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Is it bad that I keep nicking ideas from video games for my use with my d&d group. EG: The assassins creed idea in my other thread.
Also 2/3rds of my campaign contains the base story from fable 3. Help :/

It's not a bad idea, as long as you:
1. Accept that some ideas may not port over well. You don't have the same ability to dictate player actions by cut scene that you'd see in a video game, for example.

2. Try to hide them, or at least add some originality. You're not the first. Look at the play West Side Story, which is Romeo and Juliet with 20th century gangs. Look at the TV Tropes website: nearly anything you can think of is probably a cliche to someone and has been done before in some form.

The most important rule of GMing an RPG is "Is everyone having fun?" and that can trump a lot of other things.

Yep, I'd agree with everything Balance said. Sometimes its actually a good way to start something if you are stuck, but as long as you add extra ideas that are your own it can really work.

I remember a World of Darkness game I did ages back which borrowed heavily from Silent Hill 2 as I wasn't that inspired that week. Supernatural zombies it basically turned into with some Resident Evil ideas thrown in for good measure, set in a town called Aphasia Falls.

Went down very well with the players, with an added bonus a couple of them had never seen or played Silent Hill/Resi.

So aye, I wouldn't say its a bad thing, just try to add your own spin.

2. Try to hide them, or at least add some originality.

That would be my biggest concern really. I'd try to figure out how many of my players were familiar with the sources I was using and then I could be sure to change it up so they didn't see the twists and turns you had planned for them.

I think its a fine idea but dont let your players in on it.

Sometimes cheese is funny ...

Thanks for all this guys, in response I'll say that as far as I know none of my group have ever really played any games I would use for a storyline. I have changed it, such as changing names and adding and moving bits around, I don't know if you've ever played fable 3 but the idea is to form a revolution against your king by finding people to help. So that's what I'm doing. I just use the outline of the story, not all the detailed bits inbetween. I just use enough for me to be able to make up the rest. Thanks again for all the answers though.

That's normally what dm's do, but what the best gm's do is merge this stuff seamlessly. Take care to not add too much to a game, or the players might not be able to keep up with your story and will grow bored.

Well, if the players do catch on and start to metagame based on the story, you can just as easily take them from their safe happy place, and send put them into a much worse situation than what they were expecting, make sure to keep the players on their toes.

btemple0 wrote:Well, if the players do catch on and start to metagame based on the story, you can just as easily take them from their safe happy place, and send put them into a much worse situation than what they were expecting, make sure to keep the players on their toes.

That's the fun of DMing! No matter what plans you have, it only really matters that you stay a couple steps ahead of the players!

Not really as long as people don't spot the source material and turn it to their advantage.

Borrowing and being inspired is not a bad thing, but like the others said, try not to copy it all the way and throw in your own twists.

If all else fails, deploy zombies. I used Mire Zombies for my own scenario, which turned out swell enough, seeing as the players had a hard time putting them down with their bolters and las weapons. So much for expecting regular zombies!

scarskull5 wrote:Is it bad that I keep nicking ideas from video games for my use with my d&d group. EG: The assassins creed idea in my other thread.
Also 2/3rds of my campaign contains the base story from fable 3. Help :/

I do not see a problem with it, you like an idea that has already been done in a game and would like to take on that idea and role play it out in an open environment that a table top RPG provides.

Its a trick i use _heavily_ in my games. I steal from any source i can get my hands on. Ever read the Darksword trilogy? my main bad guy's troopers are stolen directly from there. atm they're on a world that looks remarkably like the WFB world, with some 40k elements thrown in. The chaos gods are now demon lords (i can even use the ones from the core books i have ) but i take ideas, and not whole plots usually. My suggestion is take broad ideas (like the assassins vs templar theme from Assassin's Creed) and make it your own. The Assassins are still the good guys, but then again... so are the templars. Change things up and it won't get boring.

I used to rip off story ideas from movies, video games, books, places completely unrelated to D&D genre and 'convert' them to fantasy land just as a rough jumping-off point for a plot, even including important twists and climax moments. My players had no idea they were actually playing through the plots of "Terminator 2" or "Temple of Doom" or "Guns of Navaronne".

Here's a fun D&D blog about DMing a deadly game heavily inspired by videogames:

http://slamdancr.com/wp/introduction/
http://dreadgazebo.net/4e-plays-like-a-video-game/