As a lover of Conan and Red Sonja I couldn’t agree more. They both concentrated on more bite sized stories that made it easier to translate to the table.
I once used some ideas from a graphic-novel type magazine back in the day called "EPIC". It's old-old skool, I believe one of the publishers was part of the animated movie Heavy Metal (the mag' referenced it all the time), totally out of print. So I set up a small party in a world similar to Cholly & Flytrap series, plus elements from other stories like ABRAXAS. Hey whattaya expect, we were just kids! Thanks.
Man! Flashback to my school days there! I loved Abraxas and liked Cholly and Flytrap too. I can see using ideas from the old classic magazines like Epic and Heavy Metal, and some from 2,000 A.D. (where I first read Judge Dredd), but it'd be a much more grim world (like a Dark Sun campaign) more than the high fantasy standard.
You could also "genre switch" some older super hero comics. Just change team member types to their fantasy equivalent and then see if the story can also be switched as well. The Chris Claremont X-Men could do well. Many Doctor Strange can work too. Anyway, read comics, play games. Win-Win!!
The old D&D comics by DC were good. Arion, Lord of Atlantis, sorcery, strange races, it was definitely interesting. Mike Grell's Warlord was a favorite of mine. Somebody, I think DC but I'm unsure, did some Dragon Lance comics. Roy Thomas did a comic called Arak, Son of Thunder about a Native American boy found in a canoe out at sea by vikings and raised by them. It was a Sword & Sorcery comic set in Viking Age Europe. Roy was getting his digs in at Marvel at the same time he was showing DC how to compete with Conan. My brother bought me the full run years ago, which I still have. 30 something issues, iirc. Comics and novels are often good source materials for a D&D campaign for sure. This brings up a question. How do you feel about using published modules vs homebrew? My group always did homebrew for the most part as once TSR closed the Dungeon Hobby Shop in the late 70s there was no local gaming store in or near Lake Geneva. It wasn't until a few years after the group started that we were able to get our hands on some modules and the Greyhawk boxed set. When the DM ran the Giants series he decided to use Greyhawk for the first time. I prefer to run homebrew campaign settings and I'll use published adventures as source material for my own. I mean, you never run published modules aka adventure paths as written since players can get copies to read. I don't allow them to get away with that but it's easier just to cherry pick stuff and make the adventure I run my own. For instance when I ran Pathfinder I ran Rise of the Runelords, but I definitely changed things up and blended elements of Gary Gygax's Giants series into it. Never run modules as written! Also, when running AD&D, never roll the random treasure from a monster on the spot in front of the players. My first DM learned that the hard way, as he rolled a few magic items that threatened to blow up his campaign. Randomly rolling a powerful item you really don't want in your campaign world and then telling the players NOPE is a needless hassle. Just roll all that as session or campaign prep just like pre-rolling random encounter types. A random encounter can lead to the introduction of a campaign changing antagonist or antagonists that weren't part of your initial setting if you're not careful. I mean, a good DM/GM rolls with the punches, adapts, and overcomes but it's less work to just keep an item out of the player's hands.altogether. Great original topic, love the show!
The old fantasy comics are a good idea for plot point ideas. I liked more superhero or less known otherworld (Eastman and Laird's original TMNT comics and original Judge Dredd) comics over fantasy for some reason, so I missed out on those, though I saw the Conan and Red Sonja movies, because of course I did. I used old pulp style books (Doc Savage books) and adventure books (especially the variety of Edgar Rice Burroughs classics that ran the gamut of concepts) as locations to mine for ideas. These were ideal sources in my youth (and even more so now) because they were from a past generation and weren't the "every geek reads" books of my generation (I was born in '68 for a reference point) unlike the works of others such as Michael Moorcock (Elric), Terry Brooks (Shannara), Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time), and the eternal master J.R.R. Tolkien. I also would mine ideas from products for other fantasy role playing games when I could pick them up inexpensively. I still have a dozen or more Middle Earth Roleplaying modules that I used for concepts as well as the related Rolemaster game system, RuneQuest, Tunnels and Trolls, Earthdawn, Palladium, and Talislanta. I also mined a lot of third party D&D offerings such as the great Judges Guild line and the equally good Role Aids modules, even the silly sounding but well done adventures where the main character sending adventurers on adventures was a wizard named Fez. The library was also a great resource. Books of lesser known myths and legends (many of which also appeared in the Deities and Demigods hardback) could be a source for adventure seeds. Because of my family background I was drawn to Native American and Welsh legends and stories along with the Greco-Roman and Aztec/Mayan legends I was also interested in, while another friend of mine delved into Chinese mythology (possibly because of the movie Big Trouble in Little China, though he was interested in Chinese culture even before that came out) and of course altered it somewhat to disguise the source. There are a lot of great sources for delving for adventure ideas, and I just realized that I may have sabotaged future podcast content with this comment. Well, crap. 😞 If necessary, delete this and run with your future podcast content anyway. Just maybe give me a nod in one of them. 😀
As a lover of Conan and Red Sonja I couldn’t agree more. They both concentrated on more bite sized stories that made it easier to translate to the table.
I once used some ideas from a graphic-novel type magazine back in the day called "EPIC". It's old-old skool, I believe one of the publishers was part of the animated movie Heavy Metal (the mag' referenced it all the time), totally out of print.
So I set up a small party in a world similar to Cholly & Flytrap series, plus elements from other stories like ABRAXAS. Hey whattaya expect, we were just kids!
Thanks.
Man! Flashback to my school days there! I loved Abraxas and liked Cholly and Flytrap too. I can see using ideas from the old classic magazines like Epic and Heavy Metal, and some from 2,000 A.D. (where I first read Judge Dredd), but it'd be a much more grim world (like a Dark Sun campaign) more than the high fantasy standard.
You could also "genre switch" some older super hero comics. Just change team member types to their fantasy equivalent and then see if the story can also be switched as well. The Chris Claremont X-Men could do well. Many Doctor Strange can work too. Anyway, read comics, play games. Win-Win!!
👍👍
The old D&D comics by DC were good. Arion, Lord of Atlantis, sorcery, strange races, it was definitely interesting. Mike Grell's Warlord was a favorite of mine. Somebody, I think DC but I'm unsure, did some Dragon Lance comics. Roy Thomas did a comic called Arak, Son of Thunder about a Native American boy found in a canoe out at sea by vikings and raised by them. It was a Sword & Sorcery comic set in Viking Age Europe. Roy was getting his digs in at Marvel at the same time he was showing DC how to compete with Conan. My brother bought me the full run years ago, which I still have. 30 something issues, iirc.
Comics and novels are often good source materials for a D&D campaign for sure.
This brings up a question. How do you feel about using published modules vs homebrew? My group always did homebrew for the most part as once TSR closed the Dungeon Hobby Shop in the late 70s there was no local gaming store in or near Lake Geneva. It wasn't until a few years after the group started that we were able to get our hands on some modules and the Greyhawk boxed set. When the DM ran the Giants series he decided to use Greyhawk for the first time. I prefer to run homebrew campaign settings and I'll use published adventures as source material for my own. I mean, you never run published modules aka adventure paths as written since players can get copies to read. I don't allow them to get away with that but it's easier just to cherry pick stuff and make the adventure I run my own. For instance when I ran Pathfinder I ran Rise of the Runelords, but I definitely changed things up and blended elements of Gary Gygax's Giants series into it. Never run modules as written! Also, when running AD&D, never roll the random treasure from a monster on the spot in front of the players. My first DM learned that the hard way, as he rolled a few magic items that threatened to blow up his campaign. Randomly rolling a powerful item you really don't want in your campaign world and then telling the players NOPE is a needless hassle. Just roll all that as session or campaign prep just like pre-rolling random encounter types. A random encounter can lead to the introduction of a campaign changing antagonist or antagonists that weren't part of your initial setting if you're not careful. I mean, a good DM/GM rolls with the punches, adapts, and overcomes but it's less work to just keep an item out of the player's hands.altogether.
Great original topic, love the show!
@@rickanderson8683 glad you enjoyed. Far as module vs homebrew, my style is too improv for following a module
The old fantasy comics are a good idea for plot point ideas. I liked more superhero or less known otherworld (Eastman and Laird's original TMNT comics and original Judge Dredd) comics over fantasy for some reason, so I missed out on those, though I saw the Conan and Red Sonja movies, because of course I did.
I used old pulp style books (Doc Savage books) and adventure books (especially the variety of Edgar Rice Burroughs classics that ran the gamut of concepts) as locations to mine for ideas. These were ideal sources in my youth (and even more so now) because they were from a past generation and weren't the "every geek reads" books of my generation (I was born in '68 for a reference point) unlike the works of others such as Michael Moorcock (Elric), Terry Brooks (Shannara), Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time), and the eternal master J.R.R. Tolkien.
I also would mine ideas from products for other fantasy role playing games when I could pick them up inexpensively. I still have a dozen or more Middle Earth Roleplaying modules that I used for concepts as well as the related Rolemaster game system, RuneQuest, Tunnels and Trolls, Earthdawn, Palladium, and Talislanta. I also mined a lot of third party D&D offerings such as the great Judges Guild line and the equally good Role Aids modules, even the silly sounding but well done adventures where the main character sending adventurers on adventures was a wizard named Fez.
The library was also a great resource. Books of lesser known myths and legends (many of which also appeared in the Deities and Demigods hardback) could be a source for adventure seeds. Because of my family background I was drawn to Native American and Welsh legends and stories along with the Greco-Roman and Aztec/Mayan legends I was also interested in, while another friend of mine delved into Chinese mythology (possibly because of the movie Big Trouble in Little China, though he was interested in Chinese culture even before that came out) and of course altered it somewhat to disguise the source.
There are a lot of great sources for delving for adventure ideas, and I just realized that I may have sabotaged future podcast content with this comment. Well, crap. 😞
If necessary, delete this and run with your future podcast content anyway. Just maybe give me a nod in one of them. 😀
@@thatpatrickguy3446 lol nah. All good. Great ideas here