Acting the Part: Movies, Books and Characters to help you roleplay

I thought I would throw this out there to see what influences people have had to help get them into character. Or what you think would help others role play a bit more. Dirty Harry: A friend of mine played a mage in Shadowrun that reminded me so much of Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry it was almost funny. He never pulled out the one liners but he was the same sort of hard hitting out for justice in his own way sort of dude. Very cool character and I've borrowed him for a few writing projects. Nuromancer: William Gibson's classic cyber punk novel. Great for getting into the Cyberpunk genera. Willow: The unwilling heroes, the love pixie dust and drunk brownies. This movie is something every 6 year old from my generation should of seen. if you haven't you are behind the curve my friends. Madmartigan! The Princess Bride: Ok while I've never gotten a direct influence from this movie, its one of my favorites and hilarious with great characters all around. ahh there are lots more that I'll probalby post latter but i would like to see what some other people come up with.

I think the list is almost endless. I normally add flavors or try to see if I can do a spin-off from characters. Both when I am a player and the GM.  My favourite villain is based loosely on Mr. Kurtz (from the Heart of Darkness novel) and on the interpretation of him in Apocalypse Now. What I really find amazing for plot ideas and inspiration as a GM is watching Doctor Who.

I have to read Heart of Darkness.... I was actually just thinking of it like 3 days ago.

If you're running a really light-hearted fantasy campaign, I can't think of a better influence to go with than Princess Bride.  Love the witty repartee. Probably my longest-running (2e) D&D character ever was was based on Connor MacLeod from Highlander. I planned it out waaaay ahead of time- developed him as a master swordsman and eventually traded all of my magic items and gold to the Wizard in the party to wish for eternal life, until beheaded. The melancholy immortal thing really went well with my teenage angst.

I'm actually surprised songs aren't mentioned. I mean character inspirations are easy to draw up from anything you like and what a person likes is different for each person. I mean I often use Anime characters as inspiration (my most blatant ripoff being  Ahiru  from Princess Tutu) but also book characters (Mercedes Lackey and Tamora Pierce have some good ones) but in order to "get into character" even when you've had a bad day or you just aren't feeling like the character you've made is music. Having a few character songs - whether its an instrumental with the right feel, lyrics with the right feel or you actually used the song to help flesh out personality and backstory, listening to this music will put you in the right mindset for your character.

Iconic characters from movies (even better from books, if you can get your players to read fiction in the genre) can serve as a quick, two-dimensional "handle" that is easy to convey to all players about what a character is like.  The player may of course make their own embellishments. Try to steer them to appropriate books especially.  I ran a long campaign of RINGWORLD (Chaosium Inc., 1984), an RPG based on the Larry Niven books and using the Basic RolePlaying-type system (characteristics based on 3d6, but skill-based percentile rolls for everything). The first book RINGWORLD won both the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1971.  I encouraged one player to read it, he said "Yeah, yeah."  Four weeks later he was, "THIS BOOK IS FANTASTIC!  Why didn't you tell me to read it?"  "We did."  "But you should have FORCED me!"  Certainly it helped the game "live" more for him.

Idiosyncratic trick I came up with... I cast all my NPCs with real life actors.  I just jot down the actor as though he's the player of the NPC. I then do my best impression of the actor when role playing any given NPC.  I don't have to be good at it... it simply keeps me consistent.  Oh, right... Yordengard ... um... oh, Alec Guinness... turn on Obi Wan Kenobi mode... that's right.