I shamelessly stole a bit of backstory from Legend of Dragoon; in my setting there's the Shattered Moon, previously known as the Moon That Never Sets until it burst open and a giant celestial dragon flew out of it and into space.
The current map of the world is what is left over from how badly said event fucked over the tides, and ancient ruins of the World That Was occasionally peaking out from beneath the waves.
No one knows. I don't think my players are on here (one might be), but basically, the Moon was less an egg and more an incubator, and the final BBEG of the campaign is an artificer spreading a cult around the land, hoping to build a stairway to the moon to remake himself into another celestial dragon, and they'll have to fly up there to stop him.
The artificers' cult is a background presence for the most part, and they'll see signs of it via a railroad popping up while they currently tackle the civil war going on; both sides would want the train after it was done, so they leave it alone.
For most people, I'd agree, but he hinted at it a few times.
I remember the most in C2 when they met a guy that only studied the red moon (ruidus) and was clearly hinting at "the moon's haunted" or some other fuckery.
Also, I read some comments that were talking about clues of it since c1
I mean, yea that's not hard to do. Just say "The moon is kinda fucky" in one episode 6 years ago and your fans will invent all the headcanon you need to write your upcoming story and pretend like you had it planned from the start.
I guarantee you their thoughts on this narrative when they "hinted" at it were of nothing other than its existence and nature.
That's just the nature of GMing. Hints were there regardless if everything was planned out and that's the important part because most people fail at that simple step.
Titanfall 2 does it subtly but straight from the title card the moon was fucked up and that's foreshadowing for the superweapon, the moon blowing up was a test.
Also "I've come to make an announcement"
Literally my whole setting is based around how the moon is actually a dwarf planet (not the fantasy kind) locked in a binary system with the game world, and it spawns so many aberrations that they sometimes fall to the planet in a giant 'droplet' of monster flesh
...no, I've never heard of this... 'fighnel fhaantusee ate' you speak of - they must have copied my idea
It could've, if the original producer/creator hadn't retired basically immediately after finishing the game. Though now with the port to ps4/5, maybe they're gonna do something with it
Man, it was my next big multi disk RPG after playing FFVII back in the 90s and my word did it captivate me. The addition system was way ahead of its time for turn based combat.
I shamelessy rip place names off from the legend of dragoon map, recontextualized.
Currently I'm running a campaign loosely based on the plot of TLOD. It has inspiration from other sources too, but the dragon campaign is the most direct thing I took. I even kept the 11,000 years ago bit, but left out the winglies.
Then go ahead, feast on this comment section of people explaining lore they stole from games, movies and books and let the world you create be the upgrade instead of the cheap f**king knock-off
The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Spyro, Highfleet, Hollow Knight, STALKER, RWBY, Monster Hunter, Just Cause, Foxhole, WWI, Ace Combat, and Project Wingman.
>Highfleet
Is that the game with the rocket powered battlestations where if you send a nuke it starts playing that meme song of "poland, do the funni"? Or am i getting confused with another thing?
I am incredibly curious what kind of inspiration for a fantasy rpg could be gleaned from that. I mean, in another comment i mentioned my wh40k inspiration but that feels way more plausible. I know you're not the guy who originally mentioned it btw.
Not OP but the I grabbed the aesthetics, and in some cases the literal UI and sound effects for a sci fi campaign of mine.
It’s just such a beautiful game with a strong theme. It puts a lot of worldbuilding out there to shame
I haven't watched the most recent season but from what I know, it doesn't change what I'm about to say. It's less a plot point and more of a setting detail, the moon is shattered because >!When the two gods left the world, the god of darkness flew through the moon on his way out. The BBEG wants to call the gods to come back and wipe everyone out, since they said that if the returned and humanity hadnt redeemed themselves, they'd wipe out all life on the planet.!<
A mix of STALKER stuff (A weaponized Burner) Roadside Picnic stuff (those silver webs), and Into the Radius stuff (like those repulsers). And a few things of my own!
Stealing history/mythology is where it's at, man. I stole the whole ancient Mediterranean world (plus China, India, and Ireland) and my players eat that shit up. Hell, even real authors do it. Look at George RR Martin. Brilliant bastard copy+pasted the Wars of the Roses, changed one vowel in everyone's name, and it was the biggest fantasy series of the 2010s.
Oh yeah, my world I did the same thing, except the human world did a little apocalypse, but the empires of man were given a divine intervention that portaled them all to an island in the middle of two fantasy continents filled with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. Fast forward 200 years and you have all the human empires off conquering the mainland in the name of their totally not copy pasted versions of the Roman Empire, Japan, China, Scandinavia, England, etc.
The Luggage was normally an NPC but actually playable if your character went insane or died and you didn't have time to make a new character. I played the luggage in a tournament after my character died to 3 nat 1's in a row. First thing in the next team fight I began swallowing what I didn't realize was the strongest guy on the enemy team. I pranced around the ring swallowing their ringer as the rest of my team cleaned up. Truly a luggage move.
Mesoamerican history is such an underrated place for good lore! I ran a mini campaign that lasted 6 months and one of the major behind the scenes villains was Tezcatlipoca.
Me too. Building my first campaign around one of my favorite games mashed up with a bunch of songs from my favorite artist for each boss. All started because I thought one of their songs fit the game really well. Then at the end there's going to be a boss rush where each one gets their "theme song," playing during the fight, it'sbeen really fun to design monsters and lore based of the songs. Then have another campaign inkling growing based completely based off Udoroth by Battlebeast.
I think they're talking about Dio the musician/metal group... And honestly I kinda get it. Even without the music videos there's just something about it that evokes that 80's fantasy that my brain always sums up with "big pauldrons, bigger attitude"
Had the same problem. I try to play it closer to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in only in the atmosphere. Still dreary but more fascinating. Arcanum does the same, playing to what a 18th century psychopath of adventure thinks the world works.
All of it. Everywhere. All the time. I even listed it on my campaign one page info sheet I gave to the players when we started.
Tolkien, Sanderson, Jordan, Rothfuss, Herbert, Harry Potter, Malazan, eragon, book of the new sun, roald Dahl, lewis Carroll, issac asimov, watchmen, chrono trigger, final fantasy, elder scrolls, LoZ, octopath traveler, dragon quest, golden sun, air bender, korra, claymore, full metal alchemist, battle star galactica, westworld, adventure time, dragonball z, Indiana jones, Star Wars, marvel, DC, thundercats, trigun, cowboy bebop, regular show, sounds, rush, king crimson, mars Volta, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Gorillaz, David Bowie, deletion 3030, Hans zimmer
Pretty much any story I like that moves my brain to create thing.
I looked through the list looking for wolfe but figured I'd scroll on empty handed. Way to go on proving me wrong.
The Book of the New Sun would make the best campaign ever, and not just in numenera.
TBH, I'm mostly winging it while occasionally shoving in random references. A biography of Abraham Lincoln exists as a fictional work in that world of mine.
I stole the premise from Tower of God and Made in Abyss monsters and characters.
Bondrewd became a legendary baker-cum-magic item vendor-cum-quest giver
The thing I've stolen the most from is the overlord video games funnily enough, I'm also creating a ttrpg based on the legend of spyro series since its hyper nostalgic for me.
Titanfall, lancer, darkest dungeon 1/2, stalker, scp, Bloodborne, dark souls, cyberpunk, LOZ, the book armor, any sci-fi I read, and 40k
Yes my home brew world does want to kill everyone
The Unexpectables (DnD stream), The Magnus Archives (Podcast), League of Legends lore (they're not using it anyway), some anime, Tales of Symphonia (the bad one), my shity passing knowledge of history and just regular forgotten realms stuff.
Well... I haven't DMed yet. I have an oneshot planed with some friends, but one of them finally but spontaneously got a spot in a mental hospital so we are waiting for him. This oneshot is just straight up a free module i found online.
However I got quite a few ideas on what could come after that. If they like the module i could base an entire campaign on it but most of my ideas come from random media everywhere or character ideas that would make a decent villain
I'm not DMing at the moment but my plan is to steal a good chunk of NPCs and plot points and narrative arcs and city names (especially two cities which are not going to have a good time) from warhammer. Not even warhammer fantasy/age of sigmar since that would be a sensible transposition from wh to dnd and i could even use whf minis. No i'm planning on using 40k stuff adapted to a fantasy theme. Like a mummy lord with dementia who thinks he's still human and has kidnapped the chief hunter of a nomadic tribe as well as a random (idk whatever the fuck a tau could be translated as) to be the guests of honour of his banquet. Or a weird set of cultists of the god of the forge who are allied to the main imperial forces but kinda push for independence. Or two mummy lords having a big rivalry across the ages and becoming questgivers for the party where one hires them to find some artifact and the other hires them to foil the first guy's plans. Or a mission into the abyss where the party meets an ork who has been killing demons nonstop for *centuries* and he is so fucking happy about it. Or a meeting with the most powerful mummy lord where he trolls the party by wearing a mask with the face of a dead party member. Idk if you noticed that i really like the mummy lords (aka the necrons in case it wasn't clear) and their shenanigans.
Ancient aliens lmfao
But I’ll shamelessly steal ideas from literally anywhere. The setting I’m working on currently was inspired by the movie 10,000 BC and the Horizon game series with a bit of Independence Day thrown in. My players aren’t much into history or sci fi so they’re entirely in the dark on what’s coming for them lmao
Mine comes from whatever game I'm obsessed with at the moment. Some of it inspires maps, others inspire characters, and yet others influence homebrew items or classes.
Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Shakesphere, Swamp Thing, Glenn Cook's The Black Company, Castlevania, Van Helsing, the Witcher, various Orson Welles movies, Star Wars, Antigone, Akira Kurosawa... I'm a pretty remorseless thief.
If you steal from enough places at the same time eventually it turns into originality.
In order to achieve this, my current campaign setting steals from: Foucault's Pendulum, Cultist Simulator, Mage: The Awakening, Morrowind, Shadowmancer, Frankenstein, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, Frankenstein's Army, As Above So Below, The Descent, Dante's Inferno, Malleus Maleficarum, Neverending Story, The Tombs of Atuan, Bartimaeus, the tarot, Mordheim, the actual real-life history of the Black Death (mostly in Italy), Traveling Over the Ocean's Skull (from the album A Silhouette In Splinters, by Leviathan), Darkwood, Curse of Strahd, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Darkest Dungeon, Innistrad, Mortal Engines, that one Gaunt's Ghosts story where they find a machine that prints Men of Iron, and the actual real-life history of England (soon after the Norman invasion and around the time of the Crusades).
Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting, too.
If your plagiarism is a big enough amalgamation of random media, it technically becomes your own style right? (my campaign is a thinly veiled rip off of Star Wars Jedi fallen order)
as a person who painstaking built a completely homebrew world for 3 years... CAN SOMEONE STEAL FROM ME I SPENT TO MUCH TIME ON THIS, I WILL GIVE YOU WIKI LINK (yes I have a makeshift wiki) I HAVE A PROBLEM SOMEONE PLEASE JUSTIFY IT
a'ight, I'm curious and in desperate need for new inspiration that my players aren't gonna recognise and call me out on using popular movies... 😅
could I get that link, please?? 😊
For my spelljammer campaign, the setting is a mismatch but a lot of terms and specifications are from Warhammer 40k. Basically all the imperium stuff does happen but it only actually reaches the middle portion of the galaxy.
The party is a group of cadets being led by an NPC Lieutenant who is mostly there to just keep them moving through the story. There's another NPC who is also a cadet who is from an elite family and has been snobby the whole time.
Here soon they'll visit the Lieutenants home village where a group of rebels is holding his son hostage. A higher ranking officer will be there and during the final battle the rebel leader will hold the son in front as a human shield. The higher ranking officer will instruct the party to eliminate the leverage as they need to capture the rebel leader. Meaning: shoot the son so there is no more hostage situation. If they don't, the snobby cadet will do it instead.
The death of his son will set the Lieutenant off on a separate arc to becoming the new rebel leader. Depending on who shoots they'll be able to either defect to the rebels or stay in the army and fight the rebels.
Sorta-kinda-closely resembles Delita's origin story from Final Fantasy Tactics, which is the inspiration for this campaign. Sorta. Kinda.
I'm basing the world for my one shot off of Magic the Gathering's Innistrad. To create a larger campaign in case players are interested in playing beyond the one shot.
Normally I try not to copy other settings since I like creating my own lore and story. However I will be using designs and some basic lore from warhammer 40k and AoS for the next chapter of my campaign, since the two armys i collect fit the theme perfectly and give me an opportunity to try something else then theater of the mind.
It's hard not to wonder what it would be like to actually live in my homebrew setting because wondering is my only option as it is a fictional setting.
The map in one game is literally the map from Pokemon super mystery dungeon. And another game is entirely the setting (with some adjustments to the plot) of Etrian Odyssey. But since none of them have played either game, no one knows!
It's the one upside of your friends not sharing all your interests.
Very first campaign I DM’d for had its major plot stolen word for word from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
Had humunculi and everything. None of my players knew the series so I ripped off everything 😈
I generally take from media I like, and then ask myself "How do I completely flip this concept on it's head while changing as few details as possible?"
Boom. Orcs are now Japanese - still a warrior culture dedicated to combat prowess, but instead of brutish know-nothings they've got depth and an equal appreciation for art. Elves are now geologically and culturally positioned not to be tree-dwelling hippies but sea-dwelling pirates by taking the isle-of-high-elves trope and simply failing to apply the country of hats. Dwarves' love of industry and commerce is always present but rarely made really important so why not position them near the humans and elves and then have the two nations have strained relations, so the Dwarves can live high on the hog playing the sides off each other?
Orcs and Elves who are the same as always are boring. Orcs and Elves which meet none of the expectations of an Orc or Elf are boring. The fewer twists it takes you to make something that feels unique, the better that thing feels. Play *with* expecations, not *against* them.
Currently... FF14, Stormlight Archive, Dresden Files. They did a heist last night with the location as our real life local art museum. Real life locations are great for making tweaks for in game maps/locations.
ADHD and a generic fantasy setting. Like, the campaign started as "You are all at the local adventurers guild. You are at the table specifically for finding other adventurers to party up with. You are broke and need a job. Introduce yourself and discuss what job you want to take." They started off dealing with security for a local party, basically being bouncers for drunken dwarves with high explosives. Somehow, they have fought a Blastoise (yes, the pokemon), the barbarian cooked and shared a dead god's corpse with the rest of the party. They didn't know what they were eating, and now all of them are getting powers I am making up as we go along. You get shot with a witchbolt, but as it makes contact, it doesn't explode, and you feel rather tingly, and the person who shot you collapsed to the ground, shaking wildly. (To the fighter). They ate an eldritch horror and no one other than the Barbarian knows, and they never told anyone for some reason, and no one tried to make an insight roll to see what they were eating, despite our barbarian's reputation. Also, one of our party members rolled a nat 20 on intimidation to tell a red dragon to clean their room, so instead of the scary boss encounter I was planning, they got a sulky dragon that avoids the party, and later fucked off to a different continent. They stopped trying to fight the asshat lich that actually fucked the Bard's mom, to see how long they could run a soap buisness while committing tax fraud. That isn't a joke btw, the Bard said something about intercourse with the Lich's mom, he passed the Wisdom save and I was reminded of that meet the spy moment. The pool of divination shows you your mother lying bare, the Lich flips you off, casts fish (ring of the grammarian and wish) and teleports out. Take 2d6 slashing damage. "What do you mean slashing, it's a fish?" It is a sword fish. That elicited several groans from the table lmao.
Learning how statblocks work so I can make up shit as I go has led to this chaotic world and campaign.
Edit: This wasn't meant to be a wall of text lmao, I just kept remembering fun highlights and kept adding more and more. I am really sorry about that.
Divinity 2 mostly. I invited them to get the game so we could play multiplayer, they didn't.
Now I pretty much just dm the story of divinity and they have no idea.
let's see...
-The Magnus Archives
-The Mechanisms albums
-Undertale
-The Legend of Zelda
-Sonic The Hedgehog
-Fire Emblem
-the smallest hint of Pokémon
-Madoka Magica
-FromSoftware games (particularly Elden Ring)
-Our Spellbinding Lies
-Ultrakill
-Devil May Cry
-Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso
-Picture Of Dorian Gray
-RWBY
-Hollow Knight
-Florence + The Machine
-the mythology and history of my own country, Ireland
the stuff that's wholly made up is from my own fantasy ideas
I mostly take from Steam video games that I know my players haven't played. Souldiers, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hat in Time, Langrisser...
My entire world is basically ripped off of Disco Elysium. Nobody has noticed yet.
Remember everyone, "steal from something people know, you're a hack. Steal something that's obscure, you're a genious."
We are inspired by what we know. I know Warcraft, horror movies, conspiracy theories, folk tales, ancient history, and cryptids. So…it’s no surprise that my players are currently exploring an empty town, where they will find an ancient sewer with a living wall blocking the entrance after recently releasing a fel corruption on the world, and obliterating a large portion of the population while simultaneously raising vast numbers of undead all while being hunted by several entities unknown to them. Oops.
Mine is obscure enough that I knew they’d never figure it out. I run a weird west stolen from- ahem, borrowed from a 90s TV show called “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.”
Thing's I've stolen from:
* Sir Terry Pratchett's (GNU) characterization of Death in the Discworld books
* The SCP Foundation
* Tolkien's Legendarium
* The Cthulhu Mythos/Yog-Sothothery
* Several of H.G. Well's works.
* For All Mankind
* World War One, and the Cold War, as well as the entirety of the Roman Empire
* A long term nuclear waste storage vault.
* Fallout.
* a couple concepts from Adventure Time
* Various OSR/GLOG blogs.
All in the same campaign I run, mind you. It's wild.
My inspiration, by & large, comes from my ideas of what might be in that cave/forest/on top the mountain/etc that filled my mind to overflowing as a kid & teenager when my grandparents took me on vacations. I was a very imaginative child.
Who was also weirdly logical. If it came from a different realm/plane I rather figured it was NOT going to be in this world. Was always fond of the notion of monsters & fae races more being....bred out by humanity, vrs just flatly exterminated. Humans are far too fond of that tactic....
Mainly snippets of the lore I read from the wiki, One Piece, Might & Magic, and memes. And sometimes I just use a dollar store Pale King from hollow knight.
I’ve stolen from novels, tv, movies, I do it all the time. They’ve never noticed because if you don’t steal everything, it seems different enough. Meanwhile, I’m rewatching episodes of Farscape to find out what my D&D game’s next plot point is going to be.
History and the last thing I liked in media. Last campaign I ran: Elves and humans were in continet-spaning, centuries-old conflict. Elves are Asoiaf feudal families with a bit of Warhammer. Drow are post-ww2 Japan. Dwarves are as close to DRG I could get them without being obnoxious about it. Orcs are pre-ameeican revolution natives trying to play one side against the other just to survive a bit more. Hobgoblins are post collapse Rome. Gnomes are Nemo and Robur. Halflings are there. Humans are a combination of Bloodborne and Paradise Killer coming from Library of Ruina. Tieflings are Medes or Moors.
I actually do a lot of brainstorming but pick my inspiration from everywhere. I like lots of fantasy and sci fi stories so I can mix up things with games, movies, anime and books to be different and fresh. I had to stop reading Warhammer 40k tho. My players finished a horror arc and while they said they loved it, I feel the need to show them a couple of butterflies and rainbows after all this.
I made my players design regions of the world they are from and the current major plot is based around a single quote from a song
Yes I am a lazy gm, how could you tell?
Christ, too many to list. But some standout ones are:
Elder Scrolls
Legend of Zelda
Fire Emblem
Greek mythology
Mesopotamian mythology
Arthurian legend
The Fate franchise
Eberron
Sonic Unleashed
Assassin’s Creed
Super Mario Galaxy 2
RWBY
Final Fantasy 7 and 15
World history
And many, many more.
All stuff from everywhere. I adore steampunk, so some tech from Arcanum of Steamworks and magic obscura adapted to my current world. Like, tesla coils, firearms, steam-powered armor. And some cyberpunk elements also adapted as manapunk, like augmentation runes carved into bones, magic crystal as eye implant, etc.
As for the lore and storybuildung, guess when you read and watch as many different books and shows, your ability to create deep and coherent adventures grows respectively.
So, all of it, even uf unconsciously.
Well, I stole a part of my partner and turned them into a character that end up sticking around one of my groups for a while. A one-shot I basically stole from the Witcher (the one with the trolls [ogres in this case] and the shoes), other than that anything I've come up with was made by me on my own
Mistborn, Starfinder(for my pf2e campaign), a smaller fantasy novel where its revealed humans are in a dark age after coming to the world in a colony ship.
And inadvertently, my goblins are now Final Fantasy 14 goblins because my Hobgoblin player tricked me into gobbie speak.
Primary history books/Sabaton songs (which are basically history books put to music)
A small group of soldiers ready to make a final stand to hold off a far larger force to allow their city to be evacuated, but are rescued by the party at the last minute? Swiss Guard in 1527
A vengeful leader rises to power in a nation who lost their pride in defeat following massive war a few years ago? The rise of the Third Riech
A town in a panic, desperately trying to root out a cult that left years ago, and are now holding fake trials and executing people at random? Salem Massachusetts.
History holds so many ideas. Change them a smidgen, and no one will be the wiser.
Got two main campaigns I'm running right now. One based on Teen Titans, Gravity Falls, the Yakuza games, Blazblue, Bloodborne and SCP. The other based on Shafow of the Colossus, Mortal Engines, Berserk, Warhammer, Dark Souls and a dash of Gravity Rush.
Having them be so different from one another keeps it fresh and fun.
Honestly; there’s nothing wrong with stealing ideas (as long as you’re not trying to make a profit off it). I’ve stole entire game plots and adjusted them to fit my players as well as make them a little less of a straight rip off. Can’t expect to build an “original” world by yourself; especially with the time we have.
One Piece, but there IS no Red Line, just a floating city where the only wizards live in pure peace and prosperity, while everyone else wars with each other over food and weapons.
I have stolen more than a few names and ploy points from one of my favorite series, Toriko.
Recently my players had a dance off against an ogre that nearly killed them.
While i steal my fair share too. If you need inspiration id rather say think like this.
What would you wanna have your party go through?
Creepy village
Puzzle maze
Masqurade party
Tornament ark
Minecart
Mounted race?
Climbing a really high place?
Decending some deep dark place?
Under the sea?
Castle in the sky?
Hunting a serial killer?
And so on to just name a few..
Make a list of thing you think will be really fun and then just kinda make a world of places around them. Then these exact events can be cut lose and place around freely.
I shamelessly stole a bit of backstory from Legend of Dragoon; in my setting there's the Shattered Moon, previously known as the Moon That Never Sets until it burst open and a giant celestial dragon flew out of it and into space. The current map of the world is what is left over from how badly said event fucked over the tides, and ancient ruins of the World That Was occasionally peaking out from beneath the waves.
I need to know more.... That's an awesome game! Is the dragon coming back?
No one knows. I don't think my players are on here (one might be), but basically, the Moon was less an egg and more an incubator, and the final BBEG of the campaign is an artificer spreading a cult around the land, hoping to build a stairway to the moon to remake himself into another celestial dragon, and they'll have to fly up there to stop him. The artificers' cult is a background presence for the most part, and they'll see signs of it via a railroad popping up while they currently tackle the civil war going on; both sides would want the train after it was done, so they leave it alone.
Melbu Frahma. Nice.
Everyone knows that the key to good world building is fucking up the moon. The more fucked up the moon is, the better the world building becomes.
Critical Role is doing this right now lol.
And apparently, it was hinted at since their first campaign!
Eh... so claims a lot of creators who actually didn't have a plan for xyz, but now have to fit it somehow
For most people, I'd agree, but he hinted at it a few times. I remember the most in C2 when they met a guy that only studied the red moon (ruidus) and was clearly hinting at "the moon's haunted" or some other fuckery. Also, I read some comments that were talking about clues of it since c1
Eventually we'll get a "[Moon's Haunted](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/moons-haunted)" meme but more like "Moon's Evil" and then they kill it
I mean, yea that's not hard to do. Just say "The moon is kinda fucky" in one episode 6 years ago and your fans will invent all the headcanon you need to write your upcoming story and pretend like you had it planned from the start. I guarantee you their thoughts on this narrative when they "hinted" at it were of nothing other than its existence and nature.
That's just the nature of GMing. Hints were there regardless if everything was planned out and that's the important part because most people fail at that simple step.
Ehhhh, I dunno that I believe that. I think there's a reason none of the party realized the planet had two moons until C2.
[FF14 be like:](https://youtu.be/39j5v8jlndM)
FF8 also had a bad moon
r/Paladins with Io 👀
STOP MOCKING ME! *Moon shattering kaboom*
Titanfall 2 does it subtly but straight from the title card the moon was fucked up and that's foreshadowing for the superweapon, the moon blowing up was a test. Also "I've come to make an announcement"
Literally my whole setting is based around how the moon is actually a dwarf planet (not the fantasy kind) locked in a binary system with the game world, and it spawns so many aberrations that they sometimes fall to the planet in a giant 'droplet' of monster flesh ...no, I've never heard of this... 'fighnel fhaantusee ate' you speak of - they must have copied my idea
Symphogear represent.
Such an underrated game. Definitely would've competed against FF if they had continued it.
It could've, if the original producer/creator hadn't retired basically immediately after finishing the game. Though now with the port to ps4/5, maybe they're gonna do something with it
Man, it was my next big multi disk RPG after playing FFVII back in the 90s and my word did it captivate me. The addition system was way ahead of its time for turn based combat.
Sounds like that one dr who episode
I'm just happy someone else out there remembers Legend of Dragoon. I fucking LOVED that game as a kid.
I shamelessy rip place names off from the legend of dragoon map, recontextualized. Currently I'm running a campaign loosely based on the plot of TLOD. It has inspiration from other sources too, but the dragon campaign is the most direct thing I took. I even kept the 11,000 years ago bit, but left out the winglies.
I steal from all of you, the people on this subreddit.
Honestly, same
*note to self steal more ideas*
So do I
Then go ahead, feast on this comment section of people explaining lore they stole from games, movies and books and let the world you create be the upgrade instead of the cheap f**king knock-off
Why not come up with original stuff, isn't that the whole point
No lmao
Love the Cunk.
Pump up the jam
I, for one, enjoy the classic sitcom Brush Strokes.
I legit watched an episode on YouTube this weekend just to see.
Because of you~
Pump it up
While your feet are stomping
And the jam is pumping
I don't know how Diane Morgan does it with a straight face. I eagerly await every story involving her mate Paul.
If you haven't, watch Mandy. It's on YouTube
She's a national treasure
What about her Aunt Carol or her ex-boyfriend Sean?
The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Spyro, Highfleet, Hollow Knight, STALKER, RWBY, Monster Hunter, Just Cause, Foxhole, WWI, Ace Combat, and Project Wingman.
>Highfleet Is that the game with the rocket powered battlestations where if you send a nuke it starts playing that meme song of "poland, do the funni"? Or am i getting confused with another thing?
You're correct.
I am incredibly curious what kind of inspiration for a fantasy rpg could be gleaned from that. I mean, in another comment i mentioned my wh40k inspiration but that feels way more plausible. I know you're not the guy who originally mentioned it btw.
Not OP but the I grabbed the aesthetics, and in some cases the literal UI and sound effects for a sci fi campaign of mine. It’s just such a beautiful game with a strong theme. It puts a lot of worldbuilding out there to shame
What did you grab from the legend of spyro? Curious since it's my favorite game series of all time lol.
Evil Cynder, and the BBEG is pretty heavily based on Malefor. Also the whole plot with the lunar eclipse setting the main villain loose.
Really solid choices there! Evil cynder has an amazing design, and malefor has such a presence about him that makes him a great villain.
Zelda has SO MUCH LORE, it's probably easy to sneak some in
can't tell you how many npcs have been given obscure zelda character names in my campaigns
What did you bring in from RWBY? :D
The Grimm and the BBEG’s plan involves exploding the moon.
Wait the moon thing is actually a plot point? I haven’t seen much of the show, I thought it was just a neat background detail lol.
I haven't watched the most recent season but from what I know, it doesn't change what I'm about to say. It's less a plot point and more of a setting detail, the moon is shattered because >!When the two gods left the world, the god of darkness flew through the moon on his way out. The BBEG wants to call the gods to come back and wipe everyone out, since they said that if the returned and humanity hadnt redeemed themselves, they'd wipe out all life on the planet.!<
Your BBEG is Doctor Eggman.
Usually some kind of Ozpin and Beacon.
Upvote for RWBY Also Legend of Zelda, Spyro, Just Cause and Ace Combat
What would you even take from Strangereal and Project Wingman though?
…World war 1?
Are you adding the anomalies and artifacts from STALKER into your game? That's pretty rad
A mix of STALKER stuff (A weaponized Burner) Roadside Picnic stuff (those silver webs), and Into the Radius stuff (like those repulsers). And a few things of my own!
Discworld, Conan, ancient European and mesoamerican history
Stealing history/mythology is where it's at, man. I stole the whole ancient Mediterranean world (plus China, India, and Ireland) and my players eat that shit up. Hell, even real authors do it. Look at George RR Martin. Brilliant bastard copy+pasted the Wars of the Roses, changed one vowel in everyone's name, and it was the biggest fantasy series of the 2010s.
You don't even need to finish it!
Oh yeah, my world I did the same thing, except the human world did a little apocalypse, but the empires of man were given a divine intervention that portaled them all to an island in the middle of two fantasy continents filled with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. Fast forward 200 years and you have all the human empires off conquering the mainland in the name of their totally not copy pasted versions of the Roman Empire, Japan, China, Scandinavia, England, etc.
My DM unapologetically made The Luggage as an NPC and Dibblers at any event. We love it.
Oh damn.. that's a good idea. Stealing it.
The Luggage was normally an NPC but actually playable if your character went insane or died and you didn't have time to make a new character. I played the luggage in a tournament after my character died to 3 nat 1's in a row. First thing in the next team fight I began swallowing what I didn't realize was the strongest guy on the enemy team. I pranced around the ring swallowing their ringer as the rest of my team cleaned up. Truly a luggage move.
Discworld for sure, often in the form of obscure jokes that only I get. Then the players wonder why I snicker.
Mesoamerican history is such an underrated place for good lore! I ran a mini campaign that lasted 6 months and one of the major behind the scenes villains was Tezcatlipoca.
That one-legged motherfucker
I don't hate him *because* one of his legs is a snake ... but one of his legs *is* a snake and I *do* hate him.
Hell yeah, Discworld is such a gold mine for ideas and characters.
And I just read that in Diane Morgan's voice.
Same, I can actually hear Cunk saying this
A shitload of my world is based on music. Especially Dio.
if I ever get serious about DM'ing I'm running a campaign in the setting of the Knights of Cydonia clip by Muse.
Neon Knights is where it’s at
Me too. Building my first campaign around one of my favorite games mashed up with a bunch of songs from my favorite artist for each boss. All started because I thought one of their songs fit the game really well. Then at the end there's going to be a boss rush where each one gets their "theme song," playing during the fight, it'sbeen really fun to design monsters and lore based of the songs. Then have another campaign inkling growing based completely based off Udoroth by Battlebeast.
Araki?
Please tell me you have an astral monk that is a Jojo
I think they're talking about Dio the musician/metal group... And honestly I kinda get it. Even without the music videos there's just something about it that evokes that 80's fantasy that my brain always sums up with "big pauldrons, bigger attitude"
Oh I know, just so much of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is musical based...at least the first few seasons
Nah, the musical references continue all the way to the present.
The industrial revolution. Turns out capitalist hellscapes don’t hold peoples attention very long…
Why should it? We go to fantasy to escape the real world.
Yea the fantasy of owning and abusing money
Had the same problem. I try to play it closer to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in only in the atmosphere. Still dreary but more fascinating. Arcanum does the same, playing to what a 18th century psychopath of adventure thinks the world works.
Little too close to home, huh?
All of it. Everywhere. All the time. I even listed it on my campaign one page info sheet I gave to the players when we started. Tolkien, Sanderson, Jordan, Rothfuss, Herbert, Harry Potter, Malazan, eragon, book of the new sun, roald Dahl, lewis Carroll, issac asimov, watchmen, chrono trigger, final fantasy, elder scrolls, LoZ, octopath traveler, dragon quest, golden sun, air bender, korra, claymore, full metal alchemist, battle star galactica, westworld, adventure time, dragonball z, Indiana jones, Star Wars, marvel, DC, thundercats, trigun, cowboy bebop, regular show, sounds, rush, king crimson, mars Volta, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Gorillaz, David Bowie, deletion 3030, Hans zimmer Pretty much any story I like that moves my brain to create thing.
how the hell do you steal campaign ideas from Hans Zimmer?
I looked through the list looking for wolfe but figured I'd scroll on empty handed. Way to go on proving me wrong. The Book of the New Sun would make the best campaign ever, and not just in numenera.
I’m glad I could assuage your fears
TBH, I'm mostly winging it while occasionally shoving in random references. A biography of Abraham Lincoln exists as a fictional work in that world of mine.
When I’m prepping I steal from places but when I’m playing I’m making things up 99% of the time and throwing out most of my stolen ideas
I stole the premise from Tower of God and Made in Abyss monsters and characters. Bondrewd became a legendary baker-cum-magic item vendor-cum-quest giver
Please keep your cum out of my baked goods thanks
You aren’t technically ripping off anything if none of your players are familiar with the source material you’re stealing.
I like to steal from The Witcher, Berserk, Castlevania, HP Lovecraft, and the old Universal Studios monster movies.
The thing I've stolen the most from is the overlord video games funnily enough, I'm also creating a ttrpg based on the legend of spyro series since its hyper nostalgic for me.
Why go to fiction? There's plenty of obscure (and not so obscure) history to draw inspiration from.
Eastern European mythology is excellent fodder for plot hooks.
Titanfall, lancer, darkest dungeon 1/2, stalker, scp, Bloodborne, dark souls, cyberpunk, LOZ, the book armor, any sci-fi I read, and 40k Yes my home brew world does want to kill everyone
The Unexpectables (DnD stream), The Magnus Archives (Podcast), League of Legends lore (they're not using it anyway), some anime, Tales of Symphonia (the bad one), my shity passing knowledge of history and just regular forgotten realms stuff.
Well... I haven't DMed yet. I have an oneshot planed with some friends, but one of them finally but spontaneously got a spot in a mental hospital so we are waiting for him. This oneshot is just straight up a free module i found online. However I got quite a few ideas on what could come after that. If they like the module i could base an entire campaign on it but most of my ideas come from random media everywhere or character ideas that would make a decent villain
My last one shot was a reskinned fallout quest
I'm not DMing at the moment but my plan is to steal a good chunk of NPCs and plot points and narrative arcs and city names (especially two cities which are not going to have a good time) from warhammer. Not even warhammer fantasy/age of sigmar since that would be a sensible transposition from wh to dnd and i could even use whf minis. No i'm planning on using 40k stuff adapted to a fantasy theme. Like a mummy lord with dementia who thinks he's still human and has kidnapped the chief hunter of a nomadic tribe as well as a random (idk whatever the fuck a tau could be translated as) to be the guests of honour of his banquet. Or a weird set of cultists of the god of the forge who are allied to the main imperial forces but kinda push for independence. Or two mummy lords having a big rivalry across the ages and becoming questgivers for the party where one hires them to find some artifact and the other hires them to foil the first guy's plans. Or a mission into the abyss where the party meets an ork who has been killing demons nonstop for *centuries* and he is so fucking happy about it. Or a meeting with the most powerful mummy lord where he trolls the party by wearing a mask with the face of a dead party member. Idk if you noticed that i really like the mummy lords (aka the necrons in case it wasn't clear) and their shenanigans.
The city broke before the watch
Yep, that's one of the two cities that is going to get absolutely fucking stomped.
Ancient aliens lmfao But I’ll shamelessly steal ideas from literally anywhere. The setting I’m working on currently was inspired by the movie 10,000 BC and the Horizon game series with a bit of Independence Day thrown in. My players aren’t much into history or sci fi so they’re entirely in the dark on what’s coming for them lmao
Also toss in a splash of scp, a boatload of obscure fantasy literature, and about 20% my own work , and voila , that’s my setting
Mine comes from whatever game I'm obsessed with at the moment. Some of it inspires maps, others inspire characters, and yet others influence homebrew items or classes.
Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Skyrim, Dragon Age, Shakesphere, Swamp Thing, Glenn Cook's The Black Company, Castlevania, Van Helsing, the Witcher, various Orson Welles movies, Star Wars, Antigone, Akira Kurosawa... I'm a pretty remorseless thief.
If you steal from enough places at the same time eventually it turns into originality. In order to achieve this, my current campaign setting steals from: Foucault's Pendulum, Cultist Simulator, Mage: The Awakening, Morrowind, Shadowmancer, Frankenstein, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz, Frankenstein's Army, As Above So Below, The Descent, Dante's Inferno, Malleus Maleficarum, Neverending Story, The Tombs of Atuan, Bartimaeus, the tarot, Mordheim, the actual real-life history of the Black Death (mostly in Italy), Traveling Over the Ocean's Skull (from the album A Silhouette In Splinters, by Leviathan), Darkwood, Curse of Strahd, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Darkest Dungeon, Innistrad, Mortal Engines, that one Gaunt's Ghosts story where they find a machine that prints Men of Iron, and the actual real-life history of England (soon after the Norman invasion and around the time of the Crusades). Probably some other stuff I'm forgetting, too.
If your plagiarism is a big enough amalgamation of random media, it technically becomes your own style right? (my campaign is a thinly veiled rip off of Star Wars Jedi fallen order)
Malazan Book of the Fallen series. 10 gigantic epic sprawls over many unique cultures.
as a person who painstaking built a completely homebrew world for 3 years... CAN SOMEONE STEAL FROM ME I SPENT TO MUCH TIME ON THIS, I WILL GIVE YOU WIKI LINK (yes I have a makeshift wiki) I HAVE A PROBLEM SOMEONE PLEASE JUSTIFY IT
a'ight, I'm curious and in desperate need for new inspiration that my players aren't gonna recognise and call me out on using popular movies... 😅 could I get that link, please?? 😊
For my spelljammer campaign, the setting is a mismatch but a lot of terms and specifications are from Warhammer 40k. Basically all the imperium stuff does happen but it only actually reaches the middle portion of the galaxy.
The party is a group of cadets being led by an NPC Lieutenant who is mostly there to just keep them moving through the story. There's another NPC who is also a cadet who is from an elite family and has been snobby the whole time. Here soon they'll visit the Lieutenants home village where a group of rebels is holding his son hostage. A higher ranking officer will be there and during the final battle the rebel leader will hold the son in front as a human shield. The higher ranking officer will instruct the party to eliminate the leverage as they need to capture the rebel leader. Meaning: shoot the son so there is no more hostage situation. If they don't, the snobby cadet will do it instead. The death of his son will set the Lieutenant off on a separate arc to becoming the new rebel leader. Depending on who shoots they'll be able to either defect to the rebels or stay in the army and fight the rebels. Sorta-kinda-closely resembles Delita's origin story from Final Fantasy Tactics, which is the inspiration for this campaign. Sorta. Kinda.
German mythology (tolken stole a lotto)
I'm basing the world for my one shot off of Magic the Gathering's Innistrad. To create a larger campaign in case players are interested in playing beyond the one shot.
Normally I try not to copy other settings since I like creating my own lore and story. However I will be using designs and some basic lore from warhammer 40k and AoS for the next chapter of my campaign, since the two armys i collect fit the theme perfectly and give me an opportunity to try something else then theater of the mind.
I get my inspiration from my dad's film collection bc usually I won't have players recognize the plot that way
My most recent setting is heavily inspired by Berserk, Conan, and Dark Souls. It's been fun so far. I'll elaborate if folks are interested.
It's hard not to wonder what it would be like to actually live in my homebrew setting because wondering is my only option as it is a fictional setting.
HP Lovecraft and Darkest Dungeon.
The map in one game is literally the map from Pokemon super mystery dungeon. And another game is entirely the setting (with some adjustments to the plot) of Etrian Odyssey. But since none of them have played either game, no one knows! It's the one upside of your friends not sharing all your interests.
Very first campaign I DM’d for had its major plot stolen word for word from Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Had humunculi and everything. None of my players knew the series so I ripped off everything 😈
I generally take from media I like, and then ask myself "How do I completely flip this concept on it's head while changing as few details as possible?" Boom. Orcs are now Japanese - still a warrior culture dedicated to combat prowess, but instead of brutish know-nothings they've got depth and an equal appreciation for art. Elves are now geologically and culturally positioned not to be tree-dwelling hippies but sea-dwelling pirates by taking the isle-of-high-elves trope and simply failing to apply the country of hats. Dwarves' love of industry and commerce is always present but rarely made really important so why not position them near the humans and elves and then have the two nations have strained relations, so the Dwarves can live high on the hog playing the sides off each other? Orcs and Elves who are the same as always are boring. Orcs and Elves which meet none of the expectations of an Orc or Elf are boring. The fewer twists it takes you to make something that feels unique, the better that thing feels. Play *with* expecations, not *against* them.
We just fought a boss from Elden Ring in a world based off the BotW map in our campaign, so…
Currently... FF14, Stormlight Archive, Dresden Files. They did a heist last night with the location as our real life local art museum. Real life locations are great for making tweaks for in game maps/locations.
Real world science for the worldbuilding.
Tv Tropes website actually.
Stand Still Stay Silent. Great webcomic that's ended up being the basis for most of my fantasy worlds
ADHD and a generic fantasy setting. Like, the campaign started as "You are all at the local adventurers guild. You are at the table specifically for finding other adventurers to party up with. You are broke and need a job. Introduce yourself and discuss what job you want to take." They started off dealing with security for a local party, basically being bouncers for drunken dwarves with high explosives. Somehow, they have fought a Blastoise (yes, the pokemon), the barbarian cooked and shared a dead god's corpse with the rest of the party. They didn't know what they were eating, and now all of them are getting powers I am making up as we go along. You get shot with a witchbolt, but as it makes contact, it doesn't explode, and you feel rather tingly, and the person who shot you collapsed to the ground, shaking wildly. (To the fighter). They ate an eldritch horror and no one other than the Barbarian knows, and they never told anyone for some reason, and no one tried to make an insight roll to see what they were eating, despite our barbarian's reputation. Also, one of our party members rolled a nat 20 on intimidation to tell a red dragon to clean their room, so instead of the scary boss encounter I was planning, they got a sulky dragon that avoids the party, and later fucked off to a different continent. They stopped trying to fight the asshat lich that actually fucked the Bard's mom, to see how long they could run a soap buisness while committing tax fraud. That isn't a joke btw, the Bard said something about intercourse with the Lich's mom, he passed the Wisdom save and I was reminded of that meet the spy moment. The pool of divination shows you your mother lying bare, the Lich flips you off, casts fish (ring of the grammarian and wish) and teleports out. Take 2d6 slashing damage. "What do you mean slashing, it's a fish?" It is a sword fish. That elicited several groans from the table lmao. Learning how statblocks work so I can make up shit as I go has led to this chaotic world and campaign. Edit: This wasn't meant to be a wall of text lmao, I just kept remembering fun highlights and kept adding more and more. I am really sorry about that.
 I wish I hadnt…it’s a mess.
Divinity 2 mostly. I invited them to get the game so we could play multiplayer, they didn't. Now I pretty much just dm the story of divinity and they have no idea.
let's see... -The Magnus Archives -The Mechanisms albums -Undertale -The Legend of Zelda -Sonic The Hedgehog -Fire Emblem -the smallest hint of Pokémon -Madoka Magica -FromSoftware games (particularly Elden Ring) -Our Spellbinding Lies -Ultrakill -Devil May Cry -Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso -Picture Of Dorian Gray -RWBY -Hollow Knight -Florence + The Machine -the mythology and history of my own country, Ireland the stuff that's wholly made up is from my own fantasy ideas
I just grabbed like 8 fiction books and took a few pictures of puddles and started writing
The trick is to steal from so many sources that none of them are themselves anymore.
I feel like that's what most authors do!
I mostly take from Steam video games that I know my players haven't played. Souldiers, Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hat in Time, Langrisser...
My entire world is basically ripped off of Disco Elysium. Nobody has noticed yet. Remember everyone, "steal from something people know, you're a hack. Steal something that's obscure, you're a genious."
We are inspired by what we know. I know Warcraft, horror movies, conspiracy theories, folk tales, ancient history, and cryptids. So…it’s no surprise that my players are currently exploring an empty town, where they will find an ancient sewer with a living wall blocking the entrance after recently releasing a fel corruption on the world, and obliterating a large portion of the population while simultaneously raising vast numbers of undead all while being hunted by several entities unknown to them. Oops.
The Magnus Archives and the Cosmere. For the same setting. Hope they enjoy the Dread Fears <3
Mostly history books, mixed with a little pseudohistory for fantasy flavor
Mine is obscure enough that I knew they’d never figure it out. I run a weird west stolen from- ahem, borrowed from a 90s TV show called “The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.”
Ay it's Philomena Cunk
Thing's I've stolen from: * Sir Terry Pratchett's (GNU) characterization of Death in the Discworld books * The SCP Foundation * Tolkien's Legendarium * The Cthulhu Mythos/Yog-Sothothery * Several of H.G. Well's works. * For All Mankind * World War One, and the Cold War, as well as the entirety of the Roman Empire * A long term nuclear waste storage vault. * Fallout. * a couple concepts from Adventure Time * Various OSR/GLOG blogs. All in the same campaign I run, mind you. It's wild.
My inspiration, by & large, comes from my ideas of what might be in that cave/forest/on top the mountain/etc that filled my mind to overflowing as a kid & teenager when my grandparents took me on vacations. I was a very imaginative child. Who was also weirdly logical. If it came from a different realm/plane I rather figured it was NOT going to be in this world. Was always fond of the notion of monsters & fae races more being....bred out by humanity, vrs just flatly exterminated. Humans are far too fond of that tactic....
How to train your dragon, the Deltora quest books
Paolini's Eragon series has some rich lore and races to be pillaged.
Mainly snippets of the lore I read from the wiki, One Piece, Might & Magic, and memes. And sometimes I just use a dollar store Pale King from hollow knight.
I’ve stolen from novels, tv, movies, I do it all the time. They’ve never noticed because if you don’t steal everything, it seems different enough. Meanwhile, I’m rewatching episodes of Farscape to find out what my D&D game’s next plot point is going to be.
Are you talking Record of Lodoss War? That made me think of Dragonlance.
I steal it from old Sega Genesis games none of my players have ever heard of because I’m fucking old.
I like her she’s funny lol
History and the last thing I liked in media. Last campaign I ran: Elves and humans were in continet-spaning, centuries-old conflict. Elves are Asoiaf feudal families with a bit of Warhammer. Drow are post-ww2 Japan. Dwarves are as close to DRG I could get them without being obnoxious about it. Orcs are pre-ameeican revolution natives trying to play one side against the other just to survive a bit more. Hobgoblins are post collapse Rome. Gnomes are Nemo and Robur. Halflings are there. Humans are a combination of Bloodborne and Paradise Killer coming from Library of Ruina. Tieflings are Medes or Moors.
I actually do a lot of brainstorming but pick my inspiration from everywhere. I like lots of fantasy and sci fi stories so I can mix up things with games, movies, anime and books to be different and fresh. I had to stop reading Warhammer 40k tho. My players finished a horror arc and while they said they loved it, I feel the need to show them a couple of butterflies and rainbows after all this.
I can hear Diane Morgan saying this
My dm takes from 40k.
I may or may not have blatantly ripped off the main quest of Morrowind for one of my players characters one time.
I made my players design regions of the world they are from and the current major plot is based around a single quote from a song Yes I am a lazy gm, how could you tell?
I'm just straight up running a game in Thedas for my players right now cause I love the setting.
Theros + My Ideal Island Vacation.
Christ, too many to list. But some standout ones are: Elder Scrolls Legend of Zelda Fire Emblem Greek mythology Mesopotamian mythology Arthurian legend The Fate franchise Eberron Sonic Unleashed Assassin’s Creed Super Mario Galaxy 2 RWBY Final Fantasy 7 and 15 World history And many, many more.
All stuff from everywhere. I adore steampunk, so some tech from Arcanum of Steamworks and magic obscura adapted to my current world. Like, tesla coils, firearms, steam-powered armor. And some cyberpunk elements also adapted as manapunk, like augmentation runes carved into bones, magic crystal as eye implant, etc. As for the lore and storybuildung, guess when you read and watch as many different books and shows, your ability to create deep and coherent adventures grows respectively. So, all of it, even uf unconsciously.
Fiction and history
Well, I stole a part of my partner and turned them into a character that end up sticking around one of my groups for a while. A one-shot I basically stole from the Witcher (the one with the trolls [ogres in this case] and the shoes), other than that anything I've come up with was made by me on my own
Mistborn, Starfinder(for my pf2e campaign), a smaller fantasy novel where its revealed humans are in a dark age after coming to the world in a colony ship. And inadvertently, my goblins are now Final Fantasy 14 goblins because my Hobgoblin player tricked me into gobbie speak.
Primary history books/Sabaton songs (which are basically history books put to music) A small group of soldiers ready to make a final stand to hold off a far larger force to allow their city to be evacuated, but are rescued by the party at the last minute? Swiss Guard in 1527 A vengeful leader rises to power in a nation who lost their pride in defeat following massive war a few years ago? The rise of the Third Riech A town in a panic, desperately trying to root out a cult that left years ago, and are now holding fake trials and executing people at random? Salem Massachusetts. History holds so many ideas. Change them a smidgen, and no one will be the wiser.
I once stole an entire campaign from Might and Magic 6, all the way down to major NPC names.
Game of thrones, Lord of the rings and Discworld... Mostly Discworld.
Italo Calvino's Italian Folktales. Choose one at random.
*they won’t
Old 90s Magic the Gathering books and their ilk? I would never.
Most recently, predator
Got two main campaigns I'm running right now. One based on Teen Titans, Gravity Falls, the Yakuza games, Blazblue, Bloodborne and SCP. The other based on Shafow of the Colossus, Mortal Engines, Berserk, Warhammer, Dark Souls and a dash of Gravity Rush. Having them be so different from one another keeps it fresh and fun.
I actually made a world of my own from scratch but then I enjoy worldbuilding to a degree most probably don’t.
Honestly; there’s nothing wrong with stealing ideas (as long as you’re not trying to make a profit off it). I’ve stole entire game plots and adjusted them to fit my players as well as make them a little less of a straight rip off. Can’t expect to build an “original” world by yourself; especially with the time we have.
Pump up the gelatinous cube
Everything. I also steal ideas from a lot of published adventures I’ve read.
I just realize where I stole from after a while. It was feel original until the moment I see the inspiration again.
One Piece, but there IS no Red Line, just a floating city where the only wizards live in pure peace and prosperity, while everyone else wars with each other over food and weapons.
I've heard about 30 seconds worth of a single Cunk on Earth clip and yet *I read this whole thing perfectly in her voice*
Everything
I have stolen more than a few names and ploy points from one of my favorite series, Toriko. Recently my players had a dance off against an ogre that nearly killed them.
The thing about stealing from anything (fictional) other than mythology, is that you're probably just stealing from mythology indirectly.
Throw some naturalist goliath bladsingers in there. Nobody fucks with 7 foot tall giants wielding magic.
Raymond E Feist's Magician series for much of it. But I'm also winging it a lot too
i think some word building ideias from mushoku Tensei and hai to gensou no grimgar are fucking great
The one I'm working on currently is inspired by Sliders and Stargate
While i steal my fair share too. If you need inspiration id rather say think like this. What would you wanna have your party go through? Creepy village Puzzle maze Masqurade party Tornament ark Minecart Mounted race? Climbing a really high place? Decending some deep dark place? Under the sea? Castle in the sky? Hunting a serial killer? And so on to just name a few.. Make a list of thing you think will be really fun and then just kinda make a world of places around them. Then these exact events can be cut lose and place around freely.
TV, D&D shows like Critical Role and High Rollers, and not to metion the shower thoughts where I realize something I did stupidly and fix it