You might be familiar with D&D campaigns inspired by popular media – but in real life, it’s sometimes the other way around.
We’ve all played in a D&D campaign “inspired by” other media. Whether a popular book, movie, or anime series – I would bet money you can point to either plot points or a sidelong reference in just about any campaign. But in real life, sometimes, it’s the D&D campaign that does the inspiring, as these five different pieces of media will demonstrate.
Record of Lodoss War
Record of Lodoss War is a beloved anime series that began its life as a D&D campaign. In fact, it was a blueprint for what would become the “actual play” format early on – existing as a written-up “replay” where the contents of a play session, table talk, and all, would be published for folks to read. Lodoss was the campaign of Dungeon Master Ryo Mizuno, who would later adapt the story into a high fantasy novel and later an anime that would go on to inspire its own RPG, Sword World.
Final Fantasy
The original Final Fantasy (which was far from final, it turns out) was also inspired by a D&D campaign. Or so the legend goes. And for proof of this, you can take a look back through the enemies which are, basically taken straight from the monster manual, including “Mindflayers,” and in the original Japanese release, an enemy known as the “evil eye” (pictured above).
The Elder Scrolls
The Elder Scrolls, believe it or not, were shaped by D&D campaigns – but not until the Elder Scrolls actually existed. As the lore goes, as the developers were working on the first game in the series, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, it wasn’t long before they were playing D&D campaigns set in the world. And these campaigns would lay down a lot of the lore that would shape the Elder Scrolls II: Daggerheart, as initially run by Julian Lefay.
The Expanse
Famously The Expanse series began as a tabletop RPG campaign. And while it’s not D&D directly, the ruleset in question was D20 Future, which itself was an expansion (pun intended) of D20 Modern, which was an adaptation of D&D into rules for running games set in a world much like our own. Only filled with a little more action, intrigue, and computer hackers. Which is D&D-adjacent enough to get included on this list.
Malazan Book of the Fallen
And last but certainly not least, Malazan Book of the Fallen, a well-known sprawling fantasy series, which began as a campaign back in the days of First Edition D&D. The world of Malazan was the backdrop of a campaign for Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont. Over the course of a four-year-long campaign, the world became so rich and complex that they switched systems, eventually using GURPS. If you’ve ever read this series, you have two different RPGs to thank!
Happy Adventuring!
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