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

[apocalypstick]

Robert Jordan, before he got tedious (yes, this means only the first two books of his Wheel of Time series); George R.R. Martin, the tales of King Arthur, and.. wait for it... the CRPG Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant.

 

[HellHound]

For me it was a small bit of The Land from the Thomas Covenent novels and a big bit of The Young Kingdoms from the Elric / Stormbringer novels.

---

Hound Post # 1987 - The year that Prozac was released for use in US by Eli Lilly & Company. Prozac; Little, Blue, Happy.

 

[Nifft]

Some of my ideas come from sci-fi (Cosmography -> Greg Egan's Diaspora, for example).

Others come from the real-world, both its history and mythology. The campaign is currently in the Renaissance / Age of Exploration.

-- Nifft

EDIT: However, the most important element is crafting a society that would fit the "standard D&D" magic & power level. I ended up with very small communities full of powerful individuals, which relied on adventurers as "special ops" and recon units.

 

[Crothian]

WEll, when the world is created by a fellow with a PhD in the classics, it's going to have heavy influence of Greek and Roman mythology. But then I got my hands on it and it took a darker approach with themes from Alice in Wonderland, Gulivers Travels, Robin Hood, other more modern myths and stories.

 

[Argus Decimus Mokira]

Hey

Like mouseferatu, I didn't read LotR until college. My first experiences with fantasy were from Eddings and LeGuin. However, I feel that even more important than either of those sources was an illustrated Brothers Grimm fairy tale book I had as a child. Man, that thing simultaneously enthralled and scared the business out of me. My grandfather was also rather parial to telling me Irish myth as a kid, so the Tuatha de Danaan and their ilk are also a large influence. 'Course I also "borrowed" heavily from existing settings, especially Ravenloft and the Realms.

Thus, my homebrew world is a place very similar to Medieval Europe, full of superstition and things that go bump in the night. No dragons, not many humanoids, one single all-powerful church with a militant sect of magic-wielding knights, elder spirits that grant this magic, actual artifacts and relics instead of just magic items, and a grim, dark, and oppressive feudal society.

Thanks
-Matt

 

[Maraxle]

In no particular order -
Tolkien
Terry Goodkind
Anything swashbuckler related (Three Musketeers, old Errol Flynn flics, etc)
The Beastmaster (go ahead and laugh)
Star Wars
the gold box series of AD&D computer games
Daggerfall
Dante's Inferno
Heart of Darkness - Josef Conrad
my history classes back in high school
those old choose-your-own-adventure books
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Le Petit Prince
lots more I can't think of right now

As you can see, it's a mishmash of stuff - new, old, fantasy, fact, fiction. My campaign world has evolved through all of these things.

 

[Mouseferatu]

The Beastmaster (go ahead and laugh)

Not laughing at all. When I was in Middle School, I saw a movie on video called "Archer: Fugitive From the Empire." It was (I think) meant to be a TV pilot, since it didn't end but just sort of stopped in the middle. And looking back on it, I'm pretty sure it was absolutely awful.

Nevertheless, it stuck with me. It didn't influence my basic ideas of what a fantasy world should be (thank the Great Platypus!), but it did shape my games for months afterwards.

 

[kenjib]

In general:
Lord of the Rings
Prydain
Robert Howard's Conan
Clark Ashton Smith
H.P. Lovecraft
Le Morte D'Arthur
Frankenstein
Iliad/Oddessey
Beowulf

Current Homebrew:
Robert Howard's Conan
Clark Ashton Smith
Iliad/Oddessey
Kingdoms of Kalamar
Don Quixote

 

[DaveStebbins]

Gosh, my earliest fantasy influences for D&D? Now I have to think back more than two decades ago to my late teens.

The three I can rermember off the top of my head are Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar stories, Tolkien's The Hobbit, and all sorts of Conan stories and comics.

The intersting part is that when I think about the campaign I am currently (perpetually would be a better term) building, they would still stand out as the major influences, though others (like Dunsany and CASmith) have also been added since.

-Dave

 

[Olive]

Well, this is kinda a wierd question. I mean, literary stuff, certainly LotR. I don't like gnomes much because I don't know where they fit, and thats at least partly an LotR thing.

But my campaign is much more planar than LotR ever gets. I suspect that my main influence is the campaign I played in before I moved country and began DMing. I think that slightly dark fantesy stuff like the old Robin of Sherwood tv show, the Earthsea stuff and the Old World of Warhammer fanstasy roleplay have had an effect as well tho. my conception of dragons is very dragonlance. my consception of halflings is not, but my conception of gnomes (such as it is) is very influenced by dragonlance: I hate tinker gnome stuff and my gnomes (when I figure out where to put them) will not be mad inventors who talk fast.

Sep's story hour has also been very influential in my vision of how magic and extraplanar politics work. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that the single main influence at the moment is Sep's story hour.

I think that DnD has it's own set of assumptions about how things work, and that this makes it hard to take to much fantasy influence sometimes. That's why good story hours are so good, becasue you can see how that's done in DnD terms.

edit: oh yeah! The current campaign began in a Spain based country (very loosly). I proably never would have done that if I hadn't read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia as a teenager. the only bookt hat I can think of that changed my life substantially. So it's not fantasy, but I did create an obsession with Spain that influenced my campaign.