Often times on gaming forums you’ll see someone post asking for story ideas for their next RPG session (because they’re novice GM’s and too cheap to buy a module).

A poster on RPG.net wanted to know how to handle the loss of two players in his Firefly game. After suggestions to quickly kill off their characters and that they be GM played until they can be killed off (cause players are the bane of a GM‘s existence), I pointed the youth to the series itself. The Simon and Inara counterparts had ditched, and the very same scenarios happened in the series — the show’s history gave a way. Had he not watched those shows, or did he feel it hacky to “steal” it’s ideas when he was already following it’s characterization so close? (assholes love to play Jayne, I would)

“There is nothing new under the sun.”
– old proverb, used by old people to win arguments.

Human history holds a wealth of campaign ideas waiting to be adapted by the creative. Firefly is a sci-fi western with cowboy lingo, high tech Colts revolvers and frontier daring do. (are Reavers the natives, or the settlers?) Star Wars is sci-fi fairy tale featuring swashbuckling scoundrels, royalty, and laser swords. (a corrupt government expanding it’s power in time of war, can that be?)

How many games did 300 inspire? (Spartan loincloth is the new chainmail bikini)Is it that hard to turn on the History Channel to create your big bad guy in the image of Andrew Jackson?

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