Have you ever blatantly stolen the plot for your game from a movie, series, book or something else?

>OP pic is Masters of the Universe
>Director wanted to make a New Gods movie and so forced He-man in to this vision he had of the movie he wanted to make

Oh pic is very related OP.

I shamelessly adapted first Resident Evil movie once for a one-off session. Millennials seemed to enjoy it a lot. Especially the gore

Sort of.
Whenever I need a dungeon I steal the layout of a zelda dungoen. usually from memory.

Oh, yeah! I had an entire game (well, it was a one-shot, but a real long one) set in the forest temple.

funny how that worked out.

I'm running a campaign where I'm blending the Venezuelan crisis with the Eragon series.
GF said it sounded like Russia, so I had to correct her.

I thought the first one was consistently good, the second one had some terrible parts like the stealth sections though.

I ripped off "Paint Your Wagon" for a Song of Ice and Fire

DESU it worked quite well, even with one of the players having seen it, me and him hummed Wandering Star all game

My players are playing through TiTS. They haven't noticed yet

I had an entire arc based on Brotherhood of the Wolf. Only one player caught on at the very end.

whats tits stand for?

Trials in Tainted Space.

It's an internet porn game with a great background lore.

>GF said it sounded like Russia, so I had to correct her.
By slapping her?

I ran a hexcrawl session that lifted the map and theme wholesale from Metal Gear Solid V, the only thing I changed was leaning a little more into the cyberpunk aspects. It was transparent to the point where the Russians had teleporting zombie mooks and the players' support team included Ocelot and Miller with slightly different names.

No shame though, It was fun as shit. Just do whatever is fun, originality for the sake of being original isn't necessary for a good campaign.

thanks

Ripped off that scene with all the sacrifices from Apocalypto to set up the cult of bad guy Maya elf vampires for a session once, but I think I described it during the session as "pretty much that one part from Apocalypto."

Not wholesale ripoffs, but I am planning on stealing a ton of stuff from Danganronpa and Charlie and the Chocolate factory for my next Shadowrun game.
Also my homebrew fantasy setting is europe with the serial numbers filed off, but so is everyone else's so I don't think that counts.

Ever done that one swastika dungeon?

The worst I'd ever been *accused* of was stealing the idea for a superhero RPG character from Armor, one of the fairly new characters in the X-Men franchise. She is a telekinetic who expresses her powers only in a force-cocoon of protective armor giving her increased strength and durability. Basically a visualization of the 90's superboy tactile telekinesis.

I'd had this character going way back into one of the early Gamma World editions, before Armor, before Superboy. New player to the group shows up, "you ripped off Armor". Nah, I've character sheets from before this new kid was born.

Ironically, her *characterization* was inspired from Wolfsbane in the New Mutants, my character initially saw the power as a sign of demonic possession and the tk shell took on a demonic appearance. Also, 9-foot-tall with her hovering in the middle in fetal position.

no I only use 3d games

I ran my players through "Over the garden wall" except it was babylonian and D&D.
With some actual lovecraftian elements (as in, not just "tentacles, lol")

A nation in my setting is called Ancelot, and several areas are named after beings and places mentioned in the songs. Nobody seems to have picked it up. A cookie to whoever knows what I stole Mythgard from.

>Director wanted to make a New Gods movie and so forced He-man in to this vision he had of the movie he wanted to make

Did you know that Bosom Buddies was pitched as a standard buddy comedy, but one of the execs had just seen Some Like It Hot (which features crossdressing), so he insisted that there had to be a crossdressing angle somewhere in it?

Or that the only reason why the Robin Williams Popeye movie exists is because the studio lost the rights to Little Orphan Annie and decided that they needed to make a movie based on a newspaper comic strip because "the other guy is doing it"?

I used a plot device called the Flame Seal in one of my games. It was one of four actually five seals that helped seal away a dark dragon goddess.

I ripped off Bane Johns from the All Guardsmen Party once. My players thought it was hilarious. Of course, Bane was basically just Archer, so I figured it was all in good fun

>Deathwatch
>killteam has to escort some big dick inquisitor's daughter into safety
>they are confronted by mercs and traitor throne agents on the way
>when they get to the station, the Inquisitor tries to kill his daughter and hides his identity
>they save her and go to take him down because they now consider him a traitor and a heretic
>they are confronted by the inquisitor's cadre on the way
>they get help from a former ascension character
>the traitor inquisitor is actually possessed by a lord of change that can erase time
>campaign is finished
>everyone had fun
>they had no idea they've been playing space marine version of golden fucking wind

I ran a campaign lifted wholesale form the Exile/Avernum games. Wasn't shy about it, either. Told all the players what I was doing, and encouraged them to play them if they wanted, not really much to spoil about it.

Being a sandbox-y campaign, it did take some pretty wild turns.

>"the other guy is doing it"?

The list of movies that fall under that category would be massive. Movie execs possess exactly zero originality.

One of my favorites, and a fairly recent example, is that Suicide Squad exists as a response to Sony's planned (and abandoned) Sinister Six movie.

I basically always do this for one shots, and see how long it takes for the players to figure it out.

Most successful so far has probably been a 5e game that was just the first Fast and the Furious movie...It went well until the players got not-Paul Walker killed and ended up fighting amonst themselves while not-Vin Diesel and his gang were off raiding the caravans.

I've been itching to try and make a one shot out of Halo, where the players are great warriors awakened from a magical sleep to stop a fanatical sect of elves from activating a super weapon on some new discovered ruins in the middle of the ocean, which they believe to be the key to their after life.

Probably not a one-shot, but it would be a good 3-5 session game, I think.

By killing her bard

>did you steal
Yes, all the time.

>did you get caught
I'm pretty sure never. Most of my players are cultural illiterates who either aren't familiar with fiction that was made before their lifetime or with any that isn't anime. I have on a couple occasions been accused of stealing plots from anime, which I did not.

>what did you steal
Jeez, whole plots from Aliens, Shadowrun Returns, numerous Greek myths, KotOR, Big Trouble in Little China, several Star Wars novels, Morrowind, Lovecraft stories, Prince of Darkness, Deadwood, a lot of old John Ford films, Rome, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Farscape, Lexx, Dracula, The Maltese Falcon, The Hobbit, Nightbreed, Venture Bros, a ton of Bond films, Shogun, and almost the entire five year run of Babylon 5 as a whole campaign. Plus characters from all those and far more. I've been GMing seven years now and almost everything I've done is stolen from or inspired by something.

I've stolen a few things from shadowrun storytime (specifically the tokyo and lagos parts of the story).

Once I run a session based on Bible Black Origin

>Morrowind
Doing this literally right now. They only ever played Skyrim and have no idea. I just changed Daedric to Demon and called it good.

>Hey, Deadpool, a comedy, just made billions!
>Let's redraft this as a comedy and makes billions!
But were only 2 months from being finished, and it's a character driven dram-
>RE. DRAFT.

I was wondering, would Oblivion's story work?

Oblivion might be a bit harder. It's been years since I played it, but since the prince dude was the crux of the whole thing would it work? You could have a party play through I guess, maybe twist it so they're members of the Blades from the start trying to fulfill the king's last wish. I've been drinking too so might not be the best source of inspiration right now.

Probably. Fairly straightforward demon's be invading story, though I would make Martin's whole DMPC thing into a PC thing. But, some of your players have probably played oblivion, at least.

Ok thanks for the replies. I'm wrapping up our old campaign and I needed to new ideas. Basically running Dino Crisis and no ones caught one. Kind of disappointed, since at least two of my players are Playstation fans like me.

oh shit

What the fuck is that guy gonna do the second he fight someone that can actually hold a guard with composure, check his leg kicks and just hit him when he's winding up?

I have stolen, at various points over 10 years:
>a dungeon from Oracle of Ages, because no one ever played that Zelda gameboy game
>the Star Wars Droids plot about Tammuz-an and pirates, and Nergon-14 has been a regular feature in my campaign
>Treasure of the Sierra Madre, flavored for the setting
>Chappie
>Scooby Doo: Zombie Island plot
>Evil Dead
>a side quest from Borderlands 2 that i cant remember other than that the party liked it
>The Russian from The Punisher
>Executor Sedriss from the old star wars EU
>the plot of Dogs of War

Over 10 years my players have never noticed or cared

that's pretty much what happens
youtube.com/watch?v=xg9Y6TkGiSA

>Scooby Doo: Zombie Island
my nigga

That's not a guard, buddy. Still close enough.

why are you paying with disrespectful marvel millennials.

Haven't gotten to it, but soon I'm going to run the plot of MacBeth but with Hutts.

I plan on stealing the opening to Final Fantasy IV wholesale. Everyone starts out working for a kingdom, are forced to do something morally questionable that the king has never ordered anyone to do before, start to question things, and are exiled, only to discover a much wider and sinister plot.

My players are basically playing humans in Diablo where they have to decide whether to support heaven or hell of go full deus vult on both sides of the great war.

yeah I did say pretty much, it's a kung fu movie, you expect people to fight practically

The second one's stealth sections are fucking inexcusable. I'm playing as goddamn motherfucking Dracula, who has already defeated Satan in a fistfight, why should I have to sneak around? And incorporating mandatory stealth into a boss fight? Fuck right off.

The worst part, though, is there is absolutely zero payoff to the stealth against the Golgoth Guards or whatever they're called, the ones who look like Chaos Marines. You never actually get to properly fight them, and even at the end of the game when Drac is at full power, they will still fucking wreck him with no effort on their part. Those guards are stronger than the final boss, Satan himself. It's fucking ludicrous.

I actually got mad at one of the stealth parts and went online to look up when you get to kill those fuckers. Because surely a scene was incoming where you tear them apart to signify your progress or something, right? I was fucking blown away when I read that no, you can never defeat them. Such a terrible part of the game.

The castle parts were top tier though, seeing all sorts of creepy servants bow and scrape before you felt great.

Both games had their ups and downs, but their downs were really, really low. Way too low for the ups to make up for it. Like, god damn, the mandatory stealth still makes me angry to this day, all those years later.

My latest campaign has my own version of Red and Dembe in it.

One of my Mouseguard NPC's is Don Quixote. Our usual ForeverDM makes quick brief references to it whenever he's around.
He's pretty fun to play. But I think he's a bit sadder than the real Don Quixote.

w-what happened?

you could almost imagine it as a Conan story.

I steal actual historical events from the early modern era and up.
And my players are eating it like hot cheese. All of these history nerds and no one noticed...

All the damn time.

Or do you actually believe you're creating original content?

>Just do whatever is fun

Brendon?

I first made it seemed like I was stealing from ASOAIF before throwing a curveball and stealing from "The mist"

Best campaign I ever did

Scooby doo zombie island? I love user-kun

I have a reoccurring villain in all games.
He's Dr Smith from Lost in Space.
I steal his mannerisms, sayings and personality in general.
Usually name him with a J name and an H sirname
To pay homage to Jonathan Harris

I'm running a supers game right now and it would be easier to list the things I HAVEN'T stolen/altered slightly.

kek sounds great

You're the man. Lost in Space reruns were my jam as a kid.

Ever watch this show? He's a recurring semi-antagonist

youtube.com/watch?v=CJgws2FNjUw

I stole the setting of Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans for a campaign, does that count?

I ripped the entirety of Spec Ops: The Line during a campaign.
One of the players was a complete gloryhound, rushing in without ever thinking about the situation, always relished the chance to do violence or take down huge amounts of people - this was the guy who was supposed to be the parties "Lawful Good" played up to be merciful, mind you; he also never considered his actions or the people he worked for could be anything except completely correct 100% of the time, to the extent of being pretty zealously confrontational with anybody who didn't follow him absolutely - which was every other PC, naturally.

So I decided to steal Spec Ops to let him be a hero. The location was changed from sand to snow to fit the setting, and the real life nations were changed to fictional ones, but it was more or less the same.

2 of the 5 knew the gig from scene 1, but they all told me they were cool with it - especially if it had the intended effect on our "hero".
It did, for what it was worth - his behaviour as a character was a lot more reserved afterwards. It was also left deliberately vague as to whether he as a character went slightly nuts while he was there, it was magical fuckery from the location or if not!Konrad was actually a ghost.

We need to know more, user.

Every 1,000 years, armies of Yuan-Ti emerge, overwhelming entire continents effortlessly to gather millions of slaves and sacrifices to summon their god. None of the kingdoms heeded your warnings, and now they're on their way back. Do you have what it takes to recruit the help of the other races to end the Yuan-Ti harvest once and for all?

Pics related. And i didn't change a damn thing. I straight up told them it was seven samurai. We even watched the movie the week before the campaign.

Not quite this but related
I was running Through the Breach. The party are Guild "problem solvers", and were sent to recover covertly a grimoire of ancient earth necromancy that was being displayed as part of an archaeological tour. The owners did not know what they actually held. The party cottoned pretty quick, when the frontman of the show asked one of them to help him with gambling debts so his sister and her husband didn't find out, and said husband had a large roll of canvas containing nothing but guns....

Why bother when i can just accelerate climate change so the cold blooded fucks can't survive any more.

I want to recreate L’Omino, the Coachman from Pinocchio. I'm thinking he should be a fey of some sort, and maybe change a few things so it isn't so obvious at first.
This is a seriously underrated character, so I assume I could do some neat stuff with it.

My old DM stole his plot from homestuck as well as all the characters. You can imagine how fun that was.

>Have you ever blatantly stolen the plot for your game from a movie, series, book or something else?

I constantly steal ideas, elements, characters and even maps from every form of media from movies to videogames. Plagiarism is a recommended practice for DMs actually, since you're likely crafting your adventures and settings for one very specific group of people that never changes, and as long as those 4-5 people don't find out, no harm has been done and you actually improved their enjoyment. Just be sure to pick obscure enough sources that they don't realize they're romping in a recreation of something you saw a couple years ago.

I'm stealing Steel Ball Run, the political situation in Europe following the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, several bits off Half-Life and a fair bit of Around the World in 80 Days. It's worked. Somehow. In terms of other tales - I've stolen from the English Civil Wars, the 30 Years War, the Northern Wars, La Cristiada, the War in the Vendée, historical characters such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Julie D'Aubigny, a fusion of Thomas Midgley Jr. and Andrew Carnegie, as well as Jacques Cathelineau and Henri de la Rochejaquelein. It's all worked brilliantly so far.
Agatha Christie was a genius. If you're ever in need for some mystery, just steal from her.

>The Lion King
Literally had the kings scarred brother seize the throne with an army of gnolls and then the players restored the prince to the throne

>Agatha Christie was a genius. If you're ever in need for some mystery, just steal from her.

Nah. In a lot of her early work the solution relies on information that is not provided to the reader and thus the mystery is impossible to solve. You're going to run into problems if you try to use such material on players, unmodified at least.

That is fair criticism. Then again, that applies to pretty much everything.

Definitely built a session based on Yojimbo. Players weren't interested, skipped right past it

>Shogun

My setting and descriptive style steal a lot from Terry Pratchett's Discworld

Ran a Darkest Dungeon styled adventure recently, even playing the intro cinematic in audio form (doing it myself wouldn't have done it justice, despite being told I can do a decent impression).

Most of my players didn't know what was going on, but a couple caught on but were in no way displeased with it since the three of us all quite enjoy DD.

What changed was that they didn't end up fighting anything too powerful, at least nothing in comparison to later enemies in DD and throw in some D&D monsters I don't normally see get used in campaigns I've played, things like nothics, ropers, and gibbering mouthers.

Which of her works WOULD be best to steal from?
I've always liked the idea of running mysteries, but I'm shit at them, so having at least some inspiration would be nice.

>The Sony leaks broke the Cardinal sin of Hollywood and let the outside world know they had no fucking idea what they're doing

>Most of my players are cultural illiterates
I'm sure they're not that bad...
>Sees plots you ripped off
Do they live under rocks?

All. The. God. Damn. Time.

I ran a Dark Heresy side-session for the two assassin/infiltrator types which was essentially the first area or two of Metal Gear Solid, all the way up to the fight with Ocelot, which was instead against some weird hereteks.
Little MGS nods show up in my games all the time, usually with the baddies doing cheesy taunts in the midst of battle.
I also ran a Dark Heresy session which was more-or-less "Fury Road", but set on Iocanthos (which is basically the Mad Max planet, except shitty barren steppe instead of desert, and they're looking for plants to make drugs instead of oil). I was playing the soundtrack the whole time, which made all the car-combat really fun.

One campaign was literally just Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso without Virgil as an NPC and fighting almost everything on the way up in hell, solving puzzles in purgatory, and a bit of both in the heavens.

Another one was just Louis and Clark's Campaign to the map America, but with Elves inserted as natives, Orcs as slaves, and Dwarves and Halflings as distant trade powers settling within the region, complete with Elf Sacajawea.

I also bingewatched both My Hero Academia and One Punch Man in a very short period of time, so while I wanted to think of something to go along with the whole "Japanese Superhero Guild/Business" thing, but none of my players were interested.

I'm also planning a campaign that more or less follows the stories of the Illiad and the Odyssey, with Elves as Greeks and Orcs as the playable Romans. Still gotta figure that one out.

I also did Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars and followed it up with a Good, Bad, and Ugly session which I tied to it.