Fairly often, either Corey or I will post about game nights or sessions we’ve played and what we’ve learned from that particular experience. I must say that you learn something new almost every time you sit with people around a table engaged in a game. I know I learned a few things this past Saturday night.

Once a month I hold a D&D session at my house. We aren’t very far into the campaign at this point, in fact we’ve only had two sessions (each being 4+ hours). I am the DM so of course it’s my responsibility to come up with the storyline. A tiny bit of background… I don’t watch horror films. They’ve just never interested me and i have a really hard time getting into anything from that genre, so I typically just stay away. That being said, when I introduced my D&D group to our setting where their characters would have to engage in a sadistic game in a stone room with explosive collars, I had no freaking clue I was practically creating a D&D version of Saw.

The group laughed at first when I gave them the run down on the campaign, but after realizing that I wasn’t in on the joke, they explained. I shrugged it off and just went forward with the campaign insuring the group that I had no idea. That was a month ago, but a similar situation came up just this past session.

I woke up the morning of the campaign with a great idea birthed sometime during that half-asleep, half-awake time. Only it didn’t occur to me until much later that the idea I had was (in a nutshell) The Most Dangerous Game. Yes, my group was going to be hunted on an island by sportsmen. When I realized this, I had to laugh. The media, creativity and culture we are exposed to on a daily basis truly shapes our minds and imaginations. While I had never seen Saw, I had been exposed to enough glimpses of trailers and parodies that it may have very well planted a seed in my mind that influenced my D&D campaign idea, unknown to me. And recent movie trailers for Predators had undoubtedly reminded me of The Most Dangerous Game enough that it came to me in my somewhat delusional early morning condition.

In advertising, the following question is constantly asked… “Does culture mirror advertising or does advertising mirror culture?”. I could write forever on what I think the correct answer is, but I’ll just say this in regards to gaming (and everything else)… Really good ideas are a reflection of both what we’ve experienced and what we would like to experience.

And I assure you, the D&D group is having a blast.

– Bryan

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