Two quick points to illustrate further what I meant. Firstly, naturally we all do draw inspiration from the world around us. Books, films, people, places, legends, religions, all of it can be used as inspiration for making a game. What I am specifically trying to avoid is drawing too much (a little is OK) on other RPGs for inspiration in my setting. I don't mind drawing on them for inspiration in rules, but the setting should be my own. I don't intend to lift creatures fromother peoples' games for instance, and if I draw upon mythology and popular culture for my ideas then I like to give them a good, solid twist to make them manifestly and often drastically different. I pride myself on the originality of my games, and while there is no shame in drawing on existing sources for inspiration, I don't want to end up looking like a copycat.

Secondly, my game is in the final stages of writing. I don't want to have to make any major changes at this point for fear of needing to go back and rewrite large portions of the book, or worse miss a mistake that has crept in in the meantime and have anachronisms or other errors in the final product. If I were still in the design and research stage it wouldn't be so much of a problem, but now that the game is almost finished any drastic changes in mood, tempo or content may turn out glaringly obvious and out of place.

Also there's the question of size. I was aiming for a 60 page book. I don't think what I currently have is going to fit into 60 pages, even with the small font and square pages I'm using. If I put any more unneccesary padding in it's going to explode! :) I was hoping to get it finished in time for PDF release on Halloween, but I don't think that's going to happen now.

Ash

I tend to look at other games that have done similar things to whatever I am designing certainly. I also will be influenced by games outside of the medium I am desigining in i.e. computer games, board games etc.

As for maintaining a coherent style, this is still something I am trying to get right myself. One of the things I will be doing for Reel Adventures is rewriting the whole thing once I know exactly what it contains. This will probably happen over one month so I can keep the style the same all the way through.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available! 'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

He pretty much nailed the core concept of Solipsist inside 30 mins (it was originally conceived and written as part of the 24-minute games competition). He then developed his ideas more fully, pretty much in isolation of mainstream games in the same field -- well, he was aware of Mage in a tangential way, and was probably most influenced by Heretic for STOCS.

When we started to post about Solipsist on the net a lot of people pointed and said: Aha, Nobilis! or Aha, Mage!

David has now read Nobilis and it'd be interesting to see what he had to say about that. (For what it's worth, I think they are markedly different.)

I can see what Ash is saying about not wanting to be subconsciously influenced by other works. At the same time I think it's good to be aware of what the other books are so you can have clear water between them and you, and be able to point it out to people online who will try and give you a knee-jerk reaction.

Interestingly Mutants & Masterminds first edition featured a random table in the book that had to be replaced after the first print run. Steve Kenson put the random events table in from his old hand-made supers GM shield that he'd used for over 20 years of gaming. No influence from any other game, you'd think. Until it was pointed out that it was from Villains & Vigilantes! He'd taken it from there years before to put on his shield and the memory of doing so had long faded over 20-odd years of superhero gaming. Of course, no one is likely to spot that, sometimes these things just happen.

I tend to view all creative processes as having some important things in common. And so a story from art school. In the arts building at Nottingham Trent there were two art courses running next to each other. One was "Fine Art" (which is wot I done), and the other was called "Creative Arts".

To get on to the Fine Art course you had to do a two year foundation course, or three years of further art education if you went A levels plus one year foundation route.

To get on Creative Arts you had to be 18 and like drawing, singing, dancing, playing guitar. And an overweening stage school enthusiasm to "do the show right here". Ok I'm probably making that part up.

So, as I'm sure you can imagine, there was tension between the courses. We Fine Artists saw Creative Artists as kids - they were all younger than we were, when the difference of 2 years seems huge. They also had at least 2 years less training to get their degrees. They split their degree over music, performing arts, and visual arts and thus to our minds were clearly feckless drifters with no dedication to a vocation such as painting or sculpture.

And for their part I'm sure they thought we were...poopyhaids or whatever facile commentary they passed of as critical facility. ;)

But this is a long run for a short slide. The actual meat of the story is I once overheard a Creative Arts kid saying to her friend, "Well I think my art is more original because of my lack of knowledge about art history."

And clearly that foolhardy statement stuck with me, since I am retelling it now. How could she possibly know what was original?

Jon Hodgson
www.jonhodgson.net

Well, by definition if you're not basing something on an existing idea then it is original to you. It may not be original to everyone, but it's certainly a definition of the word original. It is not necessary to know what is original in order to be it by your own judgement, just as it is not necessary to know what a dragon usually is in order to write about what you want one to be. However one can also take old ideas and make them new by putting an interesting twist to them, and that is also originality, to an extent. This has the added attraction that you are approaching a concept that people are used to and will be comfortable with as a result. It also carries the risk of retreading old ground. I prefer to go back to basics if I'm going to base my ideas on anything already in existence and ignore the interpretations that everyone else has placed upon them in the meantime. I can't possibly research EVERY interpretation of 'Dragon' in literature for instance, I'd be at it for centuries!

For example, did you know that 'Banshee' (Baen Sidhe in the original gaellic) means nothing more threatening than 'fairy woman'? In its original form, the banshee's wail did not foretell death at all. She was a fairy who attended the funerals of certain important Irish families as a mourner, so her wail was in fact an expression of sorrow brought on by the death, and nothing to do with its cause or presaging. That legend has been twisted around so violently in the meantime that very few people understand its origins any more.

That is not to say that researching how others have treated a subject is not a good idea, but sometimes I personally prefer not to. My mind is one big ball of seething ideas, and if I accept too much input from sources divergent from the path I am taking, all too often it distracts me and I end up somewhere that I originally didn't want to be.

Ash