Artistic freedom to borrow

[womzilla]

I'm reading a thread on RPG.net on using Heroquest mechanics for a Call of Cthuhlu-like horror RPG, and bruceb said this:

I just started reading [Bookhounds of London] in the dentist waiting room on Friday, and have been thinking this weekend about looting it as a resource for Nameless Streets.

(He made this comment before he had announced that he and Ben Monroe are working on Something Wicked, a horror RPG using the Heroquest mechanics. Possibly he hadn't even decided he was going to do it yet.)

What struck me about this comment is that I can't think of another artistic medium where the artists are so constantly open about taking ideas from other works. "I borrowed this from that" is in no way a shameful admission in RPGs, either among the creators or in the player audience. Maybe that's one of the reasons I still have such warmth for it.

Comments

[ferret-herder.livejournal.com]

It's true in computer RPGs as well, in creative materials and mechanics. I have a friend who's a developer at Turbine (D&D Online, Lord of the Rings Online); he played World of Warcraft for a year or so to get ideas of what Blizzard was doing with their user interface and other things. Pretty much everyone has personnel playing the other games to get ideas.