So what are your top five inspirational movies? What movies motivate you to game, or motivate the style in which you game? Why?

• Heat
  
• Ronin
  
• Reservoir Dogs
  
• Layer Cake
  
• The Departed

It's easy to see why I play Shadowrun, I suspect, but I like the feel of these movies-the grit. The grime. And in many cases the absurd.

I absolutely love the shoot out/ bank robbery scene in Heat(Set this clip to Bone Crusher featuring Killer Mike:: Never Scared. Fucking well worth it.). I love the feel of it, I love the way it plays out, how it looks.

And that's how I try to get my games to feel.

What about you?

Ghost in the Shell
Serial Experiments: Lain*
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Spy Games
Akira**

*Actually a series. But it really inspires my gaming, so I cheated.
**It wasn't much on cohesion in the movie. Listed more for atmosphere, action scenes and characterization.

• Dirty Dozen, The: Showcases the team dynamic necessary to make roleplaying in groups work, plus plenty of advice on how to deal with that one disruptive party member.
  
  
  
• Good, Bad, Ugly: A great moving thesis on how to make two-dimensional characters interesting, and how to make violence and adventure artistic without pulling punches.
  
  
  
• Krull: Big, lavish, sets -- plus lots of good advice on trunicating travel across large land masses and making big, epic, finales both big and epic.
  
  
  
• Ronin: If the Dirty Dozen is a straight-forward portrayal of team dynamic, this is The Secret Lives of Professional Bastards. Good fodder for NPCs and dirty, turncoat, PCs alike.
  
  
  
• Versus: Zombies with mad kung-fu skills. 'Nuff said.

Heat
Ronin
Blade Runner
Way of the Gun
Last Man Standing

I'm gonna cheat a bit..okay a lot ..Paul and list some directors and some movies that have been a very strong influence. Guess this list is evidence of my love for thematic play In no particular order:

John Carpenter : Carpenter has the dubious honor of having his early work regarded as essential but his later films regarded as crap. Escape From New York, The Thing, The Fog, Halloween, Assault on Precinct 13 etc, what I call grungy action pieces are perfect inspiration for the kind of adventures I like to run and my crew likes to play. They translate well to a variety of genres. In fact I recently concluded an epic Hunter campaign - The Righteuos Kind - inspired by most of early work. With Righteuos I think I may have gotten him out of my system.

Ridley Scott : Some folks like getting ideas for setting design going through various rpg world building supplements. I get it from looking at his design notes and seeking out the sources that inspire him. With films such as Bladerunner, Alien, The Duelist - can you blame me?

Sam Peckinpah - Bullet ridden morality plays,whether the violence is (encouraged ?) in films like Straw Dogs or The Wild Bunch or misplaced loyalty & betrayal Pat Garret & Billy the Kid, I like the theme (most films) of very bad people displaying very noble traits - The Wild Bunch - which seems to translate well for the kind of characters (pc and npc) that are created in my campaigns.

David Lynch & Cronenberg : There's a certain kind of creepiness and imagery of some of the films of both these directors that some how find their way into my games. Certainly Lynch's Dune and Eraserhead are pretty evident in some (all) my SF games, but it's more like I said a kind of creepiness, see Cronenberg's Existence (sp) and more recently A History of Violence and Spider that inspires the kind of atmosphere esp in my horror games, that I want to cultivate.

Films: Some recent and not so recent -

Old Boy
Road Warrior
Death Race 2000
The Wicker Man (original version)
Don't Look Now
Throne of Blood
True Romance
Lone Star

...too many to list. Depends on the game. Sorry I could not just list 5.

Regards,
David R

Cheat away hombre. I figured the idea was to discuss inspiration, and you certainly do that!

David R reminded me of one. Bring Me the head of Alfredo Garcia. I did an adventure where I ripped off large peices of this. It was a western game using Unisystem (which later on turned into old west zombie game). Good times:D

Uhhh....13th Warrior.  If there was ever a movie that screamed RPG...

• Ronin
  This movie just rocks on so many levels.  The perfect "modern action" RPG source material - strong plot, great characters, combat, chase scenes, etc...
  
• 13th Warrior
  Assemble the party.  Go. Kick. Some. Ass!
  
• A Better Tomorrow
  Hong Kong action/drama, baby.
  
• Sky Captain
  I loves me my pulp-tastic tropes.  Ace pilots, super science, larger than life characters, and 1930s style futurism.
  

I can't, specifically, name any others.  More like entire sub and sub-sub genres.

Man, this is a hard question.

Rather than point fingers at specific titles, I have to point at a whole genre instead.

#1.  Any number of 80s action flicks such as Invasion:USA, Red Dawn et al made me and a buddy make a RPG which dwelled soley on gun violence (and oddly enough, I think it is the only RPG which we ever got great distance out of in terms of usage prior to me leaving to join up with another group).

Yeah, Horror/Sci-Fi and all the rest have their place, but there is something to be said for the days of the lantern jawed hero gunning down droves of the enemy (whomever they may be that week) all the while quipping great one-liners and banging the hot chick by the end of the movie (looking at you Cobra).  

p.s.  Don't forget those wonderful "Executioner/Able Team/etc." books which were nothing more than literary versions of the aforementioned movies; they monkeyed with my brain too.

Spiderman
Episode #2 of the Kare Kano series
Fellowship of the Ring
The Castle of Cagliostro
The series finale episode of Angel

Oldboy
The Seventh Seal
Funny Games
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Dawn of the Dead

I love dream-like revenge tales involving bad dudes doing awful things to undeserving but-still-awful people that are really allegories for something else entirely.

I'm not that strongly influenced by movies compared to books though.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineOldboy
The Seventh Seal

Always though you were a cool dude...and the listing of The Seventh Seal confirms it :cheers: (Alas the old master is gone and I doubt we wll ever see the likes of his kind again)

As for Oldboy, what can I say...except of have you seen the other films in the Sympathy Trilogy?

Regards,
David R

King Kong (1932)
Raiders of the lost Ark
Conan the barbarian
Akira
Blade Runner