I'm not sure, maybe I should have asked this in publishing forum. My question is about game text.

There is a game, I'm trying to finish, It's being playtested now, and now I'm writing a certain part of game text - about setting and general style of a game and expected thematic result. It should tell potential players about narration style and expectations and ... generally make them think about game generally the same way before they try to play. It's especially important now when I want people I don't know at all to test the game.

The thing is that the game is inspired by Glen Cook's "Black Company" books. My friends (whom I playtested it with) and I wanted to play such game for a long time and we don't need that part of game text, but now I tried with a different group and had some trouble getting them together, but then I said "Black Company" and they were like "Oh, that's what it is all about!".

It's not exactly a Black Company game (such was made by Green Ronin, I guess), but many things are taken from the book. So my question is: should I refere to the book in some way in the game text?

Myself, I expect such reference to be confusing, but what you think?

Refer to it, that's exactly what "Influences and Inspirations" or Bibliography is for, or the background section/introduction.

These titles are beyond words, they're symbols, let yourself tap into their use.

Hi Ivan,

I have a concern, and a suggestion. It sounds like someone may already own the rights to produce a game based on that series of books, this makes me want to advise you to tread with caution if you are planning to publish your work. I don't know enough about law to advise you one way or the other, pointing to it as something in a series of inspirations might be alright, whereas saying this game is set in "copyrighted and licensed material" may be another thing all together.

My suggestion is... you may want to start a thread detailing more specifically the problem you had with your players in the Playtesting forum. Things that I think you might want to discuss there are what problems your players were having that was cleared up by knowing the source of your inspiration. This seems like it could be pointing to some part of what you are trying to capture that is not yet addressed in your rule system.

Guy, Clyde, you've cleared everything up, thank you very much.

My head is so full of those rules, thinking and calculating I've missed the obvious.
I believe now I've identified those problematic pieces we had and now I'm working on them.

Clyde, really, "someone" owns the rights and even made a game - Green Ronin created a huge d20 book.
My "try" is a different game, it should be allright considering legal stuff.

Dude, you're going through the same thing that I went through a while back when I was working on a Sorcerer supplement based on Fist of the North Star: It was so utterly FOTNS that, like, the serial numbers were filed but still clearly legible. To that end, what I had to do was basically recreate the setting in my own mind, recreate the relationships, characters, and the like, and in doing so I added things that I thought added to the game, and took away the dumb, lame shit. I never finished that supplement (and I probably never will), but hopefully you too can recreate the cool elements (with different names) of the cool parts you like of the Black Company, and hopefuly subsume or cover up the annyoing bits you personally don't like.

-Andy

That's why I considered the reference potentially confusing - there is too much in the book - I can't and I won't use everything in the game, but someone could cling to the reference and expect to find something I "took away" :)

For now my problem is mostly gone. Further playtesting cleared much and my answer to the First Question (what the game is about) is much clearer now. The game is by itself and Black Company fits just perfectly in "Influences and Inspirations".