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

[Grim]

What's the inspiration for my world?

I took normal DND, and said "this needs a change."

So I killed the Elven and Drow gods (Twin siblings), and then had the orc nations band together to crush BOTH elven lands, forcing sun and dark elf into a stange, unstable alliance

So I had the dwarves and humans enemies, at least pre-current time. Basically set them up Federation-Klingon style, united today by thier fear of a greater enemy, and mutual frustration with the years and years of fighting.

So I have arcane magic regulated by a council of elders, and magical "castration" as a method of punishment for reckless use of high level magic.

So I made all halflings recently freed slaves, but left an extremely height-ist sentiment against them.

So I decided that due to the commonness of monsters, the pesentry was extremely adapted to thier existance. Like in Dune, the peasentry will report "monster-sign", and the local milita/guard will deal with the problem in a well though out, well rehearsed, well tested way. After years and years of monsters being problems, people arn't as unprepared as they used to be.

And thats basically it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm not certain what my baseline inspiration is. I can list off a lot of inspirations, but I'm uncertain which really informs the largest fraction of my work.

The impact of my education in history is felt by nearly everything. But that really doesn't explain the way I use magic and how that informs and inspires my work.

Epics, romances, and mythology certainly play a large role.

The influence of the RPGs themselves should not be underestimated.

I read Tolkien at a fairly young age, and he certainly informs my work. Still, I really don't think I could quote him as a baseline except for the way I see his fusion of literature, mythology, and history in the stuff I tend to do.

There's a lot of Satire, Criticism, Political Philosophy, Comics, and Cinema that tends to show up.

My religion and the religions of others I have known, or religions I have read about, show up a fair amount.

If I could engineer a Role-Playing game to capture the essence of Bone and L.E.G. all at once and then work pirates and ninjas into it, I would have achieved Nirvana.

 

[Bloodstone Mage]

My biggest inspirations came from two sources: video games and movies. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy X, Brave Fencer Musashi, Saga Frontier II, Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Trainspotting, Snatch, Blue Velvet, Buffalo '66, Requiem For A Dream, Fight Club, Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Magnolia, among others.
I'm incredibly sorry for this, but I have never read any of the LotR books. In fact, the closest thing to fantasy I've read was "Outcast of Redwall" by Brian Jacques.

Anyways,
Cheers!

 

[Hand of Evil]

Mmmmm, never really thought about it, books yes (all above), movies (all those older ones, priates, Robin Hood, so-on), other peoples worlds (greyhawk, earthdawn, some web), history, and then some vision of my story.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

For me, first and foremost, Earth's history, religions and languages - although not necessarily the outward manifestation of its cultures (beyond the standard pseudomedieval stuff).

For years, Tolkien was a huge bugbear which loomed over my game design (and early attempts to write). I was so young and impressionable when I read (and re-read, and re-re-read) Tolkien, that it seemed that I would never shake him off.

About six or seven years ago I read an essay by Ursula K. LeGuin, where she wrote about how lucky she felt that she did not encounter Tolkien until her late 'teens or early 20s. Her argument was that Tolkien was so immense, so damned perfect that, had she read HIM when she was younger, she would never had begun to write herself: HIS shadow would have loomed over everything that she tried to do, and she would always fall short of the yardstick that HE set. I envied her - and saw what my problem was immediately.

I had to get over Tolkien. I have still only partially succeeded.

Other than Tolkien, but still some (I would argue) great sci-fi/fantasy literature:

Jack Vance
Gene Wolfe
Frank Herbert
Ursula LeGuin


More pulpy, but still close to my heart:

Michael Moorcock
Robert E. Howard



And medieval ballads, gestes and Arthurian stuff in spades; large amounts of mythology (mostly Norse and Finnish); and a good dose of RL religion.

Blake, Milton, Dante and anything relating to Heaven, Hell angels and demons/devils.

Magick and occultism. Neo-Paganism in its numerous forms. Psychedelia.

Any mysticism. Any kind, from any time period.

Zen.


For the record I have read Feist, Brooks, and Eddings and dislike them for the same reason that I was dissatisfied with my own writing - the shadow of Tolkien looms large over them. They are but pale copies.

"They are but pale copies" - see what I mean? You just can't shake the bastard off. He's still there, jabbing at me.

Ah, Tolkien. How I both love and hate thee!

 

[med stud]

I have tried to ditch Tolkien as well, and my present campaign setting is built more from the old Scandinavian myths, where dwarves and elves are really alien races (=they arent PC races). What I kept from Tolkien is the concept of organized trolls, orcs and goblins as enemies.

Societies in the world are based on ancient times, as their polytheism fits well with the polytheism of D&D. I think monotheism is far to integrated in the medieval society to make D&D of it. Moreover I based the world around the PCs on Russia instead of Europe and the Mediterrenean. In Russia, "barbarian" hordes were a threat for a long time, and was the main concern of the country until 18th century, a feel I think is fitting for a roleplaying game.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Fundamental Inspiration?

Great topic!

Besides everything that's already been said, the one area that would add to the discussion is imagery.

My games almost always start for me with a mental picture in my mind. Often times this draws from real life. My last campaign had magical "faberies", giant medieval factories powered by magic. The inspiration came from a tour of an old mill site, now a National Heritage site, in my hometown. The picture just came into my head of a brick building filled with giant wooden Rube Goldberg Devices with men and women sitting still and sweating as they tried to manipulate machines with magic. Overhead was a flying ship. From there, I pulled in stuff from many of the cited sources above!

The new vision involves a giant demon's head speaking from within flames....

 

[jayaint]

I'll admit it... I'm a little shocked that no one has mentioned (or at least, I didn't *notice* anyone mention) Anne McCaffery. Her novels of a world populated by dragons and humans, with a sci-fi genesis and a quasi-fantasy current era, are great. I read them for most of my years numbered 10-20.

I think, that might be why, the first time I came up against a dragon as a player in DnD, I didn't really want to kill it, I had too much respect for it. Until that silly breath weapon singed me a bit.

But I usually build worlds that are rife with change. I like throwing PC's into a frontier town, in a province where the capital city has just fallen. It always seems to make a good beginning seed, and allows for the world to spring in new directions without causing massive rifts in the world.

two cents...

 

[willpax]

Like many people here, I'm such a voracious reader (especially when younger) that it's hard to narrow it down.

The comment about LeGuin's anxiety about Tolkien is interesting, because I feel that way about LeGuin. Other early influences are Tolkien and Lewis and the Golden Bough, although I've read lots of things that probably play a part.

I've also been influenced by a lot of non-modern fantasy, especially ancient Greek stuff. Also modern lit.

In contrast to some here, I have been little influenced by any D&D series of books, mainly because I haven't read any. Being interested in issues of religion, politics, and culture, I've never used the cosmology or pantheons of any D&D product, and I've even tried to create alternate magic systems to better fit the mechanics to the world.

 

[Viking Bastard]

When I sat down and decided to create my current world my base theme was: High Magic
setting set around a multi-plane spanning empire ruled by a demigawd Emperor and Faerie
Royalty. Oh and it had all kinds of magical-steampunky-tech including Aircruisers, Podracers
and dimensional gates that were powered by a mysterious substance called Thunderstone
which was mined and regulated by the Gnomes, making them an economic superpower.

As I worked on the setting, I started to pay more and more detail to the thunderstone derived
"Thundertech" and especially the Aircruisers. I got the idea of a vast Aircruiser network of
cities built around large huge towers called 'Spires' which functioned as docking stations for
said Aircruisers. Then I started to work on these Spire-cities a lot, and one especially, which I
called Serpent City because of the city's Spire had a large silver dragon statue circling it's tail
around it.

Now, as I worked on Serpent City I slowly stopped working on the rest of the setting and one
day I realised that Serpent City as I had envisioned it was nothing like the setting I had started
out working on, so I saved the multi-plane setting idea for later and took Serpent City and the
Thunderstone/Aircruiser concepts and implanted them into an old homebrew GURPS fantasy
setting I had lying somewhere. Basically I advanced the setting a couple of centuries, a new
continent had been discovered with some of the standard D&D stuff (races like Gnomes,
Dwarves and Halflings (all offshots of the same race in the setting) and monsters like Orcs
and other Goblinoids which didn't exist in my original world). This new world was settled by
the denizes by the old world and Serpent City among other powers were formed. The
Gnomes had Thunderstone and created Thundertech, changing the world.

This setting is medium-magic at best. Nothing like the original concept, so I'm not sure WHAT
to say when asked what was my inspiration. Dune was a strong inspiration for my original
concept, as was the Top Cow Comics Universe (the whole Darkness/Angelus/Witchblade
thing), Neil Gaiman's DCU work and the Blood Omen/Soul Reaver games.

But for the end result... dunno.