Worlds of Design: How Original Is Your Homebrew?

As GM do you need to worry about originality in your adventures?

As GM do you need to worry about originality in your adventures?

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.” -Voltaire
I previously discussed Innovation in game design in 2017. This time I’m talking about making up adventures, “homebrew” as it’s called, to be used with your campaign but unlikely to be published.

How Original is Your Homebrew?​

There are two aspects to originality in homebrew to consider:
  • Will your players have a problem with how original it is?
  • Will lawyers have a problem with how original it is?
Of course, if you value originality greatly, like Herman Melville (Moby Dick)—“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation”—then nothing’s going to stop you from “going for it.”

People like fantasy because of the standards as much as for any originality. That is, much of the “originality” comes from the tropes of the fantasy genre itself, not from individual authors. E.g. much of the recent movie Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire (technically science fiction but owing much to fantasy) is a journey to gather together a group of “heroes” to fight evil. It’s common in fantasy, and people generally like that plot device, though it went down poorly here because the movie was heavily cut for length, and the rest of the full movie (part 2) was 4+ months away.

At TV Tropes you can read a large number of such tropes with lots of details and subtropes, a gold mine for ideas.

50 years ago in Duke University library I found Stith-Thompson’s Motif Index of Folk Literature, a multi-volume attempt to list ALL folk motifs such as “princess must be rescued,” tracing the origins of the motif and where it had been used. It is now available (revised and enlarged!) online.

Can You Overdo It?​

Yes, in fantasy fiction you can overuse certain tropes that are just TOO familiar. Like “rescuing the princess in distress.” Then again, we saw it be wildly successful in the original Star Wars movie, though with a few twists. While fiction is published for all to see, your RPG adventures will be seen only by your players, so use whatever you like. It's really hard to devise something that doesn’t amount to these tropes/motifs. But yours can be a little different, with a twist or two, just like Star Wars.

Some players have become jaded (“tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something”). They’ve seen the “same things” (from their point of view) over and over, and thirst for something new. If you are dealing with this kind of player, then you may be moving from one set of game rules to another with some frequency in order to provide some originality (or at least, variety). It’s certainly tougher on the GM to have jaded players.

Originality is sometimes discussed in board game design, but is very rarely seen. With tens of thousands of boardgames published over a century, how likely is any one to be really original? Yet people find different ways to present the same topic. Most players don’t care whether a game is original or innovative, even if they’re aware of the precedents. A barroom brawl is old hat to experienced RPG players. But to someone who has never played, participation in a barroom brawl can be exciting. Familiarity is the difference.

Legal Concerns​

What about the second part, what are the legalities of copyrights and trademarks? I am not a lawyer, and nothing I share below should be considered legal advice.

Fortunately, if you’re not publishing your work, you should generally be in the clear, thanks to a concept known as “fair use”:
Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder.
Quoting someone briefly is not a problem even in published works, though if it’s a long quote, caution requires getting permission from the originator before publication.

Whether or not a few seconds of a copyrighted song in a user-generated video constitutes fair use is something for a court to decide. But take note that if you release your work to the world, e.g. George Harrison’s 1970 song My Sweet Lord, a court can decide (and did) that you used an unusual musical flourish from another song (1963’s He’s so Fine sung by the Chifons) that otherwise sounds nothing like Harrison’s, and take all your profits from your song. What “Fair Use” is not, is posting an entire musical work as a YouTube video and claiming it’s Fair Use, or editing many minutes from someone else’s video and presenting it separately.

The same rules apply to other material, though I must note that game ideas generally cannot be copyrighted. Games can be trademarked or patented for a limited period of time. (Cooking recipes also cannot be copyrighted—recipes are “merely” sets of instructions.) Game patents are rare (like betting methods for Blackjack.) It’s trademarks of titles, names of characters, and the like that cause the most angst among creators. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ book Princess of Mars (1912) is long out of copyright, but Burroughs Inc. keeps trademarks active on “Barsoom” and the like, so Disney had to deal with this when making the movie John Carter.

That said, if you’re not publishing your work (which includes giving it away for free – whether you make money does not matter) this likely isn’t as much of a concern.

What Constitutes Publishing?​

In this electronic age, mass distribution of any kind is probably going to count as "publishing." Undoubtedly, it is something courts are working out. That is, whether running a game on Twitch counts as publishing, or playing a game at a convention, count as publishing, I don’t know. Certainly, posting something that you “borrowed” on a website may get you in trouble.

So if you devise an adventure in what is clearly Tolkien’s “The Lonely Mountain” with a party entirely of dwarves looking for a fabulous gem (an actual convention adventure example), you’re unlikely to suffer legally from a lack of originality—unless (perhaps) you publish it.

Of course, a strong legal case isn’t necessary to invite legal trouble. Always keep in mind, if someone with lots of money decides to go after you in court, they don’t need a good argument initially, they just need to spend money.

Your Turn: Do you worry about originality in the adventures you run, whether published or homebrew?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio

Voadam

Legend
I generally find that as a player I am OK with familiar stuff, but I don't want to do exact play throughs of a script. If I am playing Dragonlance I want to make my own decisions throughout rather than try to match the novels as a player.

Game of Thrones is the War of the Roses, you expect certain beats but you are never sure where or how much it will diverge from history in specifics or big plots. That for me is fun with familiar stuff.

I don't generally want to do the same adventure modules again though, even with a different group and characters.
 

aco175

Legend
My world and adventures are rather grounded and more Middle Earth than Forgotten Realms. I firmly believe that there are no original ideas and only copies of someone else's ideas from long ago. I do not know how many times in past games I or another DM have this great idea and adventure, only to be told by a player: "Hey, this is just like such-and-such show or movie."
 

Voadam

Legend
Your Turn: Do you worry about originality in the adventures you run, whether published or homebrew?

As a DM I generally run modules but try to not run the same module for the same players twice and I avoid running stuff that people are familiar with so that stuff is original to their experience.

I have plenty of modules so I have plenty of options.

A couple exceptions.

I have used the Ravenloft module Feast of Goblyns twice where the second group was actually dealing with the aftermath of the first group's having gone partially through the adventure, so that was a great blending of the two campaigns and having the module integrated into the setting.

I ran White Plume Mountain for my long running 1e Greyhawk campaign in the 80s that included my brother, then ran the 5e version for a one shot for my son, my brother, and his two kids as a spur of the moment low prep thing when we were visiting (he had the 5e anthology and I was familiar with White Plume from the original). I then ran the 5e version again for my son, my brother-in-law, and his two kids. For my son each time he went in it was to different branches of the dungeon with different characters and different groups, one ended in a TPK and one turned out super successful, so it was novel different experiences each time.

I have also run the 3.5 Freeport Trilogy, online in a pbp game here and once in a face to face campaign with completely different people.

Mostly I run things once only and I have tons of adventures I have not run that I am interested in running.
 
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Meech17

WotC President Runner-Up.
Your Turn: Do you worry about originality in the adventures you run, whether published or homebrew?
No.. But maybe a little.. But mostly no.

My 5E game takes place in a world I kind of invented, but by invented I mean I took things I liked and smooshed them all together.

  • I've inserted Kithicor forest and Highpass from EverQuest as points of interest.
  • The players are tracking down magical gems that enhance their abilities like Deltora Quest.
  • There are some major political factions at play also looking for these gems, including a culty religious leader secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes in his kingdom, from.... A lot of things? The Three Musketeers, and I'm sure many many others.
  • Another faction is the potentially noble, potentially nefarious Princess Sophie. I'm yet undecided. The players haven't met her yet, but have heard about her, and are really keen on meeting her, so I need to figure out where she stands soon. She was however lifted directly from my older brother's campaign I played in as a teen.
  • These factions are all hunting for these gems to assemble them together and summon a powerful entity in order to obtain a wish, in the theme of Dragon Ball.
  • I've also inserted a lot of things from the Forgotten Realms. The Pantheon, the races, and some other general D&D lore I didn't feel compelled to invent on my own. My "World" very much could just be a continent on the same planet as the Sword Coast.

None of it is original, but in a way it's been remixed and flavored to be something kind of new. I don't really intend publishing this adventure, so I'm not worried about any legal trouble. I have toyed around with the idea of trying to put it together into some sort of book or booklet. Perhaps I'd post it online, but that would be more as a creative exercise than anything. And I'm sure I've edited things to the point of keeping it fair use.

I might feel a little bad/weird if one day one of my players say "Hey wait.. Are we just doing Dragon Ball?" but so far that hasn't been an issue.
 

talien

Community Supporter
I was super excited to have a battle of succession in which a cursed line of royals are all tested by Edgar Allen Poe-inspired trials that the PCs must help see them through (or condemn them to the curse) and then ultimately decide who would sit on the throne. It all revolves around a looming threat of dragons and giants that will attack the Mournwall, a giant 600 ft. tall wall that...

Oh god, I just reinvented Game of Thrones, didn't I?
 

I have several modes of adventure-running, depending on the ambition level and style of the campaign.

The last time I ran anything resembling traditional fantasy, the characters were in a police force in a large city. This was inevitably informed by the Night Watch sub-series of Pratchett's Discworld series, but I did not try to adapt any of those plots, because they would not have fitted the government or politics of the city, nor the characters and players. I'm somewhat proud of having had the police force employed by the Thieves' Guild several years before Pratchett published The Colour of Magic. (I've had the city since 1979, but started the police campaign in about 2012).

My basic source of plots was exploring the ways that crime would work in a D&D world. For example, someone was murdered, looking like an accident. The murderer expected the victim to simply be buried, and that to be the end of the matter. But the local lord decided to get him raised, which meant the murderer had to arrange for the body to vanish, and that made it look like a crime.

One of the campaigns I'm running is "Cold War Pulp" - transplanting some of the styles and idioms of the pulp era to the early 1950s. So far, the cases have involved a psychic who could teleport small amounts of material - which is a big problem when he works in a uranium extraction plant - and strange people from underground stealing wine from the vintners of Burgundy. There will be UFOs, mad scientists, and other things; it won't be as conspiratorial as the X-Files, but many of the strange things will be similar.

The other is WWII in India, with magic returning to the world after a long absence. This is a follow-up to a campaign that dealt with the same themes and was mostly set in Europe and North America. This is "secret history" and involves understanding the history enough to slip adventures into the cracks. The course of events will gradually change, and the PCs will get chances to influence that.

The genesis of the idea was the realisation by a PC in the Europe/North America campaign that the wide practice of mediative arts in Indian culture and religions meant the country was going to become a magical powerhouse post-war. Any ideas the British may have had about retaining control were laughably deluded. As a working-class Conservative, he wasn't best pleased with this discovery, but the conclusion was inescapable, and denying the facts wasn't going to work.
 

MacDhomnuill

Explorer
My homebrew is a mix of original and published settings. After several decades of trying to write a cool, original exciting, interesting, homebrew world I gave up and instead I created a map of an interesting island/continent roughly the size of England. I then proceeded to populate it with lots of published small settings and wierd ideas from my failed novel writing phase. That large forest up in the north western part of the southern plains? Yeah it’s called Dolmemwood. There is a whole area on the eastern shore thats filled with lazy liches small settings. The most recent area is called the Misty Vale. Soon I will add a haunted castle (Castle Twilight kick starter) and a spooky area called Gloomshire (also a KS). I use Harn world maps and locations tweaked to fit my medium fantasy setting as well.

But not everything in setting is built from existing published products. My southwestern coast, which is populated by dwarves, who primarily fish and farm, and also speak with deep plantation era, southern accents. Those are all mine. The large cosmopolitan capital city thats based on a map of paris from the 1300s? Also mine. The desert nation populated by a socialist collective of Kobolds (dog men OG kobolds) and art loving bohemian pigmen (I don’t like orcs), yup thats mine too.

I am slowly adding other island areas with products like Thousand Thousand Islands and the stuff Munkao over at Centaur Games is putting out next.

90% of this stuff will never see play but I enjoy the world building.
 

GMMichael

Guide of Modos
That is, much of the “originality” comes from the tropes of the fantasy genre itself, not from individual authors. E.g. much of the recent movie Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire (technically science fiction but owing much to fantasy) is a journey to gather together a group of “heroes” to fight evil. It’s common in fantasy, and people generally like that plot device, though it went down poorly here because the movie was heavily cut for length, and the rest of the full movie (part 2) was 4+ months away.
Is that why Rebel Moon went down poorly? I . . . can't even.

Your Turn: Do you worry about originality in the adventures you run, whether published or homebrew?
Heck. No. Everything that can be invented has been invented. But I do worry about predictability. I don't need PCs figuring out what's going on before I want them to. Which makes things difficult if one of them has a Mental score over 18 . . .
 

Dire Bare

Legend
Is that why Rebel Moon went down poorly? I . . . can't even.


Heck. No. Everything that can be invented has been invented. But I do worry about predictability. I don't need PCs figuring out what's going on before I want them to. Which makes things difficult if one of them has a Mental score over 18 . . .
Rebel Moon went down poorly because . . . it's not very good. Boring and uninspired. Visually fun, but by the end of the first film, you don't care about any of the characters, and probably can't even remember any of their names.

Which is a bummer, I was looking forward to the show!
 

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