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tbok1992
2013-01-27, 01:53 PM
This thread is exactly what it says on the tin: media that is actually really good as inspiration for Tabletop RPG campaigns, but you almost never see used. I'll start:

Forbidden Zone- Not only is the Sixth Dimension a really good place to go if you want inspiration for a very... different Feywild-centered campaign, but Danny Elfman's Devil is one of the best examples of Lawful Evil I've ever seen. I could explain more on that, but I'll just post this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzr8phoGjXI) to his one major (And awesome) scene in the film.

The Last Dragon- Sho-Nuff is the best example of a Monk BBEG ever, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

Jon Hodgman's "Complete World Knowledge" trilogy of books- While all of them are must-haves if you're doing an Unknown Armies game, I'd especially recommend adapting the Mole-Men from "More Information Than You Require" for a D&D Underdark game if you really want to throw players for a loop.

I mean, classy; enlightened; democratic mole men with acid spit and glowing mucus and all manner of ridiculous steeds (Including the Hoary Chiggers, the Lesser and greater Chariot worms, the Dirt Pumas, the man-eating Clydesdales, the brain sharks, the pseudosaurs, the list goes on)? What's not to love?! And also, if you want inspiration for an Eldrich Abomination for any game you're playing, Hodgman's list of "700 Ancient and Unspeakable Ones" in the third book "That Is All" is a great place to go.

So, what do you think is excellent yet under-ripped-off media for a tabletop RPG campaign.

TheThan
2013-01-27, 03:58 PM
I pull most of my stuff from 80’s and 90’s Saturday morning cartoons. It’s glorious.

Seriously, I’d start linking youtube, but there’s too much to go with. So just youtube “80s cartoons” and be amazed at what there is.

Kitten Champion
2013-01-27, 04:57 PM
This just happened to be the last thing I watched, however, Shadow Skill (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=729) would translate well into TTRPG setting. Especially if you're doing a high-powered Exalted bent to things. The seamless mix of Eastern and Western designs stands out to me. Monsters, super-powered warriors, and magicians of different stripes inhabiting the same setting -- with power that comes from one's conviction in one's own strength as expressed in a mantra.

It's got a lot of neat ideas, anyways.

tbok1992
2013-01-28, 02:57 PM
Dead and Buried- This one's probably underused because very few people have seen it, which is a shame, as it's a very smart, tense suspense-horror movie. And, not to spoil to much, but the Big Bad of the film is quite possibly the best necromancer ever put on film, and would be the perfect model for any

Barkley: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden- There's a lot of stuff you could draw from here, from the intentionally surgically modified furries in the sewers to the Dugar-Genie negotioations sidequest, but the thing I'd like to note would be the way Basketball is used as a dead-serious theme and a motif (Most notably in the battle with the Spaulding CEO and the final battle with MIchael Jordan) in the same fashion as such things as The Lifestream or Fate, except for comedy value due to how silly the idea is.

It goes to show how much the difference between "Serious" and silly is a matter of context, and it'd be perfect to adapt for a silly D20 Modern campaign or an Unknown Armies game.

Chilingsworth
2013-01-29, 03:44 AM
I'd like to play in a campaign inspired by Harry Turtledove's Darkness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Series) series.

themocaw
2013-01-29, 02:54 PM
Every Asian-themed RPG I've ever seen seems to pull from Japan and China. Why not India or Southeast Asia?

Read the "Ramayana," some seriously badass stuff in there. Dudes fighting hundred-armed monsters, flying chariots, demigod princes, monkey kings, eagle arrows. . . lots of game material there.

Doorhandle
2013-01-29, 05:37 PM
Ancient mythology is always a good place to start. I would also suggest journey to the west as well. Hell, some of the Greek stuff that isn't overused is also awesome, such as Zeus vs Typhon.

Art, both ancient an modern, could also be an interesting sources of ideas: at the very least, it would provide interesting geometry.

tbok1992
2013-02-03, 03:04 PM
The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao- A great little George Pal film I'm surprised not more people know about, there's not just the titular circus (Which is a great model for any benevolent yet magical circus you want to use in your game), but there's also the villain, who manages to take the old, cliched "greedy tycoon trying to railroad the quaint little ________ for the purposes of making money off of _______" character and making him well-rounded and compelling. If you ever want to change up a cliche villain archetype for your game, use this guy as an example of how to do it well.

The LOBster
2013-02-04, 11:25 AM
I'd suggest Celtic mythology. Sure, everyone rips off the Fair Folk, or Arthurian mythology, but it's rare that you see anything based on the Ulster Cycle, for one thing - in fact, the only times I've seen anything reference the Ulster Cycle are the Nasuverse (Where Cu Chulainn, THE MOST BADASS MYTHOLOGICAL HERO EVER, is a character), 4E (What with the Formorions and all) and Kingdoms of Amalur (Which has the Tuatha de Annan as the main enemies, and has a boss fight against a giant monster named Balor who shoots death rays from his eye, and has to have mooks pry open his eyelid - a lot like the original Balor, king of the Formorians, actually).

Also, we definitely need more African mythology, like maybe a chaotic neutral race of spiders based on Anansi. Not to mention Native America/First Nations mythology - Wendigos are getting more popular, but I'd really like to see a Piasa make an appearance.

valadil
2013-02-04, 12:27 PM
I think this one is so obvious it's oft overlooked. I use my minis for inspiration. If I don't know anything about an NPC I'll pick a mini out of the box. That gives you race, gender, and class pretty much right away. Weapon choice can be indicative too, especially if it's a non-optimal weapon. What other gear the mini carries can indicate what he thinks he has to prepare for. Is this mini pristine or a battle scarred veteran? Clothing can indicate fashion versus function or it could be heraldry. Applying 60 seconds of thought to the overlooked details of a mini can give you a halfway decent NPC.

tbok1992
2013-02-05, 12:53 PM
I think this one is so obvious it's oft overlooked. I use my minis for inspiration. If I don't know anything about an NPC I'll pick a mini out of the box. That gives you race, gender, and class pretty much right away. Weapon choice can be indicative too, especially if it's a non-optimal weapon. What other gear the mini carries can indicate what he thinks he has to prepare for. Is this mini pristine or a battle scarred veteran? Clothing can indicate fashion versus function or it could be heraldry. Applying 60 seconds of thought to the overlooked details of a mini can give you a halfway decent NPC.

Huh. Never really thought of that before. On a similar subject, I do think that, something like the Than mentioned, there's a lot of great toys taht could serve as inspiration for RPG creatures or races.

Some examples:
-Boglins would be great as inspiration for a sort of Chaotic Neutral swamp creature
-The three main baddies of Inhumanoids could work really well as Demon Lords.
-Even though Rock Lords were kind of dumb, they'd make a great basis for temple guards.
-He-Man has a lot of this, but as one example, the Snake Men would be perfect to design some unique Yuan-Ti villains/NPCs after.
-And finally, while they're a little more obscure, I do maintain that these (http://bogleech.com/scrapbook/bodymonsters.html) would make an awesome basis for some undead.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-02-05, 03:20 PM
Also, we definitely need more African mythology, like maybe a chaotic neutral race of spiders based on Anansi. Not to mention Native America/First Nations mythology - Wendigos are getting more popular, but I'd really like to see a Piasa make an appearance.

Check out Spears of the Dawn (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/110293/Spears-of-the-Dawn?affiliate_id=161118)!

tbok1992
2013-02-05, 04:08 PM
Not to mention that Pathfinder has put a few african creatures in Bestiary 3, most notably the Kongamoto and the Grootslang (Which, by the way, I must say is awesome).

But another thing I think is underused as inspiration for games, specifically for modern games, is the US Supreme Court Citizens United ruling.

Now hear me out. The idea, most notably codified in that case, that Corporations are legally People, could be combined with the idea of a Tulpa, a being created because so many people believe in it.

And since most corporations would be heartless monsters if they were actual people, and said tulpas would likely be enormously powerful given the size, scope, and societal entrenchment of most corporations, I think the idea would make the perfect basic for all kinds of big bads in a modern setting, especially in Unknown Armies where they do weird crap like that all the time.

Plus, the idea of fighting the fat, cheese-smelling embodiment of Wal-Mart tickles me pink. "WAL-TON HUNGERS!"

Mephibosheth
2013-02-05, 08:32 PM
Every Asian-themed RPG I've ever seen seems to pull from Japan and China. Why not India or Southeast Asia?

Read the "Ramayana," some seriously badass stuff in there. Dudes fighting hundred-armed monsters, flying chariots, demigod princes, monkey kings, eagle arrows. . . lots of game material there.

This. This! A thousand times, this! I can't speak for Southeast Asia, but South and Central Asian mythological and historical traditions have oodles of fantastic gaming inspiration, mostly-untapped to my knowledge. And when companies try, they do a horrible job. Like WotC's Mahasarpa setting, where they didn't even bother to change any of the names; they just picked them from real-world traditions and plopped them down in the midst of a Rokugan setting.

Even outside the Ramayana, you have a huge corpus of puranic literature about the exploits of the various gods, the Mahabharata with magical weapons bestowed upon worthy heroes by the gods, holy bards who can survive blazing fires and dance with a thousand women at once, traditions of asceticism that ascribe strange supernatural powers upon monks and renunciates, and a whole host of other things that would make for awesome gaming.

And that's just the traditions we commonly associate with India. That's not even getting into Central Asian traditions with kingdoms governed by assassins and worship in fire temples and invincible sons fighting undefeated fathers to the death not knowing their relationship. And historically, things like the Great Game in the 18th and 19th century would make for a fantastic game.

I've been trying to do a lot of homebrew along these lines; my Scroungers setting is heavily South and Central Asian-influenced, there are rules for elephant warfare, sant-kavis, the vanar race from The Ramayana, and a bunch of other stuff. Check my extended homebrew signature (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3507396&postcount=14) for examples. But it seems like these influences haven't permeated the western culture the same way that Japanese and Chinese influences have, so they're not nearly as common in gaming as I think they should be.

*climbs off soap box*

GungHo
2013-02-06, 10:09 AM
For modern media: The Thing is a good inspiration for abberations.

For ancient myth: I like exploring Indian (Ramayana and Mahabarata, specifically the Bhagavad Gita) and Persian (Shahnameh) mythology.

tbok1992
2013-02-07, 12:31 PM
Huh. I've noticed a fair few people've mentioned Indian myth as underused. I think the reason for that is that there isn't really any big; easy to navigate and fun to read collection of the "Need-to-know" bits such as myths, creatures, gods, and so-on like the Edith Hamilton or D'Alure books did for Greek and Norse myth. And there especially wasn't any at the time the fantasy genre was being codified with D&D.

This is the same with American Indian and Latin American myths, which really is an indicator that somebody should get on that for all those three sub-sectors of myth. Because the things I know about the former especially (Like the Navajo creation myth, the Iriquois flying head, the Sisiutl) are awesome, but there's no one big, far-reaching source to look them all up in in a fun manner.

Ravens_cry
2013-02-07, 01:05 PM
Studio Ghibli.
Specifically, I want to do a diesel punk fantasy campaign that involves sky pirates, mercenaries, and flying boats in a Mediterranean-esque world analogous to the Interwar period.

tbok1992
2013-02-07, 01:39 PM
Well, the Kodama Kami from Pathfidner are pretty much those little bobbleheaded forest-spirits from Princess Mononoke. And the Deer God could make for a great Mythic Level Kami, and the Forest Gods could make for a great template to add to normal animals.

Amechra
2013-02-07, 03:28 PM
Australian Dreamtime myths aren't used nearly enough.

Or, hell, American Tall Tales.

I know the homebrew forums were working on Americana-Punk a while back, but they didn't get very far.

tbok1992
2013-02-10, 12:26 AM
I do agree with you on the Tall Tales inspirations, though Pathfinder has the Hodag, and when I found out about the Goliath in 4e, I thought to myself "Now how can I make Paul Bunyan out of this character.?

Also, a source I've wondered about is, weirdly, fursuiting WAIT DON'T GO! I mean, there's some very obvious parallels to be drawn with old werewolf myths of sorcerers turning into wolves by donning special wolf pelts, with both involving breaking of taboos by assuming a separate; personally empowering identity.

Also, the fact that said medeval werewolves were usually crazy, and there tends to be a lot of that running rampant amongst some (Not all) furries makes me think it'd be a good idea to combine the whole "Skinwalker" werewolf with the idea of fursuiting in some Modern campaign.

Novawurmson
2013-02-10, 12:53 AM
Reading through Grimms' Fairy Tales lately (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2591/2591-h/2591-h.htm). A lot of it has been copied quite a bit (and a lot of it repeats throughout the tales), but there's some nuggets to be found.


[W]hen they had walked a little farther to where they could see the gallows, the man said to him: 'Look, there is the tree where seven men have married the ropemaker's daughter, and are now learning how to fly.'

tbok1992
2013-02-11, 02:36 PM
Yes. And "The Girl without Hands" has so many good ideas that could be used for a devil-based campaign.

Also, a part another neglected work I think would make good inspiration is the final battles in all of the Earthbound/Mother series, and how you don't defeat the villains by fighting. You defeat Giygas in the first game by reminding him of his childhood in a way I won't spoil, you defeat him in the second game by praying for help from everyone you've met in your journey, and you fight The Masked Man/[SPOILER] by letting him hit you until he comes to his senses. This is an example of how not every confrontation with the BBEG needs to end with a fight, and in fact ending it without a true battle could be used to create a truly emotional moment.

Altair_the_Vexed
2013-02-13, 12:56 PM
For modern media: The Thing is a good inspiration for abberations.Been done - the d20 Modern Star Doppelganger is exactly that. Nasty creature... I've converted it for my E6 game.

Stubbazubba
2013-02-13, 01:22 PM
Crime shows - Law & Order, CSI, or Bones. I would like to see a game where you uncover the clues left behind by the murderer until you build a consensus about who it was.

therakishrogue
2013-02-13, 01:27 PM
I would really enjoy a game setting and system based off of 20th century Latin American magical realism. Something like Marquez's [I]100 Years of Solitude[I], with blood portents, shaman magic, and wandering demons existing side by side with early 19th century revolutionary warfare and a backdrop of the vast South American wilderness or highly stratified cities. Would be a good setting for a particularly zany World of Darkness game, now that I think about it.

Eldan
2013-02-13, 02:47 PM
Australian Dreamtime myths aren't used nearly enough.

Or, hell, American Tall Tales.

I know the homebrew forums were working on Americana-Punk a while back, but they didn't get very far.

Americana-Punk was a ton of fun, yes. I'll have to have a look at it again and some point.

Of course, it's weird if I'm doing it. I'm not American and don't even know any tall tales. I just liked what was already around.

And I still want to run a game of hobos with alcohol-fueled mystical powers fighting the evils of both the Wyld and the Government along the transdimensional railways.

tbok1992
2013-02-13, 03:38 PM
Americana-Punk was a ton of fun, yes. I'll have to have a look at it again and some point.

Of course, it's weird if I'm doing it. I'm not American and don't even know any tall tales. I just liked what was already around.

And I still want to run a game of hobos with alcohol-fueled mystical powers fighting the evils of both the Wyld and the Government along the transdimensional railways.

Oh god, then you need to read Hodgman's "Areas of My Expertise". The stuff on Hoboes and on the weird bits of the 51 States (Including the lost state of Ar) is just perfect for that.

Ravens_cry
2013-02-13, 03:39 PM
I'd like to try something Mesopotamian sometime.
Ancient Rome is also shockingly underused. Oh, you see its gods and monsters used a lot, but as an actual setting . . . not nearly as much.

Doorhandle
2013-02-13, 06:36 PM
I find art from things like deviantart and how-to-draw books can be quite useful as well.

Also, don't be afraid to steal adventures from other systems!

Surfnerd
2013-02-14, 10:50 PM
Sometimes news sparks inspiration for me. Maybe thats pretty common, but I imagine if you actively used the news to spark inspiration you would have an endless fountain of madness at your disposal.

I should note the news that actually got my creative juices flowing is usually NPR programs.

Admiral Squish
2013-02-14, 11:24 PM
Just gonna leave this here, for any of you guys who were interested in the idea of american myths. Or chinese myths. Or aztec. Or native american. Or inuit.
Vespuccia, a magical version of America. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269334)

ATEKazul
2013-02-15, 12:38 AM
In all honesty I like all of the suggestions here I use many of them.

I would also like to add that mythology even the well used ones have unused or under utillised elements.

Also while you don't have to believe in them I find cryptozoology and ancient astronaut theories along with books that try to combine science and religion to be great sources for inspiration.


I would also love more things based off of David Brin's The Practice Effect book.
It has an interesting effect as a theme where the more you use something for a certain purpose the better it becomes at that purpose but if it goes for to long with out use it will revert back to its base form or components.
For example if you use your sleeves as a napkin they will slowly become better at it's purpose by becoming sponge like and developing a texture that will clean better. but if you leave that shirt off for a while it will turn back into a normal shirt.


I also find fan fiction and art especialy crossovers or alternate universes to be excellent sources of inspiration. It can be quite surprising how a single crossover between 2 series can produce such a wide array of variances and unique idea's or interpretations even when running almost the same storyline or scenario!


Well I hope that helps I'll keep an eye on here and post if I think of anymore good sources for idea's.

Doorhandle
2013-02-15, 01:20 AM
I would also love more things based off of David Brin's The Practice Effect book.
It has an interesting effect as a theme where the more you use something for a certain purpose the better it becomes at that purpose but if it goes for to long with out use it will revert back to its base form or components.
For example if you use your sleeves as a napkin they will slowly become better at it's purpose by becoming sponge like and developing a texture that will clean better. but if you leave that shirt off for a while it will turn back into a normal shirt.




You gain hitpoints as you level because they become better at preventing you from dying? GEINIUS!

Snide remarks aside, that is a very cool concept.