for behind the screen. One I'm ready to create my own adventures, though, I'm looking to borrow the scenario from the movies "Haunted" (a ghost story, surprisingly enough) set in 20th century England, and "The Great Silence" a spaghetti western. In neither case, I'm sure, will I be able to have the players follow the plot. I look forward to seeing what they do differently than the movie heroes did.

 

[Kilmore]

One source I borrowed heavily from was Miyazaki's manga classic "Naucicaä of the Valley of Wind" transposed to a Bronze Age setting. Especially Princess Kushana.

It also occours to me that my classic campaign shares a lot with Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad".