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View Full Version : Okay, DMs, what have YOU "borrowed" from?



Muz
2008-05-16, 03:33 PM
Okay, DMs, we've all done it. (Well, most of us. Well, okay, I have, and I'm hoping I'm not alone 'cause otherwise this is going to be a really boring thread.) Life's busy, you've got job, family, non-gaming-related fun stuff going on, but you still have to run a campaign. You don't have time to completely spin up an entirely new adventure idea, but you also don't want to just grab a module directly. So what do you do? You mine TV/books/movies/video games, that's what! :smallsmile:

Granted this works best (or works only) if your players are unfamiliar with what you're stealing from, so it can be a little tricky, but if done well, it can also be pretty darned cool. So my question is, what have YOU stolen ripped off appropriated borrowed from to adapt into an RPG campaign? I suppose I should start, huh?

My campaign's in a homebrewed world, but lots of what happens there can be considered Frankensteined in from other sources, including the following (I'll just list a few details, but I'd be glad to elaborate if anyone's curious):

-Elements from Terry Brooks' Four Lands setting (party stepped through a one-way gate and found themselves in Culhaven during the Federation occupation, and--long story short--had to find their way home)

-Quest for Glory 2 (the end, anyway; the Ad Avis character was just a weathly and foolish merchant messing with stuff far beyond his skill)

-Quest for Glory 5 (pretty much the plot of the whole game, with adjustments and no liontaurs/kattas, but it worked out quite well)

-Quest for Glory 4 (Katrina, the merchant from above, and the town setting itself, though Katrina's goal was quite different, far outside the city, and she'd insinuated herself into the party's business long before they even arrived in town)

-A liiiiittle bit of Hyperion. :smallbiggrin:

-The Dark Crystal (general plot, though altered in various ways, among them the idea that the game-Skeksis were psionic and game-Aughra was a crystal dragon)

That's about all for the major stuff I've appropriated, and it's been a while since I've taken anything now. (Of course, right now I'm running a rather large 2nd edition module, so...) There've been various other things that are less major, however. Borrowed names, concepts, etc., such as a king of a somewhat Celtic nation named Owain Glyndor and an enigmatic gnome named Kesh who knows more than he should and has claimed "We are ALL Kesh..."

So I know I'm not alone. Come on, own up. It doesn't make you any less creative to admit it, you know. (Heck, it takes work sewing all that stuff together cohesively, plus it makes for a fun mishmash.) :smallbiggrin:

Human Paragon 3
2008-05-16, 03:46 PM
The Sparrow
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Phantasy Star IV
Apocalypse Now (or, if you prefer, Heart of Darkness)
Battlestar Galactica
Disc World
Terminator
Preditor
Event Horizon
Dr. Who
Marvel 1602
Dragon Ball Z
True Events in Earth History (of course)
Punky Brewster (wierdly enough)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel
Bartameus trillogy

That's all I can think of right now, but the list almost certainly goes on.

EDIT: I have original thoughts, I promise. I've just been DMing for a long time.

Xefas
2008-05-16, 04:18 PM
I steal names from everything.

If there's a movie/book/game that I've seen/read/played that none of my players have, then it's overwhelmingly likely that I've ripped a name or two from it.

This has had many awkward effects when a new player joins the game. Partway through the "The story so far..." explanation my group will be giving them, they start to snicker and blurt out "This city is entirely run by Warcraft characters!" or "All the geography on this continent are names of Dawn of War maps!" to which I then I have to stop everyone and explain I mooched the names from somewhere else and that they actually have no relation whatsoever to the thing I mooched them from.

Often, when I'm retelling a roleplaying story as an anecdote on a forum, I have to invent all new names for many of the proper nouns in the story so it doesn't sound quite as dumb.

Tequila Sunrise
2008-05-16, 04:26 PM
I gratuitously and unashamedly borrow names and plots from everything. Deities named Athena and Merlin, nations known as The Shire and Thorbardin, cities called Camelot and Caemlyn, plots involving large circular magical portals to countless worlds dominated by aberrations that live in your head. I'm a literary thief, and proud of it!

TS

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 04:29 PM
I take something from just about EVERYTHING I come across. Trick is, I take the small things no one will notice, not even a total geek. For example, stealing the name of a minor antagonist from a CRPG for making a character, or making a plot similar to that of an obscure tv series but refined, etc. Works wonders, really.

Muz
2008-05-16, 04:30 PM
Heck, I swipe names for things the player(s) HAVE seen, sometimes if only for amusement. (In most cases, they're only names, though every once in a while they're exactly appropriate, since they're used to them being otherwise.)

The party was once traveling and came across (random encounter) a really big guy, and regular-sized guy with a sword, and a short, stocky bald guy. They claimed to be "but poor lost circus performers" and asked if there was a village nearby.

Cue extremely wary reaction from the party, even though they did turn out to BE lost circus performers. :smallwink:

obliged_salmon
2008-05-16, 04:34 PM
The captain of my Serenity game was hired to stand in for a famous opera singer on Paquin (whom she looked almost exactly like), and got abducted on stage. None of the players knew about FFVI, but they LOVED the hook.

Reinboom
2008-05-16, 04:34 PM
For my current campaign, I made sure to read (or reread) the following:

Sun Tzu's Art of War
U.S. Military field manuals (most notably on resource allocation)
Select works of Machiavelli.
Les Giblin's How to Have Confidence & Power in Dealing with People (not for me, but for an NPC to use)

I also spoke with a close friend for a lot of preindustrial European war insights (of which, he is a major in).


Other than that, I'm not sure what my influences are.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 04:38 PM
For my current campaign, I made sure to read (or reread) the following:

Sun Tzu's Art of War
U.S. Military field manuals (most notably on resource allocation)
Select works of Machiavelli.
Les Giblin's How to Have Confidence & Power in Dealing with People (not for me, but for an NPC to use)

I also spoke with a close friend for a lot of preindustrial European war insights (of which, he is a major in).


Other than that, I'm not sure what my influences are.


....What, no love for the 48 Rules of Power?

Player_Zero
2008-05-16, 04:43 PM
I think that it'd be much easier to find things which I/we haven't stolen from. What was that quote... "A genius piece of writing is not showing your sources." Or something like that, anyway.

Interesting things I've stolen from:
The Ultima Virtues system.
Vandal Hearts (The PS1 game) - That is, I borrowed names, places and whatnot.
...EVERY anime series I've ever watched... Yeah, I'm just that cool.

AstralFire
2008-05-16, 04:46 PM
One of my party's NPC assistants is a direct homage to Jade Curtiss/Balfour from Tales of the Abyss, although he has developed an independent personality over time.

Ravyn
2008-05-16, 04:48 PM
Usually my borrowings are pretty small, relatively obscure sources, and by the time I'm done with them you wouldn't recognize them. My personal best happened near the end of last winter, for my Exalted game--I'd gotten a visual inspiration from Pullman's panzerbjorne. Six hours in tight conspiracy with one of my players later, we had.... well, they were still polar bears, and they still wore armor of meteoric iron, but they'd also become leave-no-traces world-fixers with a complicated variation on the setting astrological system and the quirkiest mechanical bases I think I'd ever devised.

Aside from that, I've borrowed several in jokes from different series, two names (nobody's caught me out on them yet), two pictures.... and my group is about to be run through what's essentially a high-powered game of Calvinball. It's all good, right?

Reinboom
2008-05-16, 05:01 PM
....What, no love for the 48 Rules of Power?

Didn't read it til now.
Interesting work, though, the NPCs that actually use the works I listed have a developed personality and psychology that I don't want to risk offplaying by sinking more in to them. And there are a couple of rules on that list that they would just strictly disagree with.

Satyr
2008-05-16, 05:01 PM
My current campaign world is hybrid from Guprps Banestorm (medieval humans from good old Terra are summoned into a fantasy world) with fantasy creatures from Changeling: The Dreaming (an old world of darkness setting) and the cosmological background similar to the spirit world Werewolf: The Apocalypse (another world of darkness setting), with additional elements from Midnight D20, Dark Sun, several standard works of medieval history as ressources and several stupid ideas from myself.
The system is a chimera of much too many different editions of D20 such as Iron Heroes, Midnight, Standard D&D, Game of Thromes and about 50 pages of houserules.
It's a monster.
But a great monster.

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 05:03 PM
Didn't read it til now.
Interesting work, though, the NPCs that actually use the works I listed have a developed personality and psychology that I don't want to risk offplaying by sinking more in to them. And there are a couple of rules on that list that they would just strictly disagree with.

Of course. Some rules contradict each other. A lord who uses them all judiciously is invincible, more or less, but you can't use them all at once.

Jayngfet
2008-05-16, 05:08 PM
I steal everything that doesn't sound like it has too many apostrophes, I hate those.

Saph
2008-05-16, 05:12 PM
I copied my last campaign completely off of an old Genesis RPG, Phantasy Star IV. Copied the characters, story, plot, world, names, everything. I even tried to structure the campaign to follow the game story. Doing your own work is for suckers. :P

- Saph

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 05:34 PM
I copied my last campaign completely off of an old Genesis RPG, Phantasy Star IV. Copied the characters, story, plot, world, names, everything. I even tried to structure the campaign to follow the game story. Doing your own work is for suckers. :P

- Saph

I Take Offense to That Last One! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne)

I has wuvs my true high magic campaign setting. I is not going to let it goes.

Scaboroth
2008-05-16, 05:37 PM
I've always made it a point to not railroad my campaigns, which sometimes turns against me when the PCs go off in an utterly random and unforeseen direction. What do you do when you have to come up with multiple NPCs on the spot? Pull some names off a pre-written list, of course. I noticed when I started reading Dune that Frank Herbert loves to give you little details about minor characters, many of whom would appear no more than once in the narrative. Every time a new name popped up, I would jot it down. By the end of the series (six large books in all) the list was hundreds of names long!

TheCountAlucard
2008-05-16, 07:50 PM
I mostly borrow names. A common tactic of mine is to reverse them, or otherwise mix up the letters. A warm beach city became known as "Immia."

shadow_archmagi
2008-05-16, 07:56 PM
I've always made it a point to not railroad my campaigns, which sometimes turns against me when the PCs go off in an utterly random and unforeseen direction. What do you do when you have to come up with multiple NPCs on the spot? Pull some names off a pre-written list, of course. I noticed when I started reading Dune that Frank Herbert loves to give you little details about minor characters, many of whom would appear no more than once in the narrative. Every time a new name popped up, I would jot it down. By the end of the series (six large books in all) the list was hundreds of names long!

Thats the ideal way to steal. Steal things no one else will notice. Its best if they havn't even SEEN the source. Even if they have, who is going to remember little Mrs. Mapes the cleaner woman?

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-16, 07:59 PM
Or the Zirekile monastery from final fantasy tactics? Or Tiresias the seer from Oedipus Rex? Or Vellichek the genius technician from Starcraft's Kimmerian Pirates added mission?

Something like that?

Glawackus
2008-05-16, 08:03 PM
Hellboy--I have an undersea temple coming up that's going to have some Mike Mignola-ish goodness.

Discworld--I think the Citadel Elite (Eberron) are dumb-looking in every art piece, and as such, I treat the Sharn City Watch as having a much larger jurisdiction and much more competent officers a la the Ankh-Morpork Watch. (There's a warforged character coming up based on Detritus! :smallbiggrin:)

The Phantom of the Opera--I'm working on a one-shot adventure, possibly for my old DM's birthday, that's going to be a pretty straight-up adaptation of this (with the PCs cleaning out the dungeons under the opera house and contending with the Opera Ghost trying to ruin everything).

Grommen
2008-05-16, 08:20 PM
Like the Kender, I've stolen anything that was not nailed down.

In my current campaign the PC's Wild Elf village is lead by "Chief Two-Feathers", the great Shaman "Smoke on the Watter", other villages are named "Fire in the Sky" and "Rockey Mountain High". I was running out of names when one of the players suggested the ever famous "Three Dog Night".

Many of the named weapons have names like "Megadeath", and "Merciful Fate".

I once centered an entire adventure around Darth Vader and his quest for the last "Twinky" in the universe.

O and of coarse we all travel down the Yellow Brick Road to seek the "Wizard of Ozz(y)"

EvilElitest
2008-05-16, 08:23 PM
I can borrow from anything. literally anything
from
EE

wakazashi.juice
2008-05-16, 08:48 PM
I've borrowed from... well, just about everything. Names, ideas, entire plotlines. I even stole pirate halflings from Tears of Blood for my own campaign (kudos guys, great idea).

I do have this DM, who insists on ripping nothing off (except for stuff in official DnD books: Gnomes and Halflings and Orcs are extremely generic). Most of his city names end up being 'Town A' or 'City X', inside 'Nation Y'.

The Gilded Duke
2008-05-16, 09:00 PM
Best movie I ever borrowed from was "The Warriors", best traveling adventure I have ever done. The Chosen are just trying to deliver a message to an Inspired Lord. Another Inspired doesn't want that message to ever get delivered and so has sent out all of her agents, and alerted all of the groups old enemies of their exact route and destination.

Besides that.. I like stealing awesome moments from pre-published adventures. Sometimes I find neat things in some of the monster manuals where I take a concept from it but ignore the stats. (Monster Manual 5 is the best for this)

Thorosofmyr
2008-05-16, 10:24 PM
Extensive borrowing was done from many a video game and anime

The "Hammer of Dawn" from Gears of war
The cyborg demon undead ninja, inspired partly from Grey Fox in MGS
Several bits from Half Life 2
-Directed RPGs
-Walking Drones
-Armed enforcers completely in gas masks
An omnipotent trans-dimentional arms dealer, partially from the arms seller in Resident Evil 4
A lot of mech ideas from Eva
The Dhaka, from Price of Persia 2
Basically Plasmids from Bioshock

And quite a few others, all from the same RPG too. Was a bunch of fun, tell you true.

FlyMolo
2008-05-16, 10:29 PM
Mostly personalities. I ripped off my god-sorceror from Dr. Who. Acts, talks, and looks kinda like the Doctor.

Basically the same role, too.

Albonor
2008-05-16, 10:38 PM
One of my party's NPC assistants is a direct homage to Jade Curtiss/Balfour from Tales of the Abyss, although he has developed an independent personality over time.

I've got one too but he is one of the BAAAAAAAd guys...

drengnikrafe
2008-05-17, 01:28 AM
I decided to run a sandbox campaign after my plans for a Princess Bride Campaign and Final Fantasy I campaign went down the tubes. So, I had to design a big map with lots of arbitrary cities so that my PCs could explore as they wish. Only one problem: I bite at coming up with names. Then, the idea hit me: Take awesome names from weapons. Immediately, the name of every weapon that didn't explicitly sound like a weapon from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones appeared as the name in my city.
I also got a weird inkling, and was able to twist the name of my girlfriend in 4 different ways to put as four totally different cities. That was the funnier part....

KillianHawkeye
2008-05-17, 07:24 AM
I once made the D&D version of Carmen Sandiego. I'm currently working on doing the Thundercats as a group of adventuring Catfolk.

The BBEG in my current campaign is searching for an artifact that has the same power as the BBEG from the 4th season of Angel. (The one where anybody who looks at her gets auto-brainwashed to worship her.)


The party was once traveling and came across (random encounter) a really big guy, and regular-sized guy with a sword, and a short, stocky bald guy. They claimed to be "but poor lost circus performers" and asked if there was a village nearby.

Cue extremely wary reaction from the party, even though they did turn out to BE lost circus performers. :smallwink:

I totally have to steal this one!! :smallbiggrin:

Newtkeeper
2008-05-17, 04:26 PM
Everything I can get my grubby little hands on.

I am not ashamed to say my campaign's races are lovingly ripped from Tolkien. My elves are wise, my orcs cruel, my halflings hobbits.

Though I play in no official campaign setting, I feel no shame in robbing anything that'll fit from any setting- especially Planescape. My world is somewhere in a knockoff Great Wheel.

Norse Mythology is my bread and butter. I stole the whole pantheon, and took not only its lunch money, but also its monsters- and the concept of Ragnaroc.

But, in the end, nothing is so unbelievable, so fantastic, so uncopyrighted as reality. Semi-nomadic warrior jews? We've got Khazars! Lands across the seas discovered and colonized by exiles? Check! Great leaders whose empires decayed within a generation? Meet my pal Charlemagne! Voyages of discovery around the world? Too many to bother counting, although I'm partial to Cook. The same, made by pirates? Drake, show em!

I've taken reality, smashed it up, remolded it, and added magic. Really, what else do we need? Besides pointy-eared folk, I mean.

mostlyharmful
2008-05-17, 05:00 PM
[QUOTE=Grommen;4332091]I once centered an entire adventure around Darth Vader and his quest for the last "Twinky" in the universe. [QUOTE]

Now this one sounds like fun. I can see playing a minion/henchman/Igor-type stormtrooper as we march across the cosmos, slaying irritating teddybears and bemoaning the lack of a good joint grease these days.... Loads of fun.:smallbiggrin:

Personally, I love to steal from Pratchett, Tolkein and the Old WoD, plus Banestorms great for ideas about cramming magic and mediaval humans together with wacky races. Also The Icelandic Sagas are fantastic for nicking personal motivations/stories and good names...

Project_Mayhem
2008-05-17, 05:02 PM
Or Tiresias the seer from Oedipus Rex

Aww come on, anyone who knows the slightest about Greek mythology would recognise him - Ovid uses him in like every story

... although if I did use the name, I'd make him a changeling :smallwink:

Azerian Kelimon
2008-05-17, 07:00 PM
Aww come on, anyone who knows the slightest about Greek mythology would recognise him - Ovid uses him in like every story

... although if I did use the name, I'd make him a changeling :smallwink:

Thing is, the Tiresias I made was a very insightful Psychic warrior with a truly CG sense of humour. He was Tiresias in name and in insight, in the rest, he was much more fleshed out and interesting.

Soup of Kings
2008-05-17, 09:17 PM
My PC's were traveling through a forest and I randomly rolled a pack of centaurs for them, who they attempted to meet with diplomacy. Only when the PC's had asked the name of the forest did I remember I had forgot to come up with one. I'm normally pretty good at coming up with original names, but I can't do it on the spot. So I called it Du Weldenvarden, with an OOC apology to my players and a promise I would come up with a more original name and use Du Weldenvarden as sort of a placeholder. For those of you who don't know, that's from Eragon.

I don't know if this counts, but it's funny. I was playing a Bard once and tried to use a spoon as a weapon, and my DM, who is a Final Fantasy nut, laughed and spit soda. Good times.

Grommen
2008-05-18, 09:45 AM
There is no spoon. :smallcool:

SoD
2008-05-18, 12:32 PM
Well, as they say, a good DM borrows, a brilliant DM steals, and a godly DM doesn't let his players notice when he does.

When I do, I tend to start with a premade idea, and change, and adjust until he's independant.

My original idea: Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson from Terry Pratchett (someone who knows everyone).
First change (it's a biggy!): Not a warrior/fighter/monk/any sort of melee. He is now a 27th level commoner.
Second Change: As well as knowing everyone (the main idea), I wanted him to be friends with everyone (not quite carrotesque, would carrot happily be friends with a mass murderer?). Due to this, he knows everything that goes on in this Metrolopis (add a touch of Vetinari). Also everyone likes him (a dash more Carrot).
Third Change: I wanted this guy to be luck incarnate, even at 81 years old (oh yeah, age modification).

Final Product: a TN human paragon 3/commoner 17/Lucky Bastard* 10, whose charisma is over 30, and who has vow of poverty.

*Fortunes Friend

Leon
2008-05-18, 02:07 PM
Anything and Everything that i like the look of
my last Campagin was basically me converting Morrowind to D&D and tweaking it from time to time

Steelrose
2008-05-19, 07:02 AM
I'm focused on trapmaking at the moment so I have to say the Saw movies.
Although, some ideas have come from H.P. Lovecraft :smallwink:

Drascin
2008-05-19, 08:31 AM
Basically everything I have ever read or watched. I personally like getting little details from everything in my campaigns, whether it's things the players have seen or not.

A few examples? Well, the Warblade in my current campaign has mutated and developed a couple templates due to exposition to a particular blue mutagen (you've all played Metroid, so I won't insult you by explaining this one), they have faced Dark Falz a couple times, the Desert Wind Swordsage is pals with (and packing some powers of) an Elemental Lord that is suspiciously alike to Alastor from Shakugan no Shana, the current head of the city they're basing in is not Vetinari, honest :smalltongue:, the little imp they basically adopted wears Kamina glasses and cape since he took a level in badass, and the brutally powerful NPC they met a few sessions ago (and who is going to get possessed by aforementioned Falz in a couple more) wields a Bardiche clone.

These are just from this particular campaign. 'Course, none of my players have ever played Phantasy Star, watched Shakugan or Lyrical Nanoha, or read anything of Discworld, and only one has watched TTGL or played Metroid Prime, so most things kinda go really over their heads, but I'm having a blast at the very least :smalltongue:

Bender
2008-05-19, 08:33 AM
The campaign I'm running now is very loosely based on a blades of exile (http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/blades/winBOE.html) scenario, but it evolved and only one idea for an artefact remained.
That game sure has some good scenario's...

For scenery, I sometimes use real places I've actually been, like the Golden Temple in Kyoto.