What's your fundamental baseline inspiration for creating your settings?

[Mouseferatu]

A question that Agback asked me in this thread got me to thinking about where my ideas on how to create a fantasy world, and what a fantasy setting should look like, came from.

As I said in that thread, I can't count Tolkien among my original inspirations, because I (for shame) didn't read LotR until college. Rather, the works that shaped my notions of what a fantasy world should look like come from the stuff I read as a teen, when I was first really getting into it. Those would be the D&D books themselves, Dragonlance (which I really don't care for now, but loved when I was younger), David Eddings' Belgariad, and Raymond Feist's Riftwar series.

As I've grown, my tastes have changed. I've read a lot more fantasy, I have a much better understanding of what makes a good fantays setting, and of how to create a world for publication. (I'm usually less thorough creating something purely for my own use.) I've got plenty more inspirations for my writing/creating/DMing now, and many of the works that did inspire me I now try to stay away from. Nevertheless, I don't think you ever fully shake the ideas and notions with which you started, no matter how much your mind may chase or your tastes may evolve. The worlds I create now are nothing like the worlds I created even a few years ago--but I still base at least some of my ideas around concepts that have been ingrained in me since I was a young teen. (And in those few cases where I do otherwise, it's a conscious choice on my part, and requires me to literally make myself think in different ways than my instinctive pathways.)

So if you had to list them, what would you say are the works that truly and originally inspired your ideas of what a fantasy world should be, and what types of details you should include? I don't mean the things you like now and that inspire ideas. I mean the works that, if you dig to the core of your creative being, have shaped your very baseline notions of what a fantasy/D&D setting should include/be.

 

[Rune]

Well, the original inspiration for my Dream setting was the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (specifically, the effects of the improbability drive) and Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

The setting has grown a lot since then, though.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I came to my current homebrew world with two ideas in mind:

1. I was sick of stereotypical D&D games where you had a cleric running around with a party of adventurers composed of people who didn't worship the cleric's diety (or, at most, 1 or 2 other people might).

2. I was tired of the fantasy trope of the long lost fallen empire of great power and grandeur. I wanted my next campaign to take place while that empire was going strong for once.

I ended up with a fantasy Roman empire with a monotheistic (well, actually henotheistic) religion as the focus of the world.

 

[Skade]

My biggest literary inspiration is probably Dune, though not in an obvious way. It is not a desert planet

My world is quite humanocentric, with a theme of enlightenment and transformation being key to the story. My world centers on primary characters, which are PCs rather than NPCs as in the Realms. The demi-humans in the game are more akin to Welsh, Irish, Russian and German mythology than the standard races (and as such many are of higher ECL). Though I have plenty of pure evil beings laying about in torpor throughout the mythology and the games, the villains are not necessarily evil, but idealogically different from the protagonists. One of the things I strive for in world creation and story building is internal consisteny and realism, in the motivations and actions of the characters. Its a fantasy game, but I can try for that much at least.

 

[Someone]

Hmmm... Well, I think manga, the tales of Simbad, Greek mithology, and the Golden Axe arcade games.

 

[Tonguez]

I started reading Mythology (Greek/Roman, Polynesian, Celt, Viking) when I was about 8 and soon expanded out into Slavic, Babylonian, Native American, Japanese and African stuff. A lot of my ideas thus come from Myth.
My ideas of medieval 'fantasy' derive partially from Folk tales(aka 'Fairytales') and also from such books as Narnia and the Chronicles of Prydain.
I admit that my original homebrew world was somewhat generic and borrowed heavily from Prydain and Celt myth (the World was even called Terrayne!). Since then the World has changed I abadoned Cruithne (the pseudo British Isles) and headed south to Anziko (a pseudo-Africa with influences from Phillp Jose Farmers Hadon of Opar whom I discovered through my love of ERBs Tarzan books). I then moved north and created the Yuan Empire (inspired by the Mongol Empire after Genghis Khan) which bsically came to be the default setting for a while (extending from the long narrow isle of Khitai to the Dravoi (Slavic) lands across from which lay Celtic 'Cruithne'. Between Anziko and the Yuan Empire I then inserted a Zakhara-type setting (based on Mischief in Fez and other Arabic legend)

My current setting is Mythic Polynesia...

 

[Buttercup]

I have been influenced by so many things I've read that I probably can't remember all of them anymore. And some of the fiction has influenced me even though I couldn't stand it. This isn't a complete list, it's just what I can think of at 6:30 am on a Saturday morning.

For the Fiction
Tolkien
Eddings
Dune by Herbert
McCaffrey
Tanith Lee
C.J. Cherryh
Kerr (Deverry books)
Jo Clayton
Katherine Kurtz
Mercedes Lackey (one that I hate, but has influenced me anyway)
Marion Zimmer Bradley

Nonfiction/Historical Influences
Chaucer
The Venerable Bede
The Domesday Book
a whole host of books on medieval history, by authors such as Braudel, Boswell, Tuchman and too many others to count
The Roman Empire
British history and prehistory generally, up to about 1500.

And then there are the computer games. I started playing CRPGS back with Might & Magic 2. And I started playing strategy/sims with the original Sim City. I find bits and pieces from lots of those old games in my plots, and I never even mean to put them there.

 

[Agback]

G'day

My biggest influence is probably The Golden Bough, by Sir James Frazer. Before I read that my world-building efforts were very Tolkienesque: consisting largely of map, myth, and history, they strove for tragic grandeur. After reading The Golden Bough I produced a fictional ethnography of a people called the Mannedh, who had a matrilocal patriarchy that encouraged young men to behave as adventurers. Ever since then my world-building has focussed on what people do and why they do it rather than on history and myth.

Regards,


Agback

 

[der_kluge]

Earth was my (and still is) my greatest inspiration. My campaign world is based on an ice age, and undiscovered ruins, ala ancient Egypt, except not desert-based.

It's based on dead languages, and ancient civilizations, and mysteries about the way things once were. And it's based on the great age of exploration, with large galleys of men setting out to explore brave new worlds.

The rest is based on the typical D&D stuff - elves, dwarves, and all that other stuff.

 

[Pillars of Hercules]

My current campaign is loosely inspired by Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

Much is different, but the kernel of the campaign comes from the idea of PCs exploring "beyond the wall" in the northern wildlands (although in this case the wall is a mountain range with fortresses guarding the passes).