The DM's Percentage

[The Shaman]

Well, first off, I really like this guy's approach.

However, I seem to be short a lunch pail of toads most days.

:\

I often self-consciously develop campaign settings based on history or a literature genre. My D&D campaign setting tries to capture much of the feel of Nehwon or Cimmeria - swords-and-sorcery rather than "high fantasy" - but it's not directly analogous to either world: no Lankhmar, no Crom, No Grey Mouser, no Conan, &c. My present Modern game owes a heavy debt of inspiration to The Nocturnals - biotechnology and arcane magic exist side-by-side in a shadowy netherworld - but you won't find the Doc or Halloween Girl or portals to the Black Planet anywhere. My Sidewinder: Recoiled game drew on the history of the Lincoln County War, but I pulled in a plethora of other historical influences, while the character and personalities of the (original, as in not based on anyone historical but drawn from my own fevered imagination) NPCs really drove events in the game.

For the two new Modern campaign settings I'm working on, one is directly influenced by H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, C.J. Cutliffe Hyne, Percival Christopher Wren, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, but while the adventures and campaign try to capture the feel of these writers' stories (as well as historic Africa and its explorers), the story arcs and fantastic locales are my own. The other Modern mini-campaign I'm working on is based on the Algerian War - French Legion Etranger paratroopers against Algerian rebels in 1956. I'm doing a lot of reading for this one and watching the two most accessible movies about the period - The Battle of Algiers and Lost Command - and I expect that while some of the adventures may be based on actual engagements, the goal is not to roleplay Col. Bigeard and the 3e RPC at Agounenda.

Hrrrrm...I think I'm more confused now than when I started answering the question...

 

[Mark]

Thank you to everyone who had some time and information to share. There's some very interesting reading and perspectives in this thread.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Mostly from my own daydreams while at work. Magazines like Discover and National Geographic and lots of stuff on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and the National Geographic Channel feed my Frankenstein, too. But I couldn't attach a percentage to any of it.

 

[Insight]

I answered 40%, though I confess not to understand completely the wording of the poll question. I base this answer on my approach to creating adventures/scenarios.

I don't believe that writers can truly be 100% original. It's just not possible. At some level, no matter how cool you think you are, you are consciously or subconsciously taking something from somewhere else. We are all brought up through schooling and potentially parents, neighbors, friends, etc with certain influences, be they music, literature, the arts, sports, movies, etc, and those things are going to influence you whether you realize it or not.

Now, if you are talking about taking a published RPG product and modifying it for use in my game, zero percent. At least in the adventures I run. Everything is mine. Obviously, monsters, magic items, etc are 90% from the book (although in my current game most of the magic items are non-standard). But in terms of NPC personalities/motivations, plot, settings, etc, those are original inasmuch as they can be.

But I willingly and knowingly borrow ideas, concepts, and stories from historical and mythological sources. To a certain extent, you have no choice if you want players to get involved in your game. The quickest way in my experience to get someone to follow along is to create a common frame of reference.

For example, if you have a kingdom that's sorta like Ancient Egypt, tell the players it's sorta like Ancient Egypt. Sure, there are details, and those can be sorted out later. Imagine trying to explain Ancient Egypt to someone unfamiliar with the history, culture, etc. It would be hard to understand this place without calling it Egypt. But as soon as you utter this magic word, BAM, now the players have an understanding.

I hope I didn't clutter the discussion here, but I believe using a common frame of reference is essential to making the setting a little more real to your players.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

I said 20%. I steal and change ideas from these boards, movies, novels, textbooks, history, mispronunciations, sourcebooks, Dragon, Dungeon, National Geographic, video games, music, my players, Popular Mechanics, the demented imaginations of young children and university proffessors, and from mail-order catalogues.

I figure that my job as the DM is to create a story and a setting where as many possibilities as can coexist do. If I had infinite free time, I'd shoot for 40%-50% original material, but there's just too much inspiration to pass up on.

 

[Jolly Giant]

The creative process is what I love about DMing, so I definitely write everything myself. NPCs, stories, the campaign setting... I even make my own monsters, templates, PrCs, feats and spells if I can't find what I want in a book. It takes some time, but I have a job where there's a lot of downtime, so I use it to write for my campaign. It's what I enjoy most about DMing!

I tried running a published module once (RttToEE, since I'm a big fan of Monte's work) and the campaign ended after 3 sessions. I was just bored stiff! I felt like my fun and creative task as DM was reduced to being "the guy who looks things up in the book to see what happens next".

 

[The_Gneech]

Was it Mark Twain who said, "Originality is skillfully hiding your source material?"

When I was in college and had tons of free time, almost everything was either from scratch or at least an unrecognizable amalgamation of other works (including the rules I used -- I wrote new game systems of varying quality on a regular basis). I had a vibrant homebrew world that had a very Lankhmarish city as the capitol of a rather Aquilonian empire, on the edge of a sea that would look very familiar to both Sinbad and Captain Blood. (Sorcery and flintlocks can be an explosive combination!) I had pages of notes on personalities, deities, relationships between nations, and I was always ready to tinker and revise.

Now, with work all day and cartooning all night, I find my gaming time compressed to almost a singularity, and as such I need things I can run right off the shelf. The world is Greyhawk, 3 out of 5 scenarios I run come from Dungeon magazine, and the other two have sections lifted whole cloth from other sources. It turns out I'm having almost as much fun and it's considerably less work; the one thing I miss is telling myself that it's prep work for that great sword-and-sorcery novel I'm going to write any time now.

-The Gneech

 

[Mark]

Was it Mark Twain who said, "Originality is skillfully hiding your source material?"

He may have said it but can we be sure he said it first?

 

[Mark]

Shall we see if we missed a few folks...?

 

[DM JOE]

I never use modules but I do use maps from varies sources(dragon's,d20 books and the ocassional dungeon magazine).But adventure wise I just write my own stuff.