I also don’t know about ripping off movie and TV characters and just swapping out the names. I suppose it depends on the character, but I feel like this is the easiest one to tell that it was “stolen”.
You wouldn’t put them wholesale into a game. For example, you’d mentally label an NPC as a ‘Spock’ and play him as intellectual and logical. Another as a ‘McCoy’ and play him as compassionate, emotional, and a bit of a catastrophiser. Obviously, you wouldn’t use them together as the crew of a ship (along with a ‘Kirk’ and a ‘Scotty’), that would be a bit on the nose. And you wouldn’t steal characters’ history or catch-phrases, you would just use the core of the character as a shorthand for personality, as a guide for how they might present themselves, think, and interact with others.
There’s no reason, say, a fantasy city council couldn’t be run by:
a ‘Hannibal Lecter’ (brilliant, urbane, lover of the finer things)
a ‘Lesley Knope’ (energetic, rules follower)
a ‘Sarah Connor’ (determined, uncompromising)
a ‘Stringer Bell’ (confident ambitious, maybe with a secret past)
a ‘Dr. Gregory House’ (cantankerous, confrontational, cynical)
While reading this comment I had the thought of a stoic warrior type that was very much an outsider to the society he was mostly operating in but very open to learning about the things that are new to him. Occasionally he would really embrace some part of that culture and make his own references to it.
I’d probably call him Jaxson and get away with it until he said indeed.
You wouldn’t put them wholesale into a game. For example, you’d mentally label an NPC as a ‘Spock’ and play him as intellectual and logical. Another as a ‘McCoy’ and play him as compassionate, emotional, and a bit of a catastrophiser. Obviously, you wouldn’t use them together as the crew of a ship (along with a ‘Kirk’ and a ‘Scotty’), that would be a bit on the nose. And you wouldn’t steal characters’ history or catch-phrases, you would just use the core of the character as a shorthand for personality, as a guide for how they might present themselves, think, and interact with others.
There’s no reason, say, a fantasy city council couldn’t be run by:
That being said, I straight-up stole Dr. T’Ana from Lower Decks as a ship surgeon.
While reading this comment I had the thought of a stoic warrior type that was very much an outsider to the society he was mostly operating in but very open to learning about the things that are new to him. Occasionally he would really embrace some part of that culture and make his own references to it.
I’d probably call him Jaxson and get away with it until he said indeed.