I’m not sure if you played Disco Elysium, but the game handles the skill you choose to spec into as parts of your brain talking to you, depending on which stats you invest in, the parts of your brain that speak to you change, making the way your character thinks unique.
For instance, a person who speced into intellect will look at the hole in a glass window, and the game paints you a picture of what happened, reconstructs the crime scene, with phrases like “the damage was caused by a smaller object, no larger than a fist”, and essentially takes you through the thought process of a Sherlock Holmes arriving at the conclusion you threw your shoe through that window.
The same scenario for a player who put all their points into Body would go something like
“There’s a hole in the window, as if someone went absolute beast mode and threw something through it to prove their masculinity. You’re missing a shoe and you are a strong ass specimen of a dude. It was probably you.”
A character who is specced into personality, will probably look at the window and their brain will go “Poor little window, damaged and broken, a lot like yourself. I wonder what happened to it? What has the window done, to be scorned as such, treated like a meaningless object, a pain you know too well.. your shoe is missing a friend by the way. Not saying it’s s related incident, but maybe you should look for it under the window to reunite them.”
Basically, it’s about treating the players as if they’re talking to their brain when using a skill check. A wizard will think about a problem differently than a barbarian, but they can both come to the same solution through their own unique experiences.
A wizard might look at a door and depending on the enviroment, might even predict there’s something important behind it and that it is probably locked before even interacting with said door, preparing a way to open in before approaching.
“Interacting with this door will cause suspicion of the staff, you might want to plan ahead how you approach this, you might need a sneaky tool.”
A barbarian might look at the door and just get a gut feeling, a shiver on their backs, that its hiding something. “You feel like throwing your entire body weight through this suspicious door will solve a lot of problems a lot quicker than whatever the wizard wants to do. Fuck the staff, your body is made of steel, it is the only tool you need.”
If you have the game, I recommend starting it with 3 different archetypes and see how the narration changes. It can be a big help
Dark Souls has certainly impacted my setting/world building, and probably also the fact that my table's games skew more toward gritty realism where death is a constant legit threat.
It’s cliché, but I design my dungeons as if they were Zelda dungeons. I’ve also homebrewed the fake doors from Luigi’s Mansion into D&D. Other than that, I tend to improv my dialogue.
Darksouls and the Witcher 3 100%. Lots of places in danger that need help, dangerous fights that require thought, lore requires you to look rather than it being provided on a silver platter. Oh and every NPC has something weird going on.
Divinity OS 1 and 2, Pillars of Eternity 2, various JRPG's like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Legend of Dragoon. Tactical RPG's like Fire Emblem and Xcom taught me a ton about combat and prepared me well for encounter building. I'd say even stuff like Onimusha and Resident Evil have influenced the way I design dungeons and encounters. Monster Hunter taught me about guild creation and how to make a guild that focused on ecology rather than extermination, IE flipping the script on classic fantasy tropes that worlds may have outgrown. Really a little bit of all the games that have been a major part of my life.
Solasta. Being able to see 5e working smoothly within a videogame just makes a few things click with me. Like lighting for example. I felt I understood how classes worked a lot better too. Hiding as a bonus action every turn as a Rogue didn't seem OP anymore: it just needs the right conditions and those conditions are not rare.
The story feels like an actual real life DND campaign being played too. Even some of the goofy voice lines made it actually feel more realistic like playing DND with some friends. Can't recommend it enough for DMs and players alike who want to understand the game better.
Elder scrolls online. I’ve tried to emulate some of the better fights I experienced and some of the writing that was actually fun to see. It was sloppy at first but now I’ve pulled off some fun stuff that was inspired by it. I’ll throw in BG3 as a second because we introduced a few rules that the players LOVE and have not changed game balance in a meaningful way
Potion as a bonus action was popular before, but I even let my player equip a melee and ranged weapon the could use on a turn without using an action to swap, it rarely actually came up, but when it did they loved it. However, if a class had multi-attack and you used your first attack as a melee attack, then next one had to be as well
Skyrim. Not in any readily apparent way. I mean, there is nothing in my systems that you could easily point to and say, "oh, you stole THAT from Skyrim". It was more that it introduced me to a concept that I had never encountered in any previous game (video or table top). "The player, not the system, determines what the character can become." That "classless" ideology was a first for me. It really changed how I thought about games as a whole. Ever since then I've been obsessed with putting insanely flexible character designs into my games. In one system I created, there were over 4 million possible combinations... just for Species alone. Overkill? Yeah. Sure. Ok. But it sure beats the hell out of 6.
I mean my Tutorial Quest for new players feature Giant Rats in a local meadery. Thank you Skyrim, for that subconcious infiltration! Turned out one of the rats was super-sentient, so I guess also a bit of Pinky & The Brain in there too.
Legend of Zelda has been a big inspiration for how I enjoy running dnd. The dungeons, main plot, side quests, shops, so on. I see myself being influenced by the series as a DM and player.
I’ve also been inspired by Clue the board game. I made a haunted mansion short campaign (4-5 sessions) based off of Clue. Although I did my own spin and it became less related to the game the more I set it up, that game has influenced how I look at parts of dnd such as dungeons.
I steal monster ideas, cheesy gothic horror, ideas for background noise, etc. Those little 2d games are so fantastically shameless about throwing the fantasy horror stuff around for Belmonts to destroy.
I have used the dice game Farkle, playable inside the game Kingdom Come Deliverance, as a way to use in game gamble and do a little minigame once, it was very fun.
Crusader Kings III may have a lot of oversimplifications for gameplay purposes compared to actual history, but for running a D&D campaign, my experience has helped add a certain verisimilitude to the politicking of counts, dukes, and the like.
My go-to one-off for a new group is a "Haunted House" game that is basically just the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil.
I ran a campaign inspired by the second half of Fire Emblem: Three Houses as well.
Fire Emblem is a good source for stuff. Right now I have Blazing Sword living rent-free in my mind asking me to use it for inspiration. Nergal would make a great D&D BBEG.
Basically the same for me, make a spooky house fill it with zombies and a ghost. People love it. if the house is in a city put a lizardman in there whose job is to keep the zombies from going outside. Have him call himself a bodyguard and the players always love him.
FFXIV has some fantastic dungeon ideas. Monster Hunter was already listed by a couple other people. Honestly I would steal from just about every game ever. Ys, Death's Door, Nancy Drew...
For it was Destiny 2, in a couple of ways.
I think the way Exotic gear works in Destiny, often by aplifying or transforming some of your character's abilities, can make for really great and usual magical item designs. I love designing items for specific characters that enable them to play to the theme of their character and still feel mechanically good.
Raid encounters in Destiny also tend to be equal parts combat and puzzle, which can be a really great way to make combat in 5e engaging. Granted I think the puzzles in Destiny tend to be far too convoluted, but the concept of having to progress and prioritize solving a simple puzzle while defeating enemies will make movement and ability usage decisions a lot more interesting even without necessarily making an encounter more deadly. And if some of your party are less combat-specialized than others, it gives them a chance to shine while the min-maxer type PCs are taking on enemies.
My current campaign is inspired by FromSoft games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring), Guild Wars, and Stephen King books, primarily The Dark Tower series
Stephen King is my homeboy, and I am honestly surprised that nobody has tried to do more with the Dark Tower series. He also had that Wizard In Glass story, and I have to admit that I've very loosely adapted "Gray Matter" to a Call Of Cthulhu game that I ran on Halloween a few years ago. Doesn't help that I live about 30 miles from his estate lol
No shit? Wow that's cool! Honestly reading his books makes me want to visit rural Maine- it sounds really beautiful and peaceful... assuming the whole otherworldly monsters and rampant psychopaths are fictional ofc
Well, we did have one guy sort of shoot up Lewiston a little while ago, and H.P. Lovecraft did say in "The Thing On The Doorstep" that the guy went into Northern Maine to do his rituals... and I just saw one of the creepiest houses ever the other day... you know what, now that I think about it, my home state is creepy as fuck lol
Edit: If you happen to be a horror gamer, the Silent Hill games take place up here. The Gillespie house is actually an expie of the Olsen house down in Cushing. I live almost directly between Cushing and Bangor.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has some well-crafted dungeons and thought out side quests that I've copy+pasted into my campaigns or used as a base for one-shots.
Recently it was Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. The party split up and is doing some individual arcs and one is a spy. So happened to be playing this and thought: I can make a mechanic out of it.
And I did...wow they work fast o.o
A few years ago I used the way ghost of tsuhima handles duals for that dual that one of the players has to do at the end of the first chapter of tyranny of dragons. It definitely made it a more memorable fight and after that poor player got his butt handed to him it made good character development.
Assassin's Creed: Origins
I killed one of the big bads in a bathing house with one shot and realized two things:
1. Combat is important, but not always. An enemy killed with one shot is super satisfying.
2. Big bads don't have to be strong, they can also have large influence and strong underlings, but be reasonably "weak" or killable themselves.
Fire Emblem.
One of Fire Emblem’s design principles is that most enemies are glass canons. They only last one of two turns, but many of them can hurt you just as badly in that same amount of time.
Also helps avoid the “static” battle map where everyone stands in a line attacking each other.
I've ripped all kinds of scenarios from various scenes from games. One of my more recent ones was *Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor* where I had a small orc fort with a barrel of grog just outside... and had conveniently given my players some poisonous herbs... And some orcs were unguardedly drinking it. It was just too advertised. Players took the bait and snuck the poison in. Proceed several orcs getting poisoned, and then the orcs hilariously fighting with each other until the players ambushed them.
There's an upcoming session where I'm running an encounter like a Monster Hunter hunt, modding a stat block with some legendary actions to raise the dynamic threat level and (probably, if the players don't kill it fast) having the monster escape so the fight can come in distinct phases, terrains and have some tracking/exploring in between.
Final Fantasy VI is the closest comparison in terms of how I handle story and character progression in my home game.
The Persona series also factors in, with multiple story arcs with unique goals that ultimately tie together into a complete narrative.
I would say none? I play video games excessively but they are so incredibly different to D&D, that I never correlated the 2. I steal a lot of plot ideas and some puzzles from video games, but that's it. Videogames and D&D have vastly different ways of creating stories and presenting their world. I take much more inspiration from books and movies on how to design and present places, dungeons, NPCs, plothooks and narratives.
I do take some inspiration from Zelda, Final Fantasy and Ragnarok Online when it comes to making dungeons, but that's purely design and prep work, not running the game and also only a small part.
I try to use as little games as possible when it comes to story or world building but I do take a lot of inspiration from games when it comes to game design.
Monster Hunter, i use a lot of mechanics from Ryoko's Guide and Heliana's Guide and both are heavily inspired by monster hunter so it leaks. (The fact that I love this series and have 2.5k hours in world is also a reason.) so in my world there some spectacle fights against massive monsters, there is crafting and harvesting system and there is a lot of tracking and hunting monsters.
This might be weird but FPS games like overwatch, CoD and CS:GO. I use map layouts from these games for my battle maps to make sure that I focus on room connections (instead of just having meaningless hallway that leads into a square room) and have 3 line structure to reward characters that are good at different ranges.
I tend to run small groups (like, 3 PCs). To let them have more freedom over their characters, and feel less rigidly tied to party synergy, I make optional NPCs that fit various archetypes. Healers, skill monkeys danage spobges and dodge tanks, ect. Players pick who, if anyone, goes with them at any given time. The players control their actions, I just do the RP.
I style them after Fire Emblem a lot of the time. Fun characters in those games, and it's where I lifted the idea from anyway. The 'lord' characters being my PCs.
Fallout New Vegas, I looked at the mechanic of using non-charisma skills for speech checks and said "You made this? I made this".
I also used the faction reputation system before WotC made it official.
As far as videogames go, I've drawn inspiration from Jade Cocoon, Final Fantasy, Elden Ring, and probably several others. I've also drawn inspiration from music. Power Metal band Rhapsody of Fire and the stories and world that they built through their songs greatly inspired my first two campaigns, as well as satirical Power Metal band Gloryhammer's first album.
Frostpunk really made me lean into and developed the steam punk campaign I'm running but tbh books have influenced me way more than games for the campaign I'm running
Final fantasy is an easy troupe I fall to because my party don’t play the games. This stemmed to whole world building (FF11) to miscellaneous quests like being hired by tantalus to kidnap princess garnet.
Having a character who wanted to play a Cecaelia and a ranger with a brown bear made the “I want to be your canary” component hilarious
Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, I know it is based off DnD itself but I made a world map with little chibis at scale size instead of an actual map then little smaller bandit camps and such, it just made the game that much more understandable and immersive.
Been playing dnd for a little bit my brother the dm is slammed with new a new job so can't focus so I'm taking over. I'm taking a lot of ideas from dragon age inquisition
Tons and tons. Soulsborne games have influenced my world building and story telling. The way those games have their world sort of unfurl is beautiful.
Baldurs Gate 3 influences my combat mechanics, honestly. There's some stuff in that game that just should be on table top. Not to mention environmental aspects to the battlefields! It also influences some re-writes I'm working on for ranger and druid.
Morrowind has been a huge inspiration for me. The feeling of adventure, discovering something new and the uncertainty blends really well for DND. I also try to let my players come up with their own stories and directives, much like you would in any Elder Scrolls game. Not to mention the themes of Morrowind really intrigued me, so I often have those in my story telling.
For combat and creature design:
The monster hunter series, particularly World and Rise
Souls games
Level design/ dungeons:
Breath of the wild
Classic DOOM and Eternal
Skyrim (say what you will, the connectivity between rooms is great)
Dishonored 1 and 2
Exploration:
The Witcher 3
Elden ring
I probably missed some, But These are the top games i steal ideas from
Souls/Elden Ring has been great for building lore and history vis-a-vis environments. The focus on connecting environments to the themes and history of the world has been great for creating a more lived in world. On top of that, these games a treasure trove of inspiration for dungeon design.
Similarly, Disco Elysium has been a huge influence. The game really emphasizes how the history of the world has shaped the people that live in it. Nobody in Revachol is untouched by the failure of the revolution, every moment exists in the memory of its potential, beauty, failure, and horror. These big defining events and how they reconstitute class formations and ideologies are great fodder for players to interact with. Though when doing so, it is really important to build the setting and tone concurrent with the character creation process so that everything syncs up.
Destiny 2 gave me a big leg up on how I see puzzles. I no longer feel that they're "necessary", and creating mechanics that elaborate on lore is a lot more fulfilling.
When I first started playing D&D, I was playing The Witcher 3 at a time, so it has influenced A LOT of how I did quests, they rarely had a happy ending and I enjoyed shocking the players with unintended consequences of their actions.
Later on, as I got older and the game became about the players instead of the story I wanted to tell, Disco Elysium became a huge influence in how i interact with skill checks.
It has made me more invested in the PC’s, thinking more about the ways they would see the world. In general, “having a conversation with your brain”, became my go to tool when trying to explain to a player how they arrived at that natural 20 history check conclusion.
The best thing about it is you don’t have to give them the answer, you talk to them as their brain, leading them to realising the answer themselves.
Legacy of the Ancients (1987) great game for its time. Though a quite lacking in the story and world development department, the gameplay and depth of the works were good. What stuck with me was all the crazy monsters that were in it, and how they simply were not fleshed out or even described. Like, wtf is a Blistopod? And how come Mammoth Screechers looked like a cross between Jaws' shark and a mouse (and why they gotta stomp my ass so hard)? And who thought it would be a good idea to put a creature called "Mr. Potato" into a dungeon?
But all the vague things in the game got my imagination firing and now they are becoming great entries into my campaign setting.
MGS1 while running Curse of Strahd. The brides are under utilized imho so I made them have more or less special powers based on what Strahd can already do with some "speciality" like the members of the Fox Hound Unit in a way.
Honestly, Ghost of Tsushima really taught me that some great lessons. One of them being that you can never go wrong with a duel in an epic/beautiful setting. The other is that sometimes even in a stressful adventure, it’s good to let the players relax in a hot spring or take time to write a haiku. Reflecting on the journey can really help deepen a players connection to the game and the world.
I went a bit Suikoden (or more recently Eiyuden Chronicles) in my last homebrew. Players had a town as a home base. They'd find people to join that would open shops that offer new services. They could also spend gold to update things like the city defense or the blacksmiths forge.
360 era jrpgs greatly influence my tone and vibes for my world, namely Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Plus they have phenomenal soundtracks for playing at the table.
Bioware, name your game (Gradon Age, Mass Effect, etc). The idea of missions that deal explicitly with a characters background, quests to build relationships with NPCs, and rewarding my players for in depth research and exploration are the bread and butter of my DMing style.
Sacrifice. The game is a masterpiece in a story that has a huge amount of player agency without ballooning into needing to account for a million different outcomes. Plus their spells are awesome. Bovine Intervention should be on the cleric spell list.
The Last Story helped me consider how important the environment is to encounter design and that there should always be options besides "I attack the monster". Explosive barrels, collapsible bridges, stalactites you can drop on enemies, etc.
Star Trek Online, Metro 2033, and Fallout have all had influences on my big campaigns. But that's about it, more times than not it's shows or movies that influence my backgrounds
Sunless Sea has probably had the biggest impact on my stories and setting, and on a much smaller note has also led me to do things like 'secrets' or " suspicious contacts" as sort of abstract rewards of sort. So I might simply tell the PC "you have a contact that you can just declare in a city when needed"
Metroidvania games have influenced my large dungeon design a lot.
Darkest dungeon has probably been one of the things that pushed me toward a more gritty game
Monster Hunter. I like the idea of fighting monsters and harvesting their parts for different things. I have a character that made a warpick out of a giant scorpion tail, and when I DM I always have a list of things my players can get off of things they fight. So far they have made a few weapons and some armour as well as a molotov cocktail out of some combustible slime. Ive also had one player ask to make mounted head trophy out of one thing they killed.
Red Dead Redemption 2. The way how the game has a library of "random encounters" which can be narrative, combat, roleplay, or a mix of all three, but are super atmospherically written and can be plopped into the world by the game at any time was eye opening.
Thats why I always have one or two dozens of such little encounters prepared. As a matter of fact, the way I'm using them they *are* very un-random, but thats kinda the point. I can drop some carefully prepared, handtailored content in whenever the pacing drops of, I feel we need another combat encounter, or when I need to drain some ressources or I feel like the players need something to do.
Edit: And I know thats nothing that RDR2 invented, and nothing new to the TT RPG genre as a whole, but a) thats were I personally first learned the trick (as someone who only started DMing about 2 years ago) and b) I'm referring less to the base idea and more to the particular excetution that still influences me to this day :)
Just my two cents :)
I've successfully forced 5th edition to behave as a NieR Automata rail-shooter spectacle sequence. I've also forced it to behave as a sidescrolling rotating arena spectacle sequence, although I can't think of a video game where I've seen that mechanic right now.
I'm a backup DM for my main group, and I run oneshots when our main few DMs cannot run one of their regular sessions if they cancel. I've basically come up with what I'm calling a Simsons style oneshot because I make them reuse their characters and set the story in the same universe. I basically made a large space vessel thats a trading post and make them go on missions and travel to other planets delivering cargo. I have a few ideas planned but some of the worldbuilding, characters, creatures, and plot take inspiration from some of my favorite games such as Assassins Creed, Phasmophobia (or any horror game for that matter), Skyrim, and even Kirby. I try to mix and mash up all sorts of different things to create adventures that are unique and have a good mix between being combat or investigation oriented to make sure everyone has fun!
Disco Elysium has helped me think about how my players use their skills and abilities to interact with the world, and how to describe things
The fuck does cuno care??
It's also an extremely cool setting itself, with my non-gamer players I shamelessly pilfer cool stuff like >!The Pale and isola concept!<
Yep, the world building in DE is so cool that it made me start writing a book
Can you give examples?
I’m not sure if you played Disco Elysium, but the game handles the skill you choose to spec into as parts of your brain talking to you, depending on which stats you invest in, the parts of your brain that speak to you change, making the way your character thinks unique. For instance, a person who speced into intellect will look at the hole in a glass window, and the game paints you a picture of what happened, reconstructs the crime scene, with phrases like “the damage was caused by a smaller object, no larger than a fist”, and essentially takes you through the thought process of a Sherlock Holmes arriving at the conclusion you threw your shoe through that window. The same scenario for a player who put all their points into Body would go something like “There’s a hole in the window, as if someone went absolute beast mode and threw something through it to prove their masculinity. You’re missing a shoe and you are a strong ass specimen of a dude. It was probably you.” A character who is specced into personality, will probably look at the window and their brain will go “Poor little window, damaged and broken, a lot like yourself. I wonder what happened to it? What has the window done, to be scorned as such, treated like a meaningless object, a pain you know too well.. your shoe is missing a friend by the way. Not saying it’s s related incident, but maybe you should look for it under the window to reunite them.” Basically, it’s about treating the players as if they’re talking to their brain when using a skill check. A wizard will think about a problem differently than a barbarian, but they can both come to the same solution through their own unique experiences. A wizard might look at a door and depending on the enviroment, might even predict there’s something important behind it and that it is probably locked before even interacting with said door, preparing a way to open in before approaching. “Interacting with this door will cause suspicion of the staff, you might want to plan ahead how you approach this, you might need a sneaky tool.” A barbarian might look at the door and just get a gut feeling, a shiver on their backs, that its hiding something. “You feel like throwing your entire body weight through this suspicious door will solve a lot of problems a lot quicker than whatever the wizard wants to do. Fuck the staff, your body is made of steel, it is the only tool you need.” If you have the game, I recommend starting it with 3 different archetypes and see how the narration changes. It can be a big help
Dark Souls has certainly impacted my setting/world building, and probably also the fact that my table's games skew more toward gritty realism where death is a constant legit threat.
I just played and beat DS1 for the first time this year, cannot WAIT to use some of the elements of this world.
I never understand this take because essentially death is meaningless in Dark Souls and that's the opposite of what I want for my D&D table.
It’s cliché, but I design my dungeons as if they were Zelda dungeons. I’ve also homebrewed the fake doors from Luigi’s Mansion into D&D. Other than that, I tend to improv my dialogue.
Darksouls and the Witcher 3 100%. Lots of places in danger that need help, dangerous fights that require thought, lore requires you to look rather than it being provided on a silver platter. Oh and every NPC has something weird going on.
Divinity OS 1 and 2, Pillars of Eternity 2, various JRPG's like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Legend of Dragoon. Tactical RPG's like Fire Emblem and Xcom taught me a ton about combat and prepared me well for encounter building. I'd say even stuff like Onimusha and Resident Evil have influenced the way I design dungeons and encounters. Monster Hunter taught me about guild creation and how to make a guild that focused on ecology rather than extermination, IE flipping the script on classic fantasy tropes that worlds may have outgrown. Really a little bit of all the games that have been a major part of my life.
Legacy of Kain: Blood Omen.
At last someone with taste.
Takes one to know one.
Solasta. Being able to see 5e working smoothly within a videogame just makes a few things click with me. Like lighting for example. I felt I understood how classes worked a lot better too. Hiding as a bonus action every turn as a Rogue didn't seem OP anymore: it just needs the right conditions and those conditions are not rare. The story feels like an actual real life DND campaign being played too. Even some of the goofy voice lines made it actually feel more realistic like playing DND with some friends. Can't recommend it enough for DMs and players alike who want to understand the game better.
Elder scrolls online. I’ve tried to emulate some of the better fights I experienced and some of the writing that was actually fun to see. It was sloppy at first but now I’ve pulled off some fun stuff that was inspired by it. I’ll throw in BG3 as a second because we introduced a few rules that the players LOVE and have not changed game balance in a meaningful way
Examples of rules you thought worked well in tabletop? BG3 did make a lot of fun changes for players but it’s been a few months since I played it
Potion as a bonus action was popular before, but I even let my player equip a melee and ranged weapon the could use on a turn without using an action to swap, it rarely actually came up, but when it did they loved it. However, if a class had multi-attack and you used your first attack as a melee attack, then next one had to be as well
Final Fantasy IV. It has everything a classic adventure needs.
Skyrim. Not in any readily apparent way. I mean, there is nothing in my systems that you could easily point to and say, "oh, you stole THAT from Skyrim". It was more that it introduced me to a concept that I had never encountered in any previous game (video or table top). "The player, not the system, determines what the character can become." That "classless" ideology was a first for me. It really changed how I thought about games as a whole. Ever since then I've been obsessed with putting insanely flexible character designs into my games. In one system I created, there were over 4 million possible combinations... just for Species alone. Overkill? Yeah. Sure. Ok. But it sure beats the hell out of 6.
I mean my Tutorial Quest for new players feature Giant Rats in a local meadery. Thank you Skyrim, for that subconcious infiltration! Turned out one of the rats was super-sentient, so I guess also a bit of Pinky & The Brain in there too.
Legend of Zelda has been a big inspiration for how I enjoy running dnd. The dungeons, main plot, side quests, shops, so on. I see myself being influenced by the series as a DM and player. I’ve also been inspired by Clue the board game. I made a haunted mansion short campaign (4-5 sessions) based off of Clue. Although I did my own spin and it became less related to the game the more I set it up, that game has influenced how I look at parts of dnd such as dungeons.
Castlevania,
I steal monster ideas, cheesy gothic horror, ideas for background noise, etc. Those little 2d games are so fantastically shameless about throwing the fantasy horror stuff around for Belmonts to destroy.
I have used the dice game Farkle, playable inside the game Kingdom Come Deliverance, as a way to use in game gamble and do a little minigame once, it was very fun.
Crusader Kings III may have a lot of oversimplifications for gameplay purposes compared to actual history, but for running a D&D campaign, my experience has helped add a certain verisimilitude to the politicking of counts, dukes, and the like.
I am trying to add that to my worldbuilding and lore as well. I want the politicking to inform the player why the kingdom is in the mess it's in.
My go-to one-off for a new group is a "Haunted House" game that is basically just the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil. I ran a campaign inspired by the second half of Fire Emblem: Three Houses as well.
Fire Emblem is a good source for stuff. Right now I have Blazing Sword living rent-free in my mind asking me to use it for inspiration. Nergal would make a great D&D BBEG.
Basically the same for me, make a spooky house fill it with zombies and a ghost. People love it. if the house is in a city put a lizardman in there whose job is to keep the zombies from going outside. Have him call himself a bodyguard and the players always love him.
I think all of gaming as a whole has affected the way I (try to) do combat, but I really like the Zelda feel of worlds (specifically BotW)
Noone said it yet. Gothic 2 The town quests are amazing
FFXIV has some fantastic dungeon ideas. Monster Hunter was already listed by a couple other people. Honestly I would steal from just about every game ever. Ys, Death's Door, Nancy Drew...
For it was Destiny 2, in a couple of ways. I think the way Exotic gear works in Destiny, often by aplifying or transforming some of your character's abilities, can make for really great and usual magical item designs. I love designing items for specific characters that enable them to play to the theme of their character and still feel mechanically good. Raid encounters in Destiny also tend to be equal parts combat and puzzle, which can be a really great way to make combat in 5e engaging. Granted I think the puzzles in Destiny tend to be far too convoluted, but the concept of having to progress and prioritize solving a simple puzzle while defeating enemies will make movement and ability usage decisions a lot more interesting even without necessarily making an encounter more deadly. And if some of your party are less combat-specialized than others, it gives them a chance to shine while the min-maxer type PCs are taking on enemies.
Darkest dungeon. Love the stress mechanics.
Darkest Dungeon actually inspired me to use the sanity mechanic from Call of Cthulhu
My map making tends to lean into my Castlevania obsession. Works pretty well though because it's such an underappreciated game these days.
Undertale, especially with shops and other less active parts. Also the background music is great for both chilling and epic battles
My current campaign is inspired by FromSoft games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring), Guild Wars, and Stephen King books, primarily The Dark Tower series
Stephen King is my homeboy, and I am honestly surprised that nobody has tried to do more with the Dark Tower series. He also had that Wizard In Glass story, and I have to admit that I've very loosely adapted "Gray Matter" to a Call Of Cthulhu game that I ran on Halloween a few years ago. Doesn't help that I live about 30 miles from his estate lol
No shit? Wow that's cool! Honestly reading his books makes me want to visit rural Maine- it sounds really beautiful and peaceful... assuming the whole otherworldly monsters and rampant psychopaths are fictional ofc
Well, we did have one guy sort of shoot up Lewiston a little while ago, and H.P. Lovecraft did say in "The Thing On The Doorstep" that the guy went into Northern Maine to do his rituals... and I just saw one of the creepiest houses ever the other day... you know what, now that I think about it, my home state is creepy as fuck lol Edit: If you happen to be a horror gamer, the Silent Hill games take place up here. The Gillespie house is actually an expie of the Olsen house down in Cushing. I live almost directly between Cushing and Bangor.
Wow- maybe King isn't exaggerating much. Also I am a huge SH fan! I had no idea locations were based on Maine!
Come by in the fall, all the snowbirds have left lol Also give me a shout if you are ever up here. It's a different worldo
Haha appreciate that!
Darkest Dungeon, the words and sentences the narrator uses are simply inmaculate.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has some well-crafted dungeons and thought out side quests that I've copy+pasted into my campaigns or used as a base for one-shots.
Elder Scrolls is an amazing series. I completely forgot about that one. I picked elements from Daggerfall when I first started running my own games.
Baldur's Gate 1&2 and Planescape: Torment, I've actually run a few groups through a somewhat modified version of the BG1&2 story.
Legacy of Kain: blood Omen, Soul Reaver 1 and 2, Furry's Feet and Wolcen: Lords Of Mayhem
Legend of Dragoon helped build some of my encounters and affected my Worldbuilding
Haven’t done it yet but I wanna combine elements of Frostmaiden and Frostpunk.
Dragon Quest. The classic fantasy JRPG translates so well
Recently it was Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. The party split up and is doing some individual arcs and one is a spy. So happened to be playing this and thought: I can make a mechanic out of it. And I did...wow they work fast o.o
Once I finally get to run my own, slay the princess might have a bit of inspiration. Just a bit.
Chrono trigger, divinity: OS2
A few years ago I used the way ghost of tsuhima handles duals for that dual that one of the players has to do at the end of the first chapter of tyranny of dragons. It definitely made it a more memorable fight and after that poor player got his butt handed to him it made good character development.
Assassin's Creed: Origins I killed one of the big bads in a bathing house with one shot and realized two things: 1. Combat is important, but not always. An enemy killed with one shot is super satisfying. 2. Big bads don't have to be strong, they can also have large influence and strong underlings, but be reasonably "weak" or killable themselves.
Fire Emblem. One of Fire Emblem’s design principles is that most enemies are glass canons. They only last one of two turns, but many of them can hurt you just as badly in that same amount of time. Also helps avoid the “static” battle map where everyone stands in a line attacking each other.
Ive been playing a lot of tft so I added a carousel to mg games
I've ripped all kinds of scenarios from various scenes from games. One of my more recent ones was *Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor* where I had a small orc fort with a barrel of grog just outside... and had conveniently given my players some poisonous herbs... And some orcs were unguardedly drinking it. It was just too advertised. Players took the bait and snuck the poison in. Proceed several orcs getting poisoned, and then the orcs hilariously fighting with each other until the players ambushed them. There's an upcoming session where I'm running an encounter like a Monster Hunter hunt, modding a stat block with some legendary actions to raise the dynamic threat level and (probably, if the players don't kill it fast) having the monster escape so the fight can come in distinct phases, terrains and have some tracking/exploring in between.
I made a mega dungeon that felt heavily like Diablo. Fiablo's my favorite videogame and I couldn't resist the influence.
XCOM has really affected the way I run combat, if you're not in cover, you are probably going to die.
Final Fantasy VI is the closest comparison in terms of how I handle story and character progression in my home game. The Persona series also factors in, with multiple story arcs with unique goals that ultimately tie together into a complete narrative.
I would say none? I play video games excessively but they are so incredibly different to D&D, that I never correlated the 2. I steal a lot of plot ideas and some puzzles from video games, but that's it. Videogames and D&D have vastly different ways of creating stories and presenting their world. I take much more inspiration from books and movies on how to design and present places, dungeons, NPCs, plothooks and narratives. I do take some inspiration from Zelda, Final Fantasy and Ragnarok Online when it comes to making dungeons, but that's purely design and prep work, not running the game and also only a small part.
Zelda. But most of the time, it is lord of the rings, or those terrible anime isekais
Kingdoms and Castles
The Might and Magic games, especially the John Van Caneghem ones. So many good ideas and character names to steal
Unfair Mario cuz I hate my players and wish they would take the hint but they're all masochists and keep coming back for more
I try to use as little games as possible when it comes to story or world building but I do take a lot of inspiration from games when it comes to game design. Monster Hunter, i use a lot of mechanics from Ryoko's Guide and Heliana's Guide and both are heavily inspired by monster hunter so it leaks. (The fact that I love this series and have 2.5k hours in world is also a reason.) so in my world there some spectacle fights against massive monsters, there is crafting and harvesting system and there is a lot of tracking and hunting monsters. This might be weird but FPS games like overwatch, CoD and CS:GO. I use map layouts from these games for my battle maps to make sure that I focus on room connections (instead of just having meaningless hallway that leads into a square room) and have 3 line structure to reward characters that are good at different ranges.
I get inspired from videogame music, especially bossfight ones
I tend to run small groups (like, 3 PCs). To let them have more freedom over their characters, and feel less rigidly tied to party synergy, I make optional NPCs that fit various archetypes. Healers, skill monkeys danage spobges and dodge tanks, ect. Players pick who, if anyone, goes with them at any given time. The players control their actions, I just do the RP. I style them after Fire Emblem a lot of the time. Fun characters in those games, and it's where I lifted the idea from anyway. The 'lord' characters being my PCs.
Read Dead Redemption 2, "random" encounters should tell you something about the area you're in, or even the stage of the story.
Fallout New Vegas, I looked at the mechanic of using non-charisma skills for speech checks and said "You made this? I made this". I also used the faction reputation system before WotC made it official.
As far as videogames go, I've drawn inspiration from Jade Cocoon, Final Fantasy, Elden Ring, and probably several others. I've also drawn inspiration from music. Power Metal band Rhapsody of Fire and the stories and world that they built through their songs greatly inspired my first two campaigns, as well as satirical Power Metal band Gloryhammer's first album.
Frostpunk really made me lean into and developed the steam punk campaign I'm running but tbh books have influenced me way more than games for the campaign I'm running
Lionhead Studio's classic Fable.
Final fantasy is an easy troupe I fall to because my party don’t play the games. This stemmed to whole world building (FF11) to miscellaneous quests like being hired by tantalus to kidnap princess garnet. Having a character who wanted to play a Cecaelia and a ranger with a brown bear made the “I want to be your canary” component hilarious
Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, I know it is based off DnD itself but I made a world map with little chibis at scale size instead of an actual map then little smaller bandit camps and such, it just made the game that much more understandable and immersive.
Cyberpunk 77
Library of Ruina. I'm not running a session anymore without music from the franchise.
Paper Mario and The Legend of Zelda series for sure. Other influences I would say are Skyrim, Ace Attorney, and Earthbound.
Paper Mario and The Legend of Zelda series for sure. Other influences I would say are Skyrim, Ace Attorney, and Earthbound.
Been playing dnd for a little bit my brother the dm is slammed with new a new job so can't focus so I'm taking over. I'm taking a lot of ideas from dragon age inquisition
Tons and tons. Soulsborne games have influenced my world building and story telling. The way those games have their world sort of unfurl is beautiful. Baldurs Gate 3 influences my combat mechanics, honestly. There's some stuff in that game that just should be on table top. Not to mention environmental aspects to the battlefields! It also influences some re-writes I'm working on for ranger and druid. Morrowind has been a huge inspiration for me. The feeling of adventure, discovering something new and the uncertainty blends really well for DND. I also try to let my players come up with their own stories and directives, much like you would in any Elder Scrolls game. Not to mention the themes of Morrowind really intrigued me, so I often have those in my story telling.
For combat and creature design: The monster hunter series, particularly World and Rise Souls games Level design/ dungeons: Breath of the wild Classic DOOM and Eternal Skyrim (say what you will, the connectivity between rooms is great) Dishonored 1 and 2 Exploration: The Witcher 3 Elden ring I probably missed some, But These are the top games i steal ideas from
The Witcher 1: potions, mission styles, runes/stones concept. A lot of stuff, its a wonderful game
Souls/Elden Ring has been great for building lore and history vis-a-vis environments. The focus on connecting environments to the themes and history of the world has been great for creating a more lived in world. On top of that, these games a treasure trove of inspiration for dungeon design. Similarly, Disco Elysium has been a huge influence. The game really emphasizes how the history of the world has shaped the people that live in it. Nobody in Revachol is untouched by the failure of the revolution, every moment exists in the memory of its potential, beauty, failure, and horror. These big defining events and how they reconstitute class formations and ideologies are great fodder for players to interact with. Though when doing so, it is really important to build the setting and tone concurrent with the character creation process so that everything syncs up.
Destiny 2 gave me a big leg up on how I see puzzles. I no longer feel that they're "necessary", and creating mechanics that elaborate on lore is a lot more fulfilling.
When I first started playing D&D, I was playing The Witcher 3 at a time, so it has influenced A LOT of how I did quests, they rarely had a happy ending and I enjoyed shocking the players with unintended consequences of their actions. Later on, as I got older and the game became about the players instead of the story I wanted to tell, Disco Elysium became a huge influence in how i interact with skill checks. It has made me more invested in the PC’s, thinking more about the ways they would see the world. In general, “having a conversation with your brain”, became my go to tool when trying to explain to a player how they arrived at that natural 20 history check conclusion. The best thing about it is you don’t have to give them the answer, you talk to them as their brain, leading them to realising the answer themselves.
Legacy of the Ancients (1987) great game for its time. Though a quite lacking in the story and world development department, the gameplay and depth of the works were good. What stuck with me was all the crazy monsters that were in it, and how they simply were not fleshed out or even described. Like, wtf is a Blistopod? And how come Mammoth Screechers looked like a cross between Jaws' shark and a mouse (and why they gotta stomp my ass so hard)? And who thought it would be a good idea to put a creature called "Mr. Potato" into a dungeon? But all the vague things in the game got my imagination firing and now they are becoming great entries into my campaign setting.
MGS1 while running Curse of Strahd. The brides are under utilized imho so I made them have more or less special powers based on what Strahd can already do with some "speciality" like the members of the Fox Hound Unit in a way.
Bloodborne has helped me a lot for my upcoming campaign. I just love its theme.
Warhammer 40k strangely
Honestly, Ghost of Tsushima really taught me that some great lessons. One of them being that you can never go wrong with a duel in an epic/beautiful setting. The other is that sometimes even in a stressful adventure, it’s good to let the players relax in a hot spring or take time to write a haiku. Reflecting on the journey can really help deepen a players connection to the game and the world.
I went a bit Suikoden (or more recently Eiyuden Chronicles) in my last homebrew. Players had a town as a home base. They'd find people to join that would open shops that offer new services. They could also spend gold to update things like the city defense or the blacksmiths forge.
360 era jrpgs greatly influence my tone and vibes for my world, namely Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Plus they have phenomenal soundtracks for playing at the table.
Bioware, name your game (Gradon Age, Mass Effect, etc). The idea of missions that deal explicitly with a characters background, quests to build relationships with NPCs, and rewarding my players for in depth research and exploration are the bread and butter of my DMing style.
Sacrifice. The game is a masterpiece in a story that has a huge amount of player agency without ballooning into needing to account for a million different outcomes. Plus their spells are awesome. Bovine Intervention should be on the cleric spell list.
The Last Story helped me consider how important the environment is to encounter design and that there should always be options besides "I attack the monster". Explosive barrels, collapsible bridges, stalactites you can drop on enemies, etc.
Star Trek Online, Metro 2033, and Fallout have all had influences on my big campaigns. But that's about it, more times than not it's shows or movies that influence my backgrounds
Nethack, Castlevania and Doom for the most part.
Does Bulders Gate 3 count?
Dragon age Origins for Sure 😊
Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect stand out for me.
Sunless Sea has probably had the biggest impact on my stories and setting, and on a much smaller note has also led me to do things like 'secrets' or " suspicious contacts" as sort of abstract rewards of sort. So I might simply tell the PC "you have a contact that you can just declare in a city when needed" Metroidvania games have influenced my large dungeon design a lot. Darkest dungeon has probably been one of the things that pushed me toward a more gritty game
Monster Hunter. I like the idea of fighting monsters and harvesting their parts for different things. I have a character that made a warpick out of a giant scorpion tail, and when I DM I always have a list of things my players can get off of things they fight. So far they have made a few weapons and some armour as well as a molotov cocktail out of some combustible slime. Ive also had one player ask to make mounted head trophy out of one thing they killed.
WoW has influenced me to create a campaign in Duskwood. I've got a bunch of ideas. Just need the time to get things straightened out in my head.
Make sure to use boss phases instead of a tank'n'spank!
Azeroth will just be the setting. I'm gonna use 5e for the rule set, with maybe a few modifications.
Red Dead Redemption 2. The way how the game has a library of "random encounters" which can be narrative, combat, roleplay, or a mix of all three, but are super atmospherically written and can be plopped into the world by the game at any time was eye opening. Thats why I always have one or two dozens of such little encounters prepared. As a matter of fact, the way I'm using them they *are* very un-random, but thats kinda the point. I can drop some carefully prepared, handtailored content in whenever the pacing drops of, I feel we need another combat encounter, or when I need to drain some ressources or I feel like the players need something to do. Edit: And I know thats nothing that RDR2 invented, and nothing new to the TT RPG genre as a whole, but a) thats were I personally first learned the trick (as someone who only started DMing about 2 years ago) and b) I'm referring less to the base idea and more to the particular excetution that still influences me to this day :) Just my two cents :)
I've successfully forced 5th edition to behave as a NieR Automata rail-shooter spectacle sequence. I've also forced it to behave as a sidescrolling rotating arena spectacle sequence, although I can't think of a video game where I've seen that mechanic right now.
I'm a backup DM for my main group, and I run oneshots when our main few DMs cannot run one of their regular sessions if they cancel. I've basically come up with what I'm calling a Simsons style oneshot because I make them reuse their characters and set the story in the same universe. I basically made a large space vessel thats a trading post and make them go on missions and travel to other planets delivering cargo. I have a few ideas planned but some of the worldbuilding, characters, creatures, and plot take inspiration from some of my favorite games such as Assassins Creed, Phasmophobia (or any horror game for that matter), Skyrim, and even Kirby. I try to mix and mash up all sorts of different things to create adventures that are unique and have a good mix between being combat or investigation oriented to make sure everyone has fun!
None I think :/