I’m a fairly recent addition to these parts. Normally I waste my energy on MUDs or being sad I can’t pull together enough people for my Drow elf 5th edition D&D campaign. I’ve been playing Choice and Hosted games for the past two years before deciding to take a stab at learning the code or writing.
Right now I’ve been working on a project that is inspired by several of my favorite novels. Of course I’m taking pains to make the story my own but I was wondering if anyone else does the same when considering their games subject matter.
Right now I’m drawing inspiration from:
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny 1967 (highly recommend this sci-fi/fantasy hybrid)
1984 by George Orwell. It should have been retitled 2016 but who knew?
A Matter for Men by David Gerrold - one of the best alien/terraforming sci-fi series never finished.
The Sword and
Citadel by Gene Wolf
(Second half of The New Sun series by my fav)
All of these books right now are collectively influencing my work and writing!
Inspiration strikes me daily in every work I watch or read.
With that being said, here are common sources of my inspiration:
CoG Inspiration (Randomly Listed):
JimD - The Zombie Exodus series
Cataphrak - The Infinity series
Havenstone - Choice of Rebels
Fiogan - Both of her WiP
jasonstevanhill - Choice of Vampire (my favorite Vampire IP of all time)
Shawn_Patrick_Reed - Both WiP
Gower - Midsummer’s Dream
malinryden - Fallen Hero WiP
Eric_Moser - CCH series.
Snowpanther - Prison Story
FairyGodfeather - A whimsical WiP that is put on hold - don’t remember name.
Wraith - Both WiP
Then there is @poison_mara - one of the best testers in this community. Her feedback helps me write much better then I would without her help. She also gave me the “most memorable” feedback I ever received. I will never forget that.
Traditional Authors:
Glenn Cook - The Black Company series - especially those titles with “Lady” in them
Harry Turtledove - Earlier Works
Tolkien - Can’t escape his influence.
David Eddings - Earlier “pre-cynic” books.
Mercedes Lackey - Her Paladin stories.
Ann MacCaffery - Pern books.
Jerry Pournelle
Gordon R Dickson
Piers Anthony
and so many more then I can list.
Each of the above listed has provided me inspiration on my current projects.
I’m into a lot that’s on your list. I’d say I think the only thing fantasy wise that I ever enjoyed from David Eddings was The Belgarid Series and The Mallorean. Beyond that I feel like his writing got lazy and he went for easy cliches.
For Choice/Hosted game authors -
JimD is one of my favorites thus far as he narrates like I run my table top games.
I forget who wrote Choice of Robots/Alexandria but I love those.
There are more and I’m starting to delve into people’s WIPs.
Games that give me storyline inspiration are Ken Levine’s Bioshocks and Eric’s Community College Hero. I do enjoy to listen to some Tallest Man On Earth while writing. And as for profound inspiration, I go for the game Flower, it gets me daydreaming really well, which helps me to relax and write more fluidly.
Yana Toboso: Black Butler (its a manga I know, but still a book technically)
Echo Freer: Mimosa Fortuna (she signed my copy because of my excellent writing skills in one of her workshops at the school I go to)
Lee Chihyong: Demon Diary (again, a manga and not well known)
Finally:
Akira Itou: Cardfight Vanguards, think he wrote a Yu-Gi-Oh too (manga again, and limiting myself yet there are so many pieces that have inspired me to write.)
I love anything suspenseful or a thriller. Learning that you or your world is not what it seems and all the plot twists translate to a choice game better than horror which depends on the character feeling weak and overpowered. Although, the plot twist part kills the fun of replays (unless the twist isn’t revealed in every play through).
I love well done romance, but so much romance in games is unappealing. Like in Our Personal Space, I thought the guy was nice;he was just too traditional and jealous, and I felt bad and distrustful of dating others because what kind of person has an affair with a married woman? I don’t like the jerk abusive characters in games either. But I found myself drawn to the other aspects of otomes like the deep unrushed relationships, and different routes. Frozen Essense, and the Dreaming were good.
Twilight Zone
Night Gallery
Hitchcock
Urban legends (in general, not the show)
Stephen King (I always wanted that baby chicken from It)
Goosebumps
Slasher (nick game where there are slashers, reporter, cop,psychic, and campers. No one except other slashers knew who anyone was. The slashers chose one person each night from the camp to kill and had to pretend to be innocent in the morning. The reporter could see the slashers talking to one another, but didn’t know their names. The cop could protect one person a night from getting killed but not themselves. The psychic could reveal one person’s profession a night. )
White Wolf Games
Tell Tale Games
Open World Sim games
Many others
It wildly varies on what I’m working on, since I have about four different projects that are all inspired by different things. I have a Deconstruction Detective novel series, A co-op series with a friend and my two WiPs. I should probably just use my WiPs cause they are my most active ones ahaha~
Of Beasts and Humans has a bunch of inspiration, each one differently for each route I’m outlining. Most of it is anime, games and classic lit.
Lovecraft and Poe are the biggest cases, mostly regarding the Horror of Dunwhich and Ligeia
Hello Charlotte (Espeically for Selias’ s Route)
I’m not gonna lie but Dramatical Murder and the rest of Gen Urobuchi’s works like Saya No Uta
Dangan Ronpa (Boy I wonder who’s based off Kyoko???)
Hatoful Boyfriend (probably the biggest one)
Pocket Mirror
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Monster Musume
Generally old ghost stories I read on my free time
Touhou
Drakengard
Empire of Corpses (Definitely for Lomew’s Route)
SoulsBorne
That’s just hitting the surface. I am also using a lot of old ideas I had from my dead WiP Apocolyptia and other dead stories that I wrote. I need a life cause oh my lord too much animu
My biggest problem is that after a creative writing binge, (and only after) I then realize that my writing may seem to be influenced by such and such, sometimes it is, but it’s still annoying.
The only inspirations I can think of at the moment, (and for whatever I am currently writing) would be the Lost Heir series, the WIP Totem Force aaaaand that’s all I can think of right this minute, my brain feels funny… crawls back into a hole in the ground, and soon you hear the sounds of typing
I don’t take any subject matter from the novels I love (at least, not that I’m aware of) but I do look at the parts that were the most emotionally charged and try to figure out how and why it worked.
If I’m ever stuck I’ll go read something with a similar mood/atmosphere and usually it’s enough to send me running back to the keyboard. It’s the same with music.
Stories I love with similar themes/emotions;
Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book
Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows
Paul Gallico’s The Man Who Was Magic
V.E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic series
Benedict Jacka’s Alex Verus series
Legend of Korra
Any and all myths, legends, fairytales, folktales, urban legends…
So far I’m reading a very diverse collection of what people enjoy. Frankly, that’s exactly what I wanted. I find myself going towards the same texts or images for inspiration instead of looking beyond what I’m comfortable with. I’ll write a better response tomorrow after I’ve recovered. I hope everyone has a safe New Years Eve and I’m really happy that people responded in earnest.
You all have such great sources of inspiration, it makes mine seem kind of lame. The first novel I ever finished was inspired by a conglomerate of children’s books including a Goosebumps title which is hardly high literature. The novel I’m currently writing is based on that original novel, so I’m being indirectly inspired by Welcome to Camp Nightmare. Though I stripped all of the horror elements out to make it a story about writing a story. Most of my other stuff is inspired by film or television though rather than literary works. Out of my two most recently finished novels, one was inspired by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the other by Community. What I write tends to be dependent on whatever I’m watching when I finish my old novel. That’ll be what’s stuck in my head and I’ll try something similar.
I derive a lot of inspiration from my favorite authors, and a few people have actually noticed this when reading my HGs. I’d say my biggest influences come from:
Joseph Delayney - The Wardstone Chronicles
Patrick Ness - Chaos Walking series
J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter
JRR Tolkien - Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit
The Golden Eagle. At the moment its a demo you can play and the writer whos user name and or real name that i cant remember has another game that actually on the app alsostore called lords of aswick. The golden eagle even though it still a demo is where a draw a lot from. It well written and is very simple and complicated at the same time.
Chaos Walking—yes! His work is golden. I recently bought a copy of ‘The rest of us just live here’ and spent most of the time snorting at the tropes and cliches he pulls apart. Great stuff.
Patrick Ness is a genius. I seriously think he’s the best author in the world. I’m currently reading the Chaos Walking series for the third time (balled my eyes out at Manchee, again) but I still need to read A Monster Calls and The Rest of Us Just Live Here, which I plan on doing soon.
I’m super excited because A Monster Calls is coming out as an epic movie adaption very soon (the trailer looks awesome) and they plan on making the Chaos Walking trilogy into a movie series. They’ve already casted Daisy Ridley (Rey from Star Wars) as Viola, I think.
I could list almost 50 writers that inspire me, it’s almost as bad as the unhealthy amount of actors I know of and stalk on Instagram.
I’ll stick with CoG as of now. Um
I would have to say the biggest one here, at the moment is @Eric_Moser and Zachary I still have community college hero and the entire heroes rise series still installed after every cleaning of my phone installed. Their writing gives me life.
As to my Chronicles of Hallarmuli, it’s inspired by the TV show Vikings and (this is embarrassing) a gay fanfic I wrote where it was a Viking AU. I ended up really liking it, so I just kinda structured a story around it with things from the Viking Tv Show and a little Game of Thrones( books and tv).
To be honest I’ve never been much of a big writer even though I’ve always been making up characters and stories even since I was a little kid. I’ve always struggled with reading and writing but never enough for anyone (including me) to notice until I started seeing a therapist for help dealing with school related stress, so most of my inspirations are visual ones. The biggest ones have been Hayao Miyazaki’s films (Kiki’s Delivery Service specifically inspired the story I’m currently working on and will hopefully post of WIP of soon), Mushishi, Natsume Yuujinchou, and various webcomics (I follow a lot)
And even though I wasn’t a strong reader I really loved Brian Jaques’s Redwall series (really want to revisit it) as a kid and recently I started reading Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence series (and his two games). I really love how descriptive they are and how seamlessly Gladstone incorporates supernatural elements into his writing. Showing and not telling has alway been a huge challenge for me and being able to one day be able to make my writing that immersive is a major goal of mine
CoG/Hosted Games are also a really big inspiration for me, though I think the WIPs I’ve read here on the forum are even more so because they’ve made me want to write so bad that I actually sat down and actually do it. I’d like to maybe enter CoG’s contest, but if I don’t make the deadline or something, I want to submit the story I’m working on as a Hosted Game. The format of the games are also way more accessible for me than books probably because they’re broken down in smaller pieces or something. I’ve powered through well over 20 games in maybe two months when most books might take me twice that unless I have to read it for a class. Of the games that have been published, I think my favorites have been Choice of the Deathless, Creatures Such As We, and Zombie Exodus, and as for WIPs, I really like RenaB’s two WIPs
Mushi-shi! I love that show so much! Oh man, Miyazaki and Natsume’s book of friends—I can see we have similar tastes. I’m so excited that Miyazaki is going to be making a new feature film. Every time he comes back out of retirement is a blessing.
Any recommendations for webcomics? I like Snarlbear (monster-hunting, unicorns and transformations), Blindsprings (spirit pacts, princesses and magical oppression), Strong Female Protagonist (superheroes, trope subversion, freckles) and Prague Race (dark fantasy, friendship and magical parasites). If you’re mostly inspired by visuals then I strongly recommend Blindsprings for it’s beautiful illustrative qualities and Snarlbear for it’s incredible colours.
I’ll make sure to check those out :o Unfortunately I got really behind because of school and then never got around to jumping back in The ones I’ve been reading that are on Tapastic are For It To Grow, Monster Pop, Les Normaux, Rock and Riot, Griefer Belt, and Adam & Steve. Ones I’m reading that are hosted on other sites are HotBlood (that I’m speedreading to get caught up on because its sequel just started), Knights Errant, Sakana, and Monsterkind
The ones I’ve been reading that are on Tapastic are For It To Grow, Monster Pop, Les Normaux, Rock and Riot, Griefer Belt, and Adam & Steve. Ones I’m reading that are hosted on other sites are HotBlood (that I’m speedreading to get caught up on because its sequel just started), Knights Errant, Sakana, and Monsterkind 