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Drakeburn
2017-04-24, 07:37 PM
I hope you don't mind me being curious when asking this, what sources (books, tv shows, or movies) do you draw from when creating your adventures or campaigns?

For instance, when my sister runs a D&D game (whatever version that may be) for her friends, she tells me that borrows really heavily from Deltora Quest (the tv series).

CharonsHelper
2017-04-24, 08:01 PM
On purpose? Nothing

Subconsciously? Everything

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-24, 08:48 PM
Everything! Okay, seriously, the more obscure the source and stranger the genre/medium, the better. Why not steal plot lines from My Little Pony for a horror game?

The trick is to take the idea but change it so much that it's hard to tell where it originally came from.

SirBellias
2017-04-24, 09:52 PM
The trick is to take the idea but change it so much that it's hard to tell where it originally came from.

This. But to answer the question, I borrow heavily from Lovecraft, the King in Yellow, Terry Pratchett, and sometimes obscure anime. Pratchett is great for twisting things up, especially if your players haven't memorized the books as much as you have.

The King in Yellow is good for groups where your players know most of the Lovecraft stories already.

I ran a campaign based on the game Sunless Sea. It was a bit of a wash, since I didn't judge how much combat the players wanted very well. The role-playing moments were pretty good, so it really depends on what your group likes.

For some things, if I've seen them played a certain way that's entertaining, I try to emulate that in my games. I've been running a reasonably successful 5e game based on the West Marches game on Rollplay, and based a lot of my Monsterhearts shenanigans on the John Hughes High School series on Youtube.

Chijinda
2017-04-25, 02:01 AM
Everything. I've often joked to my friends about how terrible a GM I must be because every time I watch a movie or play a game it gives me new ideas for a campaign. Hell the first part of the campaign I'm presently running was strongly inspired by one of the side quests in Witcher 3, with other fragments ripped from other games or movies, and the overall plot line was a result of me trying to work out a coherent thread to tie them all together.

Sir Pippin Boyd
2017-04-25, 02:46 AM
Passively ideas can come from literally anything. Any media or even things that aren't media can spark the creative process.

When Im actively searching for ideas, I read the Monster Manual until something stands out at me. There are a ton of awesome monsters whose lore prompt ideas for plots or side quests.

Florian
2017-04-25, 03:02 AM
I hope you don't mind me being curious when asking this, what sources (books, tv shows, or movies) do you draw from when creating your adventures or campaigns? .

Iīm not all that much into media consumption or computer/console/mobile gaming. Simply donīt have the time or nerve for it.

For me, itīs the other way round: I come up with a basic campaign concept, then start googling for potentially appropriate material and watch/read that.

Professor Chimp
2017-04-25, 03:41 AM
I happily pilfer ideas from a wide variety of sources.

Books include Dune, Wheel of Time, Discworld, Lovecraft and The Witcher. I also find inspiration in videogames. I often look to games like Zelda or Metroid when designing elaborate dungeons, the former more for some simple little puzzles, the latter for making things feel more interconnected.

Also, this forum. I readily admit to having borrowed quite a few ideas here and adapting them to suit my own needs.

LordCdrMilitant
2017-04-25, 11:48 AM
Assuming I'm not already running a 40k RPG, 40k will definitely inspire things.

Also, Dwarf Fortress. Lots of Dwarf Fortress.

Yora
2017-04-25, 12:02 PM
My setting is based on consists mostly of ideas taken from Star Wars 5 and 6, Warcraft III, Morrowind, Planescape, Dark Souls, Princess Mononoke, Conan, The Witcher, Indiana Jones, and The Isle of Dread.

RedMage125
2017-04-25, 12:11 PM
For plot ideas? I don't borrow too much. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but most of it is original me.

On a much smaller scale, though, I borrow from just about everything. Naming conventions, especially. Cities named after cities in books, or characters from books or video games.
Sometimes an encounter or two will be borrowed from something. I had my players adventuring in an all-dragonborn continent that had kind of an Oriental Adventures feel (4th edition). My players got ambushed by a group of 6 NPCs. A TWF Ranger named Liam, a BS Rogue (2 daggers) named Reff, a Storm Sorcerer (staff) named Dan, a nunchaku-wielding Monk named Miko, and an assault swordmage named Usagi, all led by a Warlord named Sliver. My players didn't get the reference until halfway through the fight.
I've had a plotline that was KIND OF inspired by something else. Well, really it was a C.S. Lewis quote that made me want to make a storyline with a LG villain, someone who becomes a tyrannical dictator in the name of saving people. So...in the sense that I was inspired to "somehow" make a Lawful Good villain...that SORT OF gave me a plot idea.

Cealocanth
2017-04-25, 12:14 PM
Depends on the campaign I'm running. Right now we're running what's supposed to feel like a Viking Edda. So, I'm stealing a lot from Norse mythology, Celtic myths and tales, the Icelandic Poetic Edda, and probably from Skyrim.

Beastrolami
2017-04-25, 12:27 PM
webcomics like Killsixbilliondemons, Necropolis, Basileus
Games/mods - FFH2
Youtube series - TDDC

Many others, but those are the most recent influences.

Joe the Rat
2017-04-25, 02:04 PM
I steal everything that isn't nailed down and on fire.

Then I come back with a prybar and a fire extinguisher.

Some of it is borrowed ideas, some of it themes, some of it plots with the serial numbers filed off, but a lot of it is referencing.

The core of my current game is a light fantasy pastiche: The standard tropes, some played with, some turned on its ear, some delivered with a lampshade.


webcomics like Killsixbilliondemons, Necropolis, Basileus
Games/mods - FFH2
Youtube series - TDDC

Many others, but those are the most recent influences.
Another Demonac fan!
I watch a lot of different plays and recaps, but that's less for stealing ideas, and more for observing plotting and playing approaches - how to run it.
Though I am tempted to use The Amazing Daggerface.
(K6BD is on my to-do list)

Beastrolami
2017-04-25, 02:10 PM
Another Demonac fan!
I watch a lot of different plays and recaps, but that's less for stealing ideas, and more for observing plotting and playing approaches - how to run it.
Though I am tempted to use The Amazing Daggerface.
(K6BD is on my to-do list)

One of the things he did that I never thought of until after watching his videos was what's underwater. Dnd has so many aquatic races, and the earth is 70% water. Why aren't there large sprawling empires that are as advanced if not more so than the surface dwellers. I have put a lot more thought into what's actually in the ocean when world-building.

2D8HP
2017-04-26, 04:47 PM
So very many places. For my earliest "inspirations", I was probably most influenced by seeing Sinbad vs. the scheming sorcerer Sokurah, when I saw "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tGCuLWdZTDs&itct=CBgQpDAYAiITCJ3h5IKW0c0CFUHcfgodyloJHzIHcmVsY Xhttp://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QTIeBuLnD-A/UR_ToMA9-VI/AAAAAAAAAKA/q8g2RT4XY-s/s1600/holmes+box.jpglZEjCz6XC1bmil_AB) at the drive-in (since I later learned that the movie was made in the 1950's it must have been re-released in the early 1970's). I can specially remember first watching it through the back window of a V.W. bug while my parents watched something boring Burt Reynolds movie through the front window, and marveling at the Dragon and the sword wielding skeleton! And sometimes "Jason and the Argonauts" (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg1v5HkpdEA) was on the T.V.!

I read the "Arabian Nights", Greek mythology and a lot of science fiction, but actual fantasy fiction before playing D&D? Maybe a couple of Conan short stories if that. The "Catspaw" episode of Star Trek influenced my vision of the Dungeon, and old Errol Flynn movies influenced my vision of what PC's should be like!

Another big influence was "The Hobbit" cartoon (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qT8jCTUqgzg) which I saw on channel 5 about the same time that I first encountered a Dungeons and Dragons box (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QTIeBuLnD-A/UR_ToMA9-VI/AAAAAAAAAKA/q8g2RT4XY-s/s1600/holmes+box.jpg).

Later fantasy books, films etc. were all post D&D for me.

I can remember watching "Conan the Destroyer" and "Young Sherlock Holmes" in the movie theater and thinking of how I was going to steal homage some elements in my games (I used a mashup of CtD and YSH twice! Once for Call of Cthullu, and again for Dungeons & Dragons)!

Just this year a PC I've "rolled up" was inspired by the "Delilah Bard" character from the novels "A Darker Shade of Magic" (http://www.tor.com/2015/01/21/a-darker-shade-of-magic-excerpt-v-e-schwab/), and "A Gathering of Shadows" (http://www.tor.com/2015/09/28/excerpts-a-gathering-of-shadows-ve-schwab/).

I don't GM anymore but mostly forgotten genre media is a goldmine!

Everyone remembered "Conan the Barbarian", so I couldn't steal use as inspiration anything from that, but "Conan the Destroyer" I could use scot-free!

:biggrin:

Knaight
2017-04-26, 05:18 PM
I would identify three primary sources - the giant pile of books I've read throughout my life, classes I've taken (and research I've done) as a student, and stuff that comes up in outdoor hobbies. There are exceptions to this (there's a couple of campaigns where a major source is the aesthetic expressed in a single image or relatively short video clips), but those are the big three. Specifics are a bit hard to pin down, but I do have a few good examples:

The magic storms that alter everything in their path in my Emergent Magitech game are pretty blatantly stolen from Storm Thief.
My Galactic Fruit setting is more than a little inspired by Un Cien Anos de Soledad.
A mission to shut down a geoengineering plant for a small government on an alien planet in my Schrodinger's Hummingbird space opera game involved me reusing a high level plant design that I originally made for a technical writing class. That also traces back pretty well to a couple of academic articles.
There's a pretty good chance that my terrain descriptions map pretty well to hiking or mountain biking I've done, and that my combat descriptions map pretty well to sparring I've done.


Most of the the time the ideas are less directly borrowed from one source and more emerge from a background across a lot of sources. There are still particular authors that have an outsized influence (Alan Dean Foster, Guy Gavriel Kay, Nnedi Okorafor), and it's not hard to guess from some of my campaigns that I've spent a decent amount of time in a canoe.

GreatDane
2017-04-27, 08:59 AM
Everything! Okay, seriously, the more obscure the source and stranger the genre/medium, the better. Why not steal plot lines from My Little Pony for a horror game?

The trick is to take the idea but change it so much that it's hard to tell where it originally came from.
I operate similarly to this. I've drawn plotlines, settings, and characters (with new names) directly from books, movies, games, etc. The Fire Emblem video game series is perfect for conversion to D&D, in my opinion - it's got all the right themes, and a solid combination of tactical combat and story that transfers well.

NOhara24
2017-04-27, 09:04 AM
On purpose? Nothing

Subconsciously? Everything

This guy gets it. I end up cherry picking ideas from everything around me, and often it's not apparent to me until after the fact.

In particular, Discworld, Final Fantasy, TV Crime Dramas (Bosch, Justified)

But often when I go searching for inspiration I find myself trolling through Monster Manuals or Deities & Demigods.

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-27, 06:24 PM
Seems like most people have the idea of stealing ideas from things they like. Personally, I enjoy dumb movies and often read TVtropes, so I find amusement in the challenge of taking an idea that didn't work or didn't seem to work and trying to figure out how to make it good.

Next stop: The first DnD movie.

CharonsHelper
2017-04-27, 06:31 PM
Next stop: The first DnD movie.

Do you mean the first GOOD D&D movie? Because there have been a couple - they've just been really bad.

Really, if they want a D&D movie to make money they should take advantage of one of their IPs like Drizzt. (Not that Drizzt is an amazing story, but it would be pretty easy to make a fun popcorn action flick out of it.)

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-27, 06:41 PM
Do you mean the first GOOD D&D movie?

No, the one where Jeremy Irons left bite marks on the scenery to afford a castle.


Really, if they want a D&D movie to make money they should take advantage of one of their IPs like Drizzt. (Not that Drizzt is an amazing story, but it would be pretty easy to make a fun popcorn action flick out of it.)

I imagine a DnD movie without extensive make-up or CGI on the main protagonist AND antagonists would probably be a better idea without a huge budget. Doubt many people would be happy if the drow looked like humans in make-up as well.

RedMage125
2017-04-27, 10:31 PM
The third one, Book Of Vile Darkness, wasn't that terrible.

I know people cite how jarring the magic item shop scene was, but COME ON! Has anyone ever thought about how ridiculous and meta shopping for magic items IS? I mean, how, in-character, does one explain turning in Gloves of Dex +4 for Gloves of Dex +6? It's a cheeky bit of fun.

The rest of the movie is actually ok. It FEELS like someone's game of D&D, which means a little bit of cheese. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. It's worth a watch.

Drakeburn
2017-04-27, 11:25 PM
The third one, Book Of Vile Darkness, wasn't that terrible.

I know people cite how jarring the magic item shop scene was, but COME ON! Has anyone ever thought about how ridiculous and meta shopping for magic items IS? I mean, how, in-character, does one explain turning in Gloves of Dex +4 for Gloves of Dex +6? It's a cheeky bit of fun.

The rest of the movie is actually ok. It FEELS like someone's game of D&D, which means a little bit of cheese. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. It's worth a watch.

Worth a watch? :smallconfused:

One of those (maybe literal) CGI abominations was the reason why I couldn't sleep for one night.

And why did the main character suddenly have paladin powers after everything he's done?!

Anyways, after thinking about it, I've come to realize that when I'm planning out my D&D campaigns, it seems like I'm taking ideas from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, as well as finding inspiration from Ladyhawke, The Princess Bride, and the Crystal Shard by R.A. Salvatore.

Griffith!
2017-04-28, 05:11 AM
Well I'm a huge fan of pop culture in general, but a lot of what I steal was left out in the open anyway. I've been known to lift whole elements out of video games or movies, spray paint them liberally, and slap them on an original chassis for fun.

My current campaign could be loosely described as Dragon Age Crystal Chronicles Shippuden: Return of the King, in that it's about a magical caravan of heroes in a fairly gray medieval fantasy kingdom battling to place a lost heir on the throne in the midst of an invasion of monsters and a mysterious group of eight masked figures with indecipherable goals who operate in pairs.

But I don't like to steal characters or encounters or set pieces. Even when I'm using a published adventure or settings, I like to put a personal spin on things. Like the time my players insisted I run Skull and Shackles so I ran it as a One Piece campaign. Not literally, but that's where I took most of my inspiration, with a touch of Alestorm and Pirates of the Caribbean.

But that's only fair. After all, even my original campaigns are subconsciously influenced by everything anyway.

Potatomade
2017-04-28, 07:11 AM
My players have pointed out to me that I derive all of my campaign ideas from Babylon 5 in some form or another. It's never intentional, it just seems to be my natural drift. I've decided not to fight it.

Whenever I am intentionally pulling from something, it's usually a horror movie. I've borrowed a lot from the 1979 Nosferatu remake (the Werner Herzog one), since I like Ravenloft stuff a lot. I recommend watching that movie or the original if you ever want to get into that Gothic Horror mood. It's fantastic.

GungHo
2017-04-28, 08:44 AM
Maps.

I look at maps on reddit, cartographers guild, GIS, wikipedia, Civilization, whatever and then think "that's cool, I wonder what's going on there". I'm a sucker for a good map, but I'm also terrible at drawing them below the 100 miles-up level.

sktarq
2017-04-28, 08:54 AM
Since the most common game I run these days is some World of Darkness splat by biggest inspiration are weird newspaper stories. I have a desktop folder just for copy/pastes of the weird of our world. I have had to show players stories after we were done because they didn't believe some were "inspired by true events". Reality can just be that weird. I have set 3 games in Miami based almost entirely of Carl Hiaassen's books and "unidentified south Florida man" type stories. A technique I picked up from Mr Hiaasen himself (he works for the Miami Herald and most of the bizarre semi background stuff is just tweaked reality.

So yeah. Newspapers are my favorite source for fantasy inspiration.

For D&D? History books, old maps, that kind of thing

Logosloki
2017-04-28, 08:58 AM
I passively take in ideas from every day life, thinking and consumption of media. And then percolate it in my mind.

Typically though for me the thought process always starts with "Which setting will fit this [musing on an idea]" or "How would this work as a setting [musing on a particular idea for a setting]". Followed by "What is the implication".

TheChelaxian
2017-04-28, 02:41 PM
I personally get a lot of inspiration from movies and books I've enjoyed since I was a kid. For example, I've been developing a homebrew campaign based on the Danny Kaye movie "The Court Jester". Other sources of ideas include "The King with Six Friends", the original Bionicle toy line, and "The Whipping Boy". The older ideas for me supply the best materials.

Segev
2017-04-28, 04:35 PM
Sometimes, I get ideas from media I consume, in the form of concepts and plots I can twist into different approaches.

I probably draw a lot from TVtropes, honestly, because playing with tropes can be fun.

I also tend to draw inspiration for specific game systems and settings from the materials on those settings, themselves. The Exalted game I'm running is mostly of this form. That, plus efforts to mesh the Backgrounds of my PCs into the setting and figure out what connects to which, where, how, and why.

Braininthejar2
2017-04-28, 08:40 PM
I have a GM who gets her plot ideas from Harlequin novels.

Honest Tiefling
2017-04-29, 12:32 PM
I have a GM who gets her plot ideas from Harlequin novels.

You'd think the party would get bored at all of the time travelling vikings that joined the military.

Sredni Vashtar
2017-04-30, 06:06 AM
History, Tolkien, and other people's games mostly for me.

I have said multiple times that each episode synopsis for DuckTales would make for a good premise for a D&D game, but alas, I've never tried it.

Hawksteel
2017-04-30, 07:37 AM
All over.

For a pulp campaign I used the stories from the Tintin comics. For another I took stories from hellboy and the bprd.

For one supers campaign I used the james bond modules from victory games. At other times Ive borrowed major storylines from Marvel, DC and Image comics.

Mastikator
2017-04-30, 08:48 AM
I usually try to extrapolate from other campaigns. If I am lazy then I will burrow, if I am not then I will extrapolate.

Segev
2017-04-30, 04:36 PM
I have a GM who gets her plot ideas from Harlequin novels.


You'd think the party would get bored at all of the time travelling vikings that joined the military.

I'm more concerned that there are whole novels dedicated to Harley and that these are inspiration for campaigns. They must be real mind-screws!

RedMage125
2017-05-01, 11:39 AM
Worth a watch? :smallconfused:

One of those (maybe literal) CGI abominations was the reason why I couldn't sleep for one night.

And why did the main character suddenly have paladin powers after everything he's done?!


The CGI was an effect of the low budget they were working with. The movie was worth watching, and I stand by that. It's not "go buy the Blu-Ray" good, but it's worth renting, or borrowing from a friend.

And he still had paladin powers because this was based off 4e, not 3e.

JAL_1138
2017-05-01, 12:20 PM
I like to steal borrow maps and premade encounters from published modules from AD&D and 5e, and Adventurers' League modules quite liberally, and sometimes the initial setup, but don't adhere too closely to the plot. I'll often pull from several different ones and kitbash, refluff, and rearrange them into something that bears very little resemblance to the sources.

Piedmon_Sama
2017-05-01, 02:58 PM
On purpose? Nothing

Subconsciously? Everything

Ja. Everything I pay attention to, from a landscape photograph to a book on medieval economics to TV shows I watch leaves a kind of psychic resonance that will out in whatever I create in ways gross or subtle.