The OSR Pit Appendix N

I’ve included your submission to the Appendix N. Bloodborne is an incredible game and my favorite of the series as well. The worldbuilding is fantastic.

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Added @KnightOwl’s contributions to the Appendix N

I like Cyrano de Bergerac’s take on interplanetary travel in Voyages to the moon and sun. Collecting dew in bottles to leave Earth, the empires of the Moon and Sun – all that!

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The CRPG Project book was helpful to me! The essays on the differences of simple computer dungeon-crawls taught me more than I believed was possible about how to invent adventure from the bottom up.

@marat I added your contribution to the OSR Pit Appendix N.

Also, welcome to the community!

@Spitsdale thank you for your contribution as well, I’ve added it to the OP

I started writing adventures loosely based off movies. First was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the second was Jack Frost (the horror one).

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Sounds awesome, do you have some examples of the work you produced or can you elaborate on how the movies influenced your games? Once provided I’ll add them to the Appendix N!

Mike Mignola’s Hellboy (the comics) and its spin-offs. It’s the perfect combination of folklore, horror and action. Dark cults, strange entities, great monsters. It oozes with flavor, pretty much every arc could be adapted as a tabletop RPG adventure.

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Thanks for you contribution danzag! I’ve included it in the OP

One movie, A Field in Englad, by Ben Wheatley.

Set during the English Civil Wat (mid 17th Century), and filmed in black and white, it portraits a group of player characters (well, they certainly look like player characters), Whitehead (magic-user), Cutler (fighter), Jacob (fighter) and Friend (thief or fighter), as they travel through the English countryside, and out of curiosity they release a sorcerer, Whitehead’s rival, called O’Neill, who takes control of the group for his own purposes.

The hapless party must find a way to collaborate to break free from O’Neill’s spell.

It’s a film that inspires me a lot as a player (although for OSR games I am always a referee, none of my friends wants to be one), but also as a referee, as it inspires me to use interpersonal conflicts as a source of adventure and problems to solve, without having to turn only to the monster of the week.

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Thanks for the excellent contribution VBD. I’ve updated the OP

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Here we go, got a couple of things that I can add to the list.

C.S. Friedman - Black Sun Rising (Coldfire Trilogy #1) - suggest 1-3 This series gives a living world feel to magic and has a pseudo science fantasy vibe towards the end - link
Jesse Bullington - The Enterprise of Death - alternative history, what if witchcraft was real and the inquisition finds an actual necromancer - NSFW -link
**Brent Weeks - The Way of Shadows (Night Angel #1) ** - assassins and urban based adventures, starting in a small world and building outwards. Recommend all books in the series - link
Gail Z Martin - The Summoner (Chronicles of the Necromancer #1) - alternative take on the necromancer (white/gray), what I read as an unwanted power, and what happens when the world loses a key power. Recommend all 4 books in the series - link

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Thanks for your contribution Lahzael, the OP is updated

The Buried Giant, a fantasy novel by the Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro. The book’s quiet take on a mythical post-Roman, post-Arthurian Britain inspired my return to tabletop role playing games after a two decade hiatus.

The Buried Giant

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Added to the Appendix N, thanks ZT

Sounds bloody amazing! I have to read it, thanks.

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For me personally, I have a couple of entries for myself from a couple of Genres and my most recent/continual readings. Need to expand my readings and just do more consistent reading if I am going to be honest.

Fantasy

  • The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski
    • More recent read, first major trip into the world of Fantasy. This showed me that not having bullet proof heroes who wield powerful magic can be interesting and engaging.
  • Red Sonja Comic (2019) by Dynamite
    • Similar to the previous entry, the Red Sonja Comic is really my first trip into the world of Pulp Fantasy. The punchy visceral imagery is nice as helps me get idea for combats and the like.

Science Fiction

  • Transformers (2019) by IDW Publishing
    • I’ve been a transformers fan since I was little and it’s kind of a no brainer. The Series in both the comics and TV shows helps me generate conflicts between separate factions even it is “That one is doing evil things” at times.
  • TMNT (2011) by IDW Publishing
    • I’ve been a TMNT fan for as long as I have been a Transformers fan, TMNT helps me work out how Non-Human races can work in a world and make interesting characters beyond what their Race+Class combo is.
  • Star Wars Clones Wars
    • One of my foundational series when it comes to how I think a Sci-fi series can work and behave. Showcases how wars can be conducted within a given story or campaign.
  • Star Trek TV Series
    • Shows how large and dynamic a universe can be but also how many stories can be told within it over many years.

Western

  • The Cherokee Trail by Louis Lamour
    • An perfect showcase on how a whole adventure can center around a single town and the powers within it.
  • Last of the Breed by Louis Lamour
    • An excellent on a wilderness adventure and how the weather and the world itself can be a danger to both good guys and bad guys.
  • The Badland Trails by Ralph Compton
    • Similar to the previous entry, but it shows how a “Guard the Caravan” quest can go when the enemies are more than a random group of bandits but effectively another team of adventurers who want to attack what the PCs are guarding.
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Can you pick a few and provide a few sentences around why they provide inspiration for you?

I’ll be happy to edit the list to include them then!

Just updated the listing on my thoughts.

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Updated the OP with your inclusions, thanks for contributing!