What source material informs your fantasy gaming?

[Chris Goodwin]

Some source material has Law and Chaos (or Good and Evil, or all of them) as fundamental forces of the universe. Being good doesn't just mean you're good in a philosophical sense; it means that you've chosen, either consciously or not, to "align" yourself with the fundamental force of Good.

Old school *D&D didn't really give you that much guidance; it didn't say "You can create a world in which these are not just philosophical concepts but fundamental forces." It did take for granted that players of D&D would be familiar with the literature that went into it -- Moorcock and Vance and Howard and Lovecraft and Tolkien -- and would recognize where the tropes came from and why and how (or not) to use them.

Hmmm, I feel another thread coming on.

So here's that thread.

What informs your fantasy gaming? Literature, games, other things? It could be anything. D&D, WoW, classic fantasy literature, modern fantasy literature, what? We all have different tastes and different assumptions, and sometimes those butt up against each other in play and in discussions here.

I don't want this thread to turn into value judgements or discussion of quality of the various works. If I see it I'm going to call people on it -- and if I do it myself I expect other people to call me on it.

I'll start: for me, it's first edition Fantasy Hero, De Camp and Pratt's Incompleat Enchanter series, Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, Jack Chalker's Dancing Gods series, and Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures. When I create characters, worlds, magic systems (especially magic systems!), and other materials, those things get expressed pretty heavily.

[Markdoc]

EEE! You've named all the books I would never use! :D De gustibus non est disputandum and all that but I can't bear "comic fantasy"!

My inspirations are Jack Vance's Dying Earth and Lyonesse series, Zelazny's Amber series, plus Jack of Shadows and Creatures of Light and Darkness, Norse sagas, pretty much anything RE Howard wrote and a horde of largely unremembered British writers of "Ripping Yarns for Boys" plus bigger names like Haggard and Kipling.

The feel I am trying for is "Pulp Swords and Sorcery with a little more intellectual involvement". So the characters generally start out as doughty swordsmen, with the occasional largely combat-ineffective mage/sage, rather than powerful heroes. And rather than episodic adventures, things are tied into a larger backstory with "things" lurking in the shadows.

cheers, Mark

[Killer Shrike]

Everything I have ever experienced in life informs everything I do, including fantasy gaming. I use stuff from all over the place, in other words. The best lies are 99% truth; and what is gaming but an extended consensual lie?

[OddHat]

All sorts of things, really. Much like KS, I'll borrow from anywhere.

That said, in recent years David Gemmell pretty much shaped my idea of what Fantasy should look like. I'm a fan of Zelazny, Farmer, Heinlein, Piper, Martin, ERB, and many others. I'll borrow from pretty much any of them if it makes for a good story. I also like using history as a source; nothing adds texture to a world (for me at least) quite like taking a real historical period, situation or character and then pushing events in a different direction.

[Lord Mhoram]

Books:
Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Belgariad/Mallorian
Feist's First series (Riftwar saga)
Oath of Swords/War God's Own (best paladin books around)
Oz
Narnia
Recently Harry Dresden - I want my wizards to feel the way he does in the most recent books. And the escalating vilians and allies works great as a template for an RPG game.
Some bits of feel from the Forgotten realms over the years.

Movies

Star Wars (I like lots of fantasy races - I like to see my fantasy bars looking like the cantina in Star Wars).
Narnia (love the look)
LOTR (same as above)


Books who's feel I specifically avoid -
Fafrd Grey Mouser stuff
Conan
Elric (pretty much anything by Moorcock)


Yeah it's pretty obvious which subgenre of fantasy I prefer. :)

[GothKidSamurai]

All sorts of stuff. A good bit of humorous or light fare, Piers Anthony, Terry Pratchett kind of funny stuff. Lots of fairy tales. A good bit of Jim Butcher influence as well. And a lot of stuff cribbed from Dragonlance and Eberron.

Mostly a lot of light stuff that pokes fun at fantasy tropes while embracing the ones I enjoy. And nothing too dark to depressing. I get enough of that in real life.

[GothKidSamurai]

Books Who's Feel I Specifically Avoid -
Fafrd Grey Mouser Stuff
Conan
Elric (pretty Much Anything By Moorcock)




Qfmft

[boomer]

Our Fantasy Hero campaign was inspired by Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.

[Old Man]

REH, Black Company, Fafhrd, and Thieves World are all pretty close to the feel I'm shooting for. Yes, I am a big S&S fan. I really like the Elric books but could never play such a high-powered game in FH.

Anti-influences are juvenile fiction like the Belgariad and Belgariad II, and whiny angstfests like Thomas Covenant. But you knew that.

[Bismark]

Books:
Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (OK, it is indeed a whiny, over-written angst-fest, but if you can stomach the literary style there are some gems in there)
Feist's first series (Riftwar saga)
Moorcock's Eternal Champion stuff (esp. Elric/Corum)
Fritz Leiber's 'Swords' stuff
Dying Earth
Most of the works of REH
Some Forgotten Realms stuff (Empires trilogy was fun as was Maztica)

For more Horror-oriented stuff: Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea and Zothique stories

A veritable plethora of lesser S&S/epic stuff, some cheesy-but-fun (War of Powers comes to mind - and that's ignoring the soft porn bits...)

Lighter-hearted stuff includes Incompleat Enchanter series

Turn-offs: Thieves World (after the first few stories anyway - D-U-L-L!)
Any of the Myth-series (I found them annoying and trying too hard to be witty, rather than actually being amusing).

[Eosin]

History, all kinds of lovely stranger then fiction history.

A Song of Ice & Fire
Wheel of Time
Everything Gemmel
LotR Movies
Star Wars

Dozens of game books that inspire insanely cool ideas.
Birthright
7th Sea
MERP
Dark Ages WOD
Pendragon

A smidge of Cthulu mythos and DEMON makes everything taste better.

The list could be far more comprehensive but this is 80% of the inspiration I need. The rest is oddball, "Wow, this is a cool town I am driving through. I could use a town like this in Kromwall. The river could be...."

[Lord Mhoram]

Books:
Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
Belgariad/Mallorian
Feist's First series (Riftwar saga)

Books who's feel I specifically avoid -
Fafrd Grey Mouser stuff
Conan
Elric (pretty much anything by Moorcock)


REH, Black Company, Fafhrd, and Thieves World are all pretty close to the feel I'm shooting for. Yes, I am a big S&S fan. I really like the Elric books but could never play such a high-powered game in FH.

Anti-influences are juvenile fiction like the Belgariad and Belgariad II, and whiny angstfests like Thomas Covenant. But you knew that.

More evidence that Old Man and I should never get near each other, as we would cause a matter/anti-matter explosion that would destroy the planet. :)

[shadowcat1313]

for me as far as fantasy writing goes:
Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
Song of Ice and Fire

I tend to borrow a lot of influences from other game universes. I am looking at running a campaign based on the World of Khaas setting for the old Arduin Grimoire system.

my last AD&D campaign was a mix of first and second edition, with a modified rolemaster crit system and a few other things like healing herbs, with elements of old Arduin and set in the Arduin universe.

[jtelson]

Guy Gavriel Kay
Kenneth Hite
A laundry list of epics (Ramayana, Illiad & Odyssey, The Bible, Epic of Gilgamesh etc)
Terry Pratchett

[CTaylor]

Everything I encounter, fantasy related or not goes into the bin and I shuffle through it and bring together the elements and concepts I like. I love new material and influences, the only kind I don't care for is stuff like Terry Pratchett where he essentially mocks the fantasy genre. Fantasy is absurd enough without needing to be satirized.

[Nolgroth]

D&D in general. Parts of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms. I always prefer to use my own NPCs anyway, so I basically ignore the very existence of published characters and their actions.

Lord of the Rings (the granddaddy of inspiration in almost everything I do)

Wheel of Time (magic system and history /lore)

Ars Magica / Mage the Ascension (for spontaneous magic)

Song of Fire and Ice (As much as I hate the hopelessness, Martin writes a pretty mean court intrigue story.)

Fantasy HERO. Yes, it has provided me with some pretty useful material. Both editions.

[Theron]

It depends on the sub-genre

Sword & Sorcery:
Howard's Conan and Kull (no one else's)
Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser
Elric
Kane

Grotty, "Realistic" Fantasy:
A Song of Ice & Fire
The Malazan Books of the Fallen
The Black Company

Shiny Fantasy:
Three Hearts & Three Lions
Le Morte d'Arthur
The 80s Forgotten Realms comics (really)

[Clonus]

The last time I played D&D I used Solomon Kane as the model for my Paladin.

[Old Man]

More evidence that Old Man and I should never get near each other, as we would cause a matter/anti-matter explosion that would destroy the planet. :)

Just the planet? ;)

[Curufea]

The Anglosaxon Chronicle.
Tolkien (more the Silmarillion than the Lord of the Rings).
A Song of Ice and Fire (and to some extent the 100 years war and the War of the Roses).
Machiavelli.
ORB (The Medieval Online Reference Book).
Fantasy Hero 2nd ed - Western Shores setting.
Shakespeare.
Guy Gavriel Kay.
Various Norse myths - but not the Sagas to any great degree.

[Doc Democracy]

Hmm. I love background characters that perform small but important tasks in the world shaking events around them. As such I'd have to say that my games most resemble

Drawing of the Dark (Tim Powers)
Ash (Mary Gentle)

I enjoy reading some High Fantasy but so much prefer less grandiose stuff and have found myself drifting more often to SF which comes in a single book rather than a trilogy of them.


Doc

[PhilFleischmann]

Everything I have ever experienced in life informs everything I do, including fantasy gaming. I use stuff from all over the place, in other words. The best lies are 99% truth; and what is gaming but an extended consensual lie?
I have to echo these sentiments, but to give some specific examples of stuff that I've found most useful/inspiring:

Traditional mythology/fairy tales (primarily European)
The Book of Wierd (I don't remember the author's name off hand. It was a "lexicon of the fantastical" - a "dictionary" of sorts, rather than a novel, but it really captured a lot of the feel of fantasy worlds that I like.)
Oz (There's a whole series of Baum books that most people aren't aware of. I've only read a few, but I find they really break the mold of what is often seen in FRPGs, and I like that.)
Narnia
Pile (by Brian Aldriss, IIRC)
Movies such as Labyrinth, Princess Bride, The Dark Crystal, and other Low Fantasy and Cross-Worlds Fantasy sources

And YAFA (I wonder how well-known that abbreviation is. That's how it was presented to me, as if it was an acronym that "everyone" knew.) "Yet Another Fantasy Adventure" - a collective amatuer writing (often of varying quality). I participated in one and it was a lot of fun, but it ended rather abruptly, like they suddenly ran out of film. "OK, they kill the bad guy. The End." In fact the FH world that I GM is based on that particular story.

[MorpheousXO]

Well, my setting has inspirations from DnD, Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, Exalted (and various other White Wolf RPGs), WoW, Druaga no To aegis of uruk, and Malazan Book of the Fallen, amoungst other little tidbits from this and that that I can't quite put my finger on.

[Enforcer84]

DnD, Video games, movies, comics, pretty much everything.
But mostly the first two. :D

[teh bunneh]

One of my fantasy worlds was sort of a weird blend of Warhammer 40k and the Western Shores setting.

Yeah, seriously. :straight:

[Old Man]

Actually that doesn't seem odd to me at all. Both are similarly laid out geographically and share the one-nation-per-culture trait.

[teh bunneh]

WH40k, not WHFB. :)

[Old Man]

That does make it a bit more strange.