Mythology Gag / Tabletop Games

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• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The 3rd edition Dungeon Master's Guide used exactly the same sample dungeon for its demonstration of game play as had been presented in the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Guide. The characters' actions were nearly identical, although Lidda fared much better against the ghouls than did the original version's gnome.
  • 4e loves tossing in shout-outs to settings that are not part of this edition's gameline. Sigil is once again center-stage at higher tiers, the Spelljamming Helms can be used to navigate the Astral Sea, and it's made throw-away references to defunct settings like Greyhawk and even Dark Sun before it was confirmed as a campaign setting for this edition.
  • In the Monster Manual for 5th edition, the Goblin entry contains a short flavor text consisting of "Bree-Yark!", with an assurance in parenthasis that, to the best of the author's knowledge, this is Goblin for "We Surrender!" Those who have played (or at least are familiar with) the original Keep on the Borderlands module, where the phrase originated from, know that whilst this is what the goblins in that adventure claim it means, it actually translates as something closer to "Hey, Rube!" — a battle-cry demanding aid from all nearby allies in a potentially life-or-death struggle.
  • Spelljammer: In the 5th Edition monster compendium, the Space Hamster is given the power "Go For The Eyes!" after the battle cry of Minsc, the ranger party member from Baldur's Gate who had a Miniature Giant Golden Space Hamster named Boo as a companion and had the battle cry "The eyes, Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!"
• Exalted:
  • The Return of the Scarlet Empress has the Ebon Dragon construct an enormous Black Spiral. In addition, the entire world of Autochthonia is based on Mage: The Ascension. These qualify as Mythology Gags because Exalted was originally supposed to be a prequel to the World of Darkness, which has more or less fallen off with subsequent editions.
  • Exalted had another Werewolf reference in "Shards of the Exalted Dream", with a sinister corporation in the Modern Age shard being named after a subsidiary of Pentex.
  • In Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals, their Excellencies (usually straightforward dice adders) are known as Augmentations because they were designed before the term "Excellency" was coined. The first edition Alchemical charmset was the one that first introduced the concept before second edition gave them to everyone.
• Hoyle's Rules of Dragon Poker was the third or fourth attempt to complete the game. All previous versions, including the one from the books, were woven into the back story the author created for the game.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The oldest of the Assassin orders, the Adamus, are visually based on the original 1989 Imperial Assassin miniature.
  • In older versions of the Horus Heresy lore, the Drop Site Massacre was said to have been so brutal that only seven loyalists survived, which would have meant that the Raven Guard, Salamanders and Iron Hands would have been hugely depleted and unable to play too substantial a role. Then priorities changed behind the scenes, leading to the Horus Heresy books and a spinoff game from 40K proper. These made it so that while the Drop Site Massacre was certainly accurately named, with the Cavalry Betrayal reaping a massive tally of loyalist Space Marines, there were dozens of loyalists to make it out battered and bloodied but alive (meaning that fans of those Legions would be able to field them in the game and had an incentive to keep reading the books). However, as a sneaky nod, one of the Forge World supplements giving a broad overview of the Heresy threw in a reference to early reports that did claim only seven survivors, which later turned out to be wrong.
• Warhammer Fantasy: In the early supplement Realm of Chaos there are rules for randomly generating demons; one of the example demons, called Kweethul Gristlegut, is similar to the Horned Rat, god of the Skaven. A later Skaven army book briefly mentions Kweethul as being a heretic.
• The World of Darkness: New World of Darkness gamelines often contain references to their Old World of Darkness predecessors.
  • Mage: The Awakening:
    • The origin of the Free Council order occurred when they refused the Seer of the Throne ministry known as the Union's invitation to unite and create a world-controlling Technocracy.
    • Word of God is that the Old Man of the Hollow, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Abyss, visually resembles renegade Euthanatos archmage Voormas. Rather disturbingly, the Old Man is a lot nicer than his inspiration...
    • Many of the Legacies take their names, nicknames, and/or thematics from Ascension — the Dreamspeakers strongly resemble their Ascension predecessors, the Subtle Ones take inspiration from the Ahl-i-Batin, the Thread-Cutters from the Euthanatos, etc.
  • Vampire: The Requiem: In Vampire: The Masquerade, the Camarilla was the ruling body of vampiric politics — a worldwide conspiracy meant to keep the Kindred operating behind the scenes and hidden from mortals. In Requiem, the Camarilla was a vampiric body politic that stretched throughout the Roman Empire... and fell when it did, emphasizing the game line's shift from global to local politics.
  • Werewolf: The Forsaken: Several in-game elements are refers to lore and factions from Werewolf: The Apocalypse:
    • The game has a giant worm-like entity known as Zmai who may or may not have something to do with vampires. It is loosely based on the Zmei, worm-tainted dragon from Apocalypse.
    • The antagonistic Pure Tribes are at least partially based on the less liked elements of WTA: the Ivory Claws are based on the Silver Fangs, arrogant werewolf aristocrats whose inbreeding may have been driving them to insanity and extincion, and the Get of Fenris who never recovered, In-Universe or out, for the fact that a large faction of them happily aligned themselves with the Nazis and saw their ideology as being complementary to National Socialism. The the savage, anti-civilisation Predator Kings are basically the Red Talons, a vehemently anti-human tribe, as a villainous splat rather than a technically heroic one.
    • The Urazakh-Angir, a prophesied messianic figure in Pure mythology, is a werewolf born to a werewolf father and a normal wolf mother. This is a reference to the Lupus (wolf-born) werewolves from Apocalypse.
• Star Trek Adventures: The first mission of A Star Beyond the Stars sends the PCs in search of the USS Alcubierre, which went missing while testing a new warp drive variant. Miguel Alcubierre is the theoretical physicist who formulated the theory behind the Alcubierre Drive, inspired by Star Trek's warp drive.

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