Sources of inspiration

  1. Don Lawrence. Storm.
    Iconic images from my youth, burned into my retina. Anything-goes attitude to mixing up sci-fi and fantasy, ruins of advanced civilizations, weird and original monster designs.
  2. Edgar Rice Burroughs. A Princess of Mars.
    The book that arguably started the sword and planet genre. Stuffed to the gills with action-packed swordplay, derring-do and weird, vaguely oriental, alien civilizations on a dying planet. If I am not mistaken this is also where the brightly-colored races of man trope comes from.
  3. Leigh Brackett. The Book of Skaith Series (The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith & The Reavers of Skaith).
    Barsoom (ERB’s Mars) may be the original fantasy alien planet, but LB’s Skaith is my favorite. Another dying planet, but this one, lit by a humongous ginger star, slowly descending into a new ice-age. Medieval-level civilizations shaken up by the arrival of men in space ships.
  4. Masters of the Universe.
    Another one from my youth, and probably the single largest influence on our generation’s vision of what science fantasy looks like. Planet Karus may not lean so hard into the sci-fi gadgetry as MotU, but I imagine it to be just as brightly colored and juvenile. Bonus: read this excellent essay about approaching D&D with a MotU mindset.
  5. Jack Vance. The Dying Earth.
    Unavoidable reference. Planet Karus is classic D&D so perhaps referencing Vance is superfluous. But still. The magic in Planet Karus is not just ”vancian” because we use the original game system, which was inspired by it. We also use the conceit that magic is a kind of mathematics. And the magic that is currently known is only a small subset of all the magic once practiced. Magic-user players will be able to discover many forgotten spells by going into the wilderness and down into dark dungeons. Finally, Vance’s dying earth has the occasional surprising intrusions of high technology from long-lost civilizations, including flying cars, that Planet Karus dungeons also offer.
  6. Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud. Arzach.
    Moebius took the Western-style landscapes of his Blueberry and pushed them into a psychedelic color-palette. Also some of my favorite images of men riding vaguely dinosaur-like creatures. Similarly, Planet Karus has giant birds and diminutive dinosaurs for steeds.
  7. Ray Harryhausen. Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, etc.
    Planet Karus’s human civilization has reverted to one roughly equivalent of ancient Mesopotamia and Greece. So the feel of sandal-clad heroes facing off against Harryhausen monsters is exactly right. All you’d need to add is the occasional laser-rifle, and maybe make those mythological creatures a little more lovecraftian.