In 1979, the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D was published featuring “Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading”. Prismatic Wasteland has called for a Blog Bandwagon of Appendix [initial] based on your own sources of inspiration. These can be books, movies, comics, video games, or anything that informs your creativity.
Some of the things in this list are going to be obvious or even stereotypical, but that’s just how it is. This exercise is useless if I try to pretend I’m someone with more refined or eclectic taste. Also: I’m specifically going to try and distinguish between “things I like” and “direct influences on my work”. To a certain extent, everything is inspirational whether we’re intentional about it or not; all art affects us on some level after we see it. As an example: I really like Firefly, but I’m not really putting anything specifically from Firefly into my work even if I am writing sci-fi.
This list is presented unordered: I’m writing stuff down as it comes to me.
Homestuck – [webcomic]
Symbolism, mythology, strife specibi, time travel (and paradoxes). Captchalogue sylladexes, pesterlogues, and the feeling of being a lonely kid on the internet in the early 2000’s. The story is a game, and the players are aware of that, but it’s still serious. Probably most importantly: death being either just or heroic for it to count.
Bionicle – [toy, book, comic, movie]
Kanohi, kanoka, rhotuka: masks and disks of power. “Magic” systems visualized through a bio-mechanical lens. Ideas about heroism — unity, duty, and destiny. I can’t underline that enough: Bionicle is my platonic ideal of what a team of heroes looks like.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon – [video game]
Primary inspiration for mecha writing. ACVI informs a lot of the “feelings” like how fast they should be or the scale of combat, along with attitudes towards pilots. This leads directly into…
WARHOUND – [short fiction]
Kallidora was directly inspired by the ACVI trailer and proceeded to write a short story called WARHOUND, kicking off a niche genre of fiction called mechsploitation. Both the original story and subsequent works in the genre inspire the way I view mechs as allegories for being trans.
Titanfall 2 – [video game]
The other end of the mech spectrum: slow and stompy. Really good visuals for how the mech’s cockpit feels along with some ideas on how mechs work in combined arms warfare.
EVE Online – [video game]
Lawless vs. lawful space and long-distance interstellar travel. Space combat specifically not as pitched battles or dogfights (despite their presence) — interdictors and gate ambushes; hiding in nebulas that distort sensors and the far side of the star.
Battle Tapes – [music]
Crunchy electronic rock without being EDM or pure rock. They do a lot of really good synth stuff and it sounds the way cyberpunk feels in my head. I listened to them a lot while reading Snow Crash and Neuromancer and it’s all linked in my head now.
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! – [anime]
Adventurer’s guilds, party dynamics, diegetic classes and jobs and skill points. I’m a slut for found family between terrible people. Konosuba might be dumb but it’s got a lot of heart.
Sousou no Frieren – [anime]
This is what magic should be. I’m writing a fantasy game because I can’t get this feeling from other systems.
The Kingkiller Chronicle – [book series]
Alchemy and other ritual-based magic systems, some thoughts on bards, and depictions of fae.
Ancillary Justice – [book]
You’re an advanced starship AI. You need to interact with things in meatspace, so you use human-sized “ancillaries” (drones). Except: why should you limit yourself to one body? I like the idea of one consciousness spread across multiple bodies, each with its own pseudo-awareness.
Final Fantasy XIV – [video game]
This is sortof my ur-fantasy. Anything I make relies upon this in a sort of foundational sense, whether that’s ideas about souls and aether or how factions and nations should feel. It’s also a really clear example of how magic and technology coexist in the same setting.
Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – [anime]
Combat dolls, inorganic bodies, and the burden of immortality that comes with those things. I should probably play Nier one of these days.
Arcane – [tv show]
You’re going to start seeing a trend of “magicpunk” settings in this list where guns and spells are common practice. Anyway I really like Arcane’s aesthetic and visual design. I’m not really a steampunk girl but if you add enough magic, I’m into it.
Atelier Ryza – [video game]
I’ve blogged about this one before, but the Ryza trilogy and the Atelier series as a whole influence my mechanics for crafting and alchemy.
Honkai: Star Rail – [video game]
Elemental weakness break, turn-based combat design, shifting initiative based on character speed modification during combat. Incredibly deep worldbuilding with a flexible emotional palette that can range from fluffy slice of life to devastating drama.
RWBY – [tv show]
Girls, guns, and fight choreography. More magicpunk inspiration, along with another alchemy-like magic system. RWBY characters also guard against damage with “aura”, which is an interesting substitute for HP that I think about sometimes.
VA-11 Hall-A – [video game, music]
Immaculate vibes.
Chrono Trigger – [video game]
Time travel, adventuring parties, and combo moves. On some level, Chrono Trigger is on this list because it’s the origin point for a bunch of things that inspire me and it’s better to direct people to this than explain that I like Sea of Stars because it reminds me of Chrono Trigger.
Octopath Traveller II – [video game]
No, I haven’t played the first game or Bravely Default. Anyway this is more inspiration for adventuring parties and job mechanics for characters like the Apothecary and the Merchant. I also blogged about its elemental weakness breaks in my last post.
Monster Hunter Wilds – [video game]
I don’t like monsters in my fantasy games because they’re typically less tactical than humans. Monster Hunter changed my opinion on that somewhat and has a lot of really good combat puzzles for me to pull from.
Dragon’s Dogma II – [video game]
Singlehandedly sold me on the concept of travel / exploration in games. I don’t think I really got the “fun” of hex/point/flux crawls until I played Dragon’s Dogma. Also: the Trickster class is really evocative and I need to pull some mechanics from it for a project.
Warframe – [video game]
Another game I’ve blogged about before: I really like the wide variety of player archetypes the game supports. Both the worldbuilding and system design are things that I draw from, and I think you could make a cool ttrpg out of the weapon modding mechanic.
DIE – [comic]
This is cheating because DIE is both a comic and a ttrpg. It’s still a major inspiration. My favorite interpretation of clerics is the Godbinder from DIE. Actually, my favorite interpretation of bards is probably the Dictator, but that’s conceptually less applicable to most fantasy games.
Black Lagoon – [anime, manga]
Any time I’m writing crime, I’m probably thinking about Black Lagoon. It helps that I grew up in southeast Asia and Singapore in particular, but the atmosphere of the show is perfect to me. Found family full of broken people live outside the law and occasionally kill nazis. Good stuff.
Heaven Will Be Mine – [video game]
Gravity, culture, and the way that the mech is an idealized self used to commit violence. But it’s also a human symbol; to quote one of the greats, “We could have made them look like anything, but we made them look like us.”
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners – [anime]
This is my second cheat, because Cyberpunk is originally a ttrpg setting by R. Talsorian. Even beyond Snow Crash and Neuromancer, I think that Cyberpunk is my biggest cyberpunk influence in terms of worldbuilding. I do have some issues with the mechanics of cybernetics, but I recognize that those rules were designed in a different era of gaming.
Guilin – [geography]
I visited Guilin multiple times in my childhood, and it’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. The Li River and the giant mountain karsts inspire a lot of my fantasy settings.
Angkor Wat – [temple complex]
Pure dungeon design material for anything man made. Walking through the halls and climbing the stairs gives a real sense of scale, though Angkor Wat is admittedly the largest religious structure in the world (and probably a statistical outlier).
Phonogram – [comic]
Bards, music-as-magic, and gods formed from human movements — and how they change based on human perception.
Aphrodite IX – [comic]
Aphrodite IX is a character in a comic series of the same name originally launched in 2000 and then recycled into a post-apocalyptic series in 2013 with a different writer and artist. Sometimes, you can sell a comic book with a sexy android assassin on vibes alone and I like to keep that in mind. Anyway, this is more combat doll inspiration.
The King’s Avatar – [donghua]
I watch a lot of shows about people playing games because they ride the line of having lots of drama coupled with an awareness of game mechanics. You have to simultaneously fight for honor and legacy and also remember that the slime boss is weak to fire attacks.
Mushoku Tensei: Isekai Ittara Honki Dasu – [anime]
Don’t watch this anime. The protagonist is a terrible person in a way that is intended to gross you out, and while he suffers greatly and improves somewhat, he is never punished by the narrative or redeemed.
With that said: this is my second-favorite fantasy anime behind Frieren. The animation is breathtaking. The worldbuilding lives in my head rent-free. I constantly think about the sword styles and the magic and I’m actively putting some of the concepts in my heartbreaker. The deep loneliness of its long journey is something I want to capture and recreate.
The Faraway Paladin – [anime]
The Faraway Paladin does Lord of the Rings better than Lord of the Rings. Very specifically the second season is riffing on the Hobbit in a way that feels good to me. Also, this is how I would make a Paladin if I ever put a Paladin in my games: having a personal relationship with a deity is so important, especially when the worship of that deity forces you to go on unreasonable quests.
Neon Genesis Evangelion – [anime]
This was the first anime I ever watched and I think that’s why I’m Like This. Anyway, the thing I pull most from NGE (besides the plugsuits) is the graphic design — both of the show’s titlecards as well as the in-universe graphical displays on NERV’s computers.
I’m sure there are more influences on my writing, but my brain is cooked right now. It was really fun writing this list and seeing how many of these I’ve already talked about in blog posts before. I’ve never really tried to separate between things that inspire and things I enjoy, so it was interesting to see everything that falls into the former category together.
I stand on the shoulders of giants. Until next time!