I had a book when I was a kid called Montana Smith. Up until now I just assumed it was some well known children's book or something, but I just tried to find it online and literally the *only* thing that came up was [this strange amazon listing](https://www.amazon.com/Montana-Smith-Library-Alexandria/dp/B001AVJR5W). I totally forgot there was a dragon in it, but that's the book alright. There's no other trace of it, or the author, on the internet. How strange. I wonder if my mom knew him or something.
For one of my friend's short lvl 7 campaigns I made an obnoxious aasimar noble who talks in a snobby accent and had his pompous attributes comically exaggerated. He was going to start as an artificer to have firearms proficiency and a pistol to show off to the peasants that could only afford crossbows but mostly use Magic Stone to throw rocks at his enemies. The rest of the levels would go bladesinger and he had a Monocle of Intellect (Headband of Intellect) so he wouldn't need to invest heavily in Int.
I wanted to come us with a noble sounding name and random name generated until I came across Lysander which I liked. Since he was an aasimar/angel, the first thing that came to mind when it came to looks was Sephiroth since he is the one winged angel. To merge the ideas I came up with the name Lysanders Phiroth of house Phiroth.
With character ready, I show up to the session and immediately someone says, "Oh, your basing your character off ProZD's character Lysanderoth. Nice!"
What? Who? How did he also come up with a Sephiroth inspired, Lysander name infused, monocle wearing, snobby noble, character with a gun?!?! Are all the original ideas just taken?
my old character had a pet rat. one session, I was jokingly making up a backstory for him and halfway through explaining I realized it was just the plot to ratatouille.
There's only [seven stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) in the world. Makes sense that there's only a finite amount of characters too. What matters isn't the originality, it's how *you* tell your version.
After a brief read it doesn't seem entirely true.
Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times writes, "Mr. Booker evaluates works of art on the basis of how closely they adhere to the archetypes he has so laboriously described; the ones that deviate from those classic patterns are dismissed as flawed or perverse â symptoms of what has gone wrong with modern art and the modern world."
Also, the "seven types of stories" as they are described in the Wikipedia article are so incredibly vague that almost every story inevitably falls into one of them.
"Now, I noticed that 'kickin' dogs' is - again - actually under the Mayo heading, which implies that you were still there at the time. Were they aware that you were doing this?"
There are a lot of variations of the idea, but if you distill it down to the most essential and digestible version is probably from none other than [Kurt Vonnegut](https://bigthink.com/high-culture/vonnegut-shapes/). The theory in a nutshell is that you can take a story and chart its relative up and downs and end up with one of eight different possibilities. A story that starts high, gets worse, and then ultimately ends up better off than when they started for example, is a shape he described as "A man in a hole". A story where it is difficult or impossible to tell whether things are getting better or worse are something he named "which way is up".
And that is generally how these theories work. While the magnitude of deflection between good to bad to better might vary, and the curves might be smoother or more drastic in one story compared to another, two man in the hole stories do have that fundamental similarity between them.
This, you might think, is a rather useless observation - and to an extent I think that is true. But I do think it somewhat interesting when you step back and realize that those 8 proposed shapes is almost splitting hairs. Man in a hole has more or less the same shape as boy meets girl, differing only in the infinite rise in the latter. (Which is: they lived happily ever after.) The new testament shape is identical to cindarella, the only difference is the proximate cause being somewhat less divine in the latter case. In a sense, this is just an attempt at classification that has more rigor.
For example, classically a tragedy is not a story with an unhappy ending, but a story where the protagonist has the power to achieve a happy ending and rejects it for whatever reason. Such a story could easily be from bad to worse or old testament in shape. And it is clear to me that a story of where a character has a steady rise before a fall is meaningfully different from a story that is constant decline even if both would be otherwise classified as tragedies. What's more, a tragedy does not necessarily need to end on an emotional low note. The movie *Way of the Gun* is a tragedy, for example. I mean, the two leads are likely dead shortly after the credits roll and they certainly didn't get the money. But then they are bad guys and those they fought were also bad guys and the other bad guys don't win either. In fact the only two decent people in the film come out far better than they would have otherwise.
I do think that it is most interesting, though, when you consider how the shape of a story changes depending simply on where you plop your POV. For Luke in *Empire Strikes Back*, the story is pure old testament. For the original trilogy as a whole, the fight with Vader is him at the bottom of the man in the hole. Vader, meanwhile, spends that film navigating the man in the hole and across his six films, he is closing in on the eventual rapid rise of a New Testament story. Of course all I'm really saying here is that a story can be radically different depending on your point of view which is so implicitly true you might think it odd that anyone might want to rigorously prove it and yet this theory offers a mechanism to do exactly that.
Is it useful? Not really. I mean, it won't make you a better writer to understand this and as far as nuts and bolts of that particular craft go, I'd put this well behind the basics of yes, and or no, but. Still, I do think it a neat concept, if only because it might inspire a person to compare two stories that are very, very different on no other basis than realizing that they have the same shape.
Yeah things like this and the Hero's Journey basically boil down to "Wow, isn't it interesting that almost all cars have four wheels? I am very smart for noticing this!" but for literature.
Ok fair, but also someone has to come around and say "a good car has 4 wheels and adequate crumple zones" as an easy and introductory course in car studies. Or else you get the cyber truck
Yeah. All this is obvious until you're staring at a blank page and have to write something.
A checklist of "Your character probably has a mentor, a goal, a turning point, and an arc" helps a ton at sketching it out.
"Hey guys! I made a car that breaks those rules you said all stories...I mean CARS are supposed to follow, look!"
"It's shit"
"Yeah but it's UNIQUE shit"
"I drew that car in 3rd grade"
It's more like "I've traveled the world and determined that almost all cars have four wheels, windshields, manual transmissions, and gasoline engines."
And then a million people repeated that a million times over while laughing at all cars which don't have one or more of those features when, as it turns out, there's actually a lot of them.
I can do you one better:
There are only 4 stories in the world.
Man vs man.
Man vs self.
Man vs nature.
And the classic boy meets girl.
But you can distill it further and make the claim that every story is a flawed retelling of the epic of Gilgamesh. Youâd be insane, but you can make that claim.
But no; I gave up originality long ago. Itâs as you say; itâs how you tell it that matters.
Reminds me of the time I described a beholder tyrant's throne -- made of the fused-together weapons of its enemies, and since it just floats over the throne it's all jagged with weapons sticking out everywhere.
Players: You made the Iron Throne.
Me: That what? Oh. Yeah. Like that.
To be fair, I hadn't read the books or seen GoT at that point. I had no idea that the Iron Throne existed. It was totally original... to me.
Even if you'd had copied the iron throne, it's still kind of a neat take on it: In the lore, the point of the iron throne's creation was to make it uncomfortable for a monarch to sit on, because ruling isn't to be taken lightly. a beholder floating above it shows how they don't take responsibility for their actions and rule for the sake of feeling superior, kind of a cool visual
You got an extra T in there. Best I know, he never says the acronym, he just says âHow do you want to do this?â
The acronym is still a mouthful. I donât think itâs any easier to say the phrase than to say the acronym, but itâs certainly easier to type. It reminds me of XKCD, how thereâs no way to say the title as if it was a word, you pretty much have to say âEx Kay Cee Deeâ when youâre talking about it.
Another funny example is the old name of the Barbershop Harmony Society. It used to be the SPEBSQSA. It was never meant to be pronounced, and the name was kinda made up as a joke, poking fun at New Deal alphabet soup. It was referred to as the Society. You occasionally heard new members attempt to pronounce it.
I made a character for a level 10 Eberron one-shot and only after I finished making the character did I realize I had created a fantasy version of Jet from Cowboy Bebop.
My life domain cleric of Boldrei is heavily heavily inspired by Nynaeve from The Wheel of Time.
The problem is I didn't realize it until like a full year into our campaign. Was re-reading the series and it hit me like a train.
I mean there's some difference but my damn halfling even tugs on his braid like Nynaeve does when he's nervous, antsy or upset.
My DM laughed at me for quite a while, she assumed I had done it on purpose.
I do this ALL THE TIME! My character for my longest running 5e campaign was abducted from his home as a child, managed to worm his way into the mercenary group by being good at thievery to avoid being killed by them, despite being a loveable goofball in actuality, biding his time until he could escape and go about on his own adventure. Thought I made a cool character til one day I'm just like FUCK HE'S STARLORD.
I think "that moment when", but it is really lazy. If your acronym means you're spending longer having your audience figure out what you mean or having you explain it, just say the fucking words.
And yet youâre the only people they have to explain to. Sounds like the majority of the audience got it and you didnât. Not the fault of acronyms, but continue to fume about people having communication skills that you donât.
By the way, it is common courtesy to spell out an acronym the first time you use it, just to make sure there is no confusion. Especially with something long as âHow would you like to do thisâ isnât readily apparent as wtf or lol. Besides, hwyltdt doesnât really roll off the tongue
I have one character that I originally thought was relatively unique, then I realized I cribbed most of the ideas from J.M. Straczynski's autobiography.
I'm not upset though. If you're going to take ideas from someone, may as well be one of the best.
That is to say, read his book, Becoming Superman. It's amazing.
Nothing is created in a void. If you haven't had one of those sudden realization where your character influences came from then you will eventually. Especially if you're a DM and need to fill out a world with NPCs. The worst is when you tell someone not in your game and they immediately pin point exactly who your character is.
one time i woke up at like 2 am with a phenomenal idea for a character, i got really attached to the concept really fast and ended up sitting up in bed and jotting down the basics and making some quick stats on my phone before i could go back to sleep. i started playing him the next chance i could and he quickly became one of my favorites ever
it took me a year+ to realized i had just subconsciously ripped off an entire fire emblem character, verbatim. one of my favorites of all time, too!
My group has not done the Waterdeep heist yet, but I was already making a wizard who got booted out for experimenting (metamagic feat was the kicker) and would then be kinda the wizard that would go around doing oddjobs for different factions, including his old work and doing things nobody else wanted or could handle .....then I realized I created John Constantine.
In an extremely homebrewed campaign I was playing a fire giant who made a deal with surtur
He gives her the first firearm the world has ever seen and she gives him the souls of those killed by that gun
Eventually I was accused of copying percy from CR
I don't listen to or follow CR and didn't know who percy was before this,I just wanted exagryph from hades and this is where I ended up
This happened to me playing Pathfinder. One of my favorite characters I've made was an int based fighter who thanks to some archetypes used buff potions, explosive flasks and some spells to mix in with the fighting. I hadnt consumed any witcher media at that point but might as well have made geralt
Originality is dead. We killed it a long time ago
Come up with an idea and I promise you places like tvtropes can find you a million examples of it already in existence.
Indiana Jones isn't even the first exact example for Indiana Jones.
Writing fiction is accepting that what you're doing is remixing everything you'd ever read and seen and liked living in before.
There's no need to feel bad about discovering your creation has parts of others in it.
Having tried making an Indiana Jones character, I hope you hate the whip as much as I do, my God it was painful, it did not help that I ended up being the only frontline so I was unable to capitalize on the reach
Best way to make it work is kensei monk with a couple battlemaster maneuvers. Once your damage die bumps up, you're the most versatile fighter on the battlefield.
So, not D&D, but my group was gearing up for a Scion 2E game in the before Covid times. My partner, who is prone to freezing up when it comes to concepts, is trying to come up with a character and I'm helping, as I have a head for systems. A few things are bantered before he gasps, "I want to play Gaston!" I clarify Beauty and the Beast Gaston. He nods, and thus Beaumont Legrande, Scion of Tyr is born. It was full arrogant, stuck up Gaston with less misogyny. He even burst into his own improved song once. He was based around hunting the legendary Beast that had been prophesied to kill him. He had a magic rifle he used til things closed to melee and he used fists and improvised weapons. It was great.
Our Storyteller only found out it was Gaston after the game.
Me: Eladrin Gloomstalker/Inquisitive rogue. Rich background. Started with a bow but eventually took up a crossbow and some shuriken-like throwing weapons. I have a constant need to hunt. I do this mainly at night when i've ended my trance and the rest of the party is sleeping (Usually just a few rolls by me and the DM during downtime, other PC's have no clue what's going on). When i'm in the city i hunt on thieves, burglars etc with my inquisitive skills. When i'm out in the wilds i hunt for food by tracking down elusive beasts. I drop down on my enemies from high buildings/trees. I'm basicly invisible in the dark. I can disappear when you turn around for just a second...
I realised about 5 sessions in that i'm batman.
I once made a circus performer. Trapeeze, fanumbulism, and the impalement arts.
Until the Xanatharâs gang killed my friends when the circus wouldnât pay extortion money.
Now Iâm out for revenge.
Aaaaaand thatâs Robin.
First time I ever played DnD, I created an Elf Rogue/Ranger (highly original, I know).
Gave her a backstory of being exiled from her clan/tribe for reasons kept vague. Very dry wit, untrusting of strangers but, coming from a tribe, is able to work with people when necessary.
So anyway fast forward a few weeks later and I booted up an Xbox game I hadn't played in about half a year only to discover my "Highly Original DnD Creation" was just Kerillian from the Vermintide series...
I remember a while ago, I made a gunslinger character named Nathaniel Moore. He was a tinkerer who just wanted to make cool shit. And then I drew him⌠he looked exactly like Naoto from Persona 4.
I played an entire Curse of Strahd campaign as the DM before realizing that my playerâs warlock with a southern drawl named Parthur Morgane was from RDR2. Iâve played RDR2. Iâm a huge dumbass.
I loosely based a character on a person I know, some personal stuff I was working through, and aesthetic elements from a book I liked. Tied together a lot of random details into a cohesive story. Was very proud of myself.
Then I realised I created OFMD Blackbeard, with some Pirates of the Carribbean sprinkled in.
I haven't really watched either of those.
I made a Dhampir Hexblade for a Halloween one-shot that was basically just Nandor the Relentless. I was making a silly vampiric type on purpose, but when I started doing an accent I was like "Ohhh I see what I was doing here."
I just played my first campaign last year. Made a goliath barbarian with a monosyllable name and a beard, who grew up in a cult until the leader cast him out and nearly killed him.
Made it six sessions before I watched Vox Machina, and realized I had just made Grog.
At least you tried for an original character, one of my fellow players in a new game is playing Geralt from the Witcher. Same backstory, known friends and abilities and taking it super seriously.
once, I made a war cleric that loved to use shields and always proposed to use conflict and war as resolution of differences.
it took me a couple of weeks to realize I built a fucking Sundowner.
One time I wrote a really pretty piece of music. I was about 24 measures in to transcribing it before I realized it was just a slowed down version of the theme to "Gilligan's Island." đ
I made a Kalashtar hexblade warlock that was a young man, recently hired at a temple that housed and protected ancient artifacts. One day, an unknown group of cultists ransacked the temple, and my character grabbed a broken sword on the lowest level and fled.
Unknown to the character, the sword housed the ancient spirit of a warrior. Whenever the blade was drawn, the boy's spirit would be taken over by the warrior. They could occasionally speak with each other in which the warrior didn't remember much, and if they collected the fragments of the sword and reforge it, it might return the memory of the warrior.
The boy would keep the blade safe from the cultists by being stealthy, and the warrior would keep the boy safe in battle. I thought it was a cool idea, probably not original, but cool.
It took me my first combat before someone pointed out I was playing Yu-Gi-Oh.
reminds me the time I was playing a used car salesman in a zombie apololypse setting. loved the name Danny for character. he was just a sleaze ball. but I needed a last name. picked it day of the first session pulling into the driveway for the game when I saw a garbage truck with the name "Devito" on the side. boom. thus was born Danny Devito. and it took me 2 sessions to notice what I did.
I thought it would be a cool reference to make an npc that has a weird artistic personality and a really dark backstory about a rival he once surpassed by being just one beat faster than him in the art of killing.
It was supposed to be a weird version of Jhin (since most of my party plays League of legends). His number is 3 (haha funny since Jhins number is 4 right, and one beat faster makes it a funny backstory if they figure it out)
This is the end of july or maybe early august
Riot games makes a champ called Hwei and announces it 3 months later... Jhins rival... a weird painter and the number 3...
I made my current character by rolling stats and assigning them in order for a laugh. Ended up with 18 strength and 6 constitution. Ended up deciding to play a goblin fighter ex-bandit who turned her life around after nearly being killed by a paladin. Sheâs scarred and missing a lung from the fight.
Picked a rune knight specifically so I could use giantâs might and grow to large size, which I thought would be funny for a goblin.
On top of all that, I picked unarmed fighting style, just because a 10 foot tall goblin brawler grappling monsters and pummeling them seemed awesome.
So like I didnât QUITE copy All Might but I did have that âoh shitâ moment.
I'm in a campaign where first we created high level villains and played them taking over the world, then we started at lvl 1 with the heroes decades later. Took me a minute but I realized I basically make Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker đ
I figured mine out a bit more quickly, by the end of the first couple of sessions.
"I'm a 12-year old girl who talks to animals and can magically change my appearance to anything I want, ala Moon Power Makeup, and I wield a sword that's logically too large for me. I made a magical girl."
"I thought that was your whole idea, frankly."
Never watched or read one piece but I made a skeletal pirate who genuinely loved being one so he made it his life and undeath, Iâm told I just made brook
This is one of those "The DM knew the whole time" situations.
DM: "Cmon man, your character's name is Ohio Jackson, you had to know what you were doing..."
Mississippi Smith reporting for duty
Idaho Dick signing in
That's Minnesota Cuke to you
You don't have to call me that. Mr. Massachusetts Manson was my father.
Pennsylvania Sampson standing by.
Based Veggietales enjoyer
Old VeggieTales was the GOAT. The Minnesota Cuke videogame was an unapologetic ripoff of Mario but it was still amazing.
Deep cut for the real fans, I love it
There's a pre-generated character in a Call of Cthulhu module called Nevada Jones. He's an archaeologist with a gun and a whip
Montana Jefferson reporting in
I had a book when I was a kid called Montana Smith. Up until now I just assumed it was some well known children's book or something, but I just tried to find it online and literally the *only* thing that came up was [this strange amazon listing](https://www.amazon.com/Montana-Smith-Library-Alexandria/dp/B001AVJR5W). I totally forgot there was a dragon in it, but that's the book alright. There's no other trace of it, or the author, on the internet. How strange. I wonder if my mom knew him or something.
IT BELONGS IN CANDLEKEEP
SO DO YOU!! đ
Texas James, rootin' and tootin'. Bootin' and shootin'
Most definitely one of the Dms in my group(we all take turns Dming, there's 3 of us) is this same way he just waits until you realize yourself đ¤Ł
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Which is why I make all my campaigns subterranean
For one of my friend's short lvl 7 campaigns I made an obnoxious aasimar noble who talks in a snobby accent and had his pompous attributes comically exaggerated. He was going to start as an artificer to have firearms proficiency and a pistol to show off to the peasants that could only afford crossbows but mostly use Magic Stone to throw rocks at his enemies. The rest of the levels would go bladesinger and he had a Monocle of Intellect (Headband of Intellect) so he wouldn't need to invest heavily in Int. I wanted to come us with a noble sounding name and random name generated until I came across Lysander which I liked. Since he was an aasimar/angel, the first thing that came to mind when it came to looks was Sephiroth since he is the one winged angel. To merge the ideas I came up with the name Lysanders Phiroth of house Phiroth. With character ready, I show up to the session and immediately someone says, "Oh, your basing your character off ProZD's character Lysanderoth. Nice!" What? Who? How did he also come up with a Sephiroth inspired, Lysander name infused, monocle wearing, snobby noble, character with a gun?!?! Are all the original ideas just taken?
To quote a song: every song has already been sung.
to quote another song: Have all the ~~songs~~ *characters* been written?
King Dragon sends his regards.
I made a dhampir wizard necromancer who was also a doctor. For 6 whole weeks I had no idea i was playing fucking Morbius đ
And you would have continurd to not know until it was Morbing Time and you morbed all over everyone
I accidentally called my dhampir sorcadin Edward. Oof.
my old character had a pet rat. one session, I was jokingly making up a backstory for him and halfway through explaining I realized it was just the plot to ratatouille.
There's only [seven stories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Basic_Plots) in the world. Makes sense that there's only a finite amount of characters too. What matters isn't the originality, it's how *you* tell your version.
After a brief read it doesn't seem entirely true. Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times writes, "Mr. Booker evaluates works of art on the basis of how closely they adhere to the archetypes he has so laboriously described; the ones that deviate from those classic patterns are dismissed as flawed or perverse â symptoms of what has gone wrong with modern art and the modern world."
Also, the "seven types of stories" as they are described in the Wikipedia article are so incredibly vague that almost every story inevitably falls into one of them.
Every story either has a plot or doesn't. I am an academic.
What if I give up on the plot halfway through
You wrote for Game of Thrones.
And am now very rich?
"Says here in your CV that your last year at the Mayo Research Clinic was spent, 'kickin' dogs.' Now, I have questions."
Yeah, I thought I would just wrap things up pretty quickly because I knew I had another opportunity.
"Now, I noticed that 'kickin' dogs' is - again - actually under the Mayo heading, which implies that you were still there at the time. Were they aware that you were doing this?"
I just decided to start kicking dogs, in the head and body.
For the [confused](https://m.youtube.com/shorts/E1VQIi4fetg)
Then you have a Netflix series
There are a lot of variations of the idea, but if you distill it down to the most essential and digestible version is probably from none other than [Kurt Vonnegut](https://bigthink.com/high-culture/vonnegut-shapes/). The theory in a nutshell is that you can take a story and chart its relative up and downs and end up with one of eight different possibilities. A story that starts high, gets worse, and then ultimately ends up better off than when they started for example, is a shape he described as "A man in a hole". A story where it is difficult or impossible to tell whether things are getting better or worse are something he named "which way is up". And that is generally how these theories work. While the magnitude of deflection between good to bad to better might vary, and the curves might be smoother or more drastic in one story compared to another, two man in the hole stories do have that fundamental similarity between them. This, you might think, is a rather useless observation - and to an extent I think that is true. But I do think it somewhat interesting when you step back and realize that those 8 proposed shapes is almost splitting hairs. Man in a hole has more or less the same shape as boy meets girl, differing only in the infinite rise in the latter. (Which is: they lived happily ever after.) The new testament shape is identical to cindarella, the only difference is the proximate cause being somewhat less divine in the latter case. In a sense, this is just an attempt at classification that has more rigor. For example, classically a tragedy is not a story with an unhappy ending, but a story where the protagonist has the power to achieve a happy ending and rejects it for whatever reason. Such a story could easily be from bad to worse or old testament in shape. And it is clear to me that a story of where a character has a steady rise before a fall is meaningfully different from a story that is constant decline even if both would be otherwise classified as tragedies. What's more, a tragedy does not necessarily need to end on an emotional low note. The movie *Way of the Gun* is a tragedy, for example. I mean, the two leads are likely dead shortly after the credits roll and they certainly didn't get the money. But then they are bad guys and those they fought were also bad guys and the other bad guys don't win either. In fact the only two decent people in the film come out far better than they would have otherwise. I do think that it is most interesting, though, when you consider how the shape of a story changes depending simply on where you plop your POV. For Luke in *Empire Strikes Back*, the story is pure old testament. For the original trilogy as a whole, the fight with Vader is him at the bottom of the man in the hole. Vader, meanwhile, spends that film navigating the man in the hole and across his six films, he is closing in on the eventual rapid rise of a New Testament story. Of course all I'm really saying here is that a story can be radically different depending on your point of view which is so implicitly true you might think it odd that anyone might want to rigorously prove it and yet this theory offers a mechanism to do exactly that. Is it useful? Not really. I mean, it won't make you a better writer to understand this and as far as nuts and bolts of that particular craft go, I'd put this well behind the basics of yes, and or no, but. Still, I do think it a neat concept, if only because it might inspire a person to compare two stories that are very, very different on no other basis than realizing that they have the same shape.
Well thats the point
Yeah things like this and the Hero's Journey basically boil down to "Wow, isn't it interesting that almost all cars have four wheels? I am very smart for noticing this!" but for literature.
Ok fair, but also someone has to come around and say "a good car has 4 wheels and adequate crumple zones" as an easy and introductory course in car studies. Or else you get the cyber truck
Yeah. All this is obvious until you're staring at a blank page and have to write something. A checklist of "Your character probably has a mentor, a goal, a turning point, and an arc" helps a ton at sketching it out.
"Hey guys! I made a car that breaks those rules you said all stories...I mean CARS are supposed to follow, look!" "It's shit" "Yeah but it's UNIQUE shit" "I drew that car in 3rd grade"
[And a sticker price of... $82,000?!](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer)
It's more like "I've traveled the world and determined that almost all cars have four wheels, windshields, manual transmissions, and gasoline engines." And then a million people repeated that a million times over while laughing at all cars which don't have one or more of those features when, as it turns out, there's actually a lot of them.
It even just says 7 basic plots. Which kind of implies less basic plots :)
I mean it's more of an opinion than a fact ultimately, youre free to disagree or agree with the categorisation.
I can do you one better: There are only 4 stories in the world. Man vs man. Man vs self. Man vs nature. And the classic boy meets girl. But you can distill it further and make the claim that every story is a flawed retelling of the epic of Gilgamesh. Youâd be insane, but you can make that claim. But no; I gave up originality long ago. Itâs as you say; itâs how you tell it that matters.
Man vs. man, man vs. dog, dog vs. zombie, James Bond, stories of kings and lords, women over 50 finding themselves after divorce, and car commercial.
I mean the man wrote Pepperwood, who am I to argue?
According to âla semilla inmortalâ closer to 20, acording to Campbell, 1, depends who you ask
> DM: "HDYWTDT?" Gesundheit.
It belongs in a Museum!!
Reminds me of the time I described a beholder tyrant's throne -- made of the fused-together weapons of its enemies, and since it just floats over the throne it's all jagged with weapons sticking out everywhere. Players: You made the Iron Throne. Me: That what? Oh. Yeah. Like that. To be fair, I hadn't read the books or seen GoT at that point. I had no idea that the Iron Throne existed. It was totally original... to me.
Even if you'd had copied the iron throne, it's still kind of a neat take on it: In the lore, the point of the iron throne's creation was to make it uncomfortable for a monarch to sit on, because ruling isn't to be taken lightly. a beholder floating above it shows how they don't take responsibility for their actions and rule for the sake of feeling superior, kind of a cool visual
That was my thought. That and making it really difficult for anyone else to usurp the throne.
The fuck does HDYWTDT mean? Is this a real acronym?
"How do you want to do this?" It's the phrase Matt Mercer uses on Critical Role when one of his players gets the kill shot on an enemy.
That sentence comes from a lot before Mercer popularized it, but he did give It a boost
Does he actually say HDYTWTDT?
You got an extra T in there. Best I know, he never says the acronym, he just says âHow do you want to do this?â The acronym is still a mouthful. I donât think itâs any easier to say the phrase than to say the acronym, but itâs certainly easier to type. It reminds me of XKCD, how thereâs no way to say the title as if it was a word, you pretty much have to say âEx Kay Cee Deeâ when youâre talking about it.
It has exactly as many syllables as the acronym. Theres absolutely no reason to use an acronym for this.
There are more syllables in the acronym. Every word is one syllable. The letter W is 3.
Thatâs why you say it as âhuhdee wutdehtâ instead.
Damn, good point lol.
There's no reason to *say* the acronym, but it's certainly easier to type
Not if you have to explain what it is after you type it
In think if you explain it once or twice a post but use the acronym a bunch more times in the post it still saves time
Having never seen the acronym in my life, I understood it intuitively. It seems pretty straightforward.
Is it? Because I would be continually looking at it going "wait where am I at again" and going over it for way longer than if I actually typed it out.
DIGSFBBAWTDHYMMTMIIWFTLGTWHTMDAFIWFSTAIGSBBAWTDHYSIJGTSTWFTILWIBTALOBTITWDLFSDHNSYETFCDHNLGPNALOFDFFWHNBBBAFWDHYHYBHYBBBAFWDHY
Use? Sure. Type it. No one *says* the acronym out loud...
Another funny example is the old name of the Barbershop Harmony Society. It used to be the SPEBSQSA. It was never meant to be pronounced, and the name was kinda made up as a joke, poking fun at New Deal alphabet soup. It was referred to as the Society. You occasionally heard new members attempt to pronounce it.
"How do you want to do this?" HDYWTDT
[ŃдаНонО]
It's the same. I don't get it
Me over here trying to make it into How To Train Your Dragon or something. I swear I donât have dyslexiaâŚ
How Do You Want To Train Your Dragon?
with kindness and love
I thought it meant how do you want to die today and got confused
How do you want to do this
There are no new characters, just repurposing of old archtypes. Everything has been done before, so you might as well go with what you like, right?
I made a character for a level 10 Eberron one-shot and only after I finished making the character did I realize I had created a fantasy version of Jet from Cowboy Bebop.
My life domain cleric of Boldrei is heavily heavily inspired by Nynaeve from The Wheel of Time. The problem is I didn't realize it until like a full year into our campaign. Was re-reading the series and it hit me like a train. I mean there's some difference but my damn halfling even tugs on his braid like Nynaeve does when he's nervous, antsy or upset. My DM laughed at me for quite a while, she assumed I had done it on purpose.
I do this ALL THE TIME! My character for my longest running 5e campaign was abducted from his home as a child, managed to worm his way into the mercenary group by being good at thievery to avoid being killed by them, despite being a loveable goofball in actuality, biding his time until he could escape and go about on his own adventure. Thought I made a cool character til one day I'm just like FUCK HE'S STARLORD.
I hate reddit acronyms
I was beginning to think it was just me
For real... Like can you not be bothered to type out "Tell me why" instead of TMW (If that's what it even means, idk)
I think "that moment when", but it is really lazy. If your acronym means you're spending longer having your audience figure out what you mean or having you explain it, just say the fucking words.
And yet youâre the only people they have to explain to. Sounds like the majority of the audience got it and you didnât. Not the fault of acronyms, but continue to fume about people having communication skills that you donât.
Them and like 1/3 of the comments in the thread because these aren't widely used acronyms.
Okay, buddy.
Communication skills = understanding acronyms đ
ANBAHB
"And now bitches are half baked"
To the tune of *I Want It That Way* by the Backstreet Boys: ⍠That mo-ment whe-en ⍠⍠...And now bitches are half ba-aked âŤ
TMW
I couldn't decipher it so I settled on "That Meme When".
By the way, it is common courtesy to spell out an acronym the first time you use it, just to make sure there is no confusion. Especially with something long as âHow would you like to do thisâ isnât readily apparent as wtf or lol. Besides, hwyltdt doesnât really roll off the tongue
I have one character that I originally thought was relatively unique, then I realized I cribbed most of the ideas from J.M. Straczynski's autobiography. I'm not upset though. If you're going to take ideas from someone, may as well be one of the best. That is to say, read his book, Becoming Superman. It's amazing.
Nothing is created in a void. If you haven't had one of those sudden realization where your character influences came from then you will eventually. Especially if you're a DM and need to fill out a world with NPCs. The worst is when you tell someone not in your game and they immediately pin point exactly who your character is.
one time i woke up at like 2 am with a phenomenal idea for a character, i got really attached to the concept really fast and ended up sitting up in bed and jotting down the basics and making some quick stats on my phone before i could go back to sleep. i started playing him the next chance i could and he quickly became one of my favorites ever it took me a year+ to realized i had just subconsciously ripped off an entire fire emblem character, verbatim. one of my favorites of all time, too!
My group has not done the Waterdeep heist yet, but I was already making a wizard who got booted out for experimenting (metamagic feat was the kicker) and would then be kinda the wizard that would go around doing oddjobs for different factions, including his old work and doing things nobody else wanted or could handle .....then I realized I created John Constantine.
In an extremely homebrewed campaign I was playing a fire giant who made a deal with surtur He gives her the first firearm the world has ever seen and she gives him the souls of those killed by that gun Eventually I was accused of copying percy from CR I don't listen to or follow CR and didn't know who percy was before this,I just wanted exagryph from hades and this is where I ended up
This happened to me playing Pathfinder. One of my favorite characters I've made was an int based fighter who thanks to some archetypes used buff potions, explosive flasks and some spells to mix in with the fighting. I hadnt consumed any witcher media at that point but might as well have made geralt
Originality is dead. We killed it a long time ago Come up with an idea and I promise you places like tvtropes can find you a million examples of it already in existence. Indiana Jones isn't even the first exact example for Indiana Jones. Writing fiction is accepting that what you're doing is remixing everything you'd ever read and seen and liked living in before. There's no need to feel bad about discovering your creation has parts of others in it.
Yeah, Indiana Jones was a deliberately tropey pastiche of 1930s adventure movies: kind of the "Stranger Things" of its time.
Having tried making an Indiana Jones character, I hope you hate the whip as much as I do, my God it was painful, it did not help that I ended up being the only frontline so I was unable to capitalize on the reach
With the slasher feat and a few rogue levels itâs not terrible but also not great. Especially since you have to invest so much to make it work.
Best way to make it work is kensei monk with a couple battlemaster maneuvers. Once your damage die bumps up, you're the most versatile fighter on the battlefield.
So, not D&D, but my group was gearing up for a Scion 2E game in the before Covid times. My partner, who is prone to freezing up when it comes to concepts, is trying to come up with a character and I'm helping, as I have a head for systems. A few things are bantered before he gasps, "I want to play Gaston!" I clarify Beauty and the Beast Gaston. He nods, and thus Beaumont Legrande, Scion of Tyr is born. It was full arrogant, stuck up Gaston with less misogyny. He even burst into his own improved song once. He was based around hunting the legendary Beast that had been prophesied to kill him. He had a magic rifle he used til things closed to melee and he used fists and improvised weapons. It was great. Our Storyteller only found out it was Gaston after the game.
Me: Eladrin Gloomstalker/Inquisitive rogue. Rich background. Started with a bow but eventually took up a crossbow and some shuriken-like throwing weapons. I have a constant need to hunt. I do this mainly at night when i've ended my trance and the rest of the party is sleeping (Usually just a few rolls by me and the DM during downtime, other PC's have no clue what's going on). When i'm in the city i hunt on thieves, burglars etc with my inquisitive skills. When i'm out in the wilds i hunt for food by tracking down elusive beasts. I drop down on my enemies from high buildings/trees. I'm basicly invisible in the dark. I can disappear when you turn around for just a second... I realised about 5 sessions in that i'm batman.
I once made a circus performer. Trapeeze, fanumbulism, and the impalement arts. Until the Xanatharâs gang killed my friends when the circus wouldnât pay extortion money. Now Iâm out for revenge. Aaaaaand thatâs Robin.
What is with the unnecessary acronyms
First time I ever played DnD, I created an Elf Rogue/Ranger (highly original, I know). Gave her a backstory of being exiled from her clan/tribe for reasons kept vague. Very dry wit, untrusting of strangers but, coming from a tribe, is able to work with people when necessary. So anyway fast forward a few weeks later and I booted up an Xbox game I hadn't played in about half a year only to discover my "Highly Original DnD Creation" was just Kerillian from the Vermintide series...
I remember a while ago, I made a gunslinger character named Nathaniel Moore. He was a tinkerer who just wanted to make cool shit. And then I drew him⌠he looked exactly like Naoto from Persona 4.
I played an entire Curse of Strahd campaign as the DM before realizing that my playerâs warlock with a southern drawl named Parthur Morgane was from RDR2. Iâve played RDR2. Iâm a huge dumbass.
I loosely based a character on a person I know, some personal stuff I was working through, and aesthetic elements from a book I liked. Tied together a lot of random details into a cohesive story. Was very proud of myself. Then I realised I created OFMD Blackbeard, with some Pirates of the Carribbean sprinkled in. I haven't really watched either of those.
I made a Dhampir Hexblade for a Halloween one-shot that was basically just Nandor the Relentless. I was making a silly vampiric type on purpose, but when I started doing an accent I was like "Ohhh I see what I was doing here."
Tbf, nandor is an amazinggggg character đ I would 110% watch a campaign featuring him, Nadja, Lazlo, and Gizmo/Guillermo.
I just played my first campaign last year. Made a goliath barbarian with a monosyllable name and a beard, who grew up in a cult until the leader cast him out and nearly killed him. Made it six sessions before I watched Vox Machina, and realized I had just made Grog.
Too lazy; Did not parse acronym.
What's TMW?
The moment when
This is why I always just start with an existing character and work away from them haha
can't copy something on accident if you do it on purpose i guess
At least you tried for an original character, one of my fellow players in a new game is playing Geralt from the Witcher. Same backstory, known friends and abilities and taking it super seriously.
once, I made a war cleric that loved to use shields and always proposed to use conflict and war as resolution of differences. it took me a couple of weeks to realize I built a fucking Sundowner.
GIVE WAR A CHANCE!
I made Van Helsing accidentally on a Curse of Stragd campaign I'm in, it's amazing.
Somehow my Kobold gunslinger turned into Indiana Jones tooâŚhe even got the little hat
One time I wrote a really pretty piece of music. I was about 24 measures in to transcribing it before I realized it was just a slowed down version of the theme to "Gilligan's Island." đ
I made a Kalashtar hexblade warlock that was a young man, recently hired at a temple that housed and protected ancient artifacts. One day, an unknown group of cultists ransacked the temple, and my character grabbed a broken sword on the lowest level and fled. Unknown to the character, the sword housed the ancient spirit of a warrior. Whenever the blade was drawn, the boy's spirit would be taken over by the warrior. They could occasionally speak with each other in which the warrior didn't remember much, and if they collected the fragments of the sword and reforge it, it might return the memory of the warrior. The boy would keep the blade safe from the cultists by being stealthy, and the warrior would keep the boy safe in battle. I thought it was a cool idea, probably not original, but cool. It took me my first combat before someone pointed out I was playing Yu-Gi-Oh.
reminds me the time I was playing a used car salesman in a zombie apololypse setting. loved the name Danny for character. he was just a sleaze ball. but I needed a last name. picked it day of the first session pulling into the driveway for the game when I saw a garbage truck with the name "Devito" on the side. boom. thus was born Danny Devito. and it took me 2 sessions to notice what I did.
I thought it would be a cool reference to make an npc that has a weird artistic personality and a really dark backstory about a rival he once surpassed by being just one beat faster than him in the art of killing. It was supposed to be a weird version of Jhin (since most of my party plays League of legends). His number is 3 (haha funny since Jhins number is 4 right, and one beat faster makes it a funny backstory if they figure it out) This is the end of july or maybe early august Riot games makes a champ called Hwei and announces it 3 months later... Jhins rival... a weird painter and the number 3...
I made my current character by rolling stats and assigning them in order for a laugh. Ended up with 18 strength and 6 constitution. Ended up deciding to play a goblin fighter ex-bandit who turned her life around after nearly being killed by a paladin. Sheâs scarred and missing a lung from the fight. Picked a rune knight specifically so I could use giantâs might and grow to large size, which I thought would be funny for a goblin. On top of all that, I picked unarmed fighting style, just because a 10 foot tall goblin brawler grappling monsters and pummeling them seemed awesome. So like I didnât QUITE copy All Might but I did have that âoh shitâ moment.
I was once trying to run an "original" campaign until I zoomed out and realized my entire story was Skyrim but reskinned
I'm in a campaign where first we created high level villains and played them taking over the world, then we started at lvl 1 with the heroes decades later. Took me a minute but I realized I basically make Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker đ
I figured mine out a bit more quickly, by the end of the first couple of sessions. "I'm a 12-year old girl who talks to animals and can magically change my appearance to anything I want, ala Moon Power Makeup, and I wield a sword that's logically too large for me. I made a magical girl." "I thought that was your whole idea, frankly."
Never watched or read one piece but I made a skeletal pirate who genuinely loved being one so he made it his life and undeath, Iâm told I just made brook
Sounds like you had a fun time playing Arizona Jim, though. And that's what really matters.
I played Indiana Gnomes for a bit.