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I often wonder what other books, you young people use for resources that are not role-playing related such as popular mechanics and magazines like that.

I know growing up I used my dad's popular mechanics, with games set in the future, like star frontiers , gamma world, traveller and twilight 2000.

Right now, I'm reading Life in a Medieval City, by Joseph and Frances Gies.
I haven't used it yet, but I plan to.
It's a very nice reference.

A Dictionary of Angels and (William) Blake Dictionary - great for names
Books about secret societies and 'alternate' history are pretty handy
Random Wikipedia articles are good for ideas as well

No books, no magazines. Occasionally I will pull a base idea from tv shows or movies, but everything is canon and only the base story line is used for the game. Other than that, it is all from the imagination.

I blatantly 'barrow' from everything. Comic books, novels, non fiction books, movies, tv, plays, video games, mmos, other rpgs, I even used the overall 'plot' from a choose your own adventure book once. lol

Thing is, it's not just us that do so. Alot of the 'ideas' are sort of 'general ownership'. If you put a life like robot in your game, are you ripping off Battlestar Galactica? or the assassin droids from Star Wars, or Bladerunner? If you look in... say Traix 2.. at the "Umber armor"..... is it just really awesome armor developed by traix? Or did someone put down the controller long enough to convert the Master Chiefs armor into rifts? (( as a side note... in my games NG knocked that stuff off and it's a best seller in NA.. the helmet is naturally different than the Traix one..... you can probably guess what the helmets look like. lol))

I use pretty much anything and everything I can get my hands on. Also, I keep a notebook with me so I can write down ideas for campaigns, characters, game concepts, and just about anything else that I want to remember for later. I collect other game companies book's, especially Pathfinder and Fantasy Flight Games, and use those for inspiration as well. Some of my favorite movies have found their way into my campaigns; Aliens, Bladerunner, Chronicles of Riddick (Necromongers are perhaps one of the best written villans I've seen depicted in a science-fiction/ fantasy movie), Dune, Hero, and many others are all fairgame in my book (no pun intended).

I am Re reading 1984 for ideas about the CS. I also read Brave New World.

Pepsi Jedi wrote:I blatantly 'borrow' from everything. Comic books, novels, non fiction books, movies, tv, plays, video games, mmos, other rpgs, I even used the overall 'plot' from a choose your own adventure book once. lol

Thing is, it's not just us that do so. Alot of the 'ideas' are sort of 'general ownership'. If you put a life like robot in your game, are you ripping off Battlestar Galactica? or the assassin droids from Star Wars, or Bladerunner? If you look in... say Triax 2.. at the "Umber armor"..... is it just really awesome armor developed by traix? Or did someone put down the controller long enough to convert the Master Chiefs armor into rifts? (( as a side note... in my games NG knocked that stuff off and it's a best seller in NA.. the helmet is naturally different than the Triax one..... you can probably guess what the helmets look like. lol))

I, too, pretty much use whatever materials I encounter or have access to. I was at the recetn OH and got a look at what Kevin uses for researcg material and it too, runs the gamut from medieval to modern to futuristic.

maxoregon1984 wrote:Stephen King's The Dark Tower has a lot of fantastic apocalyptic atmosphere. Robots and demons and dimensional travel... it's practically a Rifts story already.
Clive Barker is a great source of monsters and magic.
World history is always an inspiration for role playing. If you want to know how to run an empire, read about ancient Rome. I like the Masters of Rome series by Colleen McCullough.
Also, I just watched Iron Man. Best. Power armor. Ever.

Naw, that would be the X-O Manowar power armor. Iron Man's is like wearing Howard the Duck's power armor in comparison.

If you're running ANY kind of tech game, William Gibson is a must. I think of the BAMA anytime I think about the Golden Age.

i have a ton of non-fiction reference works. some of the ones i keep coming back to though are the Tom Clancy military seires (Armored Cav, Fighter Wing, Submarine, every man a tiger, etc), and more general works like Connections. i also have regular copies of Bass Pro Shop catalogs thanks to an uncle giving me his oilder ones, which gives lots of gear for characters.

i also follow a bunch of futurist, science, space, and historical blogs that help me keep up to date with current tech trends, historical finds, and generally provide lots of good ideas.

Dr Megaverse wrote:If you're running ANY kind of tech game, William Gibson is a must. I think of the BAMA anytime I think about the Golden Age.

though the march of technology has left certain parts of the description unintentionally funny instead of depressing.. the sky belong the color of a dead channel for example. back when it was written, that line made sense. for many people reading it today, the image they get would be that of a deep blue color... given that many would never have experienced the way the static of a old blank channel blurred into grey. and since a blue sky is not usually something that goes with dreary, grungy settings...

Pepsi Jedi wrote:I blatantly 'barrow' from everything. Comic books, novels, non fiction books, movies, tv, plays, video games, mmos, other rpgs, I even used the overall 'plot' from a choose your own adventure book once. lol

Thing is, it's not just us that do so. Alot of the 'ideas' are sort of 'general ownership'. If you put a life like robot in your game, are you ripping off Battlestar Galactica? or the assassin droids from Star Wars, or Bladerunner? If you look in... say Traix 2.. at the "Umber armor"..... is it just really awesome armor developed by traix? Or did someone put down the controller long enough to convert the Master Chiefs armor into rifts? (( as a side note... in my games NG knocked that stuff off and it's a best seller in NA.. the helmet is naturally different than the Traix one..... you can probably guess what the helmets look like. lol))

I, also, borrow from anything and everything. One of my best resources though is the Art of War. On occasion I also use the Book of Five Rings.

Maybe it's just me but I think people over use the art of war. It gets banded about in RPG circles and stuff alot and you can find a ton of nerds and geeks that will quote it at you, but few people really understand it and by and large when they DO quote it at you, they're trying to be snooty. lol

I'm not saying it's crap. I'm just saying it's a bit overused by people that often misunderstand it. (( -Not- saying you are Ice. Just saying in general))

personally i find Achung-Panzer by Guderian almost as useful as Sun Tzu.. despite the fact Guderian got a number of things wrong concept wise.
generally if you actually understand the principles Sun Tzu was advocating, you don't feel the need to quote him.. you can explain things in your own words. if you've memorized parts of the art of war, its usually to either show off or because you haven't internalized the core principles Sun Tzu advocated and are stuck on the formal contents of the book.
and really, core principles are the only thing Sun Tzu has going for him.. the specific details he discusses are completely obsolete now, being tied up in the warring states period.

i've also been meaning to find a copy of On War by Clausewitz for my kindle, just haven't felt a need to yet. i generally prefer military history works over military strategy stuff.

To be honest, I can't say what inspired me, but I guess it is random books, movies, tv series and so on.

I remember one time when I used to GM Rifts, I used Johnny Cash's songs "Don't Take your Guns to Town" and "Highway Patrolman" as well as Dolly's "Joshua". The stories i certain songs can make really great adventures.

Pepsi Jedi wrote:Maybe it's just me but I think people over use the art of war. It gets banded about in RPG circles and stuff alot and you can find a ton of nerds and geeks that will quote it at you, but few people really understand it and by and large when they DO quote it at you, they're trying to be snooty. lol

I'm not saying it's crap. I'm just saying it's a bit overused by people that often misunderstand it. (( -Not- saying you are Ice. Just saying in general))

My actual introduction to Art of War was due to a business course I took in college. At the time, it was popular for corporations to use the principles to run their business. It has also been used in sword classes that I took (but not as much as Book of Five Rings).

Also, another 2 books I find myself using are an older copy of the US Army survival manual and the original Boy Scout handbook.

I have to admit; when playing Rifts I'm less inclined to consult 'The Art of War' and more inclined to refer to 'The Evil Overlord List'.

I use Wikipedia a great deal.

My influences are:
-various fantasy novels (ie. LOTR, the Forgotten Realms novels, the Valdemar Novels)
-Elfquest
-Appleseed
-the Phule's Company novels

Mostly this is for characters since I rarely GM (as I don't really like to)

No book gives greater insight into human nature than 'The Prince' by Machiavelli.

The Art of War was practical advice at the time it was written given the constraints of the era, but must be treated more philosophically for modern applications now that we have force multipliers beyond the author's wildest dreams. It's good to understand what he says and why he says it, but it's usually easier to apply in hindsight than as predictive advice.

The Vlad Taltos series of books by Steven Brust (and the histories set in the same world) are wonderfully done and provide lots of ideas about how a mature magically inclined society might function. His other stuff is also awesome ('To Reign in Hell' is my favorite take on Satan's fall from grace).

Lots of other good sources out there, but those three are the first that came to mind.

--flatline

flatline wrote:The Vlad Taltos series of books by Steven Brust (and the histories set in the same world) are wonderfully done and provide lots of ideas about how a mature magically inclined society might function. His other stuff is also awesome ('To Reign in Hell' is my favorite take on Satan's fall from grace).
--flatline

I love that series of books. They have contributed to many of my games for a very long time.

I'll use whatever tickles my fancy. Snatch a tidbit here and there from Heavy Metal magazine, find inspiration hidden in the film Outland, or an image that works its way into my mind from some lyrics on the radio. It's all good to go.

books that have stuff in them that inspired me....

The Bible: inspired a Greatest Holy weapon I made up.

The Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey: inspired a healer class

The Night Threads books inspired some Reproductive health items

There is stuff that are inspired by anime.

There are times, in the created spell topic, that I'm ether riffing on a theme of the moment, or someone has said something that got me thinking in that direction

The few really original stuff I've come up with were to start a dream I remembered when waking up.

I remember that when I took my players down into Yucatan this one time, i Read Popol Vuh (The Mayan Creation story) - It was quite awesome to read and build up the entire Maya pantheon based on the text - I think that this was the part of my GM career that I am most proud of. Also as I have been to Chitzen Itza during the time that I took my BA and wrote about this place, I used a lot of first hand knowledge of the area to describe it to my players and I sat down many hours with photoshop to edit out all Tourists from the pictures.

But the Popol Vuh I used heavily to build a story around that for when the maniacs...I mean players began to go up against Camazotz and fight in Xibalba.

I think I compiled about 90-100 pages of texts and maps of where all known temples were located in Yucatan, bad guys, photos of how it looks in the jungle, data on modern Guatumalan, Mexican, Belizian wild life as well as tourist maps over cities that I converted to overgrown ruins as well all my knowledge of Mayan life, rituals and such things (sometimes it pays to have two master degrees in Religious studies and Archaeology.

Then I also used the Vampire Plague books by Sebastian Roth (teenage/kid's book series about 3 teenagers in 1850 who fights Camazotz) - I also believe that in a way these books inspired Kevin when he wrote Vampire Kingdoms in the 90's. I do not say that it is bad, i just see parallels between some of the vampire stiff in both books.

I actually got one of my players to become interested in Maya history and culture by playing those adventures in the campaign. He still reads about that for fun.

you never know what will inspire you. you'll be reading a book, watching a film/show, watching news, whatever and suddenly -BAM- an idea will hit you. generally as something you saw or read caused a number of other ideas in your head to click into place.

usually i then end up thinking through the idea, both dissecting it to determine what elements might be required to use it, and developing spin off ideas from it.