D&D General What are your media sources of inspiration

[Stormonu]

Don't worry about keeping it short or what other folks have posted - I'm curious to see what people are personally influenced by, not necessarily creating an all-encompassing recommendation list (though it is certainly interesting to see things listed I wasn't familiar with or had forgotten about ).

 

[Mecheon]

Video games and books mostly for me.

There's the sensible inspirations, your Elder Scrolls, your Final Fantasies, your Warcraft. But then that goes all the way down to the more interesting bunch of inspirations like Ecco the Dolphin. Or Dinotopia

 

[GlassJaw]

-Thief, the video game has cool ideas for steampunk and cool ideas on various types of magical arrows. And I love calling people 'taffer'.

AKA one of the greatest video games of all time!! The world-building is absolutely amazing. Unbelievably immersive and a lesson in creating ambiance.

 

[the Jester]

I draw a lot of inspiration from real world history and mythology; it especially informs my world building and religions I create. Other than that-

Zelazny's Amber Chronicles (and other works, but especially Amber)
Comic books in general
Tolkien
Conan the Barbarian (the movie)
Steven Brust's novels, esp. the Jhereg Cycle, the Phoenix Guards novels, and Brokedown Palace
China Mievelle, esp. Perdido Street Station
Lovecraftian fiction (mostly for tone and for elder evil type stuff- it's horrifically problematic in many areas)
Willow
Star Wars (etc)
Star Trek (all series and movies, really)


I'm sure there are a ton of others, but those are what came to mind immediately.

And, of course, other RPGs in general.

 

[Minigiant]

To not repeat a lot of stuff already listed, I'll add stuff that might not appear here.

Transformers G1
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Star Ocean
Dragon Age
Slayers
Several Caribbean myths and stories

 

[ZeshinX]

Pretty much anything I watch or read is an inspiration in most respects. A concept, a narrative, a character type, sometimes a setting and its trappings...then translated in some form or fashion to a medieval sword and sorcery setting and run with it.

Some that pop out off the top of my head...

Robin of Sherwood (old 80s UK TV show)
The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks
Jhereg novels by Steven Brust
Babylon 5
Dragonlance Chronicles trilogy
Drizzt novels (until, I think, Archmage where I finally lost interest...I found Salvatore started repeating himself with Drizzt by then)
Star Wars
Star Trek
Conan the Barbarian/Conan the Destroyer
Red Sonja
Ladyhawke
Baldur's Gate 1/2 games (I have continued/borrowed many a narrative idea from them)

 

[Cadence]

Glen Cook is the one author I pick up everything by and keep rereading. His Black Company gets a lot of shout outs (and I've reread it all of it twice or more, so I'm not dissing it), but I don't think that's his strongest work, I thought the ones below were outstanding for fantasy (and he might be even better at sci-fi):

Dread Empire (and especially the short stories Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, Filed Teeth, and Severed Heads - none of which need you to have read the series)
Garrett Chronicles (the first nine anyway)
The Tower of Fear
Devil's Tooth short story

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Tolkien's LotR and Silmarillion
LeGuin's Earthsea
Howard's Conan (in part for the ideas it shares with Lovecraft)

Going over the other lists above, there are so many series I haven't read in years that are probably still rolling around in my brain - the graphic novels took over the book shelves and I didn't have space for all of them :-/

I'm not good at trying new-to-me authors. I've been trying to read things from the 1e DMG appendix, but a lot of it has been just ok or disappointing (Lieber has some moments, but gets outright bad at points; deCamp and Spratt weren't what I was expecting; getting ready to start Moorcock). As for trying new things, I really liked Rothfuss's Name of the Wind, but not so much The Wise Man's Fear.

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I should read more short story anthologies, I almost always enjoy most of the things in them and come away with lots of inspiration (for things I invariably don't have time to try). The four fantasy ones on my shelf that make me say that are:

Songs of the Dying Earth (eds. Martin & Dozois)
Fearsome Journeys (ed. Strahan)
Shattered Shields (eds. Brozek & Schmidt)
Swords & Dark Magic (es. Strahan & Anders)

 

[DammitVictor]

My biggest aesthetic influences are Robert E Howard's Conan the Barbarian, and the better comic adaptations, and recently Lin Carter's Thongor of Lemuria... the entire Masters of the Universe franchise, especially the most recent She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and various videogames: Golden Axe, WeaponLord, and most important of all the Super Mario Bros series, especially the Paper Mario and Mario + Luigi series.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Wow that's hard for me to work out, but I'll try. I'll also try to keep it short.

Books:

• Tolkein, not just the trilogy, but Hobbit, and his various smaller works.
• Ursula Le Guin, especially Earthsea
• Guy Gavriel Kay, especially Tigana, Song For Arbonne, and The Fionavar Tapestry
• Dune
• Dumas
• Gaiman, especially Neverwhere and Sandman, but also very strongly his short stories
• Stephen King's short stories and The Dark Tower
• Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of The Flame books, and his other series though he finished none of them sadly
• Dragonlance
• Margeret Weiss's other books, like the Darksword Trilogy, Rose of Prophecy, and the Deathgate Cycle
• Mercedes Lackey
• Dragonriders of Pern
• Not really Lovecraft so much as other authors playing in his sandbox. (Gaiman's Lovecraftian short stories are really, really, good)
• Sadly, a many books that I could describe, but have never been able to find the titles of again, that I read as a kid.

Movies and TV

• Star Wars
• Star Trek
• Leverage
• Legend
• Princess Bride
• The Last Unicorn
• Pirates of Darkwater
• Galaxy Rangers
• Avatar The Last Airbender
• Krull

History would be hard to list, but I've done a lot of reading on Medieval Islamic cities and scholars and such, and it deeply informs the worlds and characters I build, as do Norse and Celtic history and myth.

Forgot

• The Beastmaster Movies and TV show
• Hercules and Xena
• Various Final Fantasy games, but especially 7, 9, 10, and whichever one has magitech mechs and the female protagonist that is the first magic user in a long time at the beginning of the game? And the one with Cecil the Dragoon Knight.
  

 

[Wolfram stout]

Shakespeare:
The rival families and street war in Romeo and Juliet
The witches (hags) making mischief by the roadside in Macbeth
Doppelganger causing trouble in different plays
Faire Courts in Midsummers Night
Court intrigue in Hamlet

Lots of ways to get NPCs and side scenes for just about any type of campaign. And loads of fantasy sounding insults.