How liberal are you with references when you GM?

>>>/tgbt/
>>>/tumblr/

jesus christ are you for real?

Not particularly liberal, but when I do make references, I try to keep them subtle, low-key, or appropriate. For example, in a sidequest involving a group of martial artists who split off from their monastery and stole scrolls full of deadly forbidden techniques, I named their leaders Vargas and Dadaluma. They had nothing to do with the campaign's overarching story, they just made for a good fight.

>How to ruin a thread in one post

Quite. At this point my campaign's plot has elements borrowed from so many different sources that the end result ends up being fairly original due to not bearing much resemblance to any particular source.
The more obvious thing I tend to do is steal dialoque, though. Having characters speak slightly reworded lines from cheesy metal concept albums is starting to become something of a running theme with my games, although somehow no player has yet noticed it. The most obvious thing I did, though, was stealing Sovereign's speech from Mass Effect almost word for word for a Rogue Trader game. Everybody immediately noticed that one, but the whole speech was just so perfectly fitting for a Yu'vath dark energy contruct (that pretty much are Reapers with serial number filed off) that I had to use it.

For what it's worth I think he was almost definitely joking.

90% of Veeky Forums is autistic retards or SJWs, they don't like jokes.

I nick LEGO Castle flags for iconography, and use familiar names from other sources for capital cities. That way the stuff that players should remember will stick easily. Stuff like naming a province 'Leonhart', calling a cult 'Silverwing', naming a mountain 'Dragon's Crown', etc.

As the guy who made the joke, it's sad that we can't just laugh but have to take everything seriously.

Jokes are for casuals you fucking shitlord.

My most successful campaign was a blatant ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark in Rogue Trader.

But user, aren't you afraid that somewhere there might be people having fun?

Most nights I wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that normies are out enjoying themselves at that very moment.

So I boot up my alienware gaming laptop and queue control warrior at rank 20 to stop them.

>Control Warrior

I'd argue it's the whole "well if he isn't joking I better defend my preferences just in case" attitude that's to blame. Basically people too fucking dumb to identify a joke on a more fundamental level

you know words can be jokes right?

autist

Not much. They have to fit very tight into the plot and be interesting. Im not going to slam a reference/joke just because I can.

Well, in my shadowrun game the group came across two British weapon/gear sellers and mechanics named Gyuu and Quu and they were represented as paper cutouts of desmond Llewellyn and John Cleese as they were chasing an old clients of theirs named Connery, Dalton, lazenby, Moore and brosnan. So I would say I am rather liberal with the references.

Niet. She was very disappointed with the last black she banged. She prefers whites.

More of a groan than a laugh from me.

Never call out a reference you're making. It cheapens the experience.

It's OK user. I got the joke.

Just recently, I ran a campaign with a fairly serious overarching plot involving ancient dickass dragons and legendary dragon-slaying weapons, mostly standard fare.

Not many sessions in, I pulled the reveal that the dragons weren't actually dragons but extradimensional entities that chose to resemble dragons, and the 'weapons' giant robots. All the players were totally on-board for a surprise mecha campaign, and went with it.

That is, until they defeated who they thought was the BBEG, and the real BBEG (a manifestation of the planet's will who had been following them all along) appeared and told them that the dragons came to this world in the first place by forcing open a dimensional rift. A rift which caused concepts and influences from elsewhere to flood in and threaten to end the world as they knew it, said influences including the players themselves, which were actually 'ghosts' controlling the characters from the "real" world all along. And internet memes.

I meant it as an offhanded joke because some of the players liked to get memey in character, but they went NUTS with it and wouldn't let me leave it there. So, in the endgame, they collected equipment straight from videogames, battled hordes of Baneposting zombies, accepted the aid of a Scuttlebug from Mario 64 with the ability to travel to and from parallel universes, and provoked the ire of a certain unicycle-riding CGI frog who turned out to be the incarnation of Kek, primordial concept of darkness and God of Dank Memes.

It was surreal.

A lot of the setting features twists on tropes, turning the predictable into a suddenly terrifying experience.
Due to the setting using alternative history, I like to molest the names and success of existing corporations. It's very blunt so the players think they know what to expect.

Seen you posting these, they're fun designs and bring back good memories so don't stop.

The odd one here and there is fine but wholesale playing as characters from your favourite anime is where I draw the line.

If it's a thematically appropriate classic mythology or movie reference I might even give you a fate point or summat.

I've used Gaston from Beauty and the Beast as a villain in every campaign I've ever run.

I also make references to everything, way too often. The way I often clumsily handle them is my biggest flaw as a GM. That being said I have had some good experiences.

Gaston is always fun, I think because I'm blatantly using Gaston instead of using not!Gaston and making too many too overt references, which is the issue I usually have.

I also had some success with Henry, of the Hill Clans, and his brother Pariston, of the Hill Clans.

I ran a session that was basically an extended Blues Brothers reference in the middle of a campaign. The group needed to find a way to get to another island, and a pair of "Jazz Gnomes" offered to let them claim to be members of their band so they could get on the passenger list of a cruise ship in exchange for some bodyguard work. They, of course, started a bar fight.

And of course the whodunit where the secret necromancer was actually local desert magnate, Lord Cosby, aka The King in Jello.

but... but Gaston was the good guy...

Gaston. The guy who's plan was to murder his romantic rival, then blackmail her into marrying him.

Romantic rival? He was a flesh-eating monster.

I flat out took A World With No Boundaries from Ace Combat and am utilizing them as antagonists in a campaign.
Even the name is intact.
They're being used as a front for the major corporations of the world to incite a National Dismantlement War to usurp power from world governments. They will succeed and force their Pax Economica upon the world.
Those are wholesale ripped off from Armored Core. They have also fought a boss from one of the Armored Core games and I'm planning on them fighting the final boss from the most recent game.
And none of my players are aware of this.

All art is theft

I once just ran the entire plot from Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 and my players didn't notice.

I'd like to think I'm pretty liberal, I don't require that all references be old GMs, I'll let past players and the occasional character reference in. I will, however, insist on calling all of them and vetting out their stories compared to each other before allowing the player in question into my game.

Please tell me one of the bad guys is named Solo Wing Pixy.

I never make obvious references or homages, mostly because I worry it might hurt my player's investment in the world. I am, however, no stranger to straight-up stealing and modifying concepts I like. I recently needed a casino and used my own version of the Sinspire from the Bastard Gentlemen books. I will soon be introducing a character based on Gaunter o'Dimm from The Witcher 3 so, based on the devil from Faust really

>Thinking he's not Arya.

...

my worldbuilding is basically
>BLOOD REHVENS, TODAY WE BUILD A SETTING!
it's 89% references and 11% some chaotic bubbles from my brain-cauldron

No game without them.

As far as players go, I'd say 80% of the quick, out of character one line jokes are comparing something that just happened to some other bit of pop culture.

Now when it comes to actually stealing things to write adventures, I try to either reference real world history or steal from the 80's or earlier. Pulp westerns, B-Movies, Victorian Literature and Tom Baker-era Doctor Who are my most frequent targets.

>tfw used to queue up mill rogue for casual games
>tfw rank 20 mmr from never playing ranked

>player notices blatant ripoff
>his reaction is "good taste"
Nver happened but man we all wish that happened

1 monty python reference = 1 untimely character death

>referring to the plebian masses as people
Baka

Why does Veeky Forums dislike Monty Python?

Because it's older than dirt and has been played out by every unfunny faggot on earth.

Because it's overused to the point of nausea.

Understood.

My whole campaign I've been running for 2 and a half years is a reference to the Emperor and the imperium of man.

More so than references, I whole-heartedly steal entire plots and maps from old RPGs and other media. My players played through half of paper mario without realizing it, with every npc/plot point in the game. I just changed goombas to gnomes, koopas to elves, bob-ombs to kobolds, etc. It's still their favorite campaign.

Just throwing in random references to pop culture seems weird if it isn't already part of the game's overarching theme

Subtle enough that I've never been called out on it. I don't know if it's because they genuinely don't catch on or if they just don't bother to mention it, though.

I've had it happen a few times that stuff I thought I made up originally has been mistaken as references, though.

Okay guys, as much as the first responder was an idiot for not knowing what words mean, we need to stop parodying /pol/ because every parody eventually becomes what it is parodying.

Pic unrelated to my post, but related to (originally intended) topic.

So, you mean.

You dislike something because it's...

Too popular?

I had a campaign almost entirely based on references, where the enemy was a cult filled with not!actors complete with names ranging from paperthin to 2ply, like Johnny Wucello (Tommy Wiseau), Keith Book (Heath Ledger) and Joshua Lomanzo (Shia Labeouf), though those are poor examples and I can't think of better ones I used off the top of my head.
I wouldn't normally though, I prefer a more serious tone which can be disrupted by references, but I'd tried and failed to run a couple campaigns with this group at this point and it was very clear that they weren't looking for anything serious which originally made planning and running fucking awful until planning became 'a statblock or two and a handful of bad not!actor names. Eventually this game dropped out too though, because when we even managed to get a game together it got cancelled last minute and I was pissed because I was already halfway to the game.

tl;dr because fuck that was formatted awfully
depends on the tone of the campaign and what everyone's looking for. If you want a serious campaign, maybe only mythological references. If you want a silly campaign, go all the way and meme it up.

>L5R campaign
>PCs stumbles upon a multi-clan investigating party
>Bayushi Dafune
>Daidoji Furedo
>Kitsuki Veruma
>Shinjo Cha-Gi
>and Cha-Gi's untrustworthy War Hound, Sukobi Do

No, they dislike it because they got sick of its overuse.

That's.... very postmodern.

I steal all the shit ever and nobody can stop me. Core concepts? Stolen. Plot? Stolen. Tokens? Stolen. Maps? Fucking stolen. Mechanics? Take a guess. Right, they're stolen. And I don't give half a damn.

What did the players say?!?

Either sneak them in so deep it'll take a team of archeologists a month to figure out what the fuck is was supposed to mean, or build the game around them. If you don't have an amazing group, those are the only two extremes.

Your players got to purge /tv/ from the face of the earth?

They just met them in the ruins of an abandoned castle surrounded by goblins
I actually have no idea what to do next. Maybe have them unmask the goblin leader in a grandiose manner after laying a good ol' trap.

Very liberal, but I make them very non-obvious so most of the times players don't even realize until a while later.

user no

what the fuck

Were the zombies big?
How dank was KEK?
And how much caffeine was in your bloodstream during these shenanigans?

Monty Python isn't bad, but quoting it has gotten old. Imagine if people never stopped quoting Borat.

>Imagine if people never stopped quoting Borat.

VERY NICE I LIKE!

You know what was a real flash in the pan for comedies? Napoleon Dynamite.

I remember feeling kind of bad because I said "Methinks the sword doth protest too much!" in response to a sentient sword bitching about something. I guess the DM was willing to forgive a fleeting Shakespeare reference.

>feeling bad for quoting Shakespeare
>when it's fitting
???

It's not that it's too popular.

It's that it's popular to the point of ubiquity, popular to the point that if you let it get out of hand it can and will result in half-hour derailings because of people spouting and counterspouting Monty Python references.

It's also the fact that it's universally either Holy Grail, Life of Brian or the Parrot Sketch. Never any of the other stuff. We never see the Alien Blancmange sketch, for instance, or Mr Creosote.

>mill rogue
I hate you

>Were the zombies big?
for them

>caffeine
vodka

>How dank was KEK?
what a coincidence user, i immortalized it forever in a screencap to answer that question should it ever come up

the screams made by the players in that moment still wake me up in the middle of the night sometimes

Well, I'm running Dungeons the Dragoning...so I'm not really sure it's held to the same standard. What with being 'Hilarious plagiarism: The setting'

The group just finished foiling Lord Goreshade, a Greater Dead, in his attempt to get his hands on one of the skulls for the Deathjack. They were aided in their attempt by High Arcanist Ossyan, an Eldarin in a garish scarf and with a fondness for jelly babies. The skull had been being smuggled by the Blackram Pirates into Sigil in a forbidden shipment of Soulsteel.

Was it spirit of the motherwill

Alternatively, nineball

How did you get the keys/worlds think to go over

Except that the devil didn't appear in Faust, that was Mephistopheles.

Please have the unmasked villain mention that he would have gotten away with it.

"Do these wyverns have large talons"

As a player, I typically build in obvious references to obscure things.
>Skeleton character named after the man to whom the word "revenant" is attributed
>Swindler rogue whose real name is the same as the man who is responsible for the term "snake oil" entering the lexicon
>Cleric named Niles Krichefskoy, where the first name comes from the Frasier character (and a youtuber), as well as a character from Disgaea; all three of these share some character traits with him
As a GM, my references range from obscure as fuck to groaningly obvious
>A major quest centered around a "Mr. Sharpe" who ran the North Sea Company; this is a reference to John Blunt of the South Sea Company and they both played out in approximately the same way
>One of the Bigger Bads of the setting is explicitly Hastur, but my players have never opened a book without pictures in it so they all missed the reference
>The most obvious one: in my SciFi game there is a weapon called the Light _ Sabre, and it has the effect that when you have the high ground you double your roll to disarm
I feel pretty bad about that last one

> romantic rival
Beast blackmails bell in to being his prisoner in exchange for her fathers freedom,. She doesn't fall in love, she comes down with Stockholm syndrome.

>my players have never opened a book without pictures in it
?????
How?

No, I'm throwing them against Black Glint, which will be a three-phase fight. Phase three is the dual swords mode from the Unidentified Weapons version.
Note that the players' mechs are much less technically impressive than what fifth-gen AC has to offer.
The real trick is figuring out how to describe it without using a picture. Can't break my illusion.

I just pick up bits and small stuff for books, movies and series i like, then the players add the rest of the references thanks to their characters.

For example, two players made two characters that intended to do some Metal Gear shenanigans so i added a few references to the Metal Gear saga. Other was just a nutball that wanted to see the worl on fire, so i added some Overlord humour to the mix.

I don't mean that literally, but they are not at all well-read in anything that isn't anime or games.

We spend half our time in discord calls watching stupid shows and and playing vidya. The GM is just whoever decides to run something, so people know how much they can fuck with people.

I think a cowboys and zombies campaign a few people were in turned into NOT-Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and the DM just laughed and accepted what was happening.

My primary campaign is nothing but Homestuck references. The main quest is to save or kill the twelve demigods of the Zodiac and prevent the arrival of She Who is Already Here.

I've ran it four times over the past three years and I've never gotten past Sagitarius before the group had to break up. Feels bad, man.

Very. I often have to run with literally zero preparation, so liberal lifting of material from shit the players haven't watched is a thing I do a lot, as well as based-ons and references.

Depends on which setting I'm running.

Like the luchador d&d setting I made (giving every class monk unarmed damage, requiring everyone to wear a mask, and replacing the alignment system with "Technico" and "Rudo" alignments) was packed full of references to Lucha Libre and Mexican culture.

You should play Guacamelee, it might give you some ideas.

For the DWM2 campaign, I didn't take a lot of the stuff from Greatlog, I just used the main plot worlds, and the same reason for going to them. I also made the situation a bit goofier.

The players were a group of idiots who were bothering their friend at his new job as a wizard's assistant. They accidentally broke an artifact that was sealing a hole in reality and now have to fix it before the wizard gets back from a convention in another city or their friend is out of a job. The friend knows that magic power seals it, and uses his minuscule skills to slow down the rift's growth while the players try to find a new magic item to fill the hole. They use a portal in the back of the shop to scour the multiverse for a suitable item, guided by a ring that glows in the presence of other magic items.

I scrounged up something like 45 odd pictures from different websites that fit the high fantasy theme and let me show the players what each character looked like. This one is one of my favorites.

All theft is art.

Sometimes I try and sneak something in in the background for fun. An NPCs mother might be a little bit like the gossipy women from Hot Fuzz, or the television might be running a segment from the awful 2039 Fresh Prince reboot.

But generally I try and avoid them for serious stuff. The villainous giant women who wears giant armour to intimidate her enemies and throws warp magic at those who displease her? She will not be bouncing around acting like pic related.

At the moment I'm running a homage to 80s action movies so I consider it a duty to throw in some references. The evil criminal gang is straight outta Cobra, the PCs boss at the police station is a no-nonsense black detective called Harrigan, and there is an evil gameshow host eager to throw the PCs into his ultra-violent gladiatorial gameshow.

Spot the non-English speakers: the thread