How liberal are you with references when you GM?

Please go back to /pol/.

>>49044898
kek

>>49044898
you seem butthurt

>>49044871
I nearly ran a campaign that was basically Jagged Alliance 2, so I'd say exceptionally so.

>>49044871
If you want a lot of material that's any damn good, you're going to have to steal a lot of it.

Personally I steal from shit nobody else reads much of. My favorite sources include The Art of Not Being Governed, Medieval Underworld, Montaillou, The Great Cat Massacre, 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, and Funk & Wagnall's Standard Dictionary of Folklore.

Me and the wife want to gimmick it up and do a blatant rip off of Arya and the Hound in Pathfinder

Jokey, out of context and pointless references are present but minimal. No harm in an occasional joke, but too many just ruin the mood.

Then again? I play in a game where the GM is an absolute master of substantial, well put together references, taking material from elsewhere and folding it into a game.

I first noticed it in Dungeons the Dragoning, where he went even beyond the scope of the mishmash setting presented in the core book by bringing in elements from Iron Kingdoms, Touhou and The Old Kingdom series of books (Sabriel <3), tying them together into a consistent whole which felt appropriate and like a logical extension of the rest of the setting.

Less obviously, but no less inventively, is a magical girl game he runs, where we've encountered allies and enemies in the form of mechs from Super Robot Wars, Battletech and Infinity (the wargame), again all feeling like a logical, natural extension of the setting, but using external things as a common reference to make it easy to understand and visualize.

>>49045022

Your wife is fucking black men you cuck.

>>49044898
You...you know words have different meanings right?

>>49044871
>>>/tgbt/
>>>/tumblr/
>>>/trash/

>>49044898
jesus christ are you for real?

>>49044871
Not particularly liberal, but when I do make references, I try to keep them subtle, low-key, or appropriate. For example, in a sidequest involving a group of martial artists who split off from their monastery and stole scrolls full of deadly forbidden techniques, I named their leaders Vargas and Dadaluma. They had nothing to do with the campaign's overarching story, they just made for a good fight.

>>49044898

>How to ruin a thread in one post

>>49044871
Quite. At this point my campaign's plot has elements borrowed from so many different sources that the end result ends up being fairly original due to not bearing much resemblance to any particular source.
The more obvious thing I tend to do is steal dialoque, though. Having characters speak slightly reworded lines from cheesy metal concept albums is starting to become something of a running theme with my games, although somehow no player has yet noticed it. The most obvious thing I did, though, was stealing Sovereign's speech from Mass Effect almost word for word for a Rogue Trader game. Everybody immediately noticed that one, but the whole speech was just so perfectly fitting for a Yu'vath dark energy contruct (that pretty much are Reapers with serial number filed off) that I had to use it.

>>49045205
For what it's worth I think he was almost definitely joking.

>>49045417

90% of /tg/ is autistic retards or SJWs, they don't like jokes.

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>>49044871

I nick LEGO Castle flags for iconography, and use familiar names from other sources for capital cities. That way the stuff that players should remember will stick easily. Stuff like naming a province 'Leonhart', calling a cult 'Silverwing', naming a mountain 'Dragon's Crown', etc.

>>49045457
As the guy who made the joke, it's sad that we can't just laugh but have to take everything seriously.

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>>49045561

Jokes are for casuals you fucking shitlord.

My most successful campaign was a blatant ripoff of Raiders of the Lost Ark in Rogue Trader.

>>49045457
But anon, aren't you afraid that somewhere there might be people having fun?

>>49045644

Most nights I wake up in a cold sweat, terrified that normies are out enjoying themselves at that very moment.

So I boot up my alienware gaming laptop and queue control warrior at rank 20 to stop them.

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>>49045676

>Control Warrior

>>49045457
I'd argue it's the whole "well if he isn't joking I better defend my preferences just in case" attitude that's to blame. Basically people too fucking dumb to identify a joke on a more fundamental level

>>49045056

you know words can be jokes right?

autist

>>49044871
Not much. They have to fit very tight into the plot and be interesting. Im not going to slam a reference/joke just because I can.

Well, in my shadowrun game the group came across two British weapon/gear sellers and mechanics named Gyuu and Quu and they were represented as paper cutouts of desmond Llewellyn and John Cleese as they were chasing an old clients of theirs named Connery, Dalton, lazenby, Moore and brosnan. So I would say I am rather liberal with the references.

>>49045022
Niet. She was very disappointed with the last black she banged. She prefers whites.

>>49044898
More of a groan than a laugh from me.

Never call out a reference you're making. It cheapens the experience.

>>49044898
It's OK anon. I got the joke.

>>49044871
Just recently, I ran a campaign with a fairly serious overarching plot involving ancient dickass dragons and legendary dragon-slaying weapons, mostly standard fare.

Not many sessions in, I pulled the reveal that the dragons weren't actually dragons but extradimensional entities that chose to resemble dragons, and the 'weapons' giant robots. All the players were totally on-board for a surprise mecha campaign, and went with it.

That is, until they defeated who they thought was the BBEG, and the real BBEG (a manifestation of the planet's will who had been following them all along) appeared and told them that the dragons came to this world in the first place by forcing open a dimensional rift. A rift which caused concepts and influences from elsewhere to flood in and threaten to end the world as they knew it, said influences including the players themselves, which were actually 'ghosts' controlling the characters from the "real" world all along. And internet memes.

I meant it as an offhanded joke because some of the players liked to get memey in character, but they went NUTS with it and wouldn't let me leave it there. So, in the endgame, they collected equipment straight from videogames, battled hordes of Baneposting zombies, accepted the aid of a Scuttlebug from Mario 64 with the ability to travel to and from parallel universes, and provoked the ire of a certain unicycle-riding CGI frog who turned out to be the incarnation of Kek, primordial concept of darkness and God of Dank Memes.

It was surreal.

A lot of the setting features twists on tropes, turning the predictable into a suddenly terrifying experience.
Due to the setting using alternative history, I like to molest the names and success of existing corporations. It's very blunt so the players think they know what to expect.

>>49045474
Seen you posting these, they're fun designs and bring back good memories so don't stop.

The odd one here and there is fine but wholesale playing as characters from your favourite anime is where I draw the line.

If it's a thematically appropriate classic mythology or movie reference I might even give you a fate point or summat.

>>49044871
I've used Gaston from Beauty and the Beast as a villain in every campaign I've ever run.

I also make references to everything, way too often. The way I often clumsily handle them is my biggest flaw as a GM. That being said I have had some good experiences.

Gaston is always fun, I think because I'm blatantly using Gaston instead of using not!Gaston and making too many too overt references, which is the issue I usually have.

I also had some success with Henry, of the Hill Clans, and his brother Pariston, of the Hill Clans.

I ran a session that was basically an extended Blues Brothers reference in the middle of a campaign. The group needed to find a way to get to another island, and a pair of "Jazz Gnomes" offered to let them claim to be members of their band so they could get on the passenger list of a cruise ship in exchange for some bodyguard work. They, of course, started a bar fight.

And of course the whodunit where the secret necromancer was actually local desert magnate, Lord Cosby, aka The King in Jello.

>>49048103
but... but Gaston was the good guy...

>>49048222
Gaston. The guy who's plan was to murder his romantic rival, then blackmail her into marrying him.

>>49048246
Romantic rival? He was a flesh-eating monster.

I flat out took A World With No Boundaries from Ace Combat and am utilizing them as antagonists in a campaign.
Even the name is intact.
They're being used as a front for the major corporations of the world to incite a National Dismantlement War to usurp power from world governments. They will succeed and force their Pax Economica upon the world.
Those are wholesale ripped off from Armored Core. They have also fought a boss from one of the Armored Core games and I'm planning on them fighting the final boss from the most recent game.
And none of my players are aware of this.

>>49044871
All art is theft

>>49048462
I once just ran the entire plot from Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 and my players didn't notice.

I'd like to think I'm pretty liberal, I don't require that all references be old GMs, I'll let past players and the occasional character reference in. I will, however, insist on calling all of them and vetting out their stories compared to each other before allowing the player in question into my game.

>>49048462
Please tell me one of the bad guys is named Solo Wing Pixy.

I never make obvious references or homages, mostly because I worry it might hurt my player's investment in the world. I am, however, no stranger to straight-up stealing and modifying concepts I like. I recently needed a casino and used my own version of the Sinspire from the Bastard Gentlemen books. I will soon be introducing a character based on Gaunter o'Dimm from The Witcher 3 so, based on the devil from Faust really

>>49045048
>Thinking he's not Arya.

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>>49045676

>>49044871
my worldbuilding is basically
>BLOOD REHVENS, TODAY WE BUILD A SETTING!
it's 89% references and 11% some chaotic bubbles from my brain-cauldron

>>49044871
No game without them.

>>49044871
As far as players go, I'd say 80% of the quick, out of character one line jokes are comparing something that just happened to some other bit of pop culture.

Now when it comes to actually stealing things to write adventures, I try to either reference real world history or steal from the 80's or earlier. Pulp westerns, B-Movies, Victorian Literature and Tom Baker-era Doctor Who are my most frequent targets.

>>49045676
>tfw used to queue up mill rogue for casual games
>tfw rank 20 mmr from never playing ranked

>player notices blatant ripoff
>his reaction is "good taste"
Nver happened but man we all wish that happened

>>49044871
1 monty python reference = 1 untimely character death

>>49045644
>referring to the plebian masses as people
Baka

>>49052968
Why does /tg/ dislike Monty Python?

>>49053069

Because it's older than dirt and has been played out by every unfunny faggot on earth.

>>49053069
Because it's overused to the point of nausea.

>>49053083
>>49053088
Understood.

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>>49044871
My whole campaign I've been running for 2 and a half years is a reference to the Emperor and the imperium of man.

More so than references, I whole-heartedly steal entire plots and maps from old RPGs and other media. My players played through half of paper mario without realizing it, with every npc/plot point in the game. I just changed goombas to gnomes, koopas to elves, bob-ombs to kobolds, etc. It's still their favorite campaign.

Just throwing in random references to pop culture seems weird if it isn't already part of the game's overarching theme

>>49044871
Subtle enough that I've never been called out on it. I don't know if it's because they genuinely don't catch on or if they just don't bother to mention it, though.

I've had it happen a few times that stuff I thought I made up originally has been mistaken as references, though.

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Okay guys, as much as the first responder was an idiot for not knowing what words mean, we need to stop parodying /pol/ because every parody eventually becomes what it is parodying.


Pic unrelated to my post, but related to (originally intended) topic.

>>49053083
>>49053088
So, you mean.

You dislike something because it's...

Too popular?

>>49044871
I had a campaign almost entirely based on references, where the enemy was a cult filled with not!actors complete with names ranging from paperthin to 2ply, like Johnny Wucello (Tommy Wiseau), Keith Book (Heath Ledger) and Joshua Lomanzo (Shia Labeouf), though those are poor examples and I can't think of better ones I used off the top of my head.
I wouldn't normally though, I prefer a more serious tone which can be disrupted by references, but I'd tried and failed to run a couple campaigns with this group at this point and it was very clear that they weren't looking for anything serious which originally made planning and running fucking awful until planning became 'a statblock or two and a handful of bad not!actor names. Eventually this game dropped out too though, because when we even managed to get a game together it got cancelled last minute and I was pissed because I was already halfway to the game.

>>49054873
tl;dr because fuck that was formatted awfully
depends on the tone of the campaign and what everyone's looking for. If you want a serious campaign, maybe only mythological references. If you want a silly campaign, go all the way and meme it up.

>L5R campaign
>PCs stumbles upon a multi-clan investigating party
>Bayushi Dafune
>Daidoji Furedo
>Kitsuki Veruma
>Shinjo Cha-Gi
>and Cha-Gi's untrustworthy War Hound, Sukobi Do

>>49054242
No, they dislike it because they got sick of its overuse.

>>49047527
That's.... very postmodern.

>>49044871
I steal all the shit ever and nobody can stop me. Core concepts? Stolen. Plot? Stolen. Tokens? Stolen. Maps? Fucking stolen. Mechanics? Take a guess. Right, they're stolen. And I don't give half a damn.

>>49054997
What did the players say?!?

>>49044871
Either sneak them in so deep it'll take a team of archeologists a month to figure out what the fuck is was supposed to mean, or build the game around them. If you don't have an amazing group, those are the only two extremes.

>>49047527
Your players got to purge /tv/ from the face of the earth?

>>49056196
They just met them in the ruins of an abandoned castle surrounded by goblins
I actually have no idea what to do next. Maybe have them unmask the goblin leader in a grandiose manner after laying a good ol' trap.

>>49044871
Very liberal, but I make them very non-obvious so most of the times players don't even realize until a while later.

>>49044898
Anon no

>>49047527
what the fuck

>>49047527
Were the zombies big?
How dank was KEK?
And how much caffeine was in your bloodstream during these shenanigans?

>>49053069
Monty Python isn't bad, but quoting it has gotten old. Imagine if people never stopped quoting Borat.

>>49056482
>Imagine if people never stopped quoting Borat.

VERY NICE I LIKE!

You know what was a real flash in the pan for comedies? Napoleon Dynamite.

I remember feeling kind of bad because I said "Methinks the sword doth protest too much!" in response to a sentient sword bitching about something. I guess the DM was willing to forgive a fleeting Shakespeare reference.

>>49056588
>feeling bad for quoting Shakespeare
>when it's fitting
???

>>49054242
It's not that it's too popular.

It's that it's popular to the point of ubiquity, popular to the point that if you let it get out of hand it can and will result in half-hour derailings because of people spouting and counterspouting Monty Python references.

It's also the fact that it's universally either Holy Grail, Life of Brian or the Parrot Sketch. Never any of the other stuff. We never see the Alien Blancmange sketch, for instance, or Mr Creosote.

>>49052932
>mill rogue
I hate you

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>>49056438
>Were the zombies big?
for them

>caffeine
vodka

>How dank was KEK?
what a coincidence anon, i immortalized it forever in a screencap to answer that question should it ever come up

the screams made by the players in that moment still wake me up in the middle of the night sometimes

Well, I'm running Dungeons the Dragoning...so I'm not really sure it's held to the same standard. What with being 'Hilarious plagiarism: The setting'

The group just finished foiling Lord Goreshade, a Greater Dead, in his attempt to get his hands on one of the skulls for the Deathjack. They were aided in their attempt by High Arcanist Ossyan, an Eldarin in a garish scarf and with a fondness for jelly babies. The skull had been being smuggled by the Blackram Pirates into Sigil in a forbidden shipment of Soulsteel.

>>49048462
Was it spirit of the motherwill

Alternatively, nineball

>>49048583
How did you get the keys/worlds think to go over

>>49049263
Except that the devil didn't appear in Faust, that was Mephistopheles.

>>49056301
Please have the unmasked villain mention that he would have gotten away with it.

>>49056493
"Do these wyverns have large talons"

As a player, I typically build in obvious references to obscure things.
>Skeleton character named after the man to whom the word "revenant" is attributed
>Swindler rogue whose real name is the same as the man who is responsible for the term "snake oil" entering the lexicon
>Cleric named Niles Krichefskoy, where the first name comes from the Frasier character (and a youtuber), as well as a character from Disgaea; all three of these share some character traits with him
As a GM, my references range from obscure as fuck to groaningly obvious
>A major quest centered around a "Mr. Sharpe" who ran the North Sea Company; this is a reference to John Blunt of the South Sea Company and they both played out in approximately the same way
>One of the Bigger Bads of the setting is explicitly Hastur, but my players have never opened a book without pictures in it so they all missed the reference
>The most obvious one: in my SciFi game there is a weapon called the Light _ Sabre, and it has the effect that when you have the high ground you double your roll to disarm
I feel pretty bad about that last one

>>49048246
> romantic rival
Beast blackmails bell in to being his prisoner in exchange for her fathers freedom,. She doesn't fall in love, she comes down with Stockholm syndrome.

>>49057155
>my players have never opened a book without pictures in it
?????
How?

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>>49056917
No, I'm throwing them against Black Glint, which will be a three-phase fight. Phase three is the dual swords mode from the Unidentified Weapons version.
Note that the players' mechs are much less technically impressive than what fifth-gen AC has to offer.
The real trick is figuring out how to describe it without using a picture. Can't break my illusion.

>>49044871
I just pick up bits and small stuff for books, movies and series i like, then the players add the rest of the references thanks to their characters.

For example, two players made two characters that intended to do some Metal Gear shenanigans so i added a few references to the Metal Gear saga. Other was just a nutball that wanted to see the worl on fire, so i added some Overlord humour to the mix.

>>49057326
I don't mean that literally, but they are not at all well-read in anything that isn't anime or games.

>>49044871
We spend half our time in discord calls watching stupid shows and and playing vidya. The GM is just whoever decides to run something, so people know how much they can fuck with people.

I think a cowboys and zombies campaign a few people were in turned into NOT-Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and the DM just laughed and accepted what was happening.

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My primary campaign is nothing but Homestuck references. The main quest is to save or kill the twelve demigods of the Zodiac and prevent the arrival of She Who is Already Here.

I've ran it four times over the past three years and I've never gotten past Sagitarius before the group had to break up. Feels bad, man.

>>49044871

Very. I often have to run with literally zero preparation, so liberal lifting of material from shit the players haven't watched is a thing I do a lot, as well as based-ons and references.

Depends on which setting I'm running.

Like the luchador d&d setting I made (giving every class monk unarmed damage, requiring everyone to wear a mask, and replacing the alignment system with "Technico" and "Rudo" alignments) was packed full of references to Lucha Libre and Mexican culture.

>>49057820
You should play Guacamelee, it might give you some ideas.

>>49056917
For the DWM2 campaign, I didn't take a lot of the stuff from Greatlog, I just used the main plot worlds, and the same reason for going to them. I also made the situation a bit goofier.

The players were a group of idiots who were bothering their friend at his new job as a wizard's assistant. They accidentally broke an artifact that was sealing a hole in reality and now have to fix it before the wizard gets back from a convention in another city or their friend is out of a job. The friend knows that magic power seals it, and uses his minuscule skills to slow down the rift's growth while the players try to find a new magic item to fill the hole. They use a portal in the back of the shop to scour the multiverse for a suitable item, guided by a ring that glows in the presence of other magic items.

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>>49057731

I scrounged up something like 45 odd pictures from different websites that fit the high fantasy theme and let me show the players what each character looked like. This one is one of my favorites.

>>49048473
All theft is art.

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>>49044871
Sometimes I try and sneak something in in the background for fun. An NPCs mother might be a little bit like the gossipy women from Hot Fuzz, or the television might be running a segment from the awful 2039 Fresh Prince reboot.

But generally I try and avoid them for serious stuff. The villainous giant women who wears giant armour to intimidate her enemies and throws warp magic at those who displease her? She will not be bouncing around acting like pic related.

At the moment I'm running a homage to 80s action movies so I consider it a duty to throw in some references. The evil criminal gang is straight outta Cobra, the PCs boss at the police station is a no-nonsense black detective called Harrigan, and there is an evil gameshow host eager to throw the PCs into his ultra-violent gladiatorial gameshow.

>>49045080
>>49044898
Spot the non-English speakers: the thread

>>49056805
Noice. We just crash-landed on what's basically Tatooine/Mad Max world. And I only just understood that. God damnit.

>>49044898
This... actually is a great example.

If it doesn't distract the game too much, no biggie. But, if everything get's shoved to the side just for it, then it's a problem.

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>>49059849
Sounds nifty. I've been wondering about running a DtD campaign using the spelljamming rules in the first addon that's basically FTL except with pic related instead of the Feds. Trouble is I'm not sure who I could get it together with.

I'm about to run a game for some relative normies, so I fully intend to use names ripped straight from other settings.

>>49044871
The kinda-evil antagonist faction in my game are based on the Empire from star wars, but that's kinda vague.

More direct are the demon enemies who are coming in, who so far are all homebrewed versions of the demons from Doom. Nobody's noticed yet.

Believe it or not, I don't think I make any references in my campaigns. I try to be as original with my ideas as possible, not withstanding the fact that I may be using official campaign settings on occasion.

>>49045457
>le SJW boogeyman

And how is this post any better than the post you're criticizing? You're both retarded. Stop derailing threads with your shit politics.

>>49060215
>Stop derailing threads
We could say the same to you. That post is nearly a day old and the derailment failed. You should stop trying to bring it back up.
>>49060117
Put up a sheet at your LGS stating your intent to run an R-Type style game.
Or just look for people who want to stop the Bydo Empire.
That should fetch you a few old timers who want to see what you've got.

An art piece titled:

Anonymous
"Poe's Law in Action", 2016
Text on a Message Board

An exploration into the theory that, without a clear indicator, parodies of extreme points of view will be seen as sincere.

>>49044871
Who's this dopey white girl?
She's cute

>>49056301
It's old man Jenkins again, isn't it?

My party walked into an haunted house owned by the late lord Fred Durst.

So we have been making as many limp bizkit puns and references as possible

>>49055854

I love that movie, and I'm pretty sure I haven't watched it in over a decade because I'm desperate to preserve it's humor. Kinda like Walt Disney keeping his head in a cryo-vat until they have the means to resurrect him.

>>49053069
We don't. Just Holy Grail and the dead parrot sketch.

>>49056714
My father killed Mr. Creosote by going "ah, but it is only wafair theen" when I was full and didn't want to eat something. I got a good chuckle out of the time a DM had the Tarrasque roar "Dinsdale!?" while attacking a city, though.

>>49060815
same. Sauce?

>>49048462
Man, people are sleeping on Armored Core. It is a fucking great series.

>>49062542
a bit to minmax-ey for anyone who isnt big on robots and tinkerin'

i wanna like it but man its hard, plus it less giant robots, and more fast as fuck gundams

>>49062102
Gwenpool

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>>49044871
It depends on the setting. Some settings are built on references.

I once built an entire adventure for Deadlands: The Weird West based on one long reference to House of 1000 Corpses and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

>>49064930
many thanks anon

The party must protect a socialist elf king at his gay brother's royal wedding from right wing dwarves who want to stop the king from legalizing magical marijuana.

>>49044871
My main BBEG for an upcoming campaign has a Pennywise clown form that she'll be using to taunt at least one of the PCs.

And my Secret Superboss BBEG is pretty much Rugal Bernstein.

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>GM cancels session.
>Offer to run backup one-shot for the first time.
>I get characters from the players I have played with for a few years.
>Every single one is a rip off.
Some were more blatant than others but it's still fucking soul crushing when you realize that people you thought were clever were actually just lifting shit from somewhere else all the time you've known them.

>>49059791
Who's that?

>>49065650
But is the rugal frugal?

>>49066679
read the bottom right