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Message: <blockquote data-quote="two" data-source="post: 3211554" data-attributes="member: 9002">YesUm.  What?  A tripping farmer with a scythe gobbling cow turds "seems" close to black-and-white drug films made in the 1950's?  In what way, precisely?  Yes, they both involve drugs... and...?An apple is like a bannana - they both have skins.  An elephant is like a ship - they both can be used for travel.  A word spoken in Latin is like a bit of heiroglyphic parchment from Egypt - they both are used for communication.C'mon.  If you push it far enough, nothing is original - but just because you are generalizing to a ridiculous degree.  Answer me this:  do you agree a tripped-out farmed munching cow turds has NEVER been seen before by a D&D party?  You do.  However, it's not "original" because, well, "drug use" = "drug use."In a larger sense, being as silly as you are being, no encounter can possibly be original. "danger" = "danger" after all.  "Oh, just another way for my PC to get screwed over.  How unoriginal."You also forget the fact that this silly example took FIVE seconds to construct.  If you don't think it's sufficiently original (because the farmer uses a drug), that's fine.  Say it's not SUFFICIENTLY original - not that it is impossible to be original.  Two very different things.Now I'll take 40 seconds to sketch a scene which is even "more" original, meaning you will have difficulty poo-pooing it in a stupid way.Wave of enemies are attacking somewhere, there is a culture in the way which is going to be hit.  This culture is death-focussed; since their priests regularly are in contact with former living humans (via spells) and these humans are in heaven, the earthly flock has a LOT of confidence in their priest's teachings. After all, if Uncle Joe is in heaven and he did XYZ, all I have to do is XYZ and I am good for eternity.  Who cares about 50 years of life and possible suffering when you are talking about millions?  Not me.  In fact Uncle Joe just talked to me last week about it (via spells).  Anyway, this culture is 100% pacifist.  They will gladly be cut down because, if they don't break their pacifism vows, they go to heaven.  So the blade hurts a bit.  Oh well. I'm in heaven now!  The PC's are faced with attempting to save/stop these people from being ruthelssly cut down by the enemy. But, is it morally correct to stop people from entering heaven (even if it is from an evil act)?  Why should the PC's stop the attackers?  Can they convince the priests of this religion to put up some sort of token defense?  Should the PC's even meddle with it?  So you throw the PC's into the middle of a town being decimated by the enemy - the townspeople are holding hands and singing while getting slaughtered, that sort of thing. What do the PC's do?  (they know enough about the history/background of the people to make it a real issue).This is rather specific to D&D (requires spells to contact the dead) but I don't think you can easily claim the ethical problem faced by the PC's anything less than "fairly to highly" original.Or are you going to tell me that it's just an "ethical quandry" not any different than "do you kill one innocent boy to save a city of millions?"  Or something daffy?Ok, that was more than 40 seconds.  Call it 2 min.  Point is, if you actually spend 5 min. thinking about something, you can get as original as you want.Thinking that there is nothing original left in the world is just a cop out. Or worse -- simple acceptance that you don't have a shred of imagination.  That's just too depressing to ponder...As for if I think "original" = "better".  Not necessarily.  If it's original and really fun, it's better than derivative and really fun.  But original and so-so is worse than derivative and really fun.</blockquote>

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