How much inspiration is ok?

How far do you think your inspiration can go in creating your characters? Where is the border beyond which a new universe begins?

Let’s say I play a paladin and I really like the Bretonnian Knights aesthetic from Warhammer. So I can choose a name that is close to them, create an outfit similar to that and that’s it … Everything else must be the world of Warcraft. I am curious how you look at it - do you stop there or put the filter of your inspiration on WoW in its entirety - including cities, npc and so on …

If you want to RP, probably best to keep it WoW lore friendly, yes. :smile:

It can depend.

Personally I hardly know much about the Warhammer setting, so even if you carbon-copied a character, the “reference” would be lost on me. Though if you were to copy-paste a character from another setting and then just swap out names of locations and historical events, that’s not inspiration, it’s imitation.

It helps to draw inspiration for a character from several sources to blend them together, rather than just one - like combining spices! Also think about what you actually like about those characters that you want to play out and explore.

Aesthetic (clothes / armour / outfit)
Appearance (hair / eye / skin colour, gender, height, weight, age)
Sound (vocabulary, accent, voice)

Social (how they interact with others)
Morality (good vs evil, methods, modus operandi)
Ambition (goals, dreams, intentions)

You could take a well known character, change each of these things ever so slightly, and they’d add up to enough changes to seem like a whole new person. The most recent character I’ve made is an old first war veteran who was part of an elite Alliance black ops squad - though now he’s a dapper jolly old gentleman who goes big game hunting. He’s inspired mostly by the character of Allan Quatermain, especially Sean Connery’s portrayal of him in The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.