What do you Steal From?

[Enforcer84]

Okay, when you need an NPC (or PC) and nothing's flowing for you, do you look towards comics? Cartoons? Anime? Video Games? MOvies? Music? Literature?

Is your world populated with martial artists who fling fire and punch dragons? Any one winged Bishonen with Frickin' Huge Swords? Psychic NInjas with Purple hair?

What is your favorite source for swiping? Or is it mute and you swipe from all tihngs all the time

[Hermit]

Steal? STEAL?

I prefer to think of it as 'flattering' :p

[Enforcer84]

I suspected you would post first Hermit, can't resist a poll can you Muwahahahahahaha*coughhackcoughhack*darn ashema....

[lemming]

I think of it as idea enhancement ;)

[Ghost Archer]

Mining the ore of an NPC from a book is less likely to be identified . . . at least by my normal players.

[Catacomb]

All of the above and then some. I took a recent adventure from an episode of 'Fastlane' (The whole inject a guy with poison, dies in 24 hours I have the antidote schtick).

[Evil Steve]

Originally posted by Catacomb
All of the above and then some. I took a recent adventure from an episode of 'Fastlane' (The whole inject a guy with poison, dies in 24 hours I have the antidote schtick).

Which they stole from Escape from New York.:)

As for myself, I am the kleptomaniacal viking of ideas.

Loot and Pillage everything you can from everyone you can!

[Storn]

appropriately, I get many of my ideas from an acronym:

NPR National Public Radio.

Listen most of the day whilst I doodle the illos that will be gracing yuir rule books. I do take breaks from talk and news and listen to another acronym; BBC radio One... but that is when I'm looking for my techno-dance-trance groove. <g>

Seriously, many ideas have come to me based on real current events... usually small stories in out of the way places... but much of what I'm doing in my current Black Op arc is listening to BBC reporting on African politics... I've just dressed it up in paranormal spandex.

[Spectrum]

I tend to draw my ideas from movies, comics and various animes. Sometimes I take various elements that I like (sometimes small details) and incorporate them into one character. Although on occasion I've taken too much from one source and the end result is less than enjoyable. If I find myself drawing only on one source (ie: a prestablihed character) I try to use it as a spring board to come up with my own stuff and have a character that I enjoy playing.

[Mayday]

I cant play characters I didnt create so I may steal large concepts but I have to make it mine before I can use it. Same for NPCs out of a book.

Recently for a City of Heroes group I created Salvo. The group concept was one person, and all of her parallel world duplicates. For that campaign I stole from MechWarrior, Civilization (the PC game), Lion in Winter (the movie), Starship Trooper (the book) and Edgar Rice Burroughs. All of us based our concept off of a girl named Alexandra Rose, with red hair and green eyes.

We have a Nazis-won-WW2 texas supersoldier, a medieval bio-engineered slave catwoman, a corporate ninja, an elven ice sorceress, a Borg, a mystical samurai and Vessel, who is just too complicated a world to condense easily but is very cool.

Alias: Salvo
Name: Alyx Rousseau
Type: Gadgeteer
Description: Iron Man
Home Dimension: Terra Britannia

The Sun never set on this British Empire. Beginning with the Plantagenets, the first son of Henry II succeeded his father at the end of the 11th century. Richard LionHeart led the Crusade that reclaimed the Holy Lands as Geoffrey did the Frankish lands in Henry IIIs name. Saladin's empire was repulsed and eventually engulfed, bringing the Renaissance earlier, and to Britain rather than Italian shores. Enlightened British Royals unfettered by the Magna Carta led the exploration of the new continents in the footsteps of the norsemen.

British colonies wiped out french, spanish and portugeuse footholds, leaving only the norse colonies in the north and aztec empires in the south. These formed the basis of an economic powerhouse that continued centuries long military and social dominance.

China led the space race to the lush jungled world of Venus, but Britain was quick to follow to the Barsoomian world of Mars, Aztecs and Russians in their footsteps.

As the number of outworld colonies grew giant corporations came into dominance on each, buttressed by mech armies assisted by mechanized infantry units. Occasionally these units were used to control the worker classes but primarily for battles over resource worlds.

Background: Alyx was born into privelage as heiress to one of the largest dynastic corporation clans on Mars. As with others in her family, her training included a stint in her family's military mech squadrons to prove her leadership ability and valor, her fitness to rule the Clan. Caught up in a bitter, hard fought war with another Corporation several of Alyx' sisters, uncles and cousins died. Alyx herself led a jump unit into the enemy capital, one of thousands, but was shot down and captured. Alyx' father refused to ransom her, abandoning her to her fate.

The original posts are here. http://www.coh.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21401

[Dynamo]

I just can't vote in this one. I steal from everything, everyone, and everywhere with no shame whatsoever.

[ShelleyCM]

I'm shameless -- I'm inspired by everything. A Brazilian history class inspired my latest PC, Bartholomea Bargas (http://mactyre.net/archives/characters/bb.html), and I've been known to steal other things wholesale, from Eliza Thornberry making an appearance in a PRIMUS game to stealing the Rapture from the Elementals for use in a Champs game. I steal CoC adventures for other genres, Jane Austen plots...you name it, I've lifted it.

-Shelley

[Enforcer84]

Originally posted by Dynamo
I just can't vote in this one. I steal from everything, everyone, and everywhere with no shame whatsoever.
you can pick more than one you know:)

[Dynamo]

Originally posted by Enforcer84
you can pick more than one you know :)You're right. OK, I just picked them all, excepting only denial of theft.

You left out one of my favorite sources, though. I steal lots of stuff from this very Discussion Board. You guys post some great stuff, and you're nuts if you think I don't rob you blind. :)

[Syberdwarf2]

I steal from everything. But for the most part TV. Most of my games are Star HERO, so I steal from Andromeda, Badboloney 5, et cetera......
For my champs games, a quick browsing of the news is sufficient.

[Blue]

I have not stolen from a cereal box since the Captain Crunch campaign of '84.

My current campaign has at least 4 elements adapted directly from books (that my players haven't read).

I'm sure there are TV, Movie, and Comic Book references in my subconscious for the rest of it.

[DoctorItron]

Interesting. Comics are currently in 3rd place, behind movies and literature. It's a close race, though.

I'd like to add one voting category: "Game Material from other RPGs".

[Tamashii2000]

I steal.. umm borrow from every soure I can, last game had - Power Rings (as in green lantern) that were powered by the 'soul energy' of extra-dimentional creatures (Lord of the rings..kinda) which were being hunted down by an race of all female warriors who felt they were corrupting the world (Wonder Woman)

[JohnOSpencer]

Originally posted by Dynamo
I just can't vote in this one. I steal from everything, everyone, and everywhere with no shame whatsoever.

Preach on brother Dynamo, preach on.

Everything, everyone, anything, heck I steal so many ideas I don't even remember where I get them.

John Spencer

[wcw43921]

Have any of you ever swiped an idea without meaning to? It is possible--I came up with the concept of a telepathic sleepwalker--when she was asleep her mind would take physical form and go out into the world to do all the things she was too inhibited to do while awake.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself for my inventiveness--then I remembered I'd seen the concept before on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

All together now. . .

DO'H!!!

[tmutant]

I use ideas from everywhere, usually with a little twist to make it unique, or at least disquise so the players don't realize where it came from.:D

[winterhawk]

As an admited Pop Culture Junkie (no 12 step program for me!), let's see if I can name all the stolen elements in my current campaign by poll category...

Comics: To many to name...NPC's include 'homages' to Superman, Reed Richards, Luke Cage, Puck from Alpha Flight and the Morlocks.

Anime/Manga: NPC is a Knight Templar, sort of the Vatican's Special Forces who carries a weapon similar to (ok, its a direct ripoff :p ) the Cross Punisher wielded by Nicolas D. Wolfwood in Trigun...also have a villain who pilots his Powered Armor via Mobile Trace System ala G Gundam.

Cartoons: Currently working on villainous versions of Apache Chief, Black Vulcan, Samurai and El Dorado from Superfriends...and all superbase computers in every campaign I have ever run are manufactured by a company called Troubalert.

Movies: NPC martial artist whose costume is heavily influenced by Iron Monkey and manuevers include "No Shadow Kick" and "Buhdda Palm".

Literature: Villainous hellfire projector called Dante who belongs to the villain group Slaughterhouse 5.

Music: The campaign's version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is called The Revolution, named after Queensryche's "Revolution Calling".

Opera: Not a fan, so I've never done anyting...but my gf is...thanks for the idea!

TV: Player has a character equipped with a suit of Mandaarian powered armor...I portray the Mandaarians as cryptic and all-knowing like the Vorlons in B5.

All I can think of now...feel free to steal anything :P

[Mayday]

NPC is a Knight Templar, sort of the Vatican's Special Forces who carries a weapon similar to...

Id never thought about playing a Vatican licensed special forces hero. Thanks!

[Dynamo]

Originally posted by Mayday
Id never thought about playing a Vatican licensed special forces hero.>>SWIPE<<

Now steal from Storn's UNTIL Black Ops campaign, mix well...

Vatican Black Ops

Optional stir-in: Names from the Rapture, an ultra-right fundamentalist group from the Elementals that Shelley mentioned above.

Steal from enough places and it starts to look original. :)

[rayoman]

Yep.

I was running a Marvel SAGA game. I had an idea because I just made up four-six characters that were brand new characters. They wanted to be a part of a super hero group so they decided to ask the PC group for membership.

I handed the characters out to my players and just told them to play these characters this session and any experienced earn will also apply to their characters.

The players were surprised when they arrived at HQ to find it abandoned and no one knew where the PC group was. Random acts of robbery and violence were being committed in the city by KNOWN super heroes!

Eventually, the players had a good idea when they figured out that Copy Cat could look like anyone and gain their powers. :-) The look on the player's face was priceless when she was teleported back with the villains into the lair of Dr. Doom. She saw the PCs in statis inside some funky tubes. :-) The newbie characters almost killed the PCs.

Everyone accused me of stealing from Mystery Men. It was funny because the first time I watched Mystery Men was around 2001 and the game took place before I saw it or knew what the plot was all about.


Originally posted by wcw43921
Have any of you ever swiped an idea without meaning to?

[RDU Neil]

I like to read popular science books. Right now I'm in the middle of Nature via Nurture by Ridley... and En tanglement by Aczel. The first is about genetics and putting told to the nature vs. nurture argument... and the second is about the history of quantum mechanics, and primarily quantum connectivity.

Hard science ideas can give real flavor to wild superhero science. I love that stuff... even though I only understand half of what I read, at best. I'm not formally trained in any hard sciences.:(

[death tribble]

And YAY !

If it is not nailed down, then it shalt be stolen !

Here endeth the lesson.

And praise be fior colour printers and scanners.

[lemming]

I notice nobody has mentioned one of the greatest game supplements that's printed weekly.
The Weekly World News

[Karma]

It's kind of hard not to 'steal' to some extent, there are only so many plots/archgetypes/ etc. possible and our minds just naturally file them away for use in the future (esp. if we're roleplayers) . Most of my ideas are synthesized from many different sources instead of being stolen whole cloth from any. Plots and charaters from all sources find their way into my games but their never totally regonisable (with the exception of a few 'guest stars' that have turned up) having been moulded by ideas from other sources to something which is 'research' rather than 'plagerism'.

Relevant quote: "To steal from one is plagerism, to steal from many is research."