What Gaming Hath Shown

So, before, there was the post about what our gaming influences are. Made me think of the other route, what gaming has done to my influences. Or, what I discovered through being a gamer.

1. THE Authors. Lovecraft, Leiber, Moorcock. All of which I discovered through a lucky find at a salvation army. The Deities and Demigods that contained all of these. I ended up selling it at the first gen con I went to, meh.

2. Cyberpunk. I might have discovered it later on, when love of film would have shown to me that Blade Runner kicks all kindsa ass. For me though, it was Shadowrun. Orcs with guns and cybernetics happened to be the gateway drug for me.

3. Music. Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, X, Robert Johnson. For as reviled as White Wolf is, at least it had awesome suggested listening lists.

4. John Woo. The Hong Kong stuff at least. Hong Kong Action Theater had a super awesome suggested viewing list, which I only scraped the surface of. The Gun Fu stuff really sated me I think. So fricken awesome.

5. Samurai. I really only watched Kurosawa and read Book of the Five Rings so I could run a kick ass game of Legend of the Five Rings. Never did, though.

6. Anime. I'm sure I would have eventually seen Akira, MD geist, Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D. Heavy Gear just gave me the kick in the ass to get around to it. Starting with Patlabor.