What Movies Inspire Your Game?

[Thunt]

For us DMs, what movies have inspired great homemade adventures?

And for you players, what movies have inspired great characters?

And finally, do you consider these to be legitimate inspirations or direct rip offs? This is something my group and I have discussed off and on for years.

 

[WayneLigon]

Just some inspirations at random, that I've used in the past few years. Both characters and adventures were inspired by some; others, just one of those.

Big Trouble in Little China
Predator
Kung Fu Hustle
Treasure Planet
Trick
True Romance
Ghost in the Shell
Wonderful Days
LOTR of course
Kingdom of Heaven
Troy
Sin City
Hellsing
Get Backers
Open Range
The Missing
Layer Cake

And that's just for D&D, off the top of my head. In short, almost everything I see, everything the group sees, influences us at some point or another for a character, an NPC, a situation, a setting, a monster, combat descriptions, character hooks ('He looks like Diego Luna in Yu Tu Mama Tambien', or 'You know the pig farmer guy in Snatch? He talks like that')

 

[The Shaman]

Our Modern military game was initially inspired by the movie The Battle of Algiers - I also drew from Lost Command as well. These mostly provide inspiration - the details are drawn from about thirty different books I've collected on the subject.

Our new Modern sci-fi/apocalypse game is based on the great dystopia movies of the late Sixties and Seventies: Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, THX-1138, The Omega Man, Zardoz and others - I'm currently planning to start this game for our tabletop group at our next get-together next month. The characters will begin inside The City of Logan's Run, but what waits for them outside is quite different...

I don't recreate plots from movies - I use them to inspire me, but I don't like to rip them off directly.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

And for you players, what movies have inspired great characters?

My rogue in Birthright looked like Eric Stoltz' character in Prophecy. At later levels, he had the Balance score to be able to squat on the back of a chair, but the appearance and that were the only real influences. (If the DM would've allowed it, he'd've been a ninja!)

For a future game, I'm trying to come up with a character who I feel could get away with having an electric guitar in his soundtrack. The current idea is based partially on Lu Bu, as interpreted by Koei in their Dynasty Warriors series of games.

Brad

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Brotherhood of the Wolf...

 

[Sledge]

I've been inspired by books more than movies, but Hidalgo is on my list to borrow the feel of for a game.

 

[KaosDevice]

There are trace elements from both the short story "Who Goes There!" and the movie "John Carpenter's The Thing", in a whole lot of what I do. But then again I am huge on back story and mistrust.

 

[PrinceZane]

The greatest inspiration came from a series of books called the Elric Saga my Michael Moorcock. You want a fighter that has some serious issues (but is one bad mother.. that makes Shaft look like Barney the Dinosaur).

7 stars out of 5 for the books, highly highly recommend.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

One player in my Realms Campaign has modeled his Aasimar Paladin after the character Ahmed from the 13th Warrior.

Three of the Four players in my group have decided one of the Wizard characters is a perfect copy of Niles from the TV show Fraser, though that character's player still insists to this day that they're wrong and that he doesn’t roleplay his char that way (but I swear he does!).

Beyond that I like to use movie references while I DM, when I need help trying to describe exactly how something is in play (ex: The meteors from Meteor Swarm shoot through the air and explode like the fiery catapult shots at the beginning of Gladiator).

 

[griff_goodbeard]

I played in a really fun d20 modern game insired by Natural Born Killers