As a DM I’m always on the lookout for ideas that I can throw into my campaign. It doesn’t matter how seemingly irrelevant the source may be, once I put my gaming mind to work I can often come up with an idea for an encounter or an adventure in just about any source of popular media be it a movie, novel, video game, comic book or television show. The key is to imagine how the situation could be adapted to suit your needs. You’re not often going to find a situation or idea that’s perfectly suited for D&D when you experience it (sorry, the real world just isn’t a fantasy role-playing game) so you need to be creative.
To demonstrate the abundance of ideas in the most obvious places I focused my attention on The Simpsons. I think it’s safe to say that most gamers are fans of the show and that almost every scene and snippet of dialogue from the first few seasons is emblazoned in the minds of gamers in the 35-45 demographic. Yet even with a table of gamers who all possess near perfect recall of the earliest episodes of The Simpsons, you can still base an adventure or encounter around some of the best episodes and the players are unlikely to recognize that it was inspired by The Simpsons. To prove it, here are five examples.