Inspiration v. Plagiarism, and other Quandries

[Nick]

Hello All,

I've kicked around ideas for a few game designs in my head for the past few years, though none of them have come  to fruition- not that any of them especially should yet, but an awful lot of works-in-progress do get resigned to the external hard-drive which gets plugged in maybe once every few weeks.

That said, I've come up with an idea of which I'm rather fond, but which has spawned a few creative troubles that I thought I'd open up for discussion here. The game is (tentatively) called Endings. The premise is that the PC's comprise the group of people who know how to invoke the apocalypse. There are a set number of steps- probably 3, 5, or 7... or possibly it'll be left open to each play group, depending on the length of game they want- that must be completed for said ending to occur. Each character should also have reasons to end/not end the world, which would come to bare throughout the course of play, eventually pushing each of them closer and closer to fulfilling the steps. Further, I'd like the game to be official-setting-less. It could be a religious armageddon, could be a nuclear war, could be contact with a malevolent race of aliens who are looking for a new world to devour.

Now, for the questions:

1) I like the idea of whoever successfully ends the world "winning" in some sense (ascending to godhood, utterly destroying an opposing army, etc. depending on the style of the game), but don't want to encourage gamist strategy-mongering. Also, if ending the world becomes the goal of the game then the narrative penalties of doing so before resolving conflicts become trivialized. Do you think that huge story bonuses for committing certain actions (winning the war, being the only one spared by Cthulhu) could be genuinely outweighed by characters resolving personal issues? Would that mindset require mechanical encouragement?

2) I personally haven't played many RPG's about normal people. Theoretically, in this game these people- while not average by a long shot- are embroiled in real lives and real everyday, social conflict. It's the resolution of this conflict that should provide most of their hesitancy to not end it all. My question is... in your experience, can everyday scenes be as fun, interesting and compelling as scenes with fantastic elements in them? A certain level of fantasy could certainly be written into the game, and I imagine will be to some extent in the final draft... But I want to be able to facilitate a wide variety of styles of play... because I think the theme of apocalypse transcends genre. So another question I'm tacking onto number two is this- do you think that genrelessness inhibits a game necessarily, or is thematic cohesion a limited enough scope? (a third question for number 2: do you think that the epic grandeur of apocalypse and the intimacy of everyday life makes an uncomfortable dissonance in tone?)

3) The namesake of this thread: at what point does inspiration stop and plagiarism begin? I feel guilty in many of the mechanics I work through, because they tend to reflect very strongly things I admire in other games. For example, I really want to have some sort of endgame mechanics based on events during play, but writing such makes me feel like I'm copying MLwM, and the people-with-power with a lot of details left out feels suspiciously like sorcerer, another recent buy with which I'm quite enamoured. I understand that innovation only comes from mutating what you gather, but don't know explicitly where I should stop, and what's considered too unique to emulate. Any advice on this would be helpful.

Thanks for your time,
Nick

[Eero Tuovinen]

I like your game idea, I can get into that game. Some perspectives:

1 - winning and narrativism
Story and competition are definitely not at odds with each other, as anybody who's played intensely competitive narrativistic games can tell you. The trick is to simply make the competition a motor for story-creating play - set up your game so that competing for the privilege of destroying the world is what the players are supposed to do, and this very activity is what creates your story. Your goal in this is not to entice the players to get competitive, it's to make life easy for the players - instead of having to figure out themes and pacing and stuff, they only need to think up tight strategy, evil turns and goal-based analysis. This activity will create drama, and the drama will be what the players enjoy, not the competition itself. It's a different way of creating drama, but it works, as you can see in games like Capes or Shab al-hiri Roach, for instance.

2 - normal people in rpgs
Believe me, it works with no trouble at all. A common mistake is to fetishize the normal life, though; when a GM decides to run a normal life campaign, more often than not he decides that this means diving into the annoying details of routine life and trampling on any vestige of drama with the iron boots of "realism". This might be why some people are hesitant to play "normal" people; the capes and tights and spellbooks give them permission to be melodramatic. But that's all an illusion you can easily forget for your own design, it has little relevancy. For examples of normal people in normal and semi-normal situations, check out games like MLwM, Dust Devils, Fastlane, It Was a Mutual Decision, Breaking the Ice and Shab-al Hiri Roach (yes, I spell it differently every time), for starters.

As a starting point for practical play, I suggest forgetting alltogether that you're playing "normal people". Just play the personality and aspirations of any character you'd normally consider worthy of screen-time. Your "normal" character can be a heroic politician, a gifted artist, a morally agonized soldier or anything like that. If you'll look at so called "normal" fiction, you'll find the very same character archetypes you find in nerd-boy stuff, just without the swords and dragons. A good game for practice is Dust Devils, because you can set it in whatever genre you consider down-to-earth and realistic, and the game pretty much ensures that you'll get good drama without the normal genre props.

3 - genrelessness
Not having a background world defined is not a problem. I cite Sorcerer, which is like the guidebook to making a thematically focused game. The trick is to ensure that the setting is created somehow. You need to give the players some idea of how to come about a setting; you can give GM tools for setting creation before play (like Sorcerer does), or some kind of pre-play group system like MLwM has, or you could even create the setting during play, if you want. Just don't leave the play group hanging with some vague do-it-yourself platitudes, and you'll be fine.

4 - dissonance of epic and intimate
If this were a problem, anime would not exist. 'nuff said.

5 - inspiration and plagiarism
That's something we all struggle with to a degree at some point. My advice is to forget the issue and create your game - it's practically impossible to be so unoriginal that it becomes a problem, if you're really in the mindset of creating a game and not copying a game. The last sentence was not just comfort, it's hard experience: you can't copy MLwM or anything else so much that a solid attribution wouldn't make it right. I dare you to prove me wrong on this.

[Jason Morningstar]

Eero is wise, even if he can't spell Shab-al-Hiri to save his life. 

To reiterate point number five with a practical example, I was hugely influenced by Polaris and The Mountain Witch when I wrote The Roach, and it shows, at least to me.  Take what works and start from there.  The good ideas of others will have an impact on your design and that is not only OK, it is awesome.  Clinton Nixon talks about literally mashing his favorite games together and extrapolating from there, and the end result is very original and compelling.