Steven
- I'm sure I not the first or last person to admit that I get a lot of idea's
from outside sources. Some of my best loved adventures are a blend of
numerous idea's from published sources with only a little input from
myself. It's impossible to copywriter the inspiration that can be
generated by another persons work. It's also very hard for anyone to say
that their idea is completely original. Everybody draws inspiration from
the numerous sources throughout their lives; books, conversations, TV, history,
news, daydreams, etc... Look at the old arguments on D&D that
goes something like; D&D stole many of it's original idea's from
writers like J.R.R. Tolken. But if you look at Tolken's work he was
probably influenced by other writers like GRIMM's Fairy Tales by the brothers
Grimm. It's really hard to say where inspiration ends and plagiarism
begins (I'm not saying the line doesn't exist, just that it not as thick as you
would think). I'd hate to think what the world of RPG would be
like if we had to constantly worry about such things as using the word "magic"
or "majic", or using the word "weave" to describe where spell energy comes
from in our games. I'm all for giving the authors of "original" ideas
their due credit, but if they write books for gamers to use then they
should expect that some of the better ideas will get used as inspiration by
other people and publishers. I think that a gaming
publishers/designers should read from as many outside sources as they can,
because this means they will have more information to draw upon and get
inspiration from, which hopefully means a better product for me (I'm selfish
that way).
By the
way "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is one of my favorite
adventures".
John
Bartoli
-----Original Message-----Maryann Siembieda recently said this on the company's message boards during a thread where claims were made that WotC stole ideas, including core elements to their system, from Palladium Books:
From: Steven "Conan" Trustrum [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 7:36 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Ogf-l] Non-d20 Inspiration
"Actually I can support it as I've been told by nameless people who use to work for Hasbro that they have copies of all of our products sitting on a shelf in their production offices and that they are referred to often."
Now, out of a sense of professional curiosity, how many people here look to other rpg systems or settings, or fiction for inspiration when it comes to their writing (no worries, guys and gals, this isn't a witch hunt for plagiarism, I'm merely curious ;D ). I'd start the ball rolling and say some of the things I've written have been largely inspired by Starship Troopers, the Shannara series, Torg, and various DnD 1e adventures (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks especially).
Steven "Conan" TrustrumEmail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Homepage: http://www.trustrum.com"The only real people are the people that never existed" -- Oscar Wilde _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
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