Games, Books, Shows, and Films writers should check out

[Saintofm]

They say that it is best to wrtie what you know, and sometimes we need a little help.

So here are some films, television shows, books, and even other games that might help get the creative juices going. Put downt he titles of material you think might help inspire your fellow writers and what medium they're in, and what gaming system like fantasy or 40K they might help out in (or both if you like




40K
Star Ship Troopers (first movie, and the Ruff Necks cartoon):
The film is basicly Imperial Guard the movie, complete with Tyranids.

The cartoon, Rough necks, holds up suprisingly well and works much better on DVD as each season make their own little movies. Also, the cartoon took the best of the first film and the book.

Star Craft and Star Craft 2 )Video Games, Computer: Both have a good story, but there was one cut scene in Wings of Liberty (Fire and Furry) that made me cry and made me feel something for the mass of marines I was feeding the zerg with.

Gears of War (Game, Xbox 360): besides the fact the voice of Bender from Futurama voices the Lead Marcus Fenix, this should give you an idea on what it looks like on the end of a Space Marine. Also, the Wretches remind my of Gaunts.

Enemy Mine (film): I have not read the novels this was based off of, but I still remember this being a good film and definitely a classic involving two enemy fighter pilots, one human and one a reptilian alien, crash land on uninhabited planet and are forced to work together if they are to survive.
Future Weapons (TV): A program, think it's Discovery Chanel over here in the states, but they go over some of the great advances in weapons decnology from armor, anti armor, clearing mine feilds, and MOABs (the Mother of All Bombs).

Fantasy:

David Macaulay (TV): Castle: It's an old educational program from PBS from the late 80's/ early 90's that talks about castle life both in building, living in, and defending it. It also has some great animation segments showing a fictionalized account of what may have happend in a castle's history including a battle between the English and Welch.


David Macaulay (TV) Roman City: Same as above, but this time on a Roman city. Figure if you could steal a few things from here if you wanted to take some stuff on druchii cities.

Walking With Dinosaurs (TV): I saw this mini series on Discovery a while back, but it talks about libidinous so should give an idea on dragons and the beasts of war the lizardmen are fond of.

Clash of Dinosaurs (TV): Also on Dinosaurs, goes into much more detail on what made them as big and bad as they were (including some interesting concepts that cool, like some duckbill dinosaurs weponizing sound, or the T rex having able to dislocate it's jaw).

Centurion (Film) A smart film about the legendary 10th legion of Rome, how a handful of it's survivors are trying to get back over the Adrian wall, all the while vengeful Pics are hunting them down. The fight scenes are also cool as it gives you an idea of what weapon A does to body part B.

Immortals (film): For lack of a better term, it's a live action anime involving Greek Gods. The action is great, alot of the characters have some good moments, and the fight scenes are basically high octane and often gory beyond measure. At the same time it doesn't really feel gratuitous.

Both
Deadliest Warrior (TV): Depending if it's a modern warrior or an ancient one, it's a good way to see how things were and are done. Also, again, you get to see what Weapon A does to body part B.

[Lady kaerlith]

The Starship Troopers novel, as well as "Armor" by John Steakly, are both great if you want to see their respective authors' take on crazy-advanced power armor. Though "Armor" gets a bit weird halfway through, and "Starship Troopers" is about 30% sociological commentary, they're both good reads.

If you've seen the ST movie but not read the book, don't expect anything resembling the movie. The Mobile Infantry in the novel make Space Marines look like utter junk.

[Cathel]

Centurion (Film) A smart film about the legendary 10th legion of Rome, how a handful of it's survivors are trying to get back over the Adrian wall, all the while vengeful Pics are hunting them down. The fight scenes are also cool as it gives you an idea of what weapon A does to body part B.

I have some issues with the fight scenes.
A short sword was more a stabbing weapon and the almost constant decapitations are absolutely unrealistic.

[Drainial]

Skipping past the obvious ones (I think the word about LOTR has probobly already gotten out) I would point people's attention towards another Macauly, Thomas Babbington who is a poet from the late19th - early 20th century.

Another good author to look at is HP Lovecraft, allot of his work is better suited to someone trying to get in a Chaos frame of mind than a Druchii one but there are many gems in his huge pile of work and almost nothing not worth reading.

[Saintofm]

Skipping past the obvious ones (I think the word about LOTR has probobly already gotten out) I would point people's attention towards another Macauly, Thomas Babbington who is a poet from the late19th - early 20th century.

Another good author to look at is HP Lovecraft, allot of his work is better suited to someone trying to get in a Chaos frame of mind than a Druchii one but there are many gems in his huge pile of work and almost nothing not worth reading.

Well, beastmasters can always goad spawn, and we have to deal them every now and then.


Other stuff I think might help

Fantasy
Egypt: Engineering and Empire(TV): something from the history chanel, they show some the engineering feats of the Egyptions back in ancient times, so good for tomb kings. This might help with necrons who also have an Egypt theme, but probably more on the former.

Colosseum (TV): A Gladiator's story (TV): Something on my netflix que from the BBC. A hour long documentary in the form of a historic fiction with a narrator telling some of the ins and outs. It shows what a gladiator life was like, and it was interesting that they said that it's a myth every match was a death match (90% survival rate).

The Dark Ages (TV): Another program off the History chanel, goes through the history of the Dark Ages and even the evolution of the feudal system.


40k
Greatest Tank Battles: Another TV show that recreates some of the greatest tank battles in history. For you Imperial guard and Land raider fans, this might help alot.

[L1qw1d]

Writing What You Know has always been interesting as an idea for me. Many people grew up in a suburban landscape or a quiet rural area, or just some part of the city that could have been fairly boring.

That doesn't mean we know nothing. I enjoy a nice amount of Hard Scifi (as well as a touch of the softer social sciences), and some more 'street level' fantasy as much as the sweeping epic Hobbity stuff. You can go to DARPA's website and look at what they're researching and put HUGE spins on things.

If you look into comics, i suggest Planetary. The author was intensely interested in the things that people delve into scientifically currently and merging them with pulp style stories.

But again: you know how you'd react if threatened. you know your internal make up. While you can't paint every character the EXACT same, you can push a trait to 11 and wrap a character around it. What if your commander had gallows humour instead of just being stiff collared? What if you had a marine that had done these missions repeatedly, had year studs all over, and got a green newb General? Can you hear the litany of profanity he'd be spewing as he followed orders? What if you had a cowardly Shade, but he understood political manouvers? what about a Dreadlord that instead of Chaos, believes in murder and ORDER?

Subtle variations can cause big changes, and can be fun to write as well

[Saintofm]

You know these just came to mind, so I thought this might help out here.

40K
Hellraiser (film): Just saw it for the first time a few weeks ago and a few things came to mind: 1. This looks Awsome; 2. this is actualy scary; 3. How the hell is a man with Q-tis on his face (that's actualy how they did Pinface for those cosplayers out there) more scary than 75% of what's come out in the last 10 years; and we have the inspiration of the Dark Eldar. No seriously, after looking at the Cenobites and how they act and react, they are definitely Humunclulus material.

National Geographic: The Science of Evil (TV): since most of us on this site play badguys, why not get into their mindset.

Fantasy
Record of the Lodos War (TV, anime). Besidesds being one of the better looking anime out there, the premis can be sumed up literaly a few anime artists doing an anime of their D&D session (seriously, this is the anime in a nut shell; high fantasy, sword and sorcery, medival esc Europian feel.

Red Cliffs (Film): Hope you enjoy subtitles, but this has some excelent fight scenes, plenty of action, and for one scene at least a good look of how repeater crossbows may have been used back in Ancient China.

[L1qw1d]

I forgot this was here. There's a series you can find on Half. com called HOWDUNNIT, which actually goes into details on the subject you're covering. Which makes for some awesome scary accuracy lol

[Arggg]

For Fantasy all Bernard Cornwell books which are historical novels and for series Sons of Anarchy(i know they have nothing to do with the theme but )

[Saintofm]

I forgot this was here. There's a series you can find on Half. com called HOWDUNNIT, which actually goes into details on the subject you're covering. Which makes for some awesome scary accuracy lol

I'm checking that out, thanks

[Saintofm]

Well, here's another that is good for 40k and fantasy, and also quite terrifying.

It's a show done on the Discovery Chanel, and I found this episode on youtube. In this case cult leaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0JgFEO ... 93E111275E

I figured this would be good as most of these monsters did so because they had a ego the size of Russia, regardless if they consumed by madness or not. I figure this would be good with Morathi, Tzeetch, or Dark Eldar. Or Tau, if you want to go that rout.

There is nothing too graphic, but this is very scary stuff.

[Noble korhedron]

I'm gonna watch that Cult Leaders episode myself, but I'll be watching from a critical point of view - i.e. with the POV of how much I hate cults.