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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 205035" data-attributes="member: 463">Leiber & Moorcock were my primary childhood influences - I was reading them long before Hercules/Xena were on the air.  The TV shows are too cheesy and inconsistent to really fire my imagination, except for some of the Xena flashback eps perhaps (eg with the steppe Amazons).  Conan & Vance are cool but less resonant for me.  I've just acquired the Fantasy Masterworks' complete Conan series, but currently I'm more influenced by the Marvel comics' version of Conan, good for a quick sword & sorcery plot (eg I used a 'Man Who Would Be King' Marvel Conan story a few years back for a PBEM scenario).  Buffy - well, Buffy is great, but the magic lies in the dialogue & characterisation; if I run a Cyberpunk game it might be an influence, but to me it's less suited to D&D.  Tolkien - I use his monsters a lot, but more as Moorcockian 'chaos beastmen' (some Warhammer influence there too - Warhammer obviously borrows massively from Moorcock).In Olnor, my high-level Moorcockian world, I've made no rules changes, but there are Mabden hordes numbering in the millions, imprisoned Chaos gods, a ten-thousand-year-old atheist mage-empire, etc.  Also the 'good' PCs find themselves fighting on the side of Chaos against the empire...In Ea, my grim & gritty world, the main thing is somewhat lower magic - spellcraft checks needed to make magic items - and a dearth of high level NPCs to provide support to the beleagured PCs, as well as lots of chaotic politics, literal Chaos, and the looming threat of a new dark age following the collapse of a world-spanning empire... one strong influence is 20th-century geopolitics, especially the end of the British empire & decolonisation.</blockquote>

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