GMs how do you feel when players make characters that are extremely obvious expys from another series?

GMs how do you feel when players make characters that are extremely obvious expys from another series?

I'm not thrilled when it happens. It makes me cringe heavily, but then I realize that ripping off is the extent of some people's creativity. Then I just feel sad and proceed to run the game anyways with no bias towards them.

I'll only get angry if said expy is clashing with the kind of campaign that I'm about to run.

It's OK so long they introduce something unique and new about the character. A lot of art is based in copying something that was done before but with some twists.

I'm typically fine with expys so long as they make some effort to put differentiate them. Not only that, but someone playing basically Bilbo Baggins is going to have a completely different experience if you're playing that character in say, Ravenloft.

I don´t care.

I used to play with a friend who did that weekly. THAT´s where he problem is.
He saw a character on a movie/anime/series/whatever and tried to replicate that character (and usually managed to do it poorly) in our game, but a week later he had wathched a new character! So without interest in his current character he tried to make a new one! The continous flow of new characters concepts meant that he had no time to invest in any of them, making them pretty shitty so he grown more and more displeased with whatever he was playing.
That was a serious issue.

Other than that? I´m fine with someone playing with an obvious Dracula, Urumi Kanzaki, or a character that comes from certain media that I do not know.

It's fine by me as long as they do 2 things.
1) play their character with an actual personality
2) Dress them up just a little bit so that it's not just "i'm Bane"

As long it's balanced I don't give a rat's ass.

I belive none of Shakespeare's stories where original. Most of them, if not all came from older stories and folk tales. What he did was giving the m twist or different focus and executed them beautifully.

Pretty sure that all of his comedies were, actually. Which might be why I actually like his comedies more than his histories or tragedies.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is actually hilarious if you can get past the early-modern English language barrier.

I hate it when they say it just like x from y. When I just made it up without knowing x from y.

If it's blatantly obvious it annoys me; but if there's some effort from the player to adapt the character to the game (and, for fuck's sake, not the other way around), then it's fine.
I think a good rule of thumb might be, if the player can describe their character and it's been changed enough I don't catch on to what they're imitating, then great, they've gotten away with it.

>and, for fuck's sake, not the other way around
This is the absolute worst. I had a player once throw a fit because the magic system I was using was slow but flexible, and he was mad because whatever character from Dragon Age 2 he was emulating can throw fireballs really fast, so he should be able to throw fireballs really fast.

I even compromised and offered to let him respec into the more boring, but faster and simpler normal magic system that would let him be a magic fireball dispenser, but he said no, he should just get some free points to advance his character some more so it'd be """balanced."""

I kicked him out of the group, and cancelled that game.

Basic rule of thumb for an expy is keeping their personality/appearance (since that's what the player obviously wants to emulate 9 times out of 10), but coming up with new motivations.

What if they're also a big guy?

Let 'em.
Vampire Lupin III is one of the best things in my nWoD campaign.

0 problem.

I don't care. Most original characters suck anyway. I just insist that they play it straight and adapt them to the universe like what gets at.

That sounds awesome.

Depends on how hard of an expy it is, cause i've fallen prone to that to. I see a character I like and I go "Neat, now how would that be built in X system?"

He is. I actually feel bad I haven't had much for him to do besides a dalliance with some spies (campaign's set during the Cold War).
Had a hilarious opening scene where the rest of the group were tasked by the Prince to make sure a suspected vampire likely unearthed from a long nap didn't cause any trouble. Vampire Lupin tried quietly disabling the alarm on the museum they were checking out, his ex-hunter ghoul colleague just fired a shotgun into the front door lock and the alarm panel next to it. Cue despairing facepalm from the classy thief as a perfect entry gets utterly ruined.

My GM only play edgy assasin expy so he doesn't give a fuck.

What system?

RPG: GURPS, Magic System: Ritual Path Magic
He complained that since a fighter could do two attacks a turn after spending 25 points on extra attack, his character was too weak because he could only do almost anything he could imagine if he spent a little downtime.

Good ol' melee combatant supremacy.

Having two people that have done this in my current game, I can say with confidence that it's ultimately up to the player and how they play their character.

>implying I'm literally not playing Bugbear Simon Belmont in CoS right now

>playing Eclipse Phase
>fellow player literally has a character named "Vash the Stampede"
>receives laughs and applause when character is introduced

MFW I want to leave this horribly non-thematic campaign and group but can't because the GM is one of my best friends

>Post Simons Quest boxart
>When Said boxart ripped it's image directly from a Ravenloft Illustration
What did he mean by this?

user, of course you can. Just let go and talk to the GM about it. It's not like he'll stop being your friend from just that.

If they make sense in the setting, and they play it fine I'm cool with it.
I apply the same standards I apply to any character.
I would never do it myself tho, shit seems kinda lame.

Define extremely obvious

I've seen people say anons at my table copied [insert anime] when I'm 100000000000% sure said user never ever touched an anime, so. Everything was already done, there's nothing original anymore, and specially anime has anything you might come up with.

From a players perspective I've done both having a truly original character (What I normally do) and having a character based on another series.
Although I tend to go a bit OOC with them in that I use the character as a base and then let them evolve naturally as the game progress'.

>Everything was already done, there's nothing original anymore,
Keep telling yourself that, buddy.

If that's what they want to play ok, go for it. They're going to have to earn it though, I'm not going to throw then any bones or hand ups and it's not going to be my fault when the character falls flat and fails to live up to their expectation.

I haven't yet used magic in any of my GURPS games, but can't a fireball from an even marginally competent wizard melt a party's front-line?

It does like 1d damage per energy point so you can end up doing something like 6d burning damage without too much of a strain and if they're still alive they're on fire.

In the basic magic system, sure, but we were using one of the other systems for this game which instead takes several seconds to minutes to cast a spell.... BUT it also lets you cast the fireball ahead of time and store it as a charm, so he could have effectively had a pocket full of fireballs.

That's even better, and makes it easier for him to actually toss fireballs like a retard.

I'm looking at using magic for my next game, but I want to use Syntactic Magic and Whole-Language Symbol magic as competing schools, but I still haven't really cracked any of the books open yet to learn the magic.

Hello, Hothead

can confirm as a filthy expy user I have basically no creativity besides fusioning ha characters I enjoy. Emergent character design (as opposed to character development, which I can handle) is a completely alien idea to me and I feel I otherwise would just make self inserts.

Honestly, as long as they keep with it, it's fine.

Characters start off as expies all the time, but experiences in games change those characters, better or worse. Not!Mulder will pick up an insanity or too, Not!Guts will grow a sense of humor or switch weapons, Not!Kirk will... honestly stay the same, Kirk was already an RPG character.

The point is, playing the game is going to evolve a character beyond their expiness as the player grows or the systems of the game pull at the build

What's that from?

It's funny how these expy users inevitably play primarily anime women.

I don't really care. Sometimes people think a character's cool and want to play it or do their own take.

Unlike some retards, I'm not blind to think that because someone ripped off something that they have no creativity. Sometimes people just click with a character and want to play it. You see this a lot if you play trpgs for more than a decade. I've seen highly original people play expy characters just because they were in the mood for it. There's a time and place for basically everything.

It is fine if the existing character is a basis, and they then go beyond that. They use it as a springboard and build a larger character off it with a personality, backstory, goals, all of the things that make a character good. If they do that, it's fine. I've based lots of my characters on existing ones. Honestly, it's almost impossible not to.

What isn't good is when the existing character is all they have. They change nothing, add nothing, evolve nothing, it is just them ripping off something else with no depth or development. These are people who have no creativity whatsoever and don't even want to try to tell a story, they just want to quote lines from some TV show. That is shit, and when I've met players who did that, I have warned them to try harder, then booted them from my games. Same as players who play the exact same character in every game. Bob the Paladin dies and they roll a new character named Bob the Paladin. Those people are worthless and I won't waste my time playing with them. I don't expect you to be a great actor or a great storyteller, but I expect you to at least try.

>A Midsummer Night's Dream is actually hilarious

I get this a lot. Some player will ask me, "is that a reference to punch sparkle pirate cats?" or some shit, and I have no idea what they're talking about, and they tell me it's some anime and I'm obviously referencing it. And I'll say, no, this character is based on Quaid from Total Recall, and they just frown at me and ask "what's that?"

It's full of old sexual euphemisms all over the place to the point that there's even a porn adaptation of it.

How about "Calls him Wade of the Deadpool, has Deadpools background with magic instead of tech, dual wields katanas and uses Deadpool as his character icon" obvious.

Is that obvious enough?

Yeah I know, I've read it. It sucks. It's not as bad as As You Like It, but it's fucking bad.

Yes, obviously.

Sorry if my post was assholish, that "lol random" fucktard brought Deadpool as his character to a campaign that was suppose to be serious. I'm still salty.

This user speaks the truth.

>roll up a stereotypical 1890s British big game hunter cause the character i put thought into died 30 minutes into the last session
>a bit over a year on he's become on of the most fleshed put party members