Earlier this week, Anne reminded us of an old post where she discussed her earliest, fantasy inspirations. It reminded me of my own fantasy genre prehistory. I wrote a bit about it in my very first post on this blog back in 2009:
In my personal pre-history (which is to say the mid-seventies to the dawning of the eighties), there was already in my brain a nascent cauldron of fantasy abubble: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz conjured by the voice of a babysitter, King Arthur for boys illuminated by NC Wyeth, four-color barbarians on spinner-racks, Myth and legend sifted by Bullfinch and Harryhausen, singing hobbits and rotoscoped orcs, power swords split in twain on not one, but two, alien worlds; an elf, a dwarf, a giant--and a slayer named Hawk, the doom that came to Vermithrax Pejorative, fantasylands with oracular pigs and messianic lions.
I also not in the post the inspiration for my first character (in AD&D): An elf fighter/magic-user inspired by the protagonist in the Endless Quest book by Rose Estes, Mountain of Mirrors.
That's not the only thing in my gaming history I can trace to a specific source. For another example, I've used flightless birds as mounts in several campaign worlds I created, I suspect all traceable to this cover by James Gurney for a book I haven't read:
There are numerous things like that. Some probably borrowed from sources so long ago, I don't even remember their origins.
1 comment:
It is so cool to think about how all those old fantasy inspirations, from "The Wizard of Oz" to Harryhausen movies and even specific book covers, still influence your creative projects today! It is really neat that you can trace elements in your campaign worlds back to things you saw or read so long ago.
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