I caved and got my grubby mitts on a copy of the D&D source book that came out last November Eberron: Rising from the Last War.

Eberron is “a war-torn world filled with magic-fueled technology, airships and lightning trains, where noir-inspired mystery meets swashbuckling adventure.” (quote from here) A kind of fantasy meets modern world type setting, almost steampunk like in nature, magicpunk!

When I found out about the lightning trains I instantly thought about two movies as inspiration for an adventure or two.

The first was obviously the movie based on the graphic novel of the same name, Snowpiercer (also now a tv series as well). This could almost be a campaign setting! Definitely this is multiple sessions to tell the story. Sadly the other movie that sprang to mind was the Steven Seagal sequel Under Siege 2.

Another couple of movies that came to mind after that were The Commuter and Murder on the Orient Express.

Another movie to watch is Captain America: The First Avenger in particular the train heist where Cap and the Howling Commandos attempt to capture Zola and Bucky dies.

I also thought of Firefly episode 2: The Train Job. Where the crew of Serenity are hired to pull off a heist on a train.

I’ve not even started to think about inspiration for the pulp adventure or noir intrigue. Although one or two of the above sources of inspiration could cross over into those descriptions as well.

The airships is something else to look into for inspiration and I have one or two movies that come to mind for them as inspiration but I’ll save that for another post.