Old Movies

Game Inspiration
Books and magazines probably hold the preeminent spot regarding influences on White Box and the hobby, but there are other sources of inspiration referees and players can use for colorful descriptions, character ideas and adventure plots. The more experiences you have, the more ammunition is available to draw upon during the game. Today I want to talk about some older films.

Ivanhoe started out as a novel by Sir Walter Scott and has been adapted for the screen a number of times. The above picture is a DVD cover of the 1952 movie, which I consider to be one of the best medieval inspirational films of all time.  The costumes and scenery are evocative and the action is superb, thanks in a large part to some excellent stunt work by Yakima Canutt. The fight scene at the end between Ivanhoe and Sir Brian is worth the price of admission alone. The film is well acted and includes a number of character performances worthy of "adapting" for NPCs.

The Vikings is a 1958 film in the swashbuckling tradition which tells the Ragnar Lodbrok saga as depicted in the novel The Viking by Eddison Marshall. The scenery and costumes are of a more barbaric age than that depicted in Ivanhoe and together the movies pretty much cover the "historical" extent of what the middle ages has to offer in terms of inspiration for our fantasy games. The cast are all good actors and many of the characters can be reskinned with a simple name change for use at the game table.

The War Lord, released in 1965, is perhaps less well known than Ivanhoe or The Vikings, but is a film worth noting for the interplay between historic Normans overlords and their pagan subjects and opponents. Like the others, The War Lord has some excellent scenery and costumes and the action is inspiring, but in this film the plot involving a Christian knight and a pagan peasant girl brings two divergent cultures into conflict and is ripe with suggestions for game play that may involve administration of a manor. I always think of the game setting Harn (Columbia Games) when I watch this movie.
These three movies are just a small sampling of the many wonderful films I have watched and drawn inspiration from over the years. Other medieval themed titles which immediately come to mind are the Robin Hood pictures, especially the 1938 classic, Adventures of Robin Hood, starring the dashing Errol Flynn, King Richard and the Crusaders (based on Walter Scott's, The Talisman), various King Arthur films including Knights of the Round Table (1953, featuring more Yakima Canutt) and Excalibur (1981). Venturing outside medieval Europe, the Sinbad movies are fantastic adventure films with an obvious Arabian Nights theme. It isn't based on history, but I can't end this post without singing praises for my favorite inspirational movie, Conan The Barbarian (1982) with an outstanding soundtrack and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the starring role. Based (loosely) on the character created by Robert E. Howard, the film brings the fictional setting of Hyboria into focus and gives the viewer inspiration through the use of pounding music, big swords and lots of muscle. His acting aside, Arnold can strike a pose!