71 Days Till GaryCon! Inspiration in a World of Mass Communications.

As I mentioned in my review of The Hobbit, I never read any of Tolkien's books. In fact, outside of the first three Dragonlance novels, I never really read any fantasy fiction. Most of my exposure to fantasy came from television and movies. Thundarr the Barbarian, Beastmaster, Willow, those were the stories that I looked to for fantasy adventure. I got into D&D around the same time The Legend of Zelda came out for the NES. Not surprisingly, my first attempt at being a Dungeon Master involved trying to recreate the dungeons of that game.

It's one of those things that has left me feeling a bit excluded from the 'OSR' as it were. I know Conan The Barbarian from the Schwarzenegger films, while most other gamers have read Robert E. Howard's books. My exposure to Lovecraft came from an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. And frankly, I am more likely to quite season one of The Transformers than The Silmarillion. In fact I am more of a fan of science fiction than fantasy, despite my love for fantasy role-playing games. And I find myself looking to film and television more and more for ideas than the written works of my contemporaries.

So here's the question I have for everyone. Am I the only person like this? Am I the only one that looks at Ocean's Eleven and sees it as a Shadowrun campaign? Or wants to port the plot of Alien to a galleon on the high seas in D&D? Am I the only one that developed FASERIP stats for Optimus Prime? Heck, I'm running a play-by-post game inspired by a show on The Discovery Channel for crying out loud!

And in the future, as communications technology allows more and more people to develop their own creative worlds, what will the next step in creative inspiration come from?

S is for (Dual) Survival

Last year when my mother was visiting, I stumbled upon what would become one of my favorite shows. Dual Survival is a reality show on the Discovery Channel about two survival experts with different styles who are placed in a scenario where they have to find a way to survive outdoors and get their way back to civilization. Like most reality shows, there is drama between our two leads. Fortunately, it isn't the typical trash-talking and back-stabbing as it is a clash of styles that usually gets dealt with quickly.

Dual Survival stars two survival experts. Cody Lundin and Dave Canterbury. Cody is a minimal skills survival expert, who lives in an off-the-grid home in Arizona and gone without shoes for over 20 years. Dave is a woodsman and former Army sniper. The difference in approach to survival between the two is the show's strength. Neither man is portrayed in a bad light and, over the course of the last season, they learned to appreciate each others strengths. Cody is the go-to man for building a fire and finding shelter with minimal work. Dave uses his expertise as a hunter to find food to allow them to survive. That's not to say that they don't have their quirks. Cody's tendency to not wear shoes or full-length pants has put a hurting on him when the two are dropped in cold-weather or rocky climates. Dave is a firm believer in risk = rewards and has endangered his life to get food, including hunting an alligator and trying to get honey from a very large hive of Africanized bees.

Dual Survival has given me a few ideas to think about as far as plotting out a game. I don't usually run wilderness adventures, but I'm starting to lean towards them the more I watch the show. I would seriously consider handing out XP for surviving outdoors in a hostile environment, even without random encounters. Maybe 10% of what they need to reach the next level for their first time in a hostile environment. But still make it something that will remind the PCs why they should buy enough food and other supplies to survive.

Even if you're not a gamer, I highly recommend Dual Survival. It's a great show with good drama, good friends and good lessons. Dual Survival airs at 9PM Eastern/8PM Central Fridays on the Discovery Channel.