Skip to main content

Unusual Inspirations from Unusual Media

We’ve written a few times on the blog about using commonly shared media to get people into gaming and developing your group's games. Finding common ground can be key in getting your group to coalesce just right. You can’t stick to just that, though. While you can find plenty of shared humor and excitement by walking the same ground you know you all love, you need to expand your horizons to keep games fresh and interesting. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go digging, though, inspiration can be found in any sort of media or event if you consider it long enough and apply it well. So, this week, let's take a look at some unconventional media that could inspire our tabletop gaming stories.

A Novel Idea

Television shows and movies do it all the time: steal from classic literature and folklore and make it your own. Would the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes be the same if they hadn’t reused classic episodes of The Twilight Zone? Would Gargoyles have been as enjoyable without their takes on Shakespeare and folklore? While the Bard and maybe even the short stories Twilight Zone episodes were based might be well-known by your group, that doesn’t mean you can’t easily find something your players don’t know or might have forgotten about. You could easily drop your group into a classic folklore plot in some other land where they'll have to help (or hinder) the protagonist. At the very least, you can find inspiration yourself by thinking of a character from one of your favorite stories and putting them into a new situation. What would the Three Amigos do to help Bugs Bunny avoid Elmer Fudd and make it to Albuquerque? What would Paul Bunyan do if he thought the players were making trouble in his home town? The combinations for your inspiration are endless. Just take something you really enjoy, and mix it in with something else, and you’ll have a new game for your players cooked up in no time.

What's Up, Doc?

Speaking of cooking and documentaries, both can be excellent sources of tabletop inspiration, strange as that may seem. Documentaries on just about any subject can provide a great historical situation for you to drop your players into, especially if it's one they're less familiar with. Docs on landscapes or historic sites might also provide you a setting or description that makes your gaming session a little more memorable and real for your group. It doesn’t have to be a documentary, either, any niche show can provide excellent inspiration. Cooking shows, both of the "how-to" variety and the competition sort, can provide some delicious appetizers for your games in the form of character personalities for NPCs or a new theme for that inn you’re taking the party to: "Today’s secret ingredient is... Mushrooms!" You don’t need to stop at cooking shows, though, as we discussed in our Double Dare post, any competition show can give you some inspiration for challenges you may set up for your players.

Pop-up Video

No, not the VH1 series... though that could provide its own inspirations. Video games, as we’ve mentioned here before, can bring inspiration in from a number of avenues too. Remember though, you’re looking for media your players probably haven’t yet indulged in. If you’re using something popular that your players already know, there's a good chance they’ll spend the session thinking of that game and not yours. As with the other forms of media, try and stick to something niche that your players may not know as well. If you’ve already bonded over the media you have in common, you likely already have an idea of what media you don’t.

Bring something different to your sessions. If you draw inspiration from unexpected sources, your games are going to be interesting and memorable. The source material doesn’t even need to be interesting and memorable to the players themselves, as long as it is something you enjoy. Your addition may even fall completely flat to your players, but if you’ve enjoyed it yourself then you're doing something right, and that feeling should come across at the table. On the other hand, if your players really enjoy a particular bit of your game inspired by an unexpected source, you may want to share that media with them... just as long as you don’t plan on drawing from it again. 

- A

Send questions, comments, and recommendations of documentaries about soup, rocks, and soup made with rocks to neversaydice20@gmail.com or tweet us @neversaydice2.


 

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The Weather Stone

If the rock is wet, it's raining. If the rock is swinging, the wind is blowing. If the rock casts a shadow, the sun is shining. If the rock does not cast a shadow and is not wet, the sky is cloudy. If the rock is difficult to see, it is foggy. If the rock is white, it is snowing. If the rock is coated with ice, there is a frost. If the ice is thick, it's a heavy frost. If the rock is bouncing, there is an earthquake. If the rock is under water, there is a flood. If the rock is warm, it is sunny. If the rock is missing, there was a tornado (or the Rogue stole it). If the rock is wet and swinging violently, there is a hurricane. If the rock can be felt but not seen, it is night time. If the rock has white splats on it, watch out for birds. If there are two rocks, stop drinking, you are drunk. If the rock is glowing, get to a fallout shelter. Weather Stones have been "prognosticating" the current conditions for as long as…well, probably as long as there have been rocks. ...
Read more

Devouring "Roll for Sandwich"

Good timezone to Never Say Dice fans, adventures in Aardia, TikTok and beyond. No, I’m not the Roll for Sandwich guy (neither of us is), but if you haven’t heard of him already (or especially if you have), this week I wanted to talk about the TikTok/YouTube show Roll for Sandwich hosted by Jacob Pauwels. The premise is exactly what it sounds like: every episode, the host rolls dice to determine the various items that comprise a sandwich (except when the episode is about s’mores). He assembles the sandwich, then actually eats and critiques his random creation. If it sounds pretty niche to you... it is. You should  probably be both a bit of a foodie and a TTRPG fan in order to truly appreciate both the strange layered creations and the roleplaying references. My eldest son has been so interested in the web series that he decided he wanted to try doing it for himself. So, for the last week of summer this year, we took stock of our cupboards, made our own charts, and proceeded to con...
Read more

An Introduction to Risus

While roaming the internet in the late nineties/early noughties, I came across a TTRPG that was rules-lite and called itself “the anything RPG.” Want to play a high school cheerleader/samurai-in-training part-time goth enthusiast fast food cashier? The hot pink stick figure art glared back at me. Nah, not interested. But I was wrong. The stick figures were actually purple, and Risus is a surprisingly versatile, handy and down right fun TTRPG. I wouldn’t figure that out though till I discovered it again several years later. Even though it was written as a comedy system (and somewhat lighthearted response to GURPS) you really can use it for just about anything: space opera, high fantasy, pulp, vampires,western, any movie setting you could think of...seriously anything. You can read a far more detailed and interesting history in a number of other places should it strike your fancy. It is time for your Risus indoctrination introduction. Risus really is versatile and fairly easy to learn...
Read more

Boggled by Boglins

Last Octoberween, we took a campy nostalgic stroll and created some creatures for 5e Dungeons and Dragons (and a hidden Risus one) out of Blurp Balls . There was a significant amount of “family friendly” macabre-influenced media in the '80s and early '90s, as we mentioned previously. I do tend to revisit some of that media around this time o'year, and that might be a discussion for a later post. Like last year, I want to focus again on the "gross" toys that came out in the time period . Other than the Blurp balls, there were a few other horror-lite themed toys in my collection as a kid. Most, if not all, have likely been donated and hopefully found their way into the hands of some lucky kid instead of a landfill. I don’t think I ever owned any Madballs , but another toy that's held out in my mind are Boglins. So let's work again to see how we might transform an '80s toy into some tabletop RPG inspiration! If you don’t remember them, Boglins were esse...
Read more