Originality is a Myth! Or how I accidentally made Thorizdun...

[Magnus Animus]

New DM here.
Thought I'd share a story of my experience and how I realised every story I could think of has already been told!

Got a lot of ranting to do about my world and a metric ton of backstory, so this might take a while... so... you know... strap in!

Alright so I've been running a D&D 3.5e game to teach so friends how to play and I thought I'd go a little overboard and write something... elaborate... for them.

Not just a one-shot, or a starting town, but a sprawling tapestry of interconnected threads, starting from humble beginnings (go here, kill thing, get paid) to crazy JRPG disk 3 scenario (Immortal SuperGod is going to eat the universe and only YOU have hair thats spiky enough to stop them:smallcool:)...

The idea being, if they liked the first quest, they could seamlessly move on to bigger and better evils, and if they didnt... Hey at least I could reuse some of it for other games.

I started, and this was my first mistake, by building a world.

Did everything from scratch. Drew an intricate map of the main Kingdom, made it geologically correct, surrounded it with neighbours, wrote the history all the way from creation myth, through different eras, with god wars, origin of the planes, creation of races, then where monsters and magic come from, the rising and falling of civs, and the unification of the current kingdom, and the lineage of the royal family from the founding to now, with interesting stuff like who founded what city and who backstabbed who, and who pissed off the dwarves that one time and started an uprising.

I was really proud of it... it was heavily influenced by things like the Elder Scrolls (first map was accidently Cyrodiil rotated 90 degrees), Dragon Age, bit of Tolkien, lots of mixed mythology, and a heap of other stuff shoved in a blender, but the finished product... It was mine! (I'd actually love to show it off sometime)

Then I realized, I'd completely forgotten about my players and was just playing with myself :smallannoyed:

So I went about making my small intro mission, the classic "town is being bothered by monsters and hired you lot to investigate", while having it secretly orchestrated by my first BBEG, and let my players have at it, while I wrote the rest between sessions.

(My guys are doing really well too, for first timers! Really getting into it!)

Got my Villian's entire character fleshed out. Made him this guy that organizes destruction and mayhem, because it would bring heroes out of the woodwork which he needs for his nefarious schemes. You know... A la Mr Glass from Unbreakable.

Got kinda stumped at his motivation so I went with the whole "BECAUSE HIS GOD DEMANDS IT" and went about picking a god who fit the description.

None of them really grabbed me so I went, what the hell, I made this much from scratch... Whats difference is one god gonna make?

I really liked this idea because the DM who taught me really loved picking obscure gods, from things like Sumerian pantheons, and introducing them as random NPCs.

(Met a recurring blacksmith, Mr Tus. About 6 sessions later we find out his first name: Hephaes. Found out after I stabbed him in the face :smalleek:)

So anyway, I didnt want the players to get it straight away, so I based it on an old PS1 game series none of them would have played

The Elder God from Legacy of Kain

He's this big Eldritch abomination who feeds on souls, and sits behind the scenes, manipulating all sides like marionettes.

Sounds perfect.

And as soon as I picked him and started working him into what I'd written before, everything clicked!

He suddenly fit into every piece of history so subtly, even I didn't realize he was there!

Note: Big rambling history lesson coming up. Feel free to skip it. Its mostly the story I came up with at the start, but now the Elder God (from now on TEG) is behind the scenes.
Also I've read barely any actual D&D lore, so if you have the time to read it all, tell me if I got any right.


History Starts

Creation
Decided to make him the first primordial god, a being of pure chaos. When the other gods came along he whispered in their ears to get them to fight each other, helping create the planes from little pieces of themselves as their battlegrounds, so he could devour the loser and feed his own power, with the winner claiming the battleground as their own (i.e how the Planes got their Gods).

The gods, not wanting to needlessly put themselves in harms way, shaped the essence of their planes into creatures and sent them off to fight (creation of Angels and Demons etc.) TEG happily devoured their souls too.

When everything reached a stalemate, and each god was too powerful to attack in his own realm, all the fighting died down.
Less fighting meant less souls for TEG, so he came up with a plan. He convinced each god to give a little piece of themselves to make one final battleground, where everyone would be on equal footing. And so the fighting would go on forever, and he would never go hungry.

The Material Plane was formed.

The gods duked it out, with some of the lesser gods, who didn't have dedicated planes of their own, creating soldiers from the new world around them.

Moradin chiseled rough but hearty soldiers from the mountains.
Corellon Larethian carved his supple warriors from tree branches.
Gruumsh & Maglubiyet quickly spawned vile creatures from the plentiful filth.

Then from the very soil itself came a creature which no god had a hand in creating. Not as tough as dwarves or nimble as elves or as strong as orcs, but a creature nonetheless. The first humans.

TEG, who up to now never used his own minions, saw these godless creatures, and tried to make them his own. But he wasnt the only one. All the other gods rushed to humanity.
Some, like TEG, wanted to add them to their own ranks, others to destroy this new race before they could be used against them, and others still who tried to protect these poor souls who had just been born into a war they knew nothing about.

In the ensuing struggle TEG, who was not used to direct confrontation like this, got a little too into it and tipped his hand, revealing his full power. The other gods realised they'd been played, and that their conflict had all been orchestrated by him.

Turning against him, together, the gods ripped from the ether from which he came enough material for one last plane of pure unimaginable chaos, moved it to a deep hidden place and trapped him in this Far Plane.

(Either going to use the Far Plane, or a demiplane somewhere on Material Plane)

The gods left the bloody battleground, and vowed that no one god
would ever rule the material plane. But they left something behind. The mortal instruments of the gods were, for the first time since their creation, without instruction. Still young and frightened, they huddled together at the place of their birth, the elves in the forest, the dwarves in the mountains, and the orcs and goblins in the vile dark places, waiting for their patrons to return. All except the humans. Having no masters, they had nothing tethering them to any one place. And so they roamed, settling in every conceivable place. And so the first kingdoms were created.

The Dawn of Monsters
TEG was slowly driven insane by his prison, and after a millennia, learned to shape it the way other gods could with their own planes. He gained abhorent power and began to create monstrous creatures of his own. Eventually he weakened the bonds holding him captive and gouged giant tears into the material plane.

Humanity was just getting up and running when the monsters attacked. Terrorised with a ferocity never before seen in the Material Plane, things looked bleak for humanity.
Although sympathetic, the gods could do nothing but watch, as they vowed never to return.
But something else seeped out of the chaos. Something unexpected. Magic.

In dark moments, people begin to do impossible things. Create fire. Fly. Turn invisible. The first sorcerers walk the land. They quickly teach others to mimic their words and movements, creating the first wizards, and together they fight back. However it was not enough, and humanity was still losing. As millions were slaughtered, the combined pleading of those in need caused the gods to unconsciously lend their power. Prayers began to be answered. Clerics arose. And with both arcane and divine magic humanity began to push back the tide, eventually spilling into other planes. With a massive show of power, humanity strong-armed the gods themselves into getting off their asses and helping.

Together they sealed the fissures, using great crystalline stones of pure arcane and divine magic as locks, to ensure TEG could never break though again.

The End.

(I mean theres more, stuff like magic diminishing, power struggles, politics, racism and a cat call Satan. But thats the last of TEG)

Summary of what happened
Created chaotic god
Master manipulator
Banished to the Far Plane by Coalitition of Gods, both good and evil
Prison weakens occasionally
Set of Crystals are the key to his prison

Thought this worked out great, even found places on my map to put the Crystals, and they formed a nice pentagram over a pretty nice place for an entrance to what is essentially Cthulhu's summer home. And as luck would have it, 3 more cities formed an equilateral triangle over the spot, so I thought, hey back up locks, or maybe back up keys, or power altars, or whatever.
Then AGAIN as luck would have it, the 3 cities were essentially Chaotic Courage-berg, Neutral Wisdom-Ville and Lawful Power-Town. I had accidentally made a nice little Triforce of Morality.

And with this I also had a long running thing for the players to do.

You remember the players, right? Well while I was writing this stuff, they'd just got far enought to get the first Crystal.

(which was completely ad-libbed, I just thought of a fun set piece that had a random crystal, and when they took it I just wrote around it)

So the plan was this: TEG is subtly convincing different groups of people, through dreams and whispers, to take these stones, which weakens his prison.
Players will stumble upon these groups in their travels, through various seemingly unrelated quests, and will stop them. Eventually it will be revealed that it was all connected, and players will either seal TEG away for good, or failing that, have to fight him.

Not bad right? A little done to death in a "Dont free the Eldritch Monster" way. Even TEG isn't too unfamiliar. But still. Not bad. Its got some stuff thats just mine... right? Well I thought so...

Until I got taking to a friend.
We were talking about gods, because I wanted to populate my world a little more.

He said "Have you ever heard of The Chained God?" of course I said no.

He then went on to describe MY god to me. In agonizing detail.
Can't quote him verbatum... but to give you an idea heres some select lines from the wikia page about him.

Tharizdum - The Chained one

God of Eternal Darkness, Decay, Entropy, Malign Knowledge, Insanity, and Cold

He was imprisoned ages ago by a coalition of deities...

Tharizdun has many known artifacts. "One" that is known is actually many: a collection of gems known as the Gems of Tharizdun.

[His servant] hopes to collect the Gems of Tharizdun and set its master free.

There were a set of three artifacts known as the Theoparts, which, combined, could free Tharizdun. Each Theopart represented one of the shades of evil (i.e., neutral, lawful, or chaotic.)

Should he ever escape from his prison, it is thought that even the most evil of deities would work with their good counterparts to return Tharizdun to his prison. However, the Dark God has been known to work his will secretly by employing various demons (with or without their knowledge) to do his bidding

The ethereal substance surrounding [his prison] boils with the dreamscapes of Tharizdun's worshipers and others whose dreams the dark god invades.
...worshiped by nonhuman aberrations

So let me get this straight:

Checklist Time:

Insane ✔
Malign Knowledge ✔
Evil. ✔ (So far, this could be lots of gods)
Imprisoned. ✔
By other Gods. ✔ Hmm...
Of all alignments ✔ ... :smalleek:
Sealed in a demiplane. ✔
... Or the Far Plane ✔ ohcomeon
Could only be released by Crystals ✔
...Or 3 special things... ✔ :smallannoyed:
...Which represent alignments ✔ :smallmad:
Secretly Manipulates people ✔:smallfurious:
Invades dreams ✔
Aberrations ✔ (created them)

Exactly. The. Same.

Other stuff I only had roughly in my head is the same: his logo (a spiral to represent the far plane), some titles (He who waits), Temples (he was responsible for pyramids), his appearance (amorphous, faceless, kinda squid-like, with tentacles), style of prision (weird cyst thing or a synapse)...

All identical

It cant be a coincidence.

tl;dr I constructed a god who already existed. Exactly.

You all know what this means right.

Tharizdun prison has weakened and he has been sending me messages in my dreams.

If I worship him maybe he'll spare me from the upcoming destruction.

I hope he likes human sacrifices because... well its too late.

Praise Tharizdun

Oh and also... you know... has this happened to you?
or what did you think?
Also I kinda need a new group now, if anyones interested

[Thaneus]

You have my sympathy.
Something similar occurred to me to.

Wrote a story in an RPG System not very old at this time (it was 2015 and the first book of the system was release end of 2014ish) so I knew the basics from the core rule book and the "The Wold" book which were the only one at the time.

Get to work create a great war like time between several magical realms (basically the world is divide in mortal/material, spiritual (the dead mirror image of the mortal world), magical (several domains each reigned by different fey kings/queens with their own rules) and the god realm).

I wrecked my brain how to get this millennia like history down and how it concluded that for now it is peace.
My scenario included a "fallen" fey king who seeks revenge for the losses of the war and also from all mortals who hunt his mortal kin (whales)...

Long story short, last year i read a fantasy novel which had my setting quite well and was written sometime around 1990ish


I mean it was cool time to play with my mates and they had fun, at least most the time :smallcool:

[Inevitability]

Obviously this proves a wicked Elder Evil is weakening the veil between worlds and sneaking its own psyche into the minds of various mortals, one of which is a WotC designer. :smalltongue:

[Millstone85]

When I imagined a patron for my warlock, who was of the star pact in 4e and of the great old one in 5e, here is what I came up with:
* Like one of the primal spirits honored by druids, except from an alien ecosystem.
* Has the appearance of a swarm of tiny to large creatures, with the occasional gargantuan.
* May actually be able to coexist with life as we know it, or not.
* Would be described by warlocks as a sort of fairy godparent.

Later on, I began wondering if I had reinvented Shub-Niggurath.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Iä! Iä!

[Jay R]

I have a general solution. I base my character on a specific literary or mythological character, and then build in specific differences.

If I build a storm god, I might pattern him on Thor, but then deliberately add a rivalry with the god of the sun, change the hammer to a lightning sword, and make him Chinese in looks.

My most original PCs were all based on specific characters. I had a 2e elven thief based on Tarzan, a Flashing Blades rogue based on Disney's Aladdin, and a superhero based on Reed Richards with the powers of Magneto and Lightning Lad.

[Lord Torath]

I created three monsters that already existed as well.

First, Lizardmen. They're okay, but they're slow, and live in swamps. So I created a new version, that were faster, and lived in the desert. And hey, they could have lizard mounts they ride instead of camels or horses. That's pretty cool, right? What to call them.... lots of esses, maybe something like Sis'Thok. I wrote up descriptions of the Sis'Thok and their mounts. Then I got the D&D Creature Catalog, where they have desert-dwelling lizardmen called Sis'Thik that ride six-legged lizards called Xytar. :smallannoyed:

Several years later, I started looking at a new insect race. Preying Mantises are really cool looking, maybe I could make some Mantis-men. I showed an early sketch to a friend, who suggested I look at the Thri-Kreen. :smallsigh:

[Beleriphon]

In D&D's long history (coming up on 50 years folks) there's very little that hasn't been published in some D&D book somewhere.

Originality is often more about presentation than actual details. Gandalf is basically Odin in the guise of an old man or Merlin. The Sword of Shanarra books are basically a LotR riff with that druid guy being Gandalf in all but name.

[Arbane]

Nothing new under the sun.

In the superhero MMO, City of Heroes, I'll admit I made a fair number of characters that were (ahem) 'tributes' to characters I liked, but one was entirely accidental - for the expansion City of Villains, I made The Creepy Little Girl, a J-Horror rip-off who mostly just stabbed things and acted weird around the rest of the super-group. Later, I wanted to make an origin for her, which involved psychic powers, evil experiments by a government conspiracy...

No, I never watched 'Firefly', why do you ask? Yeah, I quite accidentally made Evil River Tam.

[Deliverance]

Look at it from the positive side, at least you didn't manage to recreate the Epic of Gilgamesh by mistake. :smallbiggrin: (Though that would be all sorts of awesome, come to think of it.)

I heartily recommend anybody who want to engage in fantasy worldbuilding, whether for RPG or story writing, to read Diana Wynne Jones' non-fiction book "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland".

[Beastrolami]

My friend created a young Rick Sanchez.... a couple months before Rick and Morty was released. (down to teh spikey blue hair, lab coat, and slouch)

In his current world, which he built from scratch, similar to OP, I noticed some striking resemblances to my favorite book series. Even one of my characters ended up becoming one of the characters in the series, even though the initial concept was completely different.

[bulbaquil]

There is nothing new under the sun... and that sentence was written about 2400 years ago, so by this point there's probably nothing new under the moon or stars either.

For me, it's usually some anime I've never heard of that I'm unconsciously ripping off.

[Ravian]

There is nothing new under the sun... Whenever I have an interesting idea for a fantasy or sci-fi world, I usually check by habit to see if anything has ever been done like it before. After a certain point of too many coincidences to count I usually just content myself if it's nothing anyone's outside a small group of devoted fans have ever heard of or else just wrap it up in a new box and hope nobody notices.

[Cluedrew]

You know... A la Mr Glass from Unbreakable.Wait, people have actually seen that movie? I didn't watch it by choice and none of the people I watched it with liked it either. ... It had potential but little more than that.

Anyways, not only I think the idea of originality, is not only more tenuous than many would like to think, but also over rated. Taking an old idea and doing it really well seems to get better results often times than a unusual idea, maybe there is a good reason it isn't done often.

[Cealocanth]

I run into this issue when I make campaign settings quite often.

First idea: Let's build a Savage Worlds setting that is based off of survival horror. No, not 'try to survive in a horror environment', but more like the tribal, paleolithic kind of survival. I guess you could call it prehistoric horror. Was a pretty cool idea. The world was vast and mysterious, the peoples of the area had very tribalistic and primitive ways of seeing the world compared to most well-known civilizations, and the monsters had a neat fundamental caveman sort-of fear to them. The magic was ritualistic and almost nothing like I've seen in an RPG before. I had the basic supplement book and was beta testing it with my group when one of them introduced me to Totems of the Dead, a prehistoric, tribal, survival horror RPG for Savage Worlds.

Second idea: We've all done the classic fantasy heroes thing before. What we haven't seen is anything that builds a game world set in the most classic fantasy of them all - Greco-Roman and Mesopotamian mythology. I decided to make a game based off of a superheroes rule system where the players played as demigods in Ancient Greece and fought through great and mighty monsters and played in the games of the gods. I had completed the first page, and then I discovered MYTHOS, a campaign setting with literally the same setup.

Third idea: Okay, so if the greek hero thing is taken, what if I try to do a Viking Edda? That sounds cool. We can have rune magic and viking warriors and dragon-ships and sailing to kill the mythical beasts of the gods. Then I discovered Hellfrost, a setting that takes that idea, makes an entire, extremely detailed game world out of it, and is actually quite fun.

Yup. At some point you stop trying to be original and just do your own thing.

[ngilop]

Here is my favorite story in regards to 'oops I stole something'.

So, a few years ago some friends asked me to design a dungeon delve heavy campaign for 3rd ed.


This was in February.. maybe early March. So I sat down and just starting writing random thoughts that came to my head and after a got a few pages of notes and important NPCs sketched out I presented an outline of what-it-is and what-it-do to my players. They seemed to like what I had down and gave their opinions on what could be axed, minimized, added to, or expanded upon.

This was mid april.

Mid July I had everything done. designed the 14 layer dungeon that was to be the main 'delve' center of operations and added in 4 other smaller dungeons and about a dozen or so 'optional' dungeons.

Then I do what I always do and do a run through with a predesigned party, wherein I make a damage spong barbarian, trap monkey rogue, heal bot cleric, magic missile plus fireball mage, and a bard who kinda does whatever the other 2 casters are not doing.

It was not until I was halfway done with the test runthat I realized "crap.. this is just diablo but instead od the big demon possessing the king's son, he manages to possess the king himself and the princess is on the run because she knows something is up.