TheRPGSite

As requested, what books, comics, videogames, films or plays have had the biggest influence on your gaming? Specifically what inspires your fantasy?

Jesus, that's a difficult question. It changes yearly really.

I'll give it some thought and try to post something later.

The Hobbit

The Prydain (sp?) Chronicles (The Black Cauldron and so on).

The covers to the LOTR novels. I feel asleep reading the books, but the covers were neat. Actually, the covers to a lot of the novels back then.

The Sinbad movies. That and Monty Python's Holy Grail really helped define D&D for me.

The Greek and Norse mythology books by the D'Aulaires (sp?)

This does require some thinking yeah...
Also this post will have more footnotes than anything I've written since I finished University. :D

BOOKS
Brooks: Shannara*
Tanith Lee: Birthgrave & Night's Master series**
Howard: stuff***
Moorcock: stuff****
Norton: post-apoc stuff*****
Tolkien: stuff
Vance: Dying Earth
Wagner: Kane******

COMICS
Flash Gordon*******
Groo*********
Jack Kirby*********

MUSIC
Bal-Sagoth**********

GAMES
Rogue & Roguelikes
Zelda series

*=the Shannara setting really is quite oldschool friendly (civilization is scattered except in the south; post-apoc and includes supertech cyborg beasties; lots of monsters and such about actually too). While it started as pure pastiche it really improved. My faves would be Wishsong and the second series (particularily the book with the Stone King, that one's good. And Elf Queen for its ridiculously monstrously dangerous island! That's what a high-level hexcrawl should look like!)
**=the Birthgrave setting is again very oldschool friendly. Love the city states and so on. While the average PC shouldn't be quite as clueless, well, peasant PCs would probably be...and I like exploration, and surprises! Night's Master for mood, cosmology and great demonlord personalities...and Underworld descriptions!
***=more for worldbuilding, history, cosmology and mood than actual stories (allthough I love said stories). Mysterious ruins, evil elder races, scary monsters, evil wizards, a sense of age, a sense of doom and elegy...
****=love his naming conventions and the breakneck pace of his early work! And...cosmology, again.
******=city states, evil gods, demons, science-fantasy alien monsters, once again a sense of history and age and elegy, a very strongly shades of gray setting decades before it was cool

*******=(30s-40s sunday strip Gordon) Mongo is the perfect sandbox hexcrawl setting. Hell the story reads like one too! :D Weird humanoids and monsters and women sexually harassing the protagonist (I'd stay away from the third bit :D). Insert magic and you have the perfect oldschool D&D setting.
********=love the look of 80s-early 90s Groo. And the setting. And the jokes.
*********=space gods, man.
**********=space gods, man.

...er. This became really rambling. :o Will continue on later...

Depends on the genre, but for fantasy I'd have to go with a mixture of books and movies, in no particular order:

• Legend
• The Spiderwick Chronicles
• The Dark Crystal
• The Neverending Story
• The Voyages of the Princess Ark
• The Name of the Rose
• The Ninth Gate
• The Dragonbone Chair trilogy
• Most of Robin Hobb's work
• The Lies of Locke Lamora
• The Golden Child
• Game of Thrones
• The Name of the Wind (mega fan)

and just generally clever intricate tales with a childlike sprinkling of magic.

The cyberpunk Deep Blue post flood game (yes Panzerkraken I'm working on the art daily :p)

• Supernatural
• Star wars
• Fringe
• x-files
• Bladerunner
• The Fifth Element
• Split second
• Total Recall
• Predator 2
• The Alien movies
• Bourne conspiracy
• Mission Impossible
• American Gothic
• Deep Rising
• Blue Submarine No 6
• Ghost in the shell
• Black Lagoon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-s31XduHb0) (especially this, if anyone is aware of anything similar let me know!)
  

Also I've unofficially adopted Xtortion Audio's Untouchable (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41ngnsC8w4E) as my "write shit for the game" tune. And the GitS song Stamina Rose (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOLLm_fzbg4) because the ping around 0:40, the sound of fear in the deeps.

AUTHORS
Lloyd Alexander (Prydain Chronicles); Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn); John Bellairs; Algernon Blackwood; Robert Chambers; John Christopher (The Tripods); Susanna Clarke (Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell), John Crowley (Little, Big); Phillip K. Dick; Lord Dunsany; Edgar Eager; E.R. Eddison (The Worm Oroborus); Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere, Stardust); Frank Herbert (Dune series); Robert Holdstock (Mythago Wood, Lavondyss); Fritz Leiber; Garth Nix; Mervyn Peake (Gormenghast); Terry Pratchett; J.R.R. Tolkien (Smith of Wotton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham); Evangeline Walton (Mabinogion series); Manly Wade Wellman; Gene Wolfe

And a crapload of Fairy Tales

FILMS
The Beastmaster, Captain chronos-Vampire Hunter,Clash of the Titans, The Court Jester, Darby O'Gill and The Little People, The Dark Crystal, Dragonslayer, Excalibur, Hawke The Slayer, The Hidden Fortress, Jabberwocky, Krull, Labyrinth, Ladyhawke, Legend, The Last Unicorn, Lord of the Rings (Bakshi); Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail, The Neverending Story, Secret of NIMH, Sword of the Valiant, Time Bandits

(also the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films I cant recall the names of which were probably awful but at that age to me they were just like Heavy Metal album covers brought to life)

TV
Brother Cadfael Mysteries, Covington Cross, Darkstar, Dungeons & Dragons cartoon, Robin of Sherwood, Jim Henson's The Storyteller, Willo The Wisp

VIDEOGAMES
Altered Beasts, Castlevania, Dragon's Lair, King's Quest, Legend of Zelda, Zork

Let's see for me(Note: Strictly Fantasy listed here)


Videogames:


-Ys: Books 1 and 2(Particularly for 'Heroic' style games)
-Castlevania series
-Dragon's Dogma/Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
-Legend of Zelda/Link to the Past(See Ys)
-Final Fantasy 1
-Rygar/Rygar: The Legendary Adventure
-7th Saga
-Gauntlet: Dark Legacy
-Faxanadu
-Breath of Fire
-Dragon Quest
-Cadash
-Beyond Oasis
-Exile(For some darker religion-based worlds)


Manga:

-Berserk(for those much darker games)


Music:

Gamma Ray
Blind Guardian
Rhapsody
Amon Amarth
Finntroll
Sabaton


Movies:

Labyrinth
Princess Bride
Willow
Conan
Legend

(My movies are mostly usual fare. My books are essentially mostly listed under Appendix N as it is.)

Nice to see multiple mentions of the Legend of Zelda games here. They're what got me to look into tabletop RPGs. Pefect combination of mystery, exploration, acquisition, action and not too much story.

Started with the Fighting Fantasy game books (both solo and group play versions) and they still influence me today, especially through their art.

I haven't read that much fantasy or scifi since my Terry Pratchett binge years ago - I prefer nonfiction, spy stuff, play scripts, and quirky modern farces, but I try to find ways to recycle what I learn from those in tabletop games.

My chief influences are Magic: The Gathering and Square Enix video games (all Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, etc.)

Lately the anime Soul Eater has been providing me a lot of material.

I couldn't emphasise enough the influence of those solo gamebooks on creating my idea of fantasy; Fighting Fantasy perhaps the most, but I found the Lone Wolf books classier. I've always wanted to run a group of PCs through Shadow on the Sand, one I played through again and again until it fell apart! In fact, a whole Lone Wolf campaign would be awesome ... Whatever happened to the plans for a RPG? I thought there were rumblings a few years ago ....

Otherwise, I grew up on similar films to previous posters, particularly influenced at a very young age by The Black Cauldron animated feature, and The Never-Ending Story, and later Willow, The Princess Bride, and Indiana Jones.

As for books, I haven't read as much of the original N as I would have liked, though I've been enjoying properly discovering Leiber, Howard, and Moorcock as an adult.

However, just recently I reread the Earthsea Trilogy, which I've been reading and rereading since I was eight, and I was amazed at how well it stands up. The writing is properly beautiful, and economically evocative, unlike so much fantasy. And I think it's perhaps the treatment of magic, and particularly a magical apprenticeship, that has most shaped my ideas of what that should be like.

Thinking over the stuff I've specifically used for my recent Dwarf Fortress campaign:
-The Boatmurdered Let's Play.
-D&D With Pornstars, Monsters & Manuals, Daddy Grognard and Dungeon Dozen blogs and the general make it weird but play it with a straight face OSR aesthetic you see on a bunch of blogs.
-The deeply fucked up Green Antarctica alternate history timeline, especially for the monkeys.
-The Saga of Erik the Viking book.
-Random One Page Dungeon modules inserted as needed.
-The Croods for the weird animals.
-Recycled NPCs I liked from old campaigns.
-Warhammer 40K for a bit of goblin attitude, but the dwarves managed to ally with them anyway...
-Elves as asshole rules lawyers from fairy tales rather than the more modern asshole hippies. Gave them a Herne the Hunter vibe.
-The Black Company for general attitude about fantasy, but no specific content I can think of.

Comics: Doom Patrol, The Invisibles, The Filth, Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Luther Arkwright
Books: Christopher Priest (The Affirmation, The Glamour, early SF), Michael Marshal Smith (Only Forward etc), early Neil Stephenson (Snowcrash, Diamond Age),  Moorcock (esp. Jerry Cornelius), John Harrison's Viriconium, Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, the obligatory nods to Zelazny and Vance
Films: Dark City, everything by David Lynch, everything by David Cronenberg (esp. Naked Lunch), Donnie Darko, Blade Runner, Delicatessen, Until The End of the World (Wim Wenders)
Games: Thief Dark Project + sequels, Quake (with NIN soundtrack), Zelda, Killer 7 and No More Heroes (Suda 51)

Speaking of solo game books-yeah, damn. Getting my memory jogged like that brought me back to the old Grailquest books(Realm of Chaos, The Castle of Darkness, etc.) I used to play those all the time back in my 7-8 year old years.

Ha! Yes! Grailquest was, I think, possibly my very first solo-play gamebook. I seem to remember in the one I had that there was a mistake in the "go to page XX" that made finishing it impossible. Given to me by my cool aunt's boyfriend of the time. Also remember having a lightning bolt on each fingertip and a fireball on each palm... was that the one?

You're kidding, right?

-clash

David Gemmell's books would be in there.

Damn but I loved the fighting fantasy game books, too. Lovely atmosphere in them, with those great illustrations and death around every corner...

Peter Englund's Ofredsår (Years of War) and Den Oövervinnerlige (The Invincible), which are about 17th Century Sweden. Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror would be obligatory too. Desmond Seward's War of the Roses is a good read too.

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

Vance's Dying Earth stuff.

Skyrim. Lord of the Rings Online.

Quote from: RunningLaser;721775David Gemmell's books would be in there.

DEFINITELY agree with this.  I found his fantasy books when I was almost out of gaming completely, and they pulled me back in to the whole mess.

My Appendix N are those things that inspired me in the early days of gaming, not necessarily now.  Things I watched as a kid that first decade of gaming that got me into gaming so much.  As mentioned, these are the media I was exposed to, so that's why I have movies rather than the book version.


From the other thread:


My Appendix N that inspired my early D&D days consists of a lot of things that would never make that back of the book

* Animated movies from the 70s and early 80s (Hobbit, LOTR, Bakshi's Wizards, Flight of Dragons, Last Unicorn, Watership Down, Black Cauldron, Heavy Metal, Secret of Nymh, Dark Crystal)
* regular fantasy movies (both Conan movies (the destroyer is still in my mind THE D&D movie), Dragonslayer, Sword and the Sorcerer, Krull, Black Hole, Beastmaster, Excalibur, All the Harryhausen movies [Sinbad, Clash of the Titans, etc], Time Bandits, Quest for the Holy Grail, Ladyhawke, Big Trouble in Little China, Willow, and the Princess Bride)
* Comics (Groo is #1 by far ;)  ), The Adventurers, Elfquest, The Realm


Most books I read were ones from the library regarding fables, myths, and that sort. Those were my favorite. Fantasy authors were primarily Terry Brooks, Lloyd Alexander, and Weis&Hickman.  It wasn't until I was a late teen or adult before I read Lieber, Howard, Lovecraft, Salvatore, etc.

The first homebrew rpg I ever designed was based on Groo the Wanderer. Great comic. Perhaps the only comic that Im pretty much garunteed to find some laugh out loud moments in every issue.

Sword & the Sorcerer will always hold a special place in my heart.  My folks took me to see that movie when I was 9.  Far too young for me to be there, but my folks made a special exception for all the kids  since it was the first movie my uncle, a budding stuntman, was in.  He was one of the guys who was eaten by rats in the tunnel:)

In chronological order:

• D'Aulaire's books of myths
• Conan comics
• Sinbad movies
• Lord of the Rings movie (Bakshi)
• The artwork in the Holmes basic book
• Early TSR and Judges Guild adventures
• Trampier artwork
• Lord of the Rings and the The Hobbit
• Epic and Heavy Metal magazines
• Paul Jaquays
• Excalibur (Boorman)
• Moorcock's Eternal Champion series
• Conan movie
• The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson
• Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books by Fritz Leiber
• Arak comics
• Nift the Lean by Michael Shea
• Dying Earth series by Jack Vance

It's worth noting all of those influences were in place by the time I was 12 or 13, and that I haven't really had anything influence my fantasy RPGs since. I find most fantasy novels absolute trash, and movies are never as cool as the stuff I conjure in my mind. So since I was a teenager, anything creative has come from my own imagination.

Trying to narrow down to a few biggest influences is not easy, but here goes:

The Thousand Nights and a Night
Greek Mythology
E.R. Burroughs
Lord Dunsany
P.J. Farmer
R.E. Howard
T. Lee
C.S. Lewis
F. Leiber
A. Merritt
M. Moorcock
A. Norton
C.A. Smith
J. Vance
A.E. Van Vogt
K.E. Wagner
R. Zelazny

In the past, for fantasy, and in no particular order:

Robert E Howard  (Conan mostly)
H.P. Lovecraft  (Mostly the stuff that Conan might be able to kill)
Michael Moorcock  (Elric stuff mostly)
The Dark Crystal
LotR et al.  (with caveats)
The Once and Future King
Star Wars

I read Conan and Elric before I read Tolkien.  As much as I love Tolkien, and I do, I'm much more influenced by the previous two than Tolkien.  And I came to Lovecraft through Conan.

I also read a lot of science fiction, though I don't recall much of it being a direct influence.

Much later, the Black Company series has had a great impact.

Quote from: TristramEvans;721729As requested, what books, comics, videogames, films or plays have had the biggest influence on your gaming? Specifically what inspires your fantasy?

Anime/Manga:

Avatar: The Last Airbender (although it might not qualify, depending upon who you ask)
Cowboy Bebop
Sword Art Online

Video Games:

Dragon Age series
Final Fantasy series, particularly 6 and 9
Legend of Zelda
Persona 3
Tales of Vesperia

I'm surprised that people are mentioning so few gaming products here. The snake has been eating its own tail for a long time and while that can be annoying, a lot of the best inspiration for my own games has come from stuff written specifically for gaming even though I use my own setting as I steal everything that's interesting and plug it in.

Quote from: Daztur;722030I'm surprised that people are mentioning so few gaming products here. The snake has been eating its own tail for a long time and while that can be annoying, a lot of the best inspiration for my own games has come from stuff written specifically for gaming even though I use my own setting as I steal everything that's interesting and plug it in.

The BECMI & 2e era art has always remained a big inspiration for me, for sure.

As have these games, of course.

Rolemaster, too, and MERP, and CoC and CP2020.

Quote from: The Ent;722057The BECMI & 2e era art has always remained a big inspiration for me, for sure.

As have these games, of course.

Rolemaster, too, and MERP, and CoC and CP2020.

For me it was Bill Willingham, with his art from B/X.  Some of the first art I saw, and made a definite impression.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;722064For me it was Bill Willingham, with his art from B/X.  Some of the first art I saw, and made a definite impression.

I suppose Elmore fills that role for me.

Quote from: The Ent;722066I suppose Elmore fills that role for me.

For me there just isn't anything like Tony DiTerlizzi that will always be what D&D looks like to me.

As my gaming palette is more than just fantasy, I'd have to break it down by genre. A modest start might look like:

Fantasy

Authors:
Clark Ashton Smith
Michael Moorcock
Fritz Leiber
JRR Tolkien
Jack Vance
Roger Zealazny
Raymond E Feist
CS Friedman
Katherine Kurtz
Steven Brust
Alexander Dumas
Edgar Rice Burroughs
HP Lovecraft

Films:
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Star Wars trilogy
Clash of the Titans
Excalibur
Heavy Metal
Conan the Barbarian
Conan the Destroyer
The Beast master
Krull
The Princess Bride
Aladdin

TV:
Record of Lodoss War
Avatar: the Last Airbender

Games (video):
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VII
Master of Magic

Science Fiction

Authors:
Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle
Frank Herbert
Isaac Asimov
Philip K Dick
Paul Anderson
CJ Cherryh
Peter F Hamilton
Theodore Sturgeon
Murray Leinster
Cordwainer Smith
Algis Budrys

Films:
Aliens
Star Wars trilogy
2001: A Space Odyssey
Contact
Westworld
The Andromeda Strain
Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan
The Terminator
Predator
Akira

TV:
Farscape
Firefly
Star Trek (TOS, TNG,  DS9)

Games:
Master of Orion II,  III*
Elite
XCom: UFO Defense
XCom: Enemy Unknown

* mmo3 had some serious game design flaws. Nonetheless,  I found the setting inspirational.

Modern/Espionage/Horror

Authors:
Robert Ludlum
Ian Fleming
Charles Stross
HP Lovecraft

Film:
James Bond series
Bourne trilogy
Mission Impossible series
Hunt for Red October
Taken
Ronin

TV:
24
Alias
Leverage
Mission Impossible

Quote from: Daztur;722071For me there just isn't anything like Tony DiTerlizzi that will always be what D&D looks like to me.

Well, I love his art as well! :)
Both for his work on Planescape, and other stuff like his faerie creatures in the MM.

The guy that did the covers for Dark Sun was also great (but Baxa I like rather less), as were the dudes illustrating Ravenloft (particularily the interior, b&w illos) and of course pretty much everything in the Gold Box FR...

2e was the Golden Age of RPG illustrations. :)

Quote from: The Ent;7220892e was the Golden Age of RPG illustrations. :)

I heartily agree.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;722082Avatar: the Last Airbender

I'm ambivalent about this one. It's quite inspiring and unquestionably good, but the Asian motifs and the four classic elements shtick feel threadbare to me and my circles, even with the spiritual/martial arts twist. Many of the adult fans are also crazed, ungrateful, nitpicking hipsters with rose-tinted goggle implants and serious entitlement issues, and they kind of suck the fun out of it when the subject comes up. Oh well.

Comics:
For me the big one is Heavy Metal and the various Warren comics... Eerie, Creepy. Also the Mystery Comics Digest from Gold Key. Any weird horror comics actually.
Oh, and underground comics... horror and weird Scifi.
Druillet and Moebius wherever I could find them.

Books:
Edgar Rice Burroughs, especially the Pellucidar series.
Lovecraft
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Bulfinch's Mythology

Cartoons:
Scooby Doo, even though it always kind of sucked. My love of Call of Cthulhu harkens straight back to that show.
Herculoids
I'm not sure where to put all the Gerry Anderson stuff so I'll plop it down here.

Movies:
All those old Shaw Bros. movies that played on Kung Fu Theater.

Quote from: The Ent;722089Well, I love his art as well! :)
Both for his work on Planescape, and other stuff like his faerie creatures in the MM.

2e was the Golden Age of RPG illustrations. :)

Ok,  now I have to take you off my favorites list ;)


While I like Tony D's art, it was way too childlike for me.  It belonged in a children's book.  I much preferred the darker art tone of 1e.

Also, I think 2e had some of the worst interior b/w art ever.  Just like the Rules Cyclopedia.  Ugh.  And don't get me started on the interior art of the Players Option's books ;)


Back on topic though, I can't believe I forgot one of the biggest inspirations I ever had:  Choose your Own Adventure Books.  Those, along with Endless Quest and Wizards, WArriors & You books were huge in inspiring me to get deeping into RPGs.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;722199Ok,  now I have to take you off my favorites list ;)


While I like Tony D's art, it was way too childlike for me.  It belonged in a children's book.  I much preferred the darker art tone of 1e.

Also, I think 2e had some of the worst interior b/w art ever.  Just like the Rules Cyclopedia.  Ugh.  And don't get me started on the interior art of the Players Option's books ;)

:D

Player's Option had some bad stuff, yeah. Well most of the illos in P'sO were bad. Seems like the later, "Black" printings of the Core 2e books also had sucky illos. I like the illos in the older 2e Core books though (especially the Color ones but also the b&w ones, many of wich originated in 1e adventures).

Agreed on RC (except the thief and druid illos, those were good).

Quote from: SacrosanctBack on topic though, I can't believe I forgot one of the biggest inspirations I ever had:  Choose your Own Adventure Books.  Those, along with Endless Quest and Wizards, WArriors & You books were huge in inspiring me to get deeping into RPGs.

I liked those as well.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;722199Back on topic though, I can't believe I forgot one of the biggest inspirations I ever had:  Choose your Own Adventure Books.  Those, along with Endless Quest and Wizards, WArriors & You books were huge in inspiring me to get deeping into RPGs.

Definitely. The Cave of Time, baby. And the Dungeon of Dread. My favourite were the Fighting Fantasy books, in particular the Citadel of Chaos.

Quote from: Haffrung;722213Definitely. The Cave of Time, baby. And the Dungeon of Dread. My favourite were the Fighting Fantasy books, in particular the Citadel of Chaos.

I never actually won Citadel of Chaos! :D
I must've tried a few dozen times!

Quote from: Haffrung;722213Definitely. The Cave of Time, baby. And the Dungeon of Dread. My favourite were the Fighting Fantasy books, in particular the Citadel of Chaos.

Oh, if we're going to get specific, my favorites were...

Demons of the Deep (made me love aquatic environments)

Vault of the Vampire (transitioned me into Ravenloft campaigns)

Tower of Destruction (a sky dungeon! we need more of these)

Night Dragon (Dragons + weird fantasy = sweeet)

Riddling Reaver (my first truly successful campaign, though quite a railroad)

The Rings of Kether (the archetype of that scifi campaign I never get to run)

Kharé - Cityport of Traps (Fun encounters and interior art)

"Hammer's Slammers", David Drake
"Point of Impact", Stephen Hunter
"American Gunfight", Stephen Hunter
"One Dimensional Man", Herbert Marcuse
"Gödel, Escher, Bach", Douglas Hofstadter
"The Burden of Office", Joseph Tussman
"Roadsigns", Roger Zelazny
"The Silmarillion", J.R.R. Tolkein
"Exterminator!", William S. Burroughs
"Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs", Hunter S. Thompson
"The Atrocity Exhibition", J.G. Ballard
"Ortona", Mark Zuehlke
"War Day", Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka
The first two years of Heavy Metal
"Junkwaffel", Vaughn Bodé

The Italian Spaghetti Westerns of the 60's & early 70's and the Hong Kong Heroic Bloodshed urban gunslinger films of the 80's & early 90's were a massive influence on my whole idea of what "Adventure" was. They contributed more to the feel of my D&D games than anything Tolkien ever wrote.

Quote from: Daztur;722030I'm surprised that people are mentioning so few gaming products here. The snake has been eating its own tail for a long time and while that can be annoying, a lot of the best inspiration for my own games has come from stuff written specifically for gaming even though I use my own setting as I steal everything that's interesting and plug it in.

Some of the most interesting ideas I find outside of table-top.  I think it has something to do with taking an idea divorced from typical RPG conventions and thinking "OK, how can I put this into my next gaming session?"

Now, this is a big :o! moment for me, because I forgot one of my absolutely biggest "Appendix N" things ever back in my original post in this thread, in spite of having told myself "you HAVE TO remember to add this stuff".

Astrid Lindgren's fantasy novels.

Lindgren's one of two fantasy novelists that I can say I prefer 100% to Howard (my absolute fave English-language fantasy author), the other one is Tove Jansson, however Jansson's stuff is less RPG-friendly than Lindgren's stuff I'd say (well less standard fantasy RPG friendly anyhow).

Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart stays my fave fantasy novel, I like it as much as I did when 7. It's shaped my views of what a dragon should be like for ever, for one thing (in case anyone's wondering: a dragon should be a pure evil engine of destruction!). Katla the dragon is among fantasy lit's greatest monsters. She's not the villain though, she's too dumb for that; the villain is a horrible totalitarian nobleman who never actually speaks in the scenes he appears in (speaking to his rank and file, not to mention the oppressed populace, is beneath him! He's got a second in command for that!). Very cool look on the baddies too, they look like Norman knights except extra evil (black helmets and cloaks). BTW I was a bit too young for reading it at 7, I think; it deals rather heavily with death, children dying to be specific.

Lindgren's Ronja the Robber's Daughter is also great, a fun little novel in a very cool fantasy forest (with gnomes, fairly scary goblin creatures and very scary harpy creatures) with one of fantasy's best female heroes.

Also there's Mio, My Son, wich was once made into a mediocre movie with Batman playing the hero's friend and Saruman playing the villain. :D More seriously, that one is good too.

I would think the largest things that affected my D&D games as a kid would be something like...

The Hobbit (Book)
Shannara (Book Series)
Dragon Warrior/Quest (Video Game Series)
Willow (Movie)
Ladyhawke (Movie)

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting but those stuck with me. Now if we go off into things that affected my OTHER games in other genres during the time I was a kid:

Star Wars
X-Men
Batman: The Animated Series
Transformers (Mostly the G1 Marvel Comics)
and a bunch of other stuff.

I'm going to stick to written works.

J.R.R. Tolkien - Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Silmarillion
Robert E. Howard - Conan
H.P. Lovecraft
Neil Gaiman - Sandman
William Goldman - The Princess Bride
Alexander Dumas - The Three Musketeers
Terry Pratchett - Small Gods
Fritz Leiber - Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
Steven Brust - Vlad Taltos

Those would all definitely be on the list. I'll also toss out:

Michael Moorcock -Elric
Roger Zelazny - Nine Princes of Amber
Edgar Rice Burroughs - A Princess of Mars
C.L. Moore - Jirel of Joiry
Clark Ashton Smith
George R.R. Martin - A Game of Thrones
Randall Garrett - Lord Darcy
Stephen King - The Dark Tower
Robert Asprin - Myth Conceptions
Jeff Smith - Bone
Frank Herbert - Dune
R.A. Salvatore - Dark Elf Trilogy
Gene Wolfe - Book of the New Sun

Things noticeably absent from this list would include J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis, and Phillip Pullman. I enjoy their work immensely, but it doesn't have any significant impact on my vision of fantasy.

Cartoon:  Thundarr the Barbarian

Quote from: Narmer;722758Cartoon:  Thundarr the Barbarian

I wanted to put that in my list, but I think my like for Thundarr was a result not a cause.

I my case, talking about cartoons, it'd be Shagma (Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea, to English-speakers). At times full-on Heavy Metal/70s-80s weird SF eurocomics vibe, yet kid-friendly (to varying degrees, a couple of the eps were fairly scary! :D).

Quote from: The Ent;722385Now, this is a big :o! moment for me, because I forgot one of my absolutely biggest "Appendix N" things ever back in my original post in this thread, in spite of having told myself "you HAVE TO remember to add this stuff".

Astrid Lindgren's fantasy novels.

Thanks for remembering! The Brothers Lionheart are a spiritual and a fantasy delight, and my first love was Ronja... The movies are brilliant as well.

I'm not nearly done with my own list, but this reminds me of another masterpiece of fantasy for young and old: Otfried Preussler's Krabat. The recent movie was merely OK, but the novel itself is up there with Lindgren's stuff. Highly recommended.

Quote from: Riordan;723025Thanks for remembering! The Brothers Lionheart are a spiritual and a fantasy delight, and my first love was Ronja... The movies are brilliant as well.

Happy to see I'm not alone! :)
(On TBP mentioning Lindgren's fantasy novels is always a great way to bond with the Swedepack...there's not quite as many Scandinavians here though)

I was a bit too young to actually crush on Ronja myself when reading (or rather having the book read to me, I was like 6 or something) :D But I enjoyed it lots.

I've stolen from both in D&D campaigns before (Brothers as "out of the way area brutalized by evil lord with secret superweapon [aka dragon]", Ronja more as in "seriously faerie tale-ish forests with lots of scary things in it for low level dudes to explore"). I believe I once made a kinda mashup of both + Mio (I made the evil lord undead - a vampire in this case). I'd do it again any time! :cool:

Quote from: RiordanI'm not nearly done with my own list, but this reminds me of another masterpiece of fantasy for young and old: Otfried Preussler's Krabat. The recent movie was merely OK, but the novel itself is up there with Lindgren's stuff. Highly recommended.

Thanks! I'll check it out! :)

I haven't seen this yet, so I'll name it as an early key influence:

Urshurak by the Brothers Hildebrandt.

Boy-howdy, it's not very good, but in the relatively empty scene of late 1970s/early 1980s fantasy (speaking as someone who lived several mountains away from a Waldenbooks as a kid), it had a massive effect on how I envisioned D&D.