What kinds of things have you studied because of table top games

Interesting thread. Bump.

>>54755795
Plenty of things for worldbuilding in my experience:

>Ancient written language structures, so I have a good system of homemade ancient runes that make sense.
Lunar calendar systems, because I wanted elves and elf-related species to use a different calendar. (In my system, Elves don't live longer, they just treat every cycle of the moon as a year so they have higher ages).
>Pagan holidays, because I wanted to have interesting events for those calendars that my friends wouldn't be familiar with.
Geophysics, cartography, and climatology for the same reason.
>HEMA, armor design, and castle architecture so I have an understanding of how to reasonably describe combat and battle strategies.

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>>54755795
It has been the inverse for me. I always read all kind of stuff way too much, and went autist into lego and drawing. Going into rpg and worldbuilding gave me an use of what I already had. Becoming the loremaster (I'm not the GM) became an even greater motivation to read all kind of stuff in turn. I made up about 80% of the setting by now.

And I really mean all kinds of stuff. The setting has:
>imperial bureaucracy uses around 30.000 seers to find out the worth of your taxes a month from now
>a nation of megatherium herders based on gaucho romanticism
>universal Soldier-esque frankstein-like steampunk cyborgs opress the populace serving a titanic analogic computer
>sea and moon goddess is a giant mermaid whose fins generate the sea currents. She spawns spell pearls and her bellybutton is a maelstrom leading to inseide the moon, which is hollow.
>ley lines are metaphysical links between people which conduct prana and are the basis of the whole Creation. If you have any kind of feelings for someone, you have a ley line connecting you to that person. If that person has feelings for you as well, the ley line goes both ways. This web sustains reality. Love and hate literally move the world.
>leyships
>spontaneous combustion is diagnosed as a disease
>two gods don't exist 364 days of the year
>repetition muskets
>a prison made from chained ship hulks in the midst of a lake
>therapeutic curses
>dwarven geomancy allows for the cultivation of geodes into city-sized chambers
>divine giant snakes made of corindon
>sultans are djinns and the superior caste of their land
>mountain dwarfs build citadels of pykrete
>two unique races
>orcs are unplayable bone-scarred necrogenic apes
>the war god's avatar is made of 300 soldiers acting in perfect unity
>slavery is legal
>kobolds are dragon larvae, one in a million actually evolves into a dragon.
>the above invented handheld rocket launcher pods
>dwarven war shovels
>samurai use firearms

>>54755795
I've only run three sessions, but so far I've already done a small bit of research on medieval names, the history of witch hunting, and what you could eat in a Wild West frontier town. I'm having way too much fun with this stuff.

Got into Tarot from the deck included with Ravenloft; those pesky gypsies got me hooked.

Studied is a bit of a strong word, but tabletop has recently dragged me into the world of streaming after my group decides to finally take the plunge after pussyfooting for a year or so. I'm the one actually running the show, so I've had to pick up a couple of skills outside of my normal skill set to keep things more or less smooth.

>>54760581
That sounds really cool. I'm not even into that kind of setting normally, but that sounds captivating to play in. I usually play low fantasy because I'm just not knowledgeable enough about fantasy and technology to develop a setting like yours. Keep it up!

Your kobolds remind me of dragonewts from Runequest, which I totally dig. If you're not familiar, the idea behind them is that dragonewts have different tiers which they access through reincarnation. So there are a bunch of kobold-like tier 1 dragonewts running around, but only one tier 4 dragonewt who is pretty much a dragon priest. And when one of them dies, they reincarnate as a dragon and someone takes their place as a tier 4.

>>54764956
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I studied tarot too because of tabletop. I was thinking of using it as a sort of character sheet system back when I was in early development of my system, but that idea didn't really work out for my end goals.

>>54763191
Sounds like a really fun time! I really love how much creativity is available for DMing. Keep it up!

>>54755795
Got any good resources for vocal training? I'm a good public speaker in some respects (volume, confidence), but I'm a terrible voice actor and my enunciation is garbage, and I can't do a proper consistent accent to save my life

>>54759538
>chronology based on months
fucking hell, that sounds incredibly silly

So if you wanted to reference something that happened 242 years ago you'd have to say it happened ~2904 "Elf years" ago? It seems like a pain in the ass to keep track of

>>54769979
I should have clarified that the Elves live very separately and independently from the other races. It's undeniably a bit naive on my part, but comparing years would never really come up much in my setting anyways. I use it more as a way to make Elves seem strange than as a legitimate way to track time.

However, my calendar is 360 days with 40 day moon cycles, and the program I use to keep track of the date and holidays does all of the conversions automatically.

>>54770176
If it works for you, more power to you my man. I still think it'd make more sense to chunk long-term time-keeping into seasons rather than individual months, because one generally doesn't care about month-length granularity for the same reason one doesn't care about how many weeks or days it's been since something, and when you have seasons you may as well upgrade to cycles of seasons, and then you're right back to years.

Still, a lunar tracking system is definitely bizarre so it accomplishes what you set out to do, which is definitely more important than anything else. Out of curiosity, does the moon have any special significance for the elves? Because then my argument is probably moot

It's a small thing, but
>Belgium history before and during WW1 along with the guns of the era
all for an ops and tactics campaign.

>>54770276
I definitely can't argue on the silliness of the idea. I totally agree with you. But I certainly wanted it to be bizarre, to the point where it's one of the reasons more efficient cultures like Dwarves can't stand them.

The moon is certainly important to the Elves in my setting. It's a part of their creation myth and, in a way, represents them. At least within their culture.

>>54770176
>>54770445
Oh, and I forgot to mention that my Elves are very closely tied to lycantrophy as well.