I'm a fan of surreal, new weird fiction and post-Lovecraft cosmic horror. I also get lots of inspiration from other RPGs. I'm an unofficial evangelist for Monte Cook Games, and their Invisible Sun (which is currently crowdfunding for a third printing), amazes with creativity. A few video game settings have me at the moment, including the Alan Wake/Control and Dishonored universes. I was also sent down a wormhole after watching the German Netflix series, Dark. I've also been meaning to adapt some ideas from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Monstress, written by Sana Takeda and Marjorie Liu, which is brilliant and beautifully crafted.
Sadly I read a lot of Paranormal romance.. it has a lot of Free loss leaders to series. And currently trying to work on a psi-crystal based Cyber-punk. Master-crystal, and slave crystals, can act as manual switches. energy transfer switches, and impression storage.
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Itinerant Deputy Shire-reave Tomas Burrfoot - world walker, Raft-captain, speaker to his dead
Toddy Shelfungus- Rider of the Order of Ill Luck, Speaker to Friends of Friends, and Horribly big nosed
Jarl Archi of Jenisis Glade Fee- Noble Knight of the Dragonborn Goldcrest Clan, Sorcerer of the Noble Investigator;y; Knightly order of the Wolfhound
Everything and anything I read or watch, but honestly I get much of my inspiration from reality.
I'm in the "anything and everything" camp.
For a campaign I've been running I started with a session inspired by various "infiltrate big fancy party" sessions I've seen in Critical Role, but with an action movie finale (whole building exploded, because why not?).
I then ran a tense airship ride in an unnatural fog loosely based on The Mist (movie, I'm not familiar with the book) with something unseen wreaking havoc. After the airship crashed there was then a later encounter which was a classic western-style "Mexican stand-off" but with two other adventuring parties, only one of which has the item they're all after.
Most recently I've run a spooky halloween horror house adventure inside Mordencai's Mansion (in Baldur's Gate) featuring an encounter with "the Twins", which I loosely based on Bobsy & Topsy from Lovecraft Country (TV show, as again I haven't read the book) which I made even more horrible by splitting the party on either side of a door, and each half of the party only had one member who could actually see the Twin that was attacking them. Made them really challenging for the party to fight despite the Twins individually being weak; they would have also possessed their target and manifested physically (visible to everyone) had I not rolled like total crap for their attacks (~80% chance to hit on three attacks each, so of course they hit once per turn).
I've also used Zork Nemesis as inspiration for a lot of my puzzles; it's a great old point and click adventure game that I still love, but nobody else in my group has played.
I just pull inspiration from anything; I've been watching a lot of UK Taskmaster (game show with Greg Davies and Alex Horne, the New Zealand version is also good) and I'm almost certainly going to end up basing a puzzle or something on one of the tasks for a sillier session.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Have to also say I pull from pretty much everything, but I will also do more focused "research" for a specific campaign. My next campaign in the works will be fey-based and the initial spark came from Catherynne Valente's Fairyland series. Once I established I wanted to base the setting on fairy tales and wanted a whimsical but also potentially dark atmosphere, I started compiling some references:
Old, definitive fairytales like Undine and Ramanya
Classics like Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka
All of Neil Gaiman's stuff
Also since there is a lot of literary work analyzing fairy tales, I read some papers that talked about the defining elements of the genre - what makes a story feel like a fairy tale? It's important for me to stay "on theme," so this gives me a list of things to look at when I design an adventure, or things to tweak if I'm adapting an idea from elsewhere.
From there, I've kept a running document and I'll jot things down whenever I get an idea from books, movies, shows, video games, music, online forums, or anything else that feels like what I'm going for.
I use films for adventures, myths, legends, fables, and folklore for setting stuff, and I even have a full list of what I drew from that is so long when I credited it in the lore book I had to go to authors, not book titles. And it is still five and half pages long. Book titles would simply triple that.
I cross genres -- I've used mystery and horror, Law and Order and Anime, paranormal fantasy and hard scifi, comedy and spy movies.
Indeed, if anything, I would say the thing I am least likely to use is existing Heroic/Epic/Typical fantasy works. Second least likely is anything from a published D&D setting.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
For example, my PCs recently found a McGuffin for a sub-plot I intend to run through the next few dozen sessions of my campaign. This one McGuffin takes inspiration from the Ramayana, Lord of the Rings, Cold-War era Soviet Research projects, and one of Glynn Stewart's space opera series... and that's just for starters.
Basically, I take inspiration from anything that sticks in my mind for any length of time.
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What are the best books, websites, games ect. that are not related to dnd that you take a lot of inspiration from?
Everything and anything I read or watch, but honestly I get much of my inspiration from reality.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'm a fan of surreal, new weird fiction and post-Lovecraft cosmic horror. I also get lots of inspiration from other RPGs. I'm an unofficial evangelist for Monte Cook Games, and their Invisible Sun (which is currently crowdfunding for a third printing), amazes with creativity. A few video game settings have me at the moment, including the Alan Wake/Control and Dishonored universes. I was also sent down a wormhole after watching the German Netflix series, Dark. I've also been meaning to adapt some ideas from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Monstress, written by Sana Takeda and Marjorie Liu, which is brilliant and beautifully crafted.
Sadly I read a lot of Paranormal romance.. it has a lot of Free loss leaders to series.
And currently trying to work on a psi-crystal based Cyber-punk.
Master-crystal, and slave crystals, can act as manual switches. energy transfer switches, and impression storage.
Itinerant Deputy Shire-reave Tomas Burrfoot - world walker, Raft-captain, speaker to his dead
Toddy Shelfungus- Rider of the Order of Ill Luck, Speaker to Friends of Friends, and Horribly big nosed
Jarl Archi of Jenisis Glade Fee- Noble Knight of the Dragonborn Goldcrest Clan, Sorcerer of the Noble Investigator;y; Knightly order of the Wolfhound
I'm in the "anything and everything" camp.
For a campaign I've been running I started with a session inspired by various "infiltrate big fancy party" sessions I've seen in Critical Role, but with an action movie finale (whole building exploded, because why not?).
I then ran a tense airship ride in an unnatural fog loosely based on The Mist (movie, I'm not familiar with the book) with something unseen wreaking havoc. After the airship crashed there was then a later encounter which was a classic western-style "Mexican stand-off" but with two other adventuring parties, only one of which has the item they're all after.
Most recently I've run a spooky halloween horror house adventure inside Mordencai's Mansion (in Baldur's Gate) featuring an encounter with "the Twins", which I loosely based on Bobsy & Topsy from Lovecraft Country (TV show, as again I haven't read the book) which I made even more horrible by splitting the party on either side of a door, and each half of the party only had one member who could actually see the Twin that was attacking them. Made them really challenging for the party to fight despite the Twins individually being weak; they would have also possessed their target and manifested physically (visible to everyone) had I not rolled like total crap for their attacks (~80% chance to hit on three attacks each, so of course they hit once per turn).
I've also used Zork Nemesis as inspiration for a lot of my puzzles; it's a great old point and click adventure game that I still love, but nobody else in my group has played.
I just pull inspiration from anything; I've been watching a lot of UK Taskmaster (game show with Greg Davies and Alex Horne, the New Zealand version is also good) and I'm almost certainly going to end up basing a puzzle or something on one of the tasks for a sillier session.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Have to also say I pull from pretty much everything, but I will also do more focused "research" for a specific campaign. My next campaign in the works will be fey-based and the initial spark came from Catherynne Valente's Fairyland series. Once I established I wanted to base the setting on fairy tales and wanted a whimsical but also potentially dark atmosphere, I started compiling some references:
Also since there is a lot of literary work analyzing fairy tales, I read some papers that talked about the defining elements of the genre - what makes a story feel like a fairy tale? It's important for me to stay "on theme," so this gives me a list of things to look at when I design an adventure, or things to tweak if I'm adapting an idea from elsewhere.
From there, I've kept a running document and I'll jot things down whenever I get an idea from books, movies, shows, video games, music, online forums, or anything else that feels like what I'm going for.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
1 word
anime
Star Trek, or trying to.
Another in the Anything and Everything crowd.
I use films for adventures, myths, legends, fables, and folklore for setting stuff, and I even have a full list of what I drew from that is so long when I credited it in the lore book I had to go to authors, not book titles. And it is still five and half pages long. Book titles would simply triple that.
I cross genres -- I've used mystery and horror, Law and Order and Anime, paranormal fantasy and hard scifi, comedy and spy movies.
Indeed, if anything, I would say the thing I am least likely to use is existing Heroic/Epic/Typical fantasy works. Second least likely is anything from a published D&D setting.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Anything, and everything--and then some.
For example, my PCs recently found a McGuffin for a sub-plot I intend to run through the next few dozen sessions of my campaign. This one McGuffin takes inspiration from the Ramayana, Lord of the Rings, Cold-War era Soviet Research projects, and one of Glynn Stewart's space opera series... and that's just for starters.
Basically, I take inspiration from anything that sticks in my mind for any length of time.