Official ICE Forums
Gamer's Corner => General Discussion => Topic started by: Colin-ICE on July 15, 2016, 02:16:59 AM
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Last week I was away on holiday. I visited Venice and Dubrovnik and in both places thought "wow, something like this would be great in an RPG". There are of course similarities between Venice and Tolkien's lake-town which led me to the following question:
How much do you use real life people and places (or close approximations) in your gaming and do you feel that it adds to the reality of the game or is it just a shortcut to a great location/npc?
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Most of my Post Apocalypse type campaigns start in my local area so I can use familiar locations and landmarks.
I also pull in other real world and locations from movies into my fantasy games.
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Considering I do a great deal of non-fantasy gaming, real life has a major impact on my settings and plot developments. Fantasy...not so much.
As for adding to the game, I think that depends greatly on how you do it. With espionage gaming you really have to bring in real life elements (political situations and so on) if you want it to be relatable for players. It CAN be a shortcut, but not always.
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In short, yes. In long, I've seen our writing attempt to become more of a way to provide a diversion and less a mirror of things that happen(ed) in real life because of those things being potentially unsettling.
Regards,
Old Man
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I try to take inspiration everywhere I can, but I'm more prone to grab an idea or a feeling rather than a whole character or place. I like everything to have a new spin. I call this filing off the serial numbers.
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I think a lot of SW was influenced by Mr. Amthor travelling- i recall that from somewhere....
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I am more inclined to take inspiration from various literary or movie sources for my games rather than real life. Though I did take a few ideas from a German castle I visited many years ago.
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I plagiarize liberally. From almost everything.
But almost all of my games are based around feudal kingdoms styled after English and German regions of the medieval period.
Even in the Shadow World setting. The fallen kingdoms of Stroanne, Miir, and Vornia lend themselves to my imagining of how our old feudal lords and nobles.
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I frequently borrow real places, castles and ruins as locations in my games. My local pub was built in 1312 and has been smashed up, burned down and brought down with a cracks call spell in the past by the PCs.
I often take floor plans of real buildings of the right era to use as locations as am terrible at making maps and plans, the same goes for ship deck plans.
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I plagiarize liberally. From almost everything.
:worthy: LOL, so do I.
I have used many of the places I have visited all over this world as ideas for locales on my worlds. What better place to get ideas than your own backyard (meaning the Earth)?
One place in particular is the awesome karst topography one can find in some places in China.
The almost literal wall created by the Himalayas gave the idea for a range of mountains called Orgon Kreaga (Impassible Mountains), impassable because they rise to about 2.2 times the Scale Height of the atmosphere. (Here on Earth, Mount Everest barely pierces above 1 Scale Height.)
Monument Valley in southern Utah was another. The Grand Canyon in Arizona, Valles Grande and Tent Rocks in New Mexico. Ayers Rock in Australia. Of course, Venice became another Lake Town. All of Greece and its islands. I even used the rip of the Valles Marineris on Mars to create The Rupture and Isantuma on my current world of Onaviu (of course some of it has water). I even used the gigantic crater (gigantic when considering its size) on Saturn's moon Mimas (or is it Enceladus?) for the idea that later became The Citadel of the AEmureirun.
I could go on forever. As said, what better place to get ideas than your own backyard? Including the entire solar system?
Of course, nowdays, people can just use Google to search for pictures of some of these places I had to travel to to see.
rmfr