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Message: <blockquote data-quote="steeldragons" data-source="post: 9302194" data-attributes="member: 92511">I hate to begin sounding like a broken record at only the third post! hahaha. But, I suspect, many of us of a certain age are going to have very similar looking lists. I'll try not to repeat tooooo much.The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings trilogy, really has to have top billing. Once I was introduced to the original red box, these were the first things I read...and watched, between the Rankin/Bass and Bakshi animated flicks.The Last Unicorn animated feature. Great call, Taran. And to an extent, the bevy of 70s & 80s fantasy flicks we were privileged to live through are all deserving of space on this list: Excalibur, Legend, Ladyhawke, Time Bandits, Dragonslayer, The Beastmaster, the Conans, of course, The Princess Bride! The Dark Crystal!! [EDIT: OMG, How did I forget the Neverending Story?! /EDIT] All formative to my shaping of fantasy, storytelling, magic, and all with elements that found their way into my D&D games/stories/characters.Arthurian legend/literature, and to a greater extent the UK & Ireland as a whole. I was obsessed back in the day, from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Mabigonion to (many years later) The Mists of Avalon.The works of Joseph Campbell: The Power of Myth and Hero with a Thousand Faces, specifically. I forget how or who caused me to discover Joseph Campbell in my early teen years. But I think it could definitely be said to have shaped and expanded my understanding of storytelling, myth-reading - which goes hand in had with this, I suppose. Anything mythology, legends/folklore, ancient religions -of any culture/civilization- related I could get my hands on, I soaked up like a sponge. It definitely influenced -and I would hope/like to think- improved my D&D.The art of Larry Elmore, for sure, shaped my imaginings of what my characters (all characters, and the sprawling backgrounds/panoramics of the fantasy world) looked like. With a healthy dose of comic book/superheroic stylings of Jeff Dee and Bill Willingham from the early TSR books and modules.The Elfquest comics/graphic novels. I basically turned anything called a "Wood or Wild elf" in my homebrew setting into Pini elves, three-fingered hands and all.Special Mention: I read the Dragonlance Chronicles, of course (who didn't back then? haha), but I feel like that was reading a series of stories about D&D. That is, they were stories and characters that I already would have immediately associated as "D&D" stuff....which they were/created for. So I don't really look at that as an "Appendix N/formative thing." Loved them. Made it through the second trilogy - was that Legends?-before losing interest. But, not really, a "shaping my D&D aesthetic" thing.</blockquote>

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