The DM's Percentage

[Fenes 2]

I can't really say how much of my material is original - I have read a ton of books, both fantasy, SF and textbooks, I surf the net, I watch movies and anime, I read fanfiction. Sometimes I take a character from one of those sources and plug it in a game as an NPC, more or less adapted (I once used Columbo as a city watch inverstigator in the FR). Odds are that whatever I create someone has created the same or something similar before me.

I don't really care about originality anyway - I see both "official" sourcebooks and inspirational material as just the building blocks for my campaign, to pick and choose and rewrite, to combine and split as I see fit until the whole feels right.

I don't use published modules though, since most of them are too hack & slash for my taste, and after tweaking them sufficently to suit my campaign and my players' taste I'd have gotten the same use out of one as from a 3-sentence plot hook from a sourcebook,

 

[Sketchpad]

I mostly use my own source material ... with occasional material from game books. A good example of this is that I use Champions in my M&M campaign and visa versa

 

[SnowDog]

Currently I'm trying to get the max game payoff I can with as little time investment as possible, so I'm running an almost-by-the-book version of Monte's BaneWarrens in a home-brewed world that isn't defined much at all outside Ptolus.

I've pulled in the cosmology from Book of the Righteous.

As such, I feel like right now I'm only running at about 10% "my own" stuff. In an ideal world, that number would be much higher, but would probably cap out somewhere in the 2/3 area as there's just so much good stuff out there -- just need to glue it together, alter it, and make it your own.

 

[The Dungeon Master]

70% comes from me, the rest comes from books, d20 supplements, movies, other suggestions from players, other D&D groups...

 

[emergent]

I rarely (once in a year and a half campaign) run purchased or given adventures as is. I do, however, "liberate" ideas or encounters from adventures and adapt them to my game.

I get ideas from all over, but a lot come from ENWorld and a lot come from game product of one form or another.

NPC's tend to come from books, movies, or real people/personal experience.

 

[Kanegrundar]

It all depends on the campaign.

For D&D, it's maybe 10-20% pre-made stuff, but the rest of the world is homebrew.

For Star Wars, it's around 95% pre-made setting material.

For my psuedo Rifts (D20 Modern), it's around 70% (that's how I voted sine this is the campaign we play the most right now).

Kane

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

when i come up with stuff to DM there's almost aways some out side insperation, i don't think anything gets created in a vacuum. I rarely use mods.

 

[psychopomp]

I would have to say that most of my ideas for adventures I run are original. The only pre-written adventures I've ever used were "The Nightmare Lands" and "Bleak House" because I thought they were pretty damn cool.

As for my sources of inspiration I am influenced by just about everything. From the novels I read to the anime I watch. They generally give me character ideas but sometimes I take a bit from the plot and tweak it to my tastes and would equally suit the campaign. I also generally DM horror/dark fantasy oriented games and ideas come quickly for me with those specific genre's.

 

[UrathDM]

Influences

About 60% of my stuff is my own.

Influences: Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Middle Earth, Midkemia, Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Birthright, and a host of others.

I usually find a rule system I like and adapt it to my homebrew world. I seldom use modules at all, reading them for ideas like cool traps or interesting encounter locations.

 

[Master Gunns]

I would have to say that 80% of the material I use comes from other sources. I like taking ideas from several sources and mixing them together to come up with something unique.

A lot of gamers think that using ready made adventures is sacrilege, but I don't have either the time or the talent to dream up all of the stuff that the hundreds of game developers have already published. That and working upwards of 60 hours a week, and frequent deployments in the military, leaves me the choice of using other peoples work or not playing at all, an easy one to make.