My RPG Influences

Lamentations of the Flame Princess is asking RPG bloggers what their gaming influences are.  I’m always willing to talk about what interests and guides me creatively, so here we go:

Quentin Tarantino. A more recent influence obviously –I started playing RPGs from 1st edition D&D. Find me another director who has the flair to merge character, story, and action like this guy does.  Kill Bill  What to me is great about Tarantino is how he can build a story on very simple foundations and build it through clever use of non-linear storytelling and dialogue, seasoning each just right, unlike his many imitators.  I ran a Trinity detective campaign that was full of killer character interactions and crazy scenes, that was funny and gritty at the same time.  One of the players described it as Pulp Fiction with psionics, and it wasn’t far off.  I learned a lot about characters and dialogues from Quentin.

Way of the Ninja. My favorite choose your own adventure book.  Deadly as a knife filled pit.  It was one of the first choose-your-own adventures I ever played with something resembling a full game system.  The true take away though was the fatalism that pervaded the book.  It never hesitated to kill you, beat you up, take your lunch money, and excruciate you for making the wrong choice.  The story was great, but what I remember most was the tone — I often create worlds that have a mean streak.  Even if the world itself is light and rainbows, somewhere there’s a pissed off ninja waiting hurt you.

Haruki Murakami. The author who penned my favorite book, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, his stories of magical realism so perfectly take you to sad and beautiful places.  In my games I steal from Murakami.  I want there to be some sessions where players have touched the last flower ever, and to feel that somehow.

Dragonball Z. Oh you thought I was going to get highbrow on you?  Not a chance.  I remember getting a chance to see bootlegged (not even subbed) Dragonball Z anime in 1993. It opened a portal of kinetic actions that will never leave me.  Forget the long-winded exposition and meaningless side-plots…the action sequences are super-powered bouts of one-upmanship.  I punch my foe into the air.  Just as he enters the air, I teleport above him and and propel him back to earth with a shoulder check.  Now that my opponent is earthbound, I teleport to his new location, catch him by the arm, and throw him into a mountain, then summon a fireball via “kamehameha” to finish him off.

And all of this animated fluidly and quickly in a matter of seconds.

Warhammer 40,000. I’ll volunteer this right out:  Warhammer 40,000 is the most artistically influential tabletop game ever.  I’m not going to get into a John Blanche: good artist or no? debate, but really, think about how many other tabletop games and computer games steal from concepts first developed by Games Workshop.  The rules generally need work, but the central mythology of the Chaos powers and The Emperor and all the branches make for a compelling world that is always a blast to come back to.

Cyberpunk 2020. The first game I ran that killed players.  Cyberpunk just killed anyone that thought they were going to wield a +1 pistol and carry the loot out of the  boardroom with a bag of holding.  It was my first taste of Total Party Kills,  about 10-15 sessions worth.  My players didn’t give up on the game, though.  Our games doubled in intensity. Players whose roleplaying triumphs previously including talking to an orc before killing it were now negotiating with gangleaders and sleazing their way past guards.  The lethality of the system forced our group to slow down and smell the flowers (which were, true to genre, growing out of a concrete data-terminal).

Similar Posts:

•      Sign up for Dungeonmastering Tools and get a free copy of Open Game Table!
•      Penniless But Not Powerless, Part 1
•      Fluency: maybe you never thought about it either