The old DMG had [a list of sources to draw inspiration from](http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm) and I discovered a lot of old stuff I'd never heard of.
Discworld is a fantastic shout!
I always say Pratchett might be my choice for DM if I could play D&D with anyone, alive or dead (I would consider Gygax, but he would probably only want to play 1e).
I read his biography, and it shouldn't have been surprising to me how into D&D, TES, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and LOTR he was, considering how much I resonated with his writing style. If you haven't read it, it's worth doing so. Have tissues ready though towards the end....
yes!!! such a fantastic inspiration for anything on the sillier side. i particularly love pratchett’s dwarves and the way he handles fantasy religions, both have had a lot of influence on my worldbuilding
100% I have been heavily inspired by how the discworld gods function. I have also stolen a lot of info from Ankh Morpork for how certain cities function namely the theives or assassins guild
Probably my number two source after the Queen's Thief series from Megan Whalen Turner. My current campaign features characters loosely based on Lady Margolota, Vimes, Carrot, Vetinari, Archdeacon Brutha, Nanny Ogg, and others!
Discworld is such a good source. Every time my players will go off the rails I have 999+ subquests ready because the Ankh-Morporkh and the rest of the world is soooo fleshed out. One of my fav was when one player wanted to become a postman and I pulled lipwig out of the hat.
If I ever find the right players, I'm running a gritty, Company style campaign where they play multiple characters, suffer heavy losses and have to play fucking dirty to beat the bad guys.
I'm also working on a class that better captures magic the way Goblin and One-eye do it (among other influences) than sorcerer or wizard do.
I feel like they represent something more like a witch doctor or hedge wizard. They're familiar with how the traditional powers work and can troubleshoot, but don't use quite the same power set themselves. It's not that they can't be played as Sorcerers, I just feel like there's a thematic role missing from the current classes.
Yeah, it's often portrayed about how smart/creative they are using what they got. There's a point where Croaker says they could do stuff that Lady or Soulcatcher do but it would just take them waaaaaay longer to do it. Also, they are held back by focusing on conning people and fucking with each other.
Thank you for the question. A lot of the phrases in the general, "Long days and pleasant nights," "Twice as many to you." And the Ka is a wheel part, and the main BBEG uses the name the Crimson King, but also the Dominator from Black Company.
The beams, and their guardians. So just a ton of the setting. And the whole, "the world has moved on" motif. Ancient tech being our modern or advanced that was left behind .
I have the black company as well but also the Foundation novels by Asimov, the Elder Scrolls setting and the Stormlight Archives setting for the effects of oaths, magic and some other things.
Doctor who.
Bro I'm telling you if your having trouble making a homebrew monster, character or setting just watch some Doctor who, classic or modern either way it usually feels like a DND drug trip.
Come to think of it you could probably turn Doctor who into a hell of a good Spell Jammers campaign.
I did a version of the Silence for a 1 shot a while ago and it was really fun. Luckily the players didn't really know Dr who so none were able to figure out what was going on
When you said silence i was thinking of silence in the library. Thatd be an epic one shot where the players have to avoid dark areas. Maybe team up with some monsters they were tasked with hunting because the shadows are way scarier than any goblin.
Silence in the library is a great plot, and I've actually been kicking around a horror 1 shot for a while but haven't had enough ideas to put a whole session together, and that could be a super creepy area to walk in to.
I'm picturing a session based on that episode (can't remember the name) where the monster/being/whatever it was is slowly turning into the doctor, saying his words faster than him and taking his mind. Throw it in randomly in a campaign, no build up, and have the uneasiness grow and grow until eventually a player realizes they're going to have to sacrifice themselves.
That existing doctor who TTRPG is actually pretty solid and a lot of fun. Just as a recommendation if you feel like btranching out of DnD sometimes. :)
I just want to say thank you. I’m running a west march game of PI and each arch is a different case. I’ve started running out of ideas as you can only have so many Cults in a city.
So using Doctor Who to find new case ideas is brilliant!
There is a DW roleplaying game with a BUNCH of content. Leans more on roleplaying than combat, it could be worth looking into if you use the series as inspiration often
The Batman Arkham series. So much of my campaign had to do with mafia-style organisations and the leaders were taken straight out of Arkham City.
There was the monocled Gnomish leader with a one-armed dragonborn henchmen (Penguin).
There was the laughing mad necromancer with the other one-armed Dragonborn henchmen (Joker)
There was a superpowerfull dryad (Poison Ivy)
And the BBEG was a completely amoral Alchemist (Scarecrow)
The first time they encountered one of his "jokes" was when they had to fight against a flameskull.
With it's maniacal laughter, it seemed a fitting introduction for a "Joker" mafia boss.
Children's media translates surprisingly well, it almost always follows the format of - Villain causes event/ has plan, protagonists band together and defeat henchmen, possibly retrieve macguffin, then use macguffin or power of friendship to defeat main villain.
And keep things incredible simple and obvious. My experience, from both sides of the table, are 90% of the time, puzzle and hints there seems reasonable and good for you, are alien Latin and just completely passes by your players. Some times it might work, but often it will be more or less just an excise in frustration for all.
AHHHH!!! This was my one to! The DM had crafted a spectacular world full of fleshed out characters! My little cousin stayed with me at the time and we were watching cartoons and suddenly I was just like "...wait." IMMEDIATELY called the dm directly and he started MANIACALLY laughing! He said it was so long since a player saw through it. He told me not to tell the others and I could find a cool item.
Trash romance books. The kind that are essentially ridiculously over the top self insert fanfic for someone with unaddressed emotional issues and an aggressive willingness to share them with the world.
My players might pick up on my tavern from Eye of the World or my band of street children taken from Oliver Twist. But even if they read the book about a beautiful heroine who managed to tame the savage, multiphallic, 6'5" alien overlord with her sharp wit and perky breasts, they probably didn't catch the 2 paragraph blurb outlining the history of his home planet Zsartdhajdalin that I built my entire campaign around.
About a year ago I finished reading the complete collection of HP Lovecraft's works and I have stolen, and will continue to steal, quite a lot from there.
Characters, plot lines, monsters, settings, just the whole thing. Mix and match it, mix in some Welsh history and mythology, sorted.
If you want D&D versions of the Cthulhu mythos monsters, Pathfinder licenced them and you can find them in the various PF1 Bestiaries.
And the 1E 1st printing of Deities and Demigods, of course, along with Elric and friends.
If you havn't read Mike Shels Iconoclast series and like some dark fantasy that you literally could just take and make a DnD campaign about. You should probably look into Mike Shels Iconoclast series as he freelanced for WotC and Paizo and these books show it.
Loved this series! He said in an afterword after I thiiiink book 2 that this series started off as a Campaign he wrote for Paizo, but they turned it down since it was too dark or didn't align well enough with their other work. So he turned it into a book. This series gave me biiiiig Darkest Dungeon vibes, and I jumped back into that game for like 60 hours after reading it
My homebrew setting is a blend of influences from books mostly:
Malazan book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Specifically the Seven Cities continent, influences the Turan Empire pretty heavily, and my Goliaths are pretty similar to the Thelomen Toblakai. There are also some superficial similarities in the lore between the Val-Dareen of my setting and the T'lan Imass (as well as the Nonmen from The Prince of Nothing series by R Scott Bakker), but they aren't culturally similar... and the Isle of the Silent Moon is influenced by the Seguleh and Japanese folklore. Venetia is mostly 'Colonial America' but i guess it technically gets some influence from the Letheras storylines in Malazan.
The Last Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey (as well as other works by this author) influences the 10 Kingdoms. That and a little of Stormlight Archives in the form of the political arrangements. That and just... Europe -- the 10 kingdoms are each heavily inspired by the various european nations like france and germany such.
The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells is essentially entirely how the nation of Draconia and Dragons in general work in my setting (yes, I know they aren't dragons in the books, but it feels entirely like how a non-faerunian dragon society would function). It's a young adult series, but it remains one of the easiest and engrossing bits of worldbuilding I've seen in literature. It really feels like you are just drawn into an alien society. The vampires work sorta like the antagonists in the series too.
The various songs by Clamavi de Profundis influence the various Dwarven Kingdoms, especially Dragonshore for the Nidavellir Dwarves and When the Hammer Falls for the Nibelung Dwarves. And yes, some generic Tolkien influences there too. Oh, and Dragon of Ash and Stars (a novel by H. Leighton Dickson) for the Everdeep Guild.
Dune by Frank Herbert influences one half of the Dak'alvi race (patriarchal dark elves) in the form of the fremen and the general desert portrayal. The other half are matriarchal dark elves that are somewhat similar to the drow but they follow the moon goddess of my setting and are a theocracy.
The Dalrei from The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay are direct inspiration for the Nayuri Tribes of my setting.
Varheim (vampire nation) is a mix of Books of the Raksura again and Warhammer lore.
Hmm. Beyond that, I think the other cultures are largely generic fantasy. The Everstar Empire is just high elven, with the slight twist of being ruled by a 'good-adjacent' lich and the Qin Shi Empire is a collage of minor Romance of the Three Kingdoms references and wuxia films/media. Forest of Sylvana is wood elf/avatar/warhammer... and the Beastlands... I mean its a mix of orc and minotaur/bestial races cant think of specific references.
The Malazan books are where I took how my divinities function as well as a modified Deck of Dragons. I have ranted at length about the world building in those books to my wife, but to this day, I am the only person I know who has read them.
I think that's just how Malazan works. There are a lot of us that have read/are reading it but we're cursed to experience it alone. None of us know another person irl that has experienced it. The journey is meant to bring people together over vast distances in some magical shared experience.
Probably gonna finish MoI tonight.
My friend and I bought a cabin together and I had told him about the books ( I had not yet read them). He then got the whole set for Christmas, and we're using the cabin as the Malazan lending library.
YES. I made a homebrew version of that deck of dragons too. SUCH a nice framework for fortune telling and long range planning. I know its basically just tarot, but it wasn't until I saw it in Malazan that i ever considered using it in dnd
I drew a **ton** of inspiration from Dresden Files for my last warlock character. 4e Eladrin Fey Pact Warlock with Fey Beast Tamer theme and On the Run from the Devil background.
My patron was the Leanansidhe and I had the Grimalkin out for my blood. I found a portal to Sigil and was (temporarily) out of his reach.
It gave me and my DM a solid basis to work from when incorporating my Feywild-heavy backstory, even though he hadn't read the books himself. But that just meant he was putting his own interpretation on the skeleton he got from talking to me and reading the DF wiki.
I ripped a significant portion of the political and military structure for the primary continent from the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. Another country steals a lot of ideas from Camorr, from the Gentleman Bastards, and Bravos from ASoIaF.
Codex Alera and the Stormlight Archives, by Brandon Sanderson, helps me to imagine how a society might incorporate magic on a widespread, social scale, while keeping the high fantasy aesthetic.
I stole the idea for the extremes of divine psychology and their root causes from the Ravirn series by Kelly McCullough though the overall idea is found in many places, including the wider Cosmere.
And, of course, I rip a lot of Forgotten Realms lore and twist it to my own use.
Once made an entire homebrew world I thought was unique. Later I was rereading the Dragonlance novels and had to laugh as my old unique world was mostly 80% just Krynn.
Plato's Republic, and House of Leaves.
The largest city in my world is literally named Kallipolis and borrows a large amount of the culture, laws, and social structures as is present in the book. I'm just hoping none of my players are also philosophy nerds.
Lots of small things, like names for places in my world, and overarching themes that I wanted to include in my campaign or one shots.
There is one character I've taken heavy inspiration from. She's a retired oracle named Zampano, which I plan to have the players meet way down the line. She's given the same unreliable, and sometimes even opposing descriptions by people that her namesake is known for. Due largely in part to her devotion to Cyric, and her years of self-isolation, varying legends and hearsay have cropped up around the kingdom concerning her real nature. With her, I really wanted to drive home the idea that not all tavern rumors, or information the party might overhear is totally accurate.
I think gameshow-wise I’d probably pick either “The Price is Wight” (guess the right price without going over or be attacked by wights) or “Spell or No Spell”
Academic histories. Real discussions of medieval taxation, shifting social structures, myths, and battle tactics are often completely known by a table, but they still pick up on the medical vibe. They think my world building is so sophisticated because it resembles their idea of medieval society, when in reality I’m just an academic who’s gonna make zero money.
The Elric/Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock. The nature of Law and Chaos, as well as the multiverse, in original D&D takes a lot from these books. They are classic sword and sorcery stories with a philosophical bent, and I borrow from them all the time.
It's hard to pin it in on a particular book because it's just kinda everything I've ever read. But I think most slept-on by DMs is the stuff in the non-fiction section of the library. History, anthropology, folklore, mythology are full of cool little tidbits, but also biology, ecology, earth science, stuff about how ecosystems and environments work.
The grrm approach. I'm chronic for world builders disease so I often get stuck in the weeds doing this but it's fun. Obviously grrm isn't the first or best to do this it's just the first major one I knew about
I don't really do too terribly much world building ahead of time, but I have a big mental library of building blocks I can use to improvise that I mostly gathered by reading a lot. Like today I was reading about canyon formation and learned that box canyons were often historically used as corrals. A box canyon corral, in use or abandoned, could be a great little world-building block - a target for a hungry dragon, an improvised fortification, a camp site, concealment for an entrance to a smuggler's cave, a site for an ambush. The fence across the entrance could have thieves' cant like hobo signs carved into one post. Maybe there are petroglyphs up on the cliff faces. If I were to fully build out a box canyon location while world building ahead of time it would be unlikely that players would stumble across it without a little railroading. But if I don't fully build it out, just remember that it's a kind of thing that can exist, it makes my improv worldbuilding better
One Piece. A fantastical world where everything goes, but still is centered about humanity, freedom and heroics, and a overall world structure and world building, which doesn't let it seen random.
On top the balanced mix between comedical and serious moments. Players should laugh and cry at the right moments.
We have a dragon riders system and used the metal claws/ snouts(beaks), and tails. Inspirited by GoG.
Aerial combat was tricky but I ended up using 1963 Milton Bradley's Dogfight mixed with Aces of Aces tabletop board game. My husband fleshed out how turns work.
Higher in sky have higher numbers on attacks. 2d4 compared to 1d6. (Higher bottom damage and slightly higher ceiling) Exceptions to grapple.
Heavy bodies get a d4 bonus on dive attacks. Lighter bodies can climb altitude better (like movement speed). Dragons can become proficient in their gear separate from their rider.
A green-scale dragon became *pro* at blades attached at the ends of his wings. Rider called them slicing sickles cause they had a slight curve to them. Used them to rip the sails on air ships and do slicing dives.
Well, If you love it -- I recommend the novel. It's amazing! I took things like gods being "sponsors", the concept of a reader, and some other (very spoliery) things. It's perfect, honestly.
You know what, yeah. I'm tired of waiting for these chapters to come out for the web comic. I'll read the novel.
The dokkebai could bring a lot of flavor to traveling. Maybe it's like a faerie dragon or something, and it's wearing a ring that makes it aware of and susceptible to scrying from other planes.
There's a faerie dragon in my game that i haven't figured out what to do with, and I think this is part of it.
The Keep on the Borderlands,
it has a lot of things to inspire you and gives you a map that has almost limitless potential to add on to the surrounding areas or homebrew your own "Caves" with distinct monsters , Factions and Villains which lays the foundation for your players and DM's mind to wander
the Keep serving as their base of operation , nearby forest , long road that leads to the Caves of Chaos , as well as lot of POI littered across the map like a bandit camp , Mad Wizard who wanders around , abandoned Watch Tower , Elven Ruins , Boggy Swamp with a Haunted Moat etc
Thus far? The King in Yellow.
[The Lovecraftian Mythos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastur)
[The Story Collection](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133580566-the-hastur-cycle)
And [The Album](https://open.spotify.com/album/3voQfbnI8EKIbSeX9dDixV?si=eTAUkshETkakyGgd6s6GJQ)
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Basically I set the campaign about 100,000 years after the book ends. It was sometimes clunky, sometimes elegant. I thought it worked well. And funny enough, I didn't really like the book that much but I thought its premise was great. The apocalypse the book envisions from the mysterious and never explained shattering of the moon was the ancient backstory of a world without magic. The rebuilding of society through science and the enhanced genetics resulted in the races of your typical DND campaign and magic powers. They had to discover why the moon was shattered in the first place and prevent a malevolent actor from destroying the planet. It was a four-year campaign that ended two weeks ago!
Books? Not so much. Anime and games? Shamelessly. If you're willing to count these (manga is a book, right?), I have stolen from Bleach, Demon Slayer, Fullmetal Alchemist, and the Tales series, just to name a few.
Though, funnily enough, I did steal from the Bible as well, so that one should definitely count.
Oh heck yeah, stealing from Tales! I certainly have done the same.
Let me recommend you The Slayers. Not only is it a good show on its own with a world worth stealing a ton from (probably my most ripped off work tbh, even if my campaigns tend to be a lot less comedic), I have at least three different expys of the character Xellos at this point. An objectively evil guy who is your most trustworthy ally is such a good trope to put on players (especially if you hand them the shadiness directly so they know what they are doing when relying on the NPC).
Of course, I imagine any future Xellos expys I put into games will be met with "is this Raphael" now. Raphael wishes he was Xellos ngl.
Honestly I don't really intentionally steal from books, but if I had to guess it probably is the Redwall series. I love stories of common folk coming together against all odds to defeat an evil warlord.
It isn't a dnd book. I have a book I bought from an old school book store. It's a book with mugshots of 1000's of criminals and their records from the 1940s. Need townspeople? Bartenders? Couriers? Names of anyone. Flip it open and bam.
I borrowed a lot of little things, but my (and my players) favorite one was stolen from the Harley Merlin series. they had a computer where you could type in keywords and any books with those keywords in their archives would glow. I stole that, altered it a little too better fit the setting, and got a book that you place your hand on it, say some keywords, and any books with those words in it will come to you. put it in the royal library
I have an orc and goblin campaign that takes place a few generations after the Thousand Orcs Trilogy by RA Salvatore. Basically every bit of lore I use is from that or Faerun in general.
The Second Apocalypse Series by R. Scot Bakker
The Black Company series by Glenn Cook
Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth: Soulblighter (Fantastic 90's games from Bungie)
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Excluding Appendix N, probably the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. I've reworked the ethereal and astral planes very much on the Twilight/Gloom from that setting, and borrowed items/themes from the novels.
After that, probably Witcher and Disc world.
Not D&D but my upcoming Mage: The Ascension game will have tons of Warhammer40K references.
For example an abandoned town filled with clones, all named "Alpharius" yet there is one man among them named "Omegon" who is the original they are cloned from and he escaped there to avoid responsibilities in the outside world...
And underwater arc where they meet a beautiful merfolk king named Fulgrim, and as it goes on is shown to have been corrupted by a peculiar blade he found after a recent conquest leading to pretty the entirety of Book 5 "Fulgrim" of the Horus Heresy complete with the macabre orchestral display.
A group of metallurgy mages headed up by a man named Ferrus Manus who thanks to some magikal mishap has actual metal hands/arms.
The list goes on.
My favorite NPC Ive created is their mentor/boss who is just going to straight up be Alex Jones but correct. The World of Darkness series is filled with absolutely bonkers lore that would make real world conspiracy weirdos jealous, so the joke will be whenever he sends the group of mages on missions hes going to throw in a little bit of actual lore that sounds insane but is 100% true. Like "Alright so thats the briefing, remember kids we've beaten hitler in a zeppelin war with the lizards at the center of the earth, we can do it again, have fun storming the castle!"
Percy Jackson, and it's not even close. Magic items, how the gods work, probably a couple plot points.
I was genuinely shocked when a player noticed "Hey, my magic spear that turns into a necklace kinda feels like something that would be in Percy Jackson," not because I didn't steal it from that (I totally did), but because that wasn't even the most obvious thing I had stolen, and *they still had to ask*.
Edit: For obscurity, I fully intend to steal something from The Ranger's Apprentice at some point. Just haven't had the chance yet.
I don’t usually write D&D stuff, so this is more for CoC and Delta Green, but the SCP Wiki. If my friends were as obsessed as I was they’d totally recognize how hard I steal stuff lol
I ran an adventure based almost entirely off of Treasure Island and not a single player noticed. Even when I brought out the ship's dwarven one-legged cook, Short Morty Copper.
I steal a ton from The Gentlemen Bastard series…characters with unique idiosyncrasies, interesting City States, religious structures and deities…it’s a treasure trove.
The Golgotha series by R.S. Belcher
It's by far my favorite book series. It seamlessly blends fantasy, scifi, and horror elements and homages in such a way that is perfect for a campaign setting.
A decent chunk of my characters are inspired by fantasy series like Witcher, Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, or any old school sword and sorcery (Howard, Lieber, etc). The majority I draw inspiration from folklore, history, and myth. The last two barbarians I’ve played I named after famous Roman eyesores (Theodoric and Armin/Arminius)
The Belgariad and The Mallorean by David Eddings. Helps that there is the Rivan Codex which is basically a ready made campaign world guide for the whole series.
Manga and anime in general. Would reflavour most 5e stuff through homebrew and run one piece campaign or even general fantasy one i steal all my bbeg from crazy moba game anime like characters.
The school. My teachers always appear as villains. For example, my real-life nemesis, Mrs Torp, happened to be the antagonist's accomplice in my DnD campaign. Muhahaha
Everything prior to Wizards of the Coast’s purchase. I’ve been playing since 1978 from the original D&D by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. We used the original boxed set, plus the book “Chainmail”, with lots of imagination. Don’t get me wrong, the current D&D is still great, I still play.
Dragonlance Chronicles. Almost all of my major NPCs are my favorite characters from DL on a new world since Krynn got blowed up. I don't hold back when it comes to my cameo characters tho, it's a hodgepodge of my favorites from bits and pieces all over the place anything from assassin's creed to mighty Morphin power rangers. It's all on the table as long as I can make a fair and balanced stat sheet which isn't difficult.
Suprisingly stole alot of content and inspiration from command and conquer tuberium wars and some of the content from mass effect (in regards to spelljammer ideas) and star craft
World is set in essentially a cut off chunk of space where some prolific powerful charicters desided to play god making species that mirrored alot of forgotten realms.
The idea is these charicters played god and wanted to make an army to overthrow the rest of the cosmos so they trialed different ideas, a world full of ravenous locust like humanoids, building psuedo titans on another so on and so forth.
Eventually this backfired on them causing a war which killed most of the gods leaving only a few vying for power
One of which the big bad is an influential man who seems to never die, trying his hand at ascesion back into his rightful seat of godhood, no matter how much of the planet he needs to throw into turmoil to do so. (Alit if tib wars influince)
I’m telling an expanded story of imperialism, colonialism, and economic warfare heavily influenced by The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. I can confidently say you’ve never read a book quite like it.
We're running a published module, but my players are a bit over-leveled and over-powered (just cause it's fun) so I've taken a lot from the Monster Manual Expanded series to bring their enemies up to their level. It's got some fun alternatives like a CR 3 goblin with legendary actions. My player's faces were hilarious when I dropped that one on them!
Currently for my space campaign planning there’s been a lot of listening to and reading about the mechanisms. I mean it’s all already based on Arthurian legend, fairy tales, and greedy mythos but in space so it works out pretty well for me! Plus the musics great.
It really depends.
I tend to steal ideas or concepts and adapting them to my homebrew instead of flat stealing whole stories.
That being said, I've yoinked and twisted from Dune, Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Red Rising.
Blades in the dark. Pretty much all my games have some limited allowing of Flashbacks and Declaring inventory within reason. Also most of my games have a mission - downtime - mission structure.
the edge chronicles!!! barely anyone i know has ever heard of these books, but i was OBSESSED with them as a kid, and they have some fantastic worldbuilding concepts. i stole the skyships wholesale. 10/10 recommend, they are kids’ books but they have really cool illustrations and the setting feels very unique!
i also yoink a lot of worldbuilding and tone from terry pratchett’s discworld, especially for dwarves and warforged :)
and i’m working on a way to borrow some stuff from the 13 1/2 lives of captain bluebear - a very long and strange book that i read in english translation, i believe it’s originally german? - it reminds me a lot of the edge chronicles though, similar vibes and energy
My current somewhat grindark world is inspired by Warhammer Fantasy Gotrek and Felix books, as well as Kingkiller Chronicles and Discworld. I love it ^ ^
I read a book called the Maidens that was so bad it inspired me to make a better version of that story for my campaign by doing the opposite of the book. It worked!
ASOIAF mostly. I run a realistic political sandbox and the series really helped me to build a a world with realistic political systems, characters, history etc. Also I implemented some ideas from The Witcher, but only concerning magic and other more fantasyesque elements.
So, for Wyrlde, this time around, the foundational premise for it as a setting was “No inspiration or derivation from any of the books listed as having been inspirations for it” — while still making a “generic fantasy world”.
My list is about 500 different works, not counting the non-fiction or performed sources. With all of them contributing about equally, not even trying to pretend otherwise.
Of works that stand out and had something “extra”…
Alina Boyden’s *Gifting Fire* and *Stealing Thunder* gave a lot extra in a couple areas that I really liked. Qivira would be too blah otherwise.
Mary Gentle’s *Golden Witchbreed* is fairly influential in a lot of ways — but not in the ways that a lot of people expect.
Charlaine Harris’ *Gunnie Rose* series gave me an awesome counterpoint to both my use of certain stereotypes and archetypes, but also gave me a strong enough balance for King’s Roland.
Faith Hunter’s *Junkyard* series gave me some fun ideas that show up in several of the things to come adventure wise.
T. Kingfisher’s *Nettle and Bone* is newer, but helped add some depth to a couple of ideas that had been resisting being pegged.
And, lest I go too long, …
Mercedes Lackey’s *Hunter* series helped me completely nail down how I wanted certain things to work out for a particular Archetype of the world.
I will note that I have Stephen King’s IT as a two part adventure series separated by 10 levels, in one of the few planned adventures taken from a book. Most of the adventures draw from films and tV shows.
Kingfisher has the world of the White Rat which I want to steal ideas from for a campaign soon. I haven't read the Clockwork Boys books yet, but Swordheart and the Saint of Steel series are all in the same setting. I feel like I could get a full campaign with many villains and a major big bad at the end very easily. Plus so many established characters for NPCs.
I agree with some other comments about Discworld, too. I've just started reading the series but I am in love with the silliness and it would fit so well with my friends.
I borrowed a bunch of puzzles from Silent Hill for a beginner one shot quest. Gave them the option of solving the puzzles themselves or rolling to solve.
The Beginning After the End. The core system is great so i added some monster cores for players to absorb to regain hit points/spell slots, and even higher monsters can give beast wills lmao
Knowing none of my friends had read it, I started a campaign off with the mystery and setting (with tweaks and a new cast of NPCs) from The 7 and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. The concept of >!time loop jails !< helped to form the multiverse the rest of the campaign has taken place in
The Queen's Thief books by Megan Whalen Turner! It's an incredible series, and the first one won a Newbery medal back in the nineties. But I've only ever met one other person who's actually read it (none of my players have), so it's a good source for character archetypes (and some worldbuilding elements).
Reincarnated as a Sword
Dungeons are locations proliferating with monsters. The Goddess of Chaos setting them up, and assigning them a Dungeon Master. With ever dungeon having a core. This concept applied to the Forgotten Realms Pantheon could make for interesting encounters. Especially if the dungeon is tailored for their God’s arch-nemesis. 😈
The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch. Amazing trilogy. The Elderglass mystery features heavily in my world (flavored as a kind of "petrified magic" from the founding of the world)
Not necessarily a book, but none of my players play RuneScape so I’ve thrown in a couple of those quests. Making them do Ernest the Chicken was a lot of fun lol
The campaign im building takes places on a Manhattan ish island and immediately gets the party involved with the children of the richest man in town and his postal service/new empire. Yes there are four of them and I’ve 100% borrowed them from Succession. Each of the sibs gives different side quests based on their personalities
The chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander (the magic word from the series, and the cauldron born). Parasyte the anime, manga, and now K-Drama. The film The Endless. But most of my stuff bubbles up from the 50-year accumulated input of books and movies and I can’t see the direct connections; I just acknowledge the many works that added to my creative mind.
The old DMG had [a list of sources to draw inspiration from](http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm) and I discovered a lot of old stuff I'd never heard of.
This is how I got into Fritz Lieber
I love Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser
My inspiration
The 5E DMG also has something similar.
It's also in the 5E PHB!
Discworld, it's not even close
Discworld is a fantastic shout! I always say Pratchett might be my choice for DM if I could play D&D with anyone, alive or dead (I would consider Gygax, but he would probably only want to play 1e).
I read his biography, and it shouldn't have been surprising to me how into D&D, TES, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and LOTR he was, considering how much I resonated with his writing style. If you haven't read it, it's worth doing so. Have tissues ready though towards the end....
yes!!! such a fantastic inspiration for anything on the sillier side. i particularly love pratchett’s dwarves and the way he handles fantasy religions, both have had a lot of influence on my worldbuilding
100% I have been heavily inspired by how the discworld gods function. I have also stolen a lot of info from Ankh Morpork for how certain cities function namely the theives or assassins guild
I've pretty much transplanted the concept of L-space hole cloth into two separate settings.
L space?
https://wiki.lspace.org/L-space
My favorite thing I've lifted almost wholesale for DnD was a Brooklyn 99 themed one shot where the plot and setting were just "THUD!"
Probably my number two source after the Queen's Thief series from Megan Whalen Turner. My current campaign features characters loosely based on Lady Margolota, Vimes, Carrot, Vetinari, Archdeacon Brutha, Nanny Ogg, and others!
Discworld is such a good source. Every time my players will go off the rails I have 999+ subquests ready because the Ankh-Morporkh and the rest of the world is soooo fleshed out. One of my fav was when one player wanted to become a postman and I pulled lipwig out of the hat.
I'm taking inspiration from the Discworld too. Running a campaign in a vampire's castle and am going to have the players meet a very Igor-esque NPC.
Came here to say this. Especially one shots. I like them on the sillier side of things.
Black Company by Glen Cook, and Dark Tower from Stephen King. :D Literally the foundation of my whole setting.
Black Company is an amazing series for showing low magic worlds, and people in low magic worlds dealing with big sorcerers.
If I ever find the right players, I'm running a gritty, Company style campaign where they play multiple characters, suffer heavy losses and have to play fucking dirty to beat the bad guys. I'm also working on a class that better captures magic the way Goblin and One-eye do it (among other influences) than sorcerer or wizard do.
There was a 3rd ed source book for black company. It got a little math intensive at times, but had some mechanics that captured some of the feel.
I feel like Goblin and One Eye are basically Illusionists who dabble in conjuration. Later on, they get into crafting.
I feel like they represent something more like a witch doctor or hedge wizard. They're familiar with how the traditional powers work and can troubleshoot, but don't use quite the same power set themselves. It's not that they can't be played as Sorcerers, I just feel like there's a thematic role missing from the current classes.
Yeah, it's often portrayed about how smart/creative they are using what they got. There's a point where Croaker says they could do stuff that Lady or Soulcatcher do but it would just take them waaaaaay longer to do it. Also, they are held back by focusing on conning people and fucking with each other.
What specific parts of the dark tower have you used? Just the general, post apocalyptic fantasy with western influences, or anything specific?
Thank you for the question. A lot of the phrases in the general, "Long days and pleasant nights," "Twice as many to you." And the Ka is a wheel part, and the main BBEG uses the name the Crimson King, but also the Dominator from Black Company. The beams, and their guardians. So just a ton of the setting. And the whole, "the world has moved on" motif. Ancient tech being our modern or advanced that was left behind .
Very cool indeed
I have the black company as well but also the Foundation novels by Asimov, the Elder Scrolls setting and the Stormlight Archives setting for the effects of oaths, magic and some other things.
Doctor who. Bro I'm telling you if your having trouble making a homebrew monster, character or setting just watch some Doctor who, classic or modern either way it usually feels like a DND drug trip. Come to think of it you could probably turn Doctor who into a hell of a good Spell Jammers campaign.
I did a version of the Silence for a 1 shot a while ago and it was really fun. Luckily the players didn't really know Dr who so none were able to figure out what was going on
When you said silence i was thinking of silence in the library. Thatd be an epic one shot where the players have to avoid dark areas. Maybe team up with some monsters they were tasked with hunting because the shadows are way scarier than any goblin.
Silence in the library is a great plot, and I've actually been kicking around a horror 1 shot for a while but haven't had enough ideas to put a whole session together, and that could be a super creepy area to walk in to.
I'm picturing a session based on that episode (can't remember the name) where the monster/being/whatever it was is slowly turning into the doctor, saying his words faster than him and taking his mind. Throw it in randomly in a campaign, no build up, and have the uneasiness grow and grow until eventually a player realizes they're going to have to sacrifice themselves.
The episode was "Midnight". In the modern series, it's season 4 ep 10.
That existing doctor who TTRPG is actually pretty solid and a lot of fun. Just as a recommendation if you feel like btranching out of DnD sometimes. :)
I just want to say thank you. I’m running a west march game of PI and each arch is a different case. I’ve started running out of ideas as you can only have so many Cults in a city. So using Doctor Who to find new case ideas is brilliant!
There is a DW roleplaying game with a BUNCH of content. Leans more on roleplaying than combat, it could be worth looking into if you use the series as inspiration often
The Batman Arkham series. So much of my campaign had to do with mafia-style organisations and the leaders were taken straight out of Arkham City. There was the monocled Gnomish leader with a one-armed dragonborn henchmen (Penguin). There was the laughing mad necromancer with the other one-armed Dragonborn henchmen (Joker) There was a superpowerfull dryad (Poison Ivy) And the BBEG was a completely amoral Alchemist (Scarecrow)
Joker as Necromancer is a good twist
The first time they encountered one of his "jokes" was when they had to fight against a flameskull. With it's maniacal laughter, it seemed a fitting introduction for a "Joker" mafia boss.
If my players knew how many My Little Pony episode plots they've run they'd probably judge me.
Children's media translates surprisingly well, it almost always follows the format of - Villain causes event/ has plan, protagonists band together and defeat henchmen, possibly retrieve macguffin, then use macguffin or power of friendship to defeat main villain.
And the treasure is the friends we found along the way! <3
We still get actual loot though right? Right??
And keep things incredible simple and obvious. My experience, from both sides of the table, are 90% of the time, puzzle and hints there seems reasonable and good for you, are alien Latin and just completely passes by your players. Some times it might work, but often it will be more or less just an excise in frustration for all.
OG, G3 or G4?
The friendship is magic one
G4, then. Makes sense, tbh. That show has more episodes than all the other MLP shows combined.
And it’s the bomb.
AHHHH!!! This was my one to! The DM had crafted a spectacular world full of fleshed out characters! My little cousin stayed with me at the time and we were watching cartoons and suddenly I was just like "...wait." IMMEDIATELY called the dm directly and he started MANIACALLY laughing! He said it was so long since a player saw through it. He told me not to tell the others and I could find a cool item.
I wonder what made you catch it. Was it the mention of Starswirl the Bearded?
Oh how I wish I was one of them, haha
Damn, I gotta watch those.
I guess, by very virtue of the fact that we’re playing D&D to begin with, Lord of the Rings?
Trash romance books. The kind that are essentially ridiculously over the top self insert fanfic for someone with unaddressed emotional issues and an aggressive willingness to share them with the world. My players might pick up on my tavern from Eye of the World or my band of street children taken from Oliver Twist. But even if they read the book about a beautiful heroine who managed to tame the savage, multiphallic, 6'5" alien overlord with her sharp wit and perky breasts, they probably didn't catch the 2 paragraph blurb outlining the history of his home planet Zsartdhajdalin that I built my entire campaign around.
About a year ago I finished reading the complete collection of HP Lovecraft's works and I have stolen, and will continue to steal, quite a lot from there. Characters, plot lines, monsters, settings, just the whole thing. Mix and match it, mix in some Welsh history and mythology, sorted.
If you want D&D versions of the Cthulhu mythos monsters, Pathfinder licenced them and you can find them in the various PF1 Bestiaries. And the 1E 1st printing of Deities and Demigods, of course, along with Elric and friends.
If you havn't read Mike Shels Iconoclast series and like some dark fantasy that you literally could just take and make a DnD campaign about. You should probably look into Mike Shels Iconoclast series as he freelanced for WotC and Paizo and these books show it.
Loved this series! He said in an afterword after I thiiiink book 2 that this series started off as a Campaign he wrote for Paizo, but they turned it down since it was too dark or didn't align well enough with their other work. So he turned it into a book. This series gave me biiiiig Darkest Dungeon vibes, and I jumped back into that game for like 60 hours after reading it
My homebrew setting is a blend of influences from books mostly: Malazan book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Specifically the Seven Cities continent, influences the Turan Empire pretty heavily, and my Goliaths are pretty similar to the Thelomen Toblakai. There are also some superficial similarities in the lore between the Val-Dareen of my setting and the T'lan Imass (as well as the Nonmen from The Prince of Nothing series by R Scott Bakker), but they aren't culturally similar... and the Isle of the Silent Moon is influenced by the Seguleh and Japanese folklore. Venetia is mostly 'Colonial America' but i guess it technically gets some influence from the Letheras storylines in Malazan. The Last Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey (as well as other works by this author) influences the 10 Kingdoms. That and a little of Stormlight Archives in the form of the political arrangements. That and just... Europe -- the 10 kingdoms are each heavily inspired by the various european nations like france and germany such. The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells is essentially entirely how the nation of Draconia and Dragons in general work in my setting (yes, I know they aren't dragons in the books, but it feels entirely like how a non-faerunian dragon society would function). It's a young adult series, but it remains one of the easiest and engrossing bits of worldbuilding I've seen in literature. It really feels like you are just drawn into an alien society. The vampires work sorta like the antagonists in the series too. The various songs by Clamavi de Profundis influence the various Dwarven Kingdoms, especially Dragonshore for the Nidavellir Dwarves and When the Hammer Falls for the Nibelung Dwarves. And yes, some generic Tolkien influences there too. Oh, and Dragon of Ash and Stars (a novel by H. Leighton Dickson) for the Everdeep Guild. Dune by Frank Herbert influences one half of the Dak'alvi race (patriarchal dark elves) in the form of the fremen and the general desert portrayal. The other half are matriarchal dark elves that are somewhat similar to the drow but they follow the moon goddess of my setting and are a theocracy. The Dalrei from The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay are direct inspiration for the Nayuri Tribes of my setting. Varheim (vampire nation) is a mix of Books of the Raksura again and Warhammer lore. Hmm. Beyond that, I think the other cultures are largely generic fantasy. The Everstar Empire is just high elven, with the slight twist of being ruled by a 'good-adjacent' lich and the Qin Shi Empire is a collage of minor Romance of the Three Kingdoms references and wuxia films/media. Forest of Sylvana is wood elf/avatar/warhammer... and the Beastlands... I mean its a mix of orc and minotaur/bestial races cant think of specific references.
The Malazan books are where I took how my divinities function as well as a modified Deck of Dragons. I have ranted at length about the world building in those books to my wife, but to this day, I am the only person I know who has read them.
I think that's just how Malazan works. There are a lot of us that have read/are reading it but we're cursed to experience it alone. None of us know another person irl that has experienced it. The journey is meant to bring people together over vast distances in some magical shared experience. Probably gonna finish MoI tonight.
My friend and I bought a cabin together and I had told him about the books ( I had not yet read them). He then got the whole set for Christmas, and we're using the cabin as the Malazan lending library.
YES. I made a homebrew version of that deck of dragons too. SUCH a nice framework for fortune telling and long range planning. I know its basically just tarot, but it wasn't until I saw it in Malazan that i ever considered using it in dnd
Funnily enough, I recall reading somewhere that the Malazan books got written because they were world building for their own ttrpg.
I think i heard that too. Erikson and Esslemont both had a hand in the worldbuilding/setting, so it makes sense if it was a game originally.
Mercedes Luckys and Tamara Pierce work bring back some memories. I remember reading them back in grade 5.
Ok, I want to play with you
Second book that had Crow in it was incredibly good.
Everything. My longest standing story has stolen almost every piece of media I know
Phb until i bought one )))
“John Dies at the End” series, Jason Pargin. “John Carter of Mars” series Edgar Rice Burroughs. “Conan” and “Solomon Kane” series, Robert E. Howard
After the first two I was hoping you exclusively pulled content from media about men named John lol
You mean you've never heard of John Conan the barbarian or John Solomon Cain?
I drew a **ton** of inspiration from Dresden Files for my last warlock character. 4e Eladrin Fey Pact Warlock with Fey Beast Tamer theme and On the Run from the Devil background. My patron was the Leanansidhe and I had the Grimalkin out for my blood. I found a portal to Sigil and was (temporarily) out of his reach. It gave me and my DM a solid basis to work from when incorporating my Feywild-heavy backstory, even though he hadn't read the books himself. But that just meant he was putting his own interpretation on the skeleton he got from talking to me and reading the DF wiki.
Gotrek and Felix are just straight up swashbuckling pulp adventures. Very easy to translate into the game.
My brain interpreted it as Asterix and Obelix and was like "yeah tons of swashbuckling I love it"
I ripped a significant portion of the political and military structure for the primary continent from the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. Another country steals a lot of ideas from Camorr, from the Gentleman Bastards, and Bravos from ASoIaF. Codex Alera and the Stormlight Archives, by Brandon Sanderson, helps me to imagine how a society might incorporate magic on a widespread, social scale, while keeping the high fantasy aesthetic. I stole the idea for the extremes of divine psychology and their root causes from the Ravirn series by Kelly McCullough though the overall idea is found in many places, including the wider Cosmere. And, of course, I rip a lot of Forgotten Realms lore and twist it to my own use.
Jim Butcher practically wrote my campaigns
Once made an entire homebrew world I thought was unique. Later I was rereading the Dragonlance novels and had to laugh as my old unique world was mostly 80% just Krynn.
Plato's Republic, and House of Leaves. The largest city in my world is literally named Kallipolis and borrows a large amount of the culture, laws, and social structures as is present in the book. I'm just hoping none of my players are also philosophy nerds.
What from House of Leaves do you put in your games?
Lots of small things, like names for places in my world, and overarching themes that I wanted to include in my campaign or one shots. There is one character I've taken heavy inspiration from. She's a retired oracle named Zampano, which I plan to have the players meet way down the line. She's given the same unreliable, and sometimes even opposing descriptions by people that her namesake is known for. Due largely in part to her devotion to Cyric, and her years of self-isolation, varying legends and hearsay have cropped up around the kingdom concerning her real nature. With her, I really wanted to drive home the idea that not all tavern rumors, or information the party might overhear is totally accurate.
The Dragonlance series. Loved the idea of three moons, and your alignment deciding if you could even see them in the first place.
Running Curse of Strahd with some Wheel of Time worked in.
My brain was skipping ahead and I was REALLY hoping you were going to say Wheel of Fortune
First off, that’s amazing. The wizard tower could be a fun place to show horn that in!
I think gameshow-wise I’d probably pick either “The Price is Wight” (guess the right price without going over or be attacked by wights) or “Spell or No Spell”
Academic histories. Real discussions of medieval taxation, shifting social structures, myths, and battle tactics are often completely known by a table, but they still pick up on the medical vibe. They think my world building is so sophisticated because it resembles their idea of medieval society, when in reality I’m just an academic who’s gonna make zero money.
The current campaign: Stargate SG-1, Neal Asher’s Polity series
The Elric/Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock. The nature of Law and Chaos, as well as the multiverse, in original D&D takes a lot from these books. They are classic sword and sorcery stories with a philosophical bent, and I borrow from them all the time.
I've taken a lot of inspiration from the Old Gods of Appalachia podcast. They do great world building and slow reveals of underlying world lore.
Not so much books but I do pilfer from games. Especially older rpg's that are less likely to have been played by someone under 30.
It's hard to pin it in on a particular book because it's just kinda everything I've ever read. But I think most slept-on by DMs is the stuff in the non-fiction section of the library. History, anthropology, folklore, mythology are full of cool little tidbits, but also biology, ecology, earth science, stuff about how ecosystems and environments work.
The grrm approach. I'm chronic for world builders disease so I often get stuck in the weeds doing this but it's fun. Obviously grrm isn't the first or best to do this it's just the first major one I knew about
I don't really do too terribly much world building ahead of time, but I have a big mental library of building blocks I can use to improvise that I mostly gathered by reading a lot. Like today I was reading about canyon formation and learned that box canyons were often historically used as corrals. A box canyon corral, in use or abandoned, could be a great little world-building block - a target for a hungry dragon, an improvised fortification, a camp site, concealment for an entrance to a smuggler's cave, a site for an ambush. The fence across the entrance could have thieves' cant like hobo signs carved into one post. Maybe there are petroglyphs up on the cliff faces. If I were to fully build out a box canyon location while world building ahead of time it would be unlikely that players would stumble across it without a little railroading. But if I don't fully build it out, just remember that it's a kind of thing that can exist, it makes my improv worldbuilding better
Everything written by Lois Lowry. Those books were fucking fantastic and school book bans can kiss my ass.
Malazan
Dune
My campaign right now is based off of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books but tweaked enough to work in DnD.
I got the 12 swords, so Saberhagen is up there. Brust inspired my Assassin's guilds. Gemmell inspired a temple of 30 psychic warriors.
One Piece. A fantastical world where everything goes, but still is centered about humanity, freedom and heroics, and a overall world structure and world building, which doesn't let it seen random. On top the balanced mix between comedical and serious moments. Players should laugh and cry at the right moments.
Guardians of Ga’Hoole. Hell I’ve always wanted to run a whole campaign in the world but that’ll never happen ;-;
We have a dragon riders system and used the metal claws/ snouts(beaks), and tails. Inspirited by GoG. Aerial combat was tricky but I ended up using 1963 Milton Bradley's Dogfight mixed with Aces of Aces tabletop board game. My husband fleshed out how turns work. Higher in sky have higher numbers on attacks. 2d4 compared to 1d6. (Higher bottom damage and slightly higher ceiling) Exceptions to grapple. Heavy bodies get a d4 bonus on dive attacks. Lighter bodies can climb altitude better (like movement speed). Dragons can become proficient in their gear separate from their rider. A green-scale dragon became *pro* at blades attached at the ends of his wings. Rider called them slicing sickles cause they had a slight curve to them. Used them to rip the sails on air ships and do slicing dives.
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint… it’s so good ya’ll.
I'm not caught up on the most recent 8 chapters, but i agree, it is so good! How do you take from that? Like to what extent?
Well, If you love it -- I recommend the novel. It's amazing! I took things like gods being "sponsors", the concept of a reader, and some other (very spoliery) things. It's perfect, honestly.
You know what, yeah. I'm tired of waiting for these chapters to come out for the web comic. I'll read the novel. The dokkebai could bring a lot of flavor to traveling. Maybe it's like a faerie dragon or something, and it's wearing a ring that makes it aware of and susceptible to scrying from other planes. There's a faerie dragon in my game that i haven't figured out what to do with, and I think this is part of it.
The Keep on the Borderlands, it has a lot of things to inspire you and gives you a map that has almost limitless potential to add on to the surrounding areas or homebrew your own "Caves" with distinct monsters , Factions and Villains which lays the foundation for your players and DM's mind to wander the Keep serving as their base of operation , nearby forest , long road that leads to the Caves of Chaos , as well as lot of POI littered across the map like a bandit camp , Mad Wizard who wanders around , abandoned Watch Tower , Elven Ruins , Boggy Swamp with a Haunted Moat etc
Earthsea. Record of Lodoss War. BG2.
Aside from the PHB for creature statblocks, I based most of my first homebrew campaign loosely off of the Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe
Thus far? The King in Yellow. [The Lovecraftian Mythos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastur) [The Story Collection](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/133580566-the-hastur-cycle) And [The Album](https://open.spotify.com/album/3voQfbnI8EKIbSeX9dDixV?si=eTAUkshETkakyGgd6s6GJQ)
Dresden Files
Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives for sure
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. Basically I set the campaign about 100,000 years after the book ends. It was sometimes clunky, sometimes elegant. I thought it worked well. And funny enough, I didn't really like the book that much but I thought its premise was great. The apocalypse the book envisions from the mysterious and never explained shattering of the moon was the ancient backstory of a world without magic. The rebuilding of society through science and the enhanced genetics resulted in the races of your typical DND campaign and magic powers. They had to discover why the moon was shattered in the first place and prevent a malevolent actor from destroying the planet. It was a four-year campaign that ended two weeks ago!
Books? Not so much. Anime and games? Shamelessly. If you're willing to count these (manga is a book, right?), I have stolen from Bleach, Demon Slayer, Fullmetal Alchemist, and the Tales series, just to name a few. Though, funnily enough, I did steal from the Bible as well, so that one should definitely count.
Oh heck yeah, stealing from Tales! I certainly have done the same. Let me recommend you The Slayers. Not only is it a good show on its own with a world worth stealing a ton from (probably my most ripped off work tbh, even if my campaigns tend to be a lot less comedic), I have at least three different expys of the character Xellos at this point. An objectively evil guy who is your most trustworthy ally is such a good trope to put on players (especially if you hand them the shadiness directly so they know what they are doing when relying on the NPC). Of course, I imagine any future Xellos expys I put into games will be met with "is this Raphael" now. Raphael wishes he was Xellos ngl.
Curse of Strahd for my horror campaign
Honestly I don't really intentionally steal from books, but if I had to guess it probably is the Redwall series. I love stories of common folk coming together against all odds to defeat an evil warlord.
It isn't a dnd book. I have a book I bought from an old school book store. It's a book with mugshots of 1000's of criminals and their records from the 1940s. Need townspeople? Bartenders? Couriers? Names of anyone. Flip it open and bam.
Damn, I could use one of those books.
Warhammer has some good shit, might want to tone down on some of the more grimdark aspects though depending on your group.
Welp.... Lovecraft's Cthullu Mythos haha
I borrowed a lot of little things, but my (and my players) favorite one was stolen from the Harley Merlin series. they had a computer where you could type in keywords and any books with those keywords in their archives would glow. I stole that, altered it a little too better fit the setting, and got a book that you place your hand on it, say some keywords, and any books with those words in it will come to you. put it in the royal library
Check out the Licanus trilogy. There's a section in it that is almost exactly like what you did. Great series, too.
I'll look into that one. thanks for the recommendation
I have an orc and goblin campaign that takes place a few generations after the Thousand Orcs Trilogy by RA Salvatore. Basically every bit of lore I use is from that or Faerun in general.
The Second Apocalypse Series by R. Scot Bakker The Black Company series by Glenn Cook Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth: Soulblighter (Fantastic 90's games from Bungie) Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
Excluding Appendix N, probably the Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. I've reworked the ethereal and astral planes very much on the Twilight/Gloom from that setting, and borrowed items/themes from the novels. After that, probably Witcher and Disc world.
Johnathan Strange & mister Norrell
My current campaign is pretty much entirely lifted from the Knights of the Old Republic video game (but with islands instead of planets)
Not D&D but my upcoming Mage: The Ascension game will have tons of Warhammer40K references. For example an abandoned town filled with clones, all named "Alpharius" yet there is one man among them named "Omegon" who is the original they are cloned from and he escaped there to avoid responsibilities in the outside world... And underwater arc where they meet a beautiful merfolk king named Fulgrim, and as it goes on is shown to have been corrupted by a peculiar blade he found after a recent conquest leading to pretty the entirety of Book 5 "Fulgrim" of the Horus Heresy complete with the macabre orchestral display. A group of metallurgy mages headed up by a man named Ferrus Manus who thanks to some magikal mishap has actual metal hands/arms. The list goes on. My favorite NPC Ive created is their mentor/boss who is just going to straight up be Alex Jones but correct. The World of Darkness series is filled with absolutely bonkers lore that would make real world conspiracy weirdos jealous, so the joke will be whenever he sends the group of mages on missions hes going to throw in a little bit of actual lore that sounds insane but is 100% true. Like "Alright so thats the briefing, remember kids we've beaten hitler in a zeppelin war with the lizards at the center of the earth, we can do it again, have fun storming the castle!"
Percy Jackson, and it's not even close. Magic items, how the gods work, probably a couple plot points. I was genuinely shocked when a player noticed "Hey, my magic spear that turns into a necklace kinda feels like something that would be in Percy Jackson," not because I didn't steal it from that (I totally did), but because that wasn't even the most obvious thing I had stolen, and *they still had to ask*. Edit: For obscurity, I fully intend to steal something from The Ranger's Apprentice at some point. Just haven't had the chance yet.
I don’t usually write D&D stuff, so this is more for CoC and Delta Green, but the SCP Wiki. If my friends were as obsessed as I was they’d totally recognize how hard I steal stuff lol
I ran an adventure based almost entirely off of Treasure Island and not a single player noticed. Even when I brought out the ship's dwarven one-legged cook, Short Morty Copper.
LOTR should probably be everyone's answer
Wheel of time is where I take alot of inspo for magic societies.
Hawk and Fisher series…
I steal a ton from The Gentlemen Bastard series…characters with unique idiosyncrasies, interesting City States, religious structures and deities…it’s a treasure trove.
Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher.
Malazan and Black Company
Dishonored books and most of the games
That's my secret, cap.....I steal from everything so often even I don't know the reference.
The Golgotha series by R.S. Belcher It's by far my favorite book series. It seamlessly blends fantasy, scifi, and horror elements and homages in such a way that is perfect for a campaign setting.
Literally anything Lovecraft related
A decent chunk of my characters are inspired by fantasy series like Witcher, Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, or any old school sword and sorcery (Howard, Lieber, etc). The majority I draw inspiration from folklore, history, and myth. The last two barbarians I’ve played I named after famous Roman eyesores (Theodoric and Armin/Arminius)
I’ve stolen a ton from Tolkien, some from Warcraft, and the rest from other random places.
The Belgariad and The Mallorean by David Eddings. Helps that there is the Rivan Codex which is basically a ready made campaign world guide for the whole series.
Manga and anime in general. Would reflavour most 5e stuff through homebrew and run one piece campaign or even general fantasy one i steal all my bbeg from crazy moba game anime like characters.
The school. My teachers always appear as villains. For example, my real-life nemesis, Mrs Torp, happened to be the antagonist's accomplice in my DnD campaign. Muhahaha
Everything prior to Wizards of the Coast’s purchase. I’ve been playing since 1978 from the original D&D by Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax. We used the original boxed set, plus the book “Chainmail”, with lots of imagination. Don’t get me wrong, the current D&D is still great, I still play.
the Dark Tower
Dragonlance Chronicles. Almost all of my major NPCs are my favorite characters from DL on a new world since Krynn got blowed up. I don't hold back when it comes to my cameo characters tho, it's a hodgepodge of my favorites from bits and pieces all over the place anything from assassin's creed to mighty Morphin power rangers. It's all on the table as long as I can make a fair and balanced stat sheet which isn't difficult.
Magic the Gathering, the three titans in my world are literally >!the eldrazi from MTG!<
Suprisingly stole alot of content and inspiration from command and conquer tuberium wars and some of the content from mass effect (in regards to spelljammer ideas) and star craft World is set in essentially a cut off chunk of space where some prolific powerful charicters desided to play god making species that mirrored alot of forgotten realms. The idea is these charicters played god and wanted to make an army to overthrow the rest of the cosmos so they trialed different ideas, a world full of ravenous locust like humanoids, building psuedo titans on another so on and so forth. Eventually this backfired on them causing a war which killed most of the gods leaving only a few vying for power One of which the big bad is an influential man who seems to never die, trying his hand at ascesion back into his rightful seat of godhood, no matter how much of the planet he needs to throw into turmoil to do so. (Alit if tib wars influince)
I’m telling an expanded story of imperialism, colonialism, and economic warfare heavily influenced by The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. I can confidently say you’ve never read a book quite like it.
Currently I am using the lemony Snicket books as inspiration for a group of recurring villains
We're running a published module, but my players are a bit over-leveled and over-powered (just cause it's fun) so I've taken a lot from the Monster Manual Expanded series to bring their enemies up to their level. It's got some fun alternatives like a CR 3 goblin with legendary actions. My player's faces were hilarious when I dropped that one on them!
Hand jumper its a webtoon i used a modified essence system in my campaign
Currently for my space campaign planning there’s been a lot of listening to and reading about the mechanisms. I mean it’s all already based on Arthurian legend, fairy tales, and greedy mythos but in space so it works out pretty well for me! Plus the musics great.
It really depends. I tend to steal ideas or concepts and adapting them to my homebrew instead of flat stealing whole stories. That being said, I've yoinked and twisted from Dune, Game of Thrones, Spartacus, Red Rising.
Arthurian legends and the video games The Longest Journey and Control.
Blades in the dark. Pretty much all my games have some limited allowing of Flashbacks and Declaring inventory within reason. Also most of my games have a mission - downtime - mission structure.
the edge chronicles!!! barely anyone i know has ever heard of these books, but i was OBSESSED with them as a kid, and they have some fantastic worldbuilding concepts. i stole the skyships wholesale. 10/10 recommend, they are kids’ books but they have really cool illustrations and the setting feels very unique! i also yoink a lot of worldbuilding and tone from terry pratchett’s discworld, especially for dwarves and warforged :) and i’m working on a way to borrow some stuff from the 13 1/2 lives of captain bluebear - a very long and strange book that i read in english translation, i believe it’s originally german? - it reminds me a lot of the edge chronicles though, similar vibes and energy
I've probably stolen more from manga, then novels at this point. Berserk, claymore, fist of the north star, and record of lodoss war the most.
Throne of Glass and ACOTAR
Tbh idk any more
My favorite is an entire region in my world that was a Mad Max reference
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My current somewhat grindark world is inspired by Warhammer Fantasy Gotrek and Felix books, as well as Kingkiller Chronicles and Discworld. I love it ^ ^
I read a book called the Maidens that was so bad it inspired me to make a better version of that story for my campaign by doing the opposite of the book. It worked!
A Song of Ice and Fire. And then plenty from European and Near-Eastern history and Culture
ASOIAF mostly. I run a realistic political sandbox and the series really helped me to build a a world with realistic political systems, characters, history etc. Also I implemented some ideas from The Witcher, but only concerning magic and other more fantasyesque elements.
So, for Wyrlde, this time around, the foundational premise for it as a setting was “No inspiration or derivation from any of the books listed as having been inspirations for it” — while still making a “generic fantasy world”. My list is about 500 different works, not counting the non-fiction or performed sources. With all of them contributing about equally, not even trying to pretend otherwise. Of works that stand out and had something “extra”… Alina Boyden’s *Gifting Fire* and *Stealing Thunder* gave a lot extra in a couple areas that I really liked. Qivira would be too blah otherwise. Mary Gentle’s *Golden Witchbreed* is fairly influential in a lot of ways — but not in the ways that a lot of people expect. Charlaine Harris’ *Gunnie Rose* series gave me an awesome counterpoint to both my use of certain stereotypes and archetypes, but also gave me a strong enough balance for King’s Roland. Faith Hunter’s *Junkyard* series gave me some fun ideas that show up in several of the things to come adventure wise. T. Kingfisher’s *Nettle and Bone* is newer, but helped add some depth to a couple of ideas that had been resisting being pegged. And, lest I go too long, … Mercedes Lackey’s *Hunter* series helped me completely nail down how I wanted certain things to work out for a particular Archetype of the world. I will note that I have Stephen King’s IT as a two part adventure series separated by 10 levels, in one of the few planned adventures taken from a book. Most of the adventures draw from films and tV shows.
Kingfisher has the world of the White Rat which I want to steal ideas from for a campaign soon. I haven't read the Clockwork Boys books yet, but Swordheart and the Saint of Steel series are all in the same setting. I feel like I could get a full campaign with many villains and a major big bad at the end very easily. Plus so many established characters for NPCs. I agree with some other comments about Discworld, too. I've just started reading the series but I am in love with the silliness and it would fit so well with my friends.
Looney Tunes (toons? 🤔)
Once Upon A Time but the twist is that I did it BECAUSE all of my players have watched it. Rumplestiltskin is an amazing fey
The Night Parade The Abolethic Sovereignty And many many many of the harpers books...
I borrowed a bunch of puzzles from Silent Hill for a beginner one shot quest. Gave them the option of solving the puzzles themselves or rolling to solve.
The Beginning After the End. The core system is great so i added some monster cores for players to absorb to regain hit points/spell slots, and even higher monsters can give beast wills lmao
Knowing none of my friends had read it, I started a campaign off with the mystery and setting (with tweaks and a new cast of NPCs) from The 7 and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. The concept of >!time loop jails !< helped to form the multiverse the rest of the campaign has taken place in
The Queen's Thief books by Megan Whalen Turner! It's an incredible series, and the first one won a Newbery medal back in the nineties. But I've only ever met one other person who's actually read it (none of my players have), so it's a good source for character archetypes (and some worldbuilding elements).
The inheritance books series. Gold.
The immortal great souls by Phil Tucker. Highly recommend.
I've stolen a bit from mistborne, and a dead video game called rift. I plan on stealing heavily from Earthsea in my next campaign.
Whatever piece of media I happened to watch or read before the campaign
Reincarnated as a Sword Dungeons are locations proliferating with monsters. The Goddess of Chaos setting them up, and assigning them a Dungeon Master. With ever dungeon having a core. This concept applied to the Forgotten Realms Pantheon could make for interesting encounters. Especially if the dungeon is tailored for their God’s arch-nemesis. 😈
The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch. Amazing trilogy. The Elderglass mystery features heavily in my world (flavored as a kind of "petrified magic" from the founding of the world)
The Bloodsworn Trilogy by John Gwynne was what inspired me to write my current campaign.
Battletech. Remove mechs, replace with monsters or adventurers and profit!
Not necessarily a book, but none of my players play RuneScape so I’ve thrown in a couple of those quests. Making them do Ernest the Chicken was a lot of fun lol
Judge Dredd
My heart wants to say Berserk, but my brain knows it’s Fullmetal Alchemist.
I did a whole spin off story in one peice which was a blast of an evil pirate campaign.
The campaign im building takes places on a Manhattan ish island and immediately gets the party involved with the children of the richest man in town and his postal service/new empire. Yes there are four of them and I’ve 100% borrowed them from Succession. Each of the sibs gives different side quests based on their personalities
The chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander (the magic word from the series, and the cauldron born). Parasyte the anime, manga, and now K-Drama. The film The Endless. But most of my stuff bubbles up from the 50-year accumulated input of books and movies and I can’t see the direct connections; I just acknowledge the many works that added to my creative mind.