Been a bit since we did one of these! This Post is part of a challenge from the Blog d100 challenge made by Buster over on 19 Sided Die. Check him out!
Rolled: 58 - Talk about a movie or book that influenced your setting!
This is a good one but a bit of a tough one! The setting of Hodas is inspired by SO many sources. I've already gone on about how Micheal Moorcock has influenced the games at length. So what Source could I talk about next? So instead I'm gonna share a few and give a short talk about why they inspired me!
Heavy Metal:
Heavy Metal is a bit of an old one, an animated film from the 1980's. This movie just refuses to explain anything and just tells its stories. It opens with a car dropping onto a planet from space and the driver just driving home and getting annihilated by an evil green orb. It talks about how powerful it is and then tells stories where it is defeated like... 3 of 5 times or something. The music of it, the storytelling, it really left a mark on me when I was young.
Silver age comics:
I've been reading comics for ages, almost entirely my dad's inherited collection. I ran superhero games for decades and you could really feel the influence of these comics. Heroes were heroes, villains were villains, the systems worked as intended but villains were getting out of prison once a week. It used to be a really black and white superhero setting where there was a lot of multiversal and villain of the week stuff. This setting grew up as people who read different comics came to play and changed the setting with their influence.
Michael Moorcock:
I know I did a post about him but I just wanna highlight that the Corum books were a huge influence on me. They were the first time in a book I had seen someone borrow from Celtic myth. These are another world of sword and sorcery that refuses to explain anything. There is a giant in the water and he drags a net behind him, why? Don't worry about it! I very much felt that was a good way to handle things like that. The players don't need to know why and how everything everywhere works all the time, their characters certainly wouldn't know these things.
The Etched City:
This book is about two people who leave behind questionable lives and arrive in a city that has many low magic elements. It very much is a story that feels very low magic until suddenly it isn't. This really made me lean into the low magic part of DCC. When I run, the world doesn't feel like it has a lot of magic in it until you find yourself in a remote island not on any map and the people here all descended from elementals.
Fantasy Metal Music:
This is a more recent influence but fantasy metal music feels like a love letter to the old school world of tabletop. Some of the songs are about the same novels I'm talking about. Blind Guardian does music about Elric, The Wheel of Time, and Arthurian legend. Glory Hammer has this whole world of insane high magic fantasy with tech elements thrown in, there is a whole song about a magic dragon (machine) and the magic scroll to control it (instruction manual). Recently I've picked up Eternal Champion, I think based on the name you can guess the influence on that one.
Blog d100 sharing this week
Since the last time I posted one of these and there are a couple out there I have been keeping an eye on. If you are doing this and want to see your posts here, please comment and I'll make sure I'm linking you!
From Mythscribe we have: Who Digs those Dungeons?, be sure to check them out, a lot of good content over on Mythscribe!
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