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I was talking with a woman who told me she wanted to start a role-playing game (RPG) campaign in a science fiction setting, but she didn't want to have it based on any of the movies, television, or books already out there. That is a tough call when you are writing something new, because so much of what we do is influenced by everything we come in contact with. Eventually, we got to an understanding that she already had a design on the campaign she wanted to run, she was looking for a system that didn't push her game into a preconceived setting. For that, we were able to come up with several ideas. Our conversation got me thinking about being influenced, or overly influenced, when developing an adventure or campaign.
When you are writing something for publication, you have to be careful you don't draw too much from an existing work. I am not talking about plagiarism, which is bad and a whole other topic. What I am talking about is coming up with something that is influenced so much by another person's work that your work comes across as a blatant copy. Luckily, when you are writing for your own enjoyment, or your own game, you have a lot more leeway.
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Because you are writing adventures for you and your group, you don't have to worry about the copyright laws and royalties. Those are for works you are trying to make money on, or, you are putting out into the public setting for self-promotion. If you do put anything out there, remember to give credit where credit is due.
Dive into your library of stories and see what you like. Also find out what your group likes. Most of the RPGs have sections with additional reference areas, especially for games focused on some of the "smaller" genre areas (like Big Eyes Small Mouthand Lucha Libre HERO—link to review). They give these reference lists to help you come up with ideas. You can even lift one and write it up for your group.
If you are running a space opera and you want to do a train robbery, why not draw off Firefly to flesh out your ideas? That was a great episode of cross genre work. Even if you write your adventure to follow the same storyline as the episode, your adventure is going to turn out different. You have different characters than they had in the show. Even if you are running the same characters, you have your players running them. More than likely, they are not going to do the same things. People, players, are great at coming up with something new.
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I remember a writing assignment where a group of us were given the same topic, and the same source materials to create a document. This was a technical writing exercise, but even then, everyone came up with something different. The same thing is going to happen to you when you work on developing the same plot for your group. It's going to be different. This happens with the storyline you are creating because of new twists and turns you put in, or there is going to be differences because of your players.
Any game master (GM) who has been playing for a period of time has ran the same adventure more than once, usually with a different group of players, but at least with a different group of characters. These reran adventures turn out differently. When Top Secretcame out with their GM Screen it included an adventure, Rescue the President. This adventure is designed for one or two characters. Because of the limited number of players I ran that adventure over twenty times to get everyone in our gaming club at the time through it, who wanted to. Every game was different.
I've done this in more recent times, rerunning old adventures for new groups of players. If you have some old adventures you liked GMing, offer to run them—it is a lot of fun to do them again. If the games are older ones your group played, most people remember the ideas but not the specifics. Even this last week I offered to run a group so a friend could introduce his children to RPGs.
If a published adventure is going to go differently when it is ran with new groups, and by different GMs, your adventure will not be the same as what was originally created by someone else.
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You can give credit to where you have gotten your ideas from. If your players liked the adventure, they will probably like the source material also. This gives you another link with your friends you are gaming with.
If your players already know the source material, you can tell them up front what you are doing. I have seen this work really well because the players know the basic storyline, but they usually want to make the corrections they thought. This can make for some fun gaming sessions.
Don't be shy to give it a try. If you think someone in your group is going to steamroll the adventure because they know it, add a twist to the plot. Let them think this is where negotiations are going to work, just like in the episode you watched, then, have commandos bust down the doors and kill the lead negotiator. Now they have something new to deal with. RPGs are about having fun. Creating adventures can be fun. And, when creativity feels like it's running low, let others help with what has already been created.
If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.
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