Characters we like to steal....

[Trent]

List some characters you have stolen, would consiser stelaing or plan to steal to make characters in your games. Maybe we can get some good ideas going here.

Enik: From the original "land of the lost" series, which was actually written by some real SF writers like niven and even gerrold. I'm not referring to the ghawdawful movie and if you saw it please don't inflict it on the rest of us who had the sense to avoid it, we don't deserve to suffer like you do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_of_the_Lost_(1974_TV_series)_characters_and_species#Enik

 

[ShapeShifter]

I've always wanted to adapt the PC races from Star Frontiers into CT terms. Does that count?

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Oddly enough, I've been using Sleestak in games since I was a kid. They are always what I thought kobolds should be like.

That being the case, I have no problem lifting characters I am particularly fond of, but I always change the names to protect the innocent. Here's a couple or three:

1. David Lo Pan (undead ancient Chinese sorcerer from Big Trouble in Little China) as a uber-villian kept alive by dark technology and shear evil, intent on "ruling the universe from beyond the grave" - the players keep stumbling across his path, particularly when they're busy doing something else

2. Simon Templar (The Saint) as a nefarious cat burgular known to the public as the "Black Baron" - the players unwittingly delivered him to the site of his biggest heist ever then helped him escape from the authorities; he left them a little reward

3. Inigo Montoya (The Princess Bride) as a noble 2nd son seeking revenge against his father's murderer - the players helped him track down the culprit and finished the job when Montoya was incapacitated in the final fight

I'm very curious to see what everyone else posts.

 

[sabredog]

Bester from B5 runs the bred and cloned for enhanced psi spy agency the bad guy empire opposite the Terran Empire IMTU. It used to be someone else until I finally watched the series a couple years ago and then realized what I had been missing.

He's just such a perfectly non-threatening looking and affable little guy till you get to know him better.

 

[veltyen]

Havelock Vetenari (The Patrician) from Terry Pratchet.

Bloodless, always informed, always knows MORE then you about everything.

Used him as an archetype for a Subsector Duke that kept asking the players so nicely to do some little task for him. Up to and including suicide missions.

 

[beowulf2044]

In the Way-Back, I had an NPC by the name of 'Captain-Sir Damien Fortune' who was in Imperial Naval Intelligence (based upon Pol Anderson's 'Flandry') who'd get the Players entangled in all manner of adventures (exploiting the Players as a 'Deniable Resource'). Those Players who attempted to follow him after one particular barroom briefing wound up unconscious in a garbage bin.

 

[ThunderChilde]

In CyberPunk(2020 ver.)
Black Magic M-66, lock, stock and barrel. Several of the background cyborgs from Appleseed, Mr. Suedo, and some of the other C-Swat backgrounders.
Pretty Soldiers/Knight Sabers/Bubblegun Crisis/Crash, and AD Police. AD Tank Police, Shirow again, comedy.

Masamune Shirow is an inspiration for the look and feel of technolgy, used in CP2020, Gurps, MGT.

Manga and Anime have been mined for ideas, npcs, themes, etc. for a very long time, across I dodn't know how many game systems.

Colossus: The Forbin(?)Project as a rouge defence computer in a Gurps Space game.

A host of characters and schticks from the MythAdventures series from Phil Foglio.

Samuria Girl from High School Battle Royal manga as the basis for a FUZION homebrew pc.

Traveller: So far, ideas and concepts from James Schmidz Telzay and Trigger stories. A short story, faintly recalled, was the basis for a major NPC and story arc. Blue Submarine Number 6 is providing color and such for the current story arc.

EVE has provided several ship descriptions, I swiped the pirate ship from http://www.crimsondark.com/, and a few other ideas from this very fine online comic.

Shirow of course. Nods to H.Beam Piper. Some ship names from the Culture series, and Chandler.

Songs from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have spawned villains, antagonests and npcs.

Hooverphonic inspired the named and function of the first A.I. the players ran across. SH-1-00151, an orbital defence station, Super Heavy orbital gun 1-00151

Music has been the seed for npcs, story lines, shading and adventures going all the way back to the beginning.

 

[Icosahedron]

Hmm, I very rarely lift characters directly and insert them into a game, and less so in recent years. I find they quickly go wooden.

Besides, my acting skills (particularly via PbP) are seldom sufficient to create a glow in the lightbulbs on my players heads, so it becomes a rather narcissistic exercise.

Some I have used in the past are: Kirk, Scotty, Avon, Aragorn, Oddball, Lister, Lara Croft, and the 'Suits You' Tailors.

I quite often figure which actor or actress might play the role if Hollywood bought my story rights, though, (as if... ) so some of the personality traits are borrowed that way, and I cut and paste photos from the internet onto character sheets.

A character I'm playing now is based on a collage of Clint Eastwood roles, for example, but Woody Allen has raised his head in a game, too.

 

[jappel]

I occasionally throw characters from other sources in as cameos. A couple years ago, a party was making their way through a downport and the pair ahead of them in a line were Ramen & Whipsnade.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Tony Soprano made a brief cameo, running an illegal card game...

 

[Gadrin]

Maria Charles and Septimus Lither from the BITS 101 Travellers.

Maria was re-tooled into "Harmony Frost", ex-army & Bounty Huntress and
Septimus Lither became "The Corporal" her partner (Sauroid race in GURPS Behind the Claw).

I have plans to press the two originals into service for future Traveller
scenarios.

>

 

[ThunderChilde]

I've read the fiction stories of those two over on Freelance Traveller I do believe.


A recurrent theft character that pops up whenever a shorthand for a very focussed tradesman or merchant is The Luggage Salesman from Joe VS. The Volcano. Distinctive voice, a simple phrase, slight cant of the head and the whole crew is onboard, it can spawn a serious jokefest from time to time.

 

[Gadrin]

I've read the fiction stories of those two over on Freelance Traveller I do believe.


A recurrent theft character that pops up whenever a shorthand for a very focussed tradesman or merchant is The Luggage Salesman from Joe VS. The Volcano. Distinctive voice, a simple phrase, slight cant of the head and the whole crew is onboard, it can spawn a serious jokefest from time to time.

Yes, actually they're about the courier who is totally taken with her
at first then can't get rid of her fast enough :rofl:I used Angie Harmon
as the femme fatale.

And Shrale the imperial vargr spy is actually a rip-off of Colonel Flagg from MASH.

Lights go out and he appears, they go out again and he's gone...like
the wind... :rofl:

>

 

[leo knight]

In my very first Traveller run, c.1977, I had just finished reading Jack Vance's "Emphyrio". Who should the PCs encounter, but Nion Bohart and Floriel trying to sell the space yacht they hijacked. The PCs killed them and took the ship, of course.

Some years later, I needed an elite group of bounty hunters. The PCs had stolen yet another starship (what is it with my players and grand theft, starship anyway?), and the original owners wanted it back, badly. I had overdosed on reading "Teen Titans", so I filed off the names, dialed down the powers from super to augmented human, and voila! An elite repo team with scary powers to bedevil the players.

In another campaign, I had a female cruiser captain, Althea Day, who, depending on the situation, might help or oppose the PCs. They never encountered her. This was years before "On Basilisk Station" came out, but darned if Honor Harrington didn't remind me of Althea. So David Weber stole from me!

Of course, every female noble in peril was Princess Leia...

 

[Klaus]

I've had Lee Marvin as Walker in my last game.

Also got a sympathetic villain who is a cross between Blake's 7's Servalan and Sarah Palin (but younger ).

 

[Trent]

I've had Lee Marvin as Walker in my last game.

Also got a sympathetic villain who is a cross between Blake's 7's Servalan and Sarah Palin (but younger ).

Can she see the Zhoadani Consulate from her house?

 

[Trent]

I know I'm gonna get a lot of blank stares and over this since I doubt anyone here but me ever read L.E. Modesitt's "The eternity artifact" but I would say that Liam Fitzhugh would be an awesome character to out and out steal (Forgive me, LEM, but theft is an even sincerer form of flattery than imitation.) given that he was a genius level scholar who also happened to be a genetically enhanced (to a minor degree) retired commando with an extremely erudite vocabulary and a strong though controllable tendency towards violence.

Also, "goodman/bond" would make an excellent zhoadani mole/infiltrator agent.

I really recommend the book to traveller fhan and anyone who like a good, solid hard SF story.

 

[ThunderChilde]

oooooh, that goes back a long ways, don't recall it that well, read it while I was home during an extended illness.

 

[Klaus]

Can she see the Zhoadani Consulate from her house?

She's Solomani, but that's weird... She lives on a place called Red Alaska and is staring out at the Hivers. But I invented her over a year ago, well before I'd heard of Ms Palin.

S**t, what if there's some kind of reality dysfunction and my Traveller villains are turning into real people! That Count Yagov was real nasty piece of work....

 

[Samules]

I stole pretty much everybody from halo for one game