Is Originality important ?

[questing gm]

I've always wondered how embarrassing it would be when players on your table could point out every shred of ideas that you have stolen from for your campaign (whether during or out of the game). Ideas that could be anything from NPCs (the party meets a rhetoric good drow with twin blades named....ok, we get the picture) to the plot hook or plotline you stole from a recent movie or TV series.

So, to prevent such embarassing moments of having your players shouting at you for being cliche or uncreative, how important is orignality to your campaign ?

Does your group just go 'hey, that's so like the episode of [....] from [....] i watched last week!' then 'all right let's get back to the game...'. They just shrug off where you get your inspirations and are concerned with the game ?

Does your players expect original descriptions of something they have never seen, heard or read before...(how many ways can you describe an orc ?). Original NPCs that doesn't remind them of anyone from somewhere

What about plotlines? Do you make an effort to concoct a cunningly original plot to wreck your PCs (which is veeerrryyy time consuming) that your players have never found themselves in each time they gather at the table ?

Ok, sometimes 'originality' comes when you take inspiration from a source that you know your players would be unfamiliar with (or better yet unknown) but when you are with a group of gamers who are also your friends, you tend to watch, read and listen to the same sort of things. Do you deliberately hide your reference or inspiration material from your players when they are playing the campaign where it was created from ?

Last question, how much (in a rough percentage) of your campaign is original material. As in something you HONESTLY came up from your head and put down on paper (avoiding the moot that sometimes what you claim to be original is still pointed out to be taken from somewhere else)...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When I lift a hook from a source, I try to use source that is either obscure or not "current."

For instance, I used the plots of a James Bond movie & some HG Wells, Jules Vernes and William Gibson stories as adventure cores for a supers game set in 1900. Nobody caught on...at least, nobody told me about it.

In time honored traditions, I've used Shakespeare too. Lifting from the Bard worked for West Side Story and Forbidden Planet, so why not me, right? Again, nobody was any the wiser.

Heck, even though Moby Dick was the inspiration for both Wrath of Khan and Of Unknown Origin, it didn't matter if people knew- the movies still rocked.

If I find I simply must retell a current tale, I take liberties with it to either change it up and surprise my buddies when they don't see my twist, or cast them in the lead roles so they can ham it up.

 

[mythusmage]

What matters is not what you use, what matters is how well you use it.

 

[Terwox]

Steal stuff your players won't recognize.

If you're not into stuff your players won't recognize, change that!

 

[Stalker0]

What matters is not what you use, what matters is how well you use it.

QFT. And of course, the fact that the players shape some of the action means it will be always be original!

OR, if you want to be childish you could throw it back at them

Oh, my idea is from Doctor Who eh? Well....your barbarian is soooo like Conan!!

 

[Deadguy]

Oh yes, I've been 'caught out' borrowing ideas from other sources! But the truth is it's never bothered anyone at all. I think most players understand that DMing is challenging, and looking to others for inspiration is a shrewd idea.

Though these days I'd be reluctant to rip off a storyline as completely as I did in University days, when I used the story from Redwall pretty much exactly as is!

 

[Blue Sky]

I steal shamelessly. That Rakshasa posing as a gladiator? We'll base him off of Brad Pitt in Troy. Annoying reporter for the Sharn Inquisitive? Just like Rita Skeeter from Harry Potter. Hell, I even based the main bad guy in my last campaign off of Cardinal Richelieu from The Three Musketeers, down to calling him Richard ir'Lune.

While my players may have given me a hard time about it, they still say it was the best campaign they ever played in.

So, I don't think originality matters as much as making it your own and running with it.

 

[Hussar]

Terwox has the right idea. Steal stuff that your players won't recognize. There's just so much out there begging to be brought in that you don't really have to lift from Lost or whatever.

Although, I imagine, if you lifted from original series Dr Who, that would count as obscure enough.

 

[Thomas Percy]

RPG is not fine art, so originality is just nice addition, not obligation of DM.

 

[greywulf]

I'm with everyone else. Steal and mix. Cross genres. If the plagiarism is going to be obvious, make it /really/ obvious (good point, Blue Sky).

It works best if you take the idea and put it in a different context. Using the plot for Macbeth in a low magic fantasy setting is good, but having events happen on a startship between planets is better. I ran that as a Traveller scenario a long while back.

Shakespeare would have made a great DM.