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

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!
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 ! 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. 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.