daniel_ream
2017-08-08, 03:22 AM
To paraphrase Perry White, I've been at this thirty years, man and boy; one thing that was true thirty years ago and is still true today is that gamers generally don't seem all that well-read outside of game books and licensed novels. And over time, D&D has gone from being a voracious consumer of myths, legends, fiction, movies, and any passing lore that wasn't nailed down to endlessly recycling its own tropes, looking inward instead of outward.
I'm starting this thread to act as a repository for sources of inspiration for fantasy that you can use in your games, idea mines you can strip for neat concepts, characters, spells, magic, scenes, what-have-you. A list of stuff that gets away from the D&D tropes as hard and fast as possible. I'm going to set a few rules up front to keep things focused on that goal. These rules are specific instances of a Rule Zero: Not D&D, and not something anyone can find in a five second Google search. (I can't enforce them, but do think carefully about why they're there before arguing with them; they matter).
Fantasy sources only: Let's not get into an argument about what fantasy is or isn't; let's neither nitpick grey areas nor insist that Star Wars totally counts because Jedi.
Nothing from the AD&D DMG Appendix N: The OSR has covered Appendix N in exhaustive detail. These works were once obscure, but these days you can just toss "Appendix N" into Google and get tons of commentary and links.
No anime: Similarly, anime is more ubiquitous than it's ever been. It's easy to find hundreds of anime series at the click of a button. You whippersnappers don't know what it was like when we had to smuggle laserdiscs and bootleg VHS tapes out of Japan. Also, get off my lawn. There's also the fact that pretty much all anime trad fantasy is aggressively pushing the D&D cliches, and we're looking to get away from that.
No books published after 1985: This is an arbitrary rule, but D&D pretty much swallowed the fantasy lit genre whole in the 1980's and it's been recycling the D&D tropes ever since. Three of the top selling fantasy book series are based on the author's RPG campaigns. Wait, four, I always forget Feist.
Feel free to violate these rules if your link obeys Rule Zero (Redwall was written in 1986 and I think it counts).
I'll start things off with some random bits in no particular order:
Books
Children's Literature
Earthsea (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40909-earthsea-cycle) cycle - a different look at wizards, with an emphasis on personal responsibility and some Jungian psychology for good measure
The Dark is Rising (https://www.goodreads.com/series/44420-the-dark-is-rising) sequence - short reads, as they're mostly for younger readers. Lots of Britannic folklore and a great collect quest
Monster Blood Tattoo (https://www.goodreads.com/series/42442-monster-blood-tattoo) series - I have no idea how to describe this. Edwardian magic-punk? This is hands down the most original and coherent fantasy setting I've seen in decades.
Classic Fantasy Lit
Spellsinger (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40662-spellsinger) - There's not a lot of light hearted fantasy these days. Talking anthropomorphic animals is a one-shot gag, but the magic system is worth looking at
Castle Perilous (https://www.goodreads.com/series/42982-castle-perilous) - the castle is a nexus and every door opens on a completely different fantasy universe. The castle occupants are people who found their way in and now can't find the door home. Played for laughs, but an alternative to Spelljammer if you want to do a milieu-hopping campaign
Majipoor (https://www.goodreads.com/series/50087-majipoor) - I'm cheating a bit. This is technically science fiction, but it's presented as fantasy. It has magic, strange demi-human races and a medieval technology level. And it's huge - the planet is the size of Jupiter.
Television
The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin (http://www.tv.com/shows/the-adventures-of-teddy-ruxpin/) - No, seriously. There's an airship, a dark lord with an air force of goblins flying magic-punk prop planes, a massive collect quest, weird races, and magic all over the place. This is an epic campaign.
The Adventures of Sinbad (http://www.tv.com/shows/the-adventures-of-sinbad/) - one of the many knockoffs of Hercules and Xena, if you can stomach the apocalyptically bad acting there are some great wandering band of heroes plots you can steal. Unlike Hercules & Xena, it's an ensemble cast so you don't need to rework the plots for multiple PCs
Spellbinder (http://www.tv.com/shows/spellbinder/) - good luck tracking down this Australian kids fantasy show. Pretty stock kids-from-our-world-end-up-in-fantasy-universe plot, but the setting is recognizably trad fantasy without using any of the usual D&D tropes.
Film
Everybody knows the classics like Krull, Conan, the Sword and the Sorceror, Beastmaster, The Scorpion King, etc., etc. You can Google for "top 100 fantasy movies" easy enough. Here's some lesser known stuff.
The Sinbad movies - 1 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051337/), 2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071569/), 3 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076716/) - The special effects don't age well, but The Golden Voyage of Sinbad has an awesome treasure map, as well as the most sympathetic villain in a fantasy movie ever ("Sire! We have reached the island ahead of Sinbad!" "Excellent! Wine for all the men!")
Painted Skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Skin_(2008_film)) and Painted Skin: The Resurrection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Skin:_The_Resurrection) - these used to be on Netflix, but your local Chinese bootleg store probably has them. These defy description a bit, but there's lots of neat supernatural elements that aren't your usual Western fare, and they're less all over the map tonally than most anime. Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3585004/) and Ice Fantasy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5022298/) are also worth checking out for typically over the top supernatural wu xia.
Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Kingdom:_The_Dragon_King), also seven other names - it would be nice if we had a better adaptation of Die Nibelungenlied than this, but you take what you can get. You'll recognize a lot of the elements Tolkien appropriated, but here they're in their original context. Try to find the full German version.
I'm starting this thread to act as a repository for sources of inspiration for fantasy that you can use in your games, idea mines you can strip for neat concepts, characters, spells, magic, scenes, what-have-you. A list of stuff that gets away from the D&D tropes as hard and fast as possible. I'm going to set a few rules up front to keep things focused on that goal. These rules are specific instances of a Rule Zero: Not D&D, and not something anyone can find in a five second Google search. (I can't enforce them, but do think carefully about why they're there before arguing with them; they matter).
Fantasy sources only: Let's not get into an argument about what fantasy is or isn't; let's neither nitpick grey areas nor insist that Star Wars totally counts because Jedi.
Nothing from the AD&D DMG Appendix N: The OSR has covered Appendix N in exhaustive detail. These works were once obscure, but these days you can just toss "Appendix N" into Google and get tons of commentary and links.
No anime: Similarly, anime is more ubiquitous than it's ever been. It's easy to find hundreds of anime series at the click of a button. You whippersnappers don't know what it was like when we had to smuggle laserdiscs and bootleg VHS tapes out of Japan. Also, get off my lawn. There's also the fact that pretty much all anime trad fantasy is aggressively pushing the D&D cliches, and we're looking to get away from that.
No books published after 1985: This is an arbitrary rule, but D&D pretty much swallowed the fantasy lit genre whole in the 1980's and it's been recycling the D&D tropes ever since. Three of the top selling fantasy book series are based on the author's RPG campaigns. Wait, four, I always forget Feist.
Feel free to violate these rules if your link obeys Rule Zero (Redwall was written in 1986 and I think it counts).
I'll start things off with some random bits in no particular order:
Books
Children's Literature
Earthsea (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40909-earthsea-cycle) cycle - a different look at wizards, with an emphasis on personal responsibility and some Jungian psychology for good measure
The Dark is Rising (https://www.goodreads.com/series/44420-the-dark-is-rising) sequence - short reads, as they're mostly for younger readers. Lots of Britannic folklore and a great collect quest
Monster Blood Tattoo (https://www.goodreads.com/series/42442-monster-blood-tattoo) series - I have no idea how to describe this. Edwardian magic-punk? This is hands down the most original and coherent fantasy setting I've seen in decades.
Classic Fantasy Lit
Spellsinger (https://www.goodreads.com/series/40662-spellsinger) - There's not a lot of light hearted fantasy these days. Talking anthropomorphic animals is a one-shot gag, but the magic system is worth looking at
Castle Perilous (https://www.goodreads.com/series/42982-castle-perilous) - the castle is a nexus and every door opens on a completely different fantasy universe. The castle occupants are people who found their way in and now can't find the door home. Played for laughs, but an alternative to Spelljammer if you want to do a milieu-hopping campaign
Majipoor (https://www.goodreads.com/series/50087-majipoor) - I'm cheating a bit. This is technically science fiction, but it's presented as fantasy. It has magic, strange demi-human races and a medieval technology level. And it's huge - the planet is the size of Jupiter.
Television
The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin (http://www.tv.com/shows/the-adventures-of-teddy-ruxpin/) - No, seriously. There's an airship, a dark lord with an air force of goblins flying magic-punk prop planes, a massive collect quest, weird races, and magic all over the place. This is an epic campaign.
The Adventures of Sinbad (http://www.tv.com/shows/the-adventures-of-sinbad/) - one of the many knockoffs of Hercules and Xena, if you can stomach the apocalyptically bad acting there are some great wandering band of heroes plots you can steal. Unlike Hercules & Xena, it's an ensemble cast so you don't need to rework the plots for multiple PCs
Spellbinder (http://www.tv.com/shows/spellbinder/) - good luck tracking down this Australian kids fantasy show. Pretty stock kids-from-our-world-end-up-in-fantasy-universe plot, but the setting is recognizably trad fantasy without using any of the usual D&D tropes.
Film
Everybody knows the classics like Krull, Conan, the Sword and the Sorceror, Beastmaster, The Scorpion King, etc., etc. You can Google for "top 100 fantasy movies" easy enough. Here's some lesser known stuff.
The Sinbad movies - 1 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051337/), 2 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071569/), 3 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076716/) - The special effects don't age well, but The Golden Voyage of Sinbad has an awesome treasure map, as well as the most sympathetic villain in a fantasy movie ever ("Sire! We have reached the island ahead of Sinbad!" "Excellent! Wine for all the men!")
Painted Skin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Skin_(2008_film)) and Painted Skin: The Resurrection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Skin:_The_Resurrection) - these used to be on Netflix, but your local Chinese bootleg store probably has them. These defy description a bit, but there's lots of neat supernatural elements that aren't your usual Western fare, and they're less all over the map tonally than most anime. Snow Girl and the Dark Crystal (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3585004/) and Ice Fantasy (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5022298/) are also worth checking out for typically over the top supernatural wu xia.
Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Kingdom:_The_Dragon_King), also seven other names - it would be nice if we had a better adaptation of Die Nibelungenlied than this, but you take what you can get. You'll recognize a lot of the elements Tolkien appropriated, but here they're in their original context. Try to find the full German version.