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Doesn't bother me too much.
Granted of your three examples, I only recognize Tasselhoff, so I wouldn't be put off by someone lifting personality and backstory from books I haven't read...
unless your Cohen is a rip on Conan... Then frankly turning him to a Half-orc IS a pretty big discrepancy. A lot of these classes have a set 'stereotype' attached to them that does draw a person to want to play that stereotype...
If they're new or not really that great at RPing... I'd rather have them do that, then have every single character just be 'them.' Not really fair to hold the poor rpers up to the expert Rpers standards.. ;)
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I always like to throw in a guy with an airship named Cid.
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I have no problem with that.
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That's a great idea. I should make Syrio Forel.
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Reminds me of the time when we had a 1001 Drizzt clones..."No, you can't have a magical figurine with a tiger/lion/leapord/Dire Housecat in it and no this monster did not have two scimitars/shortswords/wolverine style claw gauntlets in his back up gear".....
I once had a guy who made a half-orc monk who sought justice and specifically targeted criminals. He named him Becru Nayew.
Clue: It's an anagram.
Ugh
I'm a drizzt clone.
Did not steal his background though...
The DM kept doing it for me.
I once had a guy who made a half-orc monk who sought justice and specifically targeted criminals. He named him Becru Nayew.
Clue: It's an anagram.
Ugh
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Sometimes that's where people need to start, before they get ideas for more creative concepts of their own.
If he is overwhelming the game with "no, this has to happen because this is what happened to the character in the story" then the GM needs to step in and explain some things about how plots are not set in stone, and he can base his past on whatever he likes, but it does not affect the future. Also as long as the GM is firm with the created character not having the same powers as the one it's based on, if the power level is dramatically different ("no, you cannot turn into a giant apocalyptic angel once per day").
But otherwise, I'd suggest seeing if you can grin and bear it. If he's given a chance to play things out, he may actually be forced to play the already-done character into a more creative direction--and as he is given the opportunity to do so, he may have more creative and original character ideas in the future. Sometimes people need a familiar place to start with.
Indeed, I think that can really end up pushing what seems to be a cliched character concept into a new direction... trying to come up with what an established character may do in an unexpected situation can actually be a fun challenge of its own.
I like to create original characters, but I also like to pull stuff from existing characters I like. It had its worst cases--I will admit it, I had a strange obsession in college/just after college that led me to basing a couple of my characters on the Pink Power Ranger for some reason; but then I did insane nonsense like "throw the Pink Power Ranger into the World of Darkness and see what happens"--but eventually gave me some ideas of how to incorporate in aspects of characters I like but folding them into other, new, traits, to get something more unique.
Frankly, having played some freeform fandom based RPs online, I think a game where everyone was asked to play an existing character could have its own form of fun ("what happens when Drizz't, Green Arrow, Red Sonja, Jim Hawking of the Outlaw Star, and Willow Rosenberg join forces to save the world?"). Spin the perspective so it seems like a challenge rather than a cliche. I realize the game in question isn't like that -- it's where everyone is original except for the one guy who's basing his character on Tasselhoff, or whomever. But as Tasselhoff never met the other characters people are playing, that induces and forces the player to shift his RP to figure out how to react to the PCs, regardless of the fact of the source material, and could push him to break the mold even if his "mold" seems pretty solid.
If it is getting overly frustrating though or there is something about his roleplaying that just isn't improving, maybe chat with your GM about it. One thing to do would be maybe have the next game use pre-gens -- the GM hands out pregen characters, which people get to choose from, which has names and background seeds already provided. I actually helped a fellow GM with that once by writing up the background seeds, to help shake the players out of usual character ruts they were in (I played a paladin, where tanks were not usually my style).
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When I first started playing D&D I thought I was being clever, original and brilliantly inventive.
Since I appear to have hoarder tendencies, especially around materials associated with my favorite activities, I still have almost every character sheet for every character I ever played.
Every now and then I go back and look at them.
Some of them embarrass me.
For example, I had a pipe-smoking, hairy-footed, pudgy halfling thief named "Pippen." I don't recall the rationale behind it. Maybe I was deliberately trying to play Pippen as an heir to Bilbo and Frodo. I don't know, all I know is that when I see that character sheet now, a little bit of my ego dies.
But perhaps the worst example was when I played Strider. I called him "Longshanks".
I totally sucked.
But somehow we had fun even with such totally hamhanded derivative characters.
There's a certain appeal to wanting to pretend to be an iconic figure. I don't think there's anything wrong with given the nature of the game.
I like DeathQuaker's post and agree with it. A character can start off based on a favorite character from a novel, movie or comic book and then come to develop its own uniqueness based on the setting and storyline its been interjected into.
I also would suggest patience and acceptance. Not everybody has the creative spark or urge to create a character's background from scratch. See where it goes in game; you may be pleasantly surprised. If you have concerns about the direction it takes or it starts to detrimentally impact other people's experience discuss it with your GM or the player in question.
When I first started playing D&D I thought I was being clever, original and brilliantly inventive.
Since I appear to have hoarder tendencies, especially around materials associated with my favorite activities, I still have almost every character sheet for every character I ever played.
Every now and then I go back and look at them.
Some of them embarrass me.
I keep a lot of old stuff too. It's very embarrassing to look at some of that stuff. Worse, are some of the homebrew worlds I created over 20 years ago.
At least he actually plays the character, going so far as to mimic speech patterns. We had a guy that only ever played Link from The Legend of Zelda. We even statted up some of the items like the Hookshot for him, but we couldn't get him to do anything even remotely RP-related.
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Gray, as embarrassed as I am about my character sheets, my reaction now when I go back and look at my hand-drawn maps and notebooks full of background for my game world is "OMG, when did I stop being so creative?"
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AD - TRUTH...or when did i EVER have THAT much free time.
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See, I'm spoiled by comics, so I'm really big on the concept of alternate universes and dimensional clones and all that stuff. So I really love seeing 'The Badger' Ranger with bone-claws and a healing factor, or the Gunslinger who can't talk right and always goes 'Hey yo!' before suckerpunching the Ogre. To me, it isn't a lack of creativity, but just wanting to see how a character or character type would play out in this different environment.
The guy at the table who, instead of creating their own guy copy/pastes a guy from a book/other media and inserts him into the game we're playing.
I have a barbarian, couldnt think of a name, named him Cohen the barbarian. BUT - and heres the important bit - he's a half orc.
Were I the guy Im talking about here, Id have made him a dwarf and just copy/pasta everything from Discworld into his character background, then RPed the character in the game.
For instance, someone whose Halfling rogue happens to be named Tasselhoff Burrfoot and has info copied from the Dragonlance books/Wiki into the background for the guy.
Or has a guy named Syrio Forel who is a spell dancer magus - same with the copy/pasta, but goes even so far as to talk like him as well.Just doesnt sit well with me
meh
You're not alone :-)
As long as it's done properly and it fits with the story, I don't really have problems with players basing off or outright copying characters from other sources. True, I prefer fresh, creative concepts, but it isn't something that cuts the waters for me. In some cases, if done tastefully, it can even add to the story (specially in more light-hearted games).
The only time I have a real problem with it is when they get too stuck on the original.
I am Vlad Taltos human fighter/witch/sorcerer/duelist/assassin with spells, feats, and skills picked to match the novels. Never mind that they don't match or mesh well in PF system.
Then gets upset because he is not the super powered always successful assassin that Vlad is in the novels.
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Gray, as embarrassed as I am about my character sheets, my reaction now when I go back and look at my hand-drawn maps and notebooks full of background for my game world is "OMG, when did I stop being so creative?"
Yeah, reminds me of the notebooks upon notebooks of stories I wrote in high school. It's chock full of cliche, terrible form, spelling errors, trite dialogue... but damned if I don't recall loving every second of writing it, and wondering why I can't seem to sit down and just stream-of-consciousness storytell anymore.
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Orthos, I am at the stage in my life that I am seriously contemplating a career change away from the middle management jobs that have provided me and my family with a reasonably comfortable lifestyle for the past 25 years to recapture the joy of my younger days when I spent the majority of my time learning (at school) or creating (at home).
I just gotta finish that last edit on my first novel... that's all. Any day now....
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A while ago I made the choice to recognize that games aren't high art.
People are going to play the things they want to play, and my "literary standards" only serve to frustrate me and anyone else I express them to.
Nowadays, when people come at me with "Bob the Fighter" or "my character is a horse with two fighter levels" I treat it with a stiff upper lip and let things roll exactly as I think they should.
It turns out that a horse with two fighter levels is badass.
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One of the first things you should do when they bring a carbon copy character to the table is throw them into a (legitimate) scenario that's completely unlike anything their original counterpart has faced. That should bring the genuine RP out.
I've been guilty of using an established character as a starting point for a PC. For example, my sorceress in the Council of Thieves game I'm playing in started out as basically "female Harry Dresden", since LH mentioned that - a caster with little formal education on magic, living on mostly street smarts and self-taught materials, scraping by with a mundane job as a private detective. However, in the two chapters of play since, she's become very different as the character has developed through the AP.
So I'm not against it as a starting point. But I do want there to be a point in the player's progress that it ceases to be someone else's character and becomes theirs.
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Sort of on the topic but not really, this is why I dislike the Vampire Template. Because all I want to do is play Angel. For years, that's all I've wanted to do, is just play Angel, or an Angel-like character concept in a game.
I don't know much about this Dresden guy, but I know he's a private detective, too. A Private Detective campaign would be awesome.
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I find it a strength and it hooks people in. Something about that Character from literature or what have you is a draw to that person. I help them with the system to find the way to express that character and thing about that character that draws them. I mean, they interact with the table, so those interactions are going to be unique and individual.
My wife wanted to try out Spirit of the Century and made a Lara Croft clone. If I told her to go away and make a true character, she would never have found out that she kind of liked Roleplaying.
Sort of on the topic but not really, this is why I dislike the Vampire Template. Because all I want to do is play Angel. For years, that's all I've wanted to do, is just play Angel, or an Angel-like character concept in a game.
Go Dhampir?
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TMNT and Other Strangeness drew a lot of players to the hobby through similar methods.
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Sometimes I want to make an new character all my own. Sometimes I'm tired of making another 1st level character and the muses are silent....so i "grab something off of the shelf"....like connan or something like that.
I do have a PFS tiefling paladin who introduces himself like this " Hello my name is Rafa Navarre, by the way do you happen to have six fingers?" "
" well I happen to have six fingers and I find people have the funniest expression on their faces when I ask....it seems to be a good way to how do you say it? break the ice?"
Sort of on the topic but not really, this is why I dislike the Vampire Template. Because all I want to do is play Angel. For years, that's all I've wanted to do, is just play Angel, or an Angel-like character concept in a game.Go Dhampir?
No. Although I have made plenty of other Dhampir concepts, it just doesn't work for this.
I will sometimes reskin a literary figure into an NPC, but I haven't done that with a PC in 30 years...
Sometimes I like to use multiple sources and put them in a blender as the starting point for a PC. For example, my 2e character Lowen started out as a deliberate mishmash of "Baby" (a mafia boss from an old Burt Reynolds movie), Mandor (from Zelazny's 2nd "Amber" series), Morrolan (from Brust's "Vlad" novels) and others -- powered down to 1st level, and with a new backstory suited to the setting, of course. Gradually he got to have his own personality through gaming with him.
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I don't think I've ever played a carbon copy character before. I've played a few that were CC's of CC's until you only have a vague impression of the original there.
The thing I've noticed in life is that you run into the same people the longer you live. They have different faces and names, but they're still the same person inside. So it is with characters, when you see one brutish barbarian you've seen them all. I don't begrudge a player running a copy character, unless he wants to play Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet and all that power at 1st level.
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I think learning to play unique characters is part of the gamer maturity progression.
I keep meaning to start a thread on the gamer maturity progression. But then I always think better of it. Life is too short for that sort of grief...
A while ago I made the choice to recognize that games aren't high art.
People are going to play the things they want to play, and my "literary standards" only serve to frustrate me and anyone else I express them to.
Nowadays, when people come at me with "Bob the Fighter" or "my character is a horse with two fighter levels" I treat it with a stiff upper lip and let things roll exactly as I think they should.
It turns out that a horse with two fighter levels is badass.
A PC like that must undergo quite the training.
One could say he would need to have nerves of steed.
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A while ago I made the choice to recognize that games aren't high art.
People are going to play the things they want to play, and my "literary standards" only serve to frustrate me and anyone else I express them to.
Nowadays, when people come at me with "Bob the Fighter" or "my character is a horse with two fighter levels" I treat it with a stiff upper lip and let things roll exactly as I think they should.
It turns out that a horse with two fighter levels is badass.
A PC like that must undergo quite the training.
One could say he would need to have nerves of steed.
I use well known archetypes for my character... I just throw them in a blender first.
Looks like this guy.
Talks like this guy.
Personality like this guy.
Attitude like this guy.
Motivations like this guy.
Theres a profligate supply of source material, so a well versed connoiseur of any entertainment media could make a case that every character is derivative.
That being said I'm always way more jazzed to see things like the Steve Colbert paladin (/cavalier?) than the thousandth drizzt clone.
Using a concept doesnt suck. Overusing a concept sucks.
I remember reading about Exar Kun, who at the time was supposed to be one of the only lightsaber wielders who had enough control over the force to be able to use 2 lightsabers at once. Now you cant turn a corner without bumping into TWF jedi, Bo staff jedi, or (shudder) nunchaku jedi...
Clearly I have my pet peeves, but unilaterally saying derivative works are bad might be taking the idea a bit far IMHO.
Sometimes I like to use multiple sources and put them in a blender as the starting point for a PC. For example, my 2e character Lowen started out as a deliberate mishmash of "Baby" (a mafia boss from an old Burt Reynolds movie), Mandor (from Zelazny's 2nd "Amber" series), Morrolan (from Brust's "Vlad" novels) and others -- powered down to 1st level, and with a new backstory suited to the setting, of course. Gradually he got to have his own personality through gaming with him.
I'm quoting Kirth, but responding to Vincent Takeda; if your source materiel comes from three different places, powered down to first level, and with a new backstory suited to the setting, who gains his own personality through gaming with him, that sounds pretty awesome. I would probably enjoy playing at that table.
If, on the other hand, you want to play Triscuit the Dark Elf because Drizzt has plot armor, that's a disaster waiting to happen.
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My current character is a summoner, and his eidolon is an attractive female humanoid.
Their interaction dynamic most resembles flynn and quorra from the latest tron movie.
(she likes him because he bends reality to his will, he likes her because she's biodigital jazz, man)
On the other hand he LOOKS like Tristam from the king arthur movie with clive owen
He SOUNDS like what it would sound like if Sam Elliot could pull off a classic russian mafia accent.
The somatic components for his spells are just a proper sounding phrase in russian (mount spell's somatic component is the russian phrase for 'where did I leave that horse...')
Lots of derivative, but kinda all over the place. The eidolon?
Her look always changes because he's an evolutionist so she's rarely ever the same thing two days in a row., her default mode is a Barbara Palvin/Gemma Ward clone but she's been a hybrid dolphin/gyrfalcon with a swim speed over 350. She's been a horse, a pegasus, a clockwork mech, a monstrous robot like the warbot from the stallone dredd movie... and I just got access to the huge evolution so I cant wait to have some fun with that... The only consistant feature she maintains through every transition is the summoner rune, puplis that do not contract in bright light, smells strongly of wintergreen, and refers to everyone else besides the summoner in the whole campaign world as IT, even when referring to them in person or talking to them directly.
Thats what I love about summoner. Artistic freedom is better than any stat bonus in any book.