What games have you loaned the most from?

I will openly admit to being a pilferer. Most of my mechanics are straight-up stolen or inspired by other games. Something like Animate This! is honestly an anomaly (as in a game with mostly original mechanics), most of the time I just steal stuff at wild abandon. So what games have you loaned mechanics and other things from?

For me, it’s funny, I steal a lot from John Harper, but not from Blades in the Dark. Rather, I have stolen so many things from Lady Blackbird (and the Solar System that inspired it in turn). I especially love the refresh scene mechanic, and have used it in several designs and even tried to homebrew it to stuff like Genesys, with mixed results.

Though, I must admit that generally I just pilfer entire games. My From X to Y series of games (of which From Dungeons to Delving is the first one) is going to be just me taking an old game and modernizing it while being cheeky about it. Then I have Pathwarden, my Pathfinder 2e hack, which, unsurprisingly, is wholly pilfered from that, with some Shadow of the Demon Lord dropped in (which I also reference more often than I admit probably).

My favorite part of pilfering though, is taking a visual style of a game and trying to replicate it! That’s also my specialty for some reason. It’s like a design forgery, honestly.

1 Like

For me, I generally don’t like to steal directly from other ttrpg’s. After all, if I steal a mechanic, then I deprive myself of the process of designing that mechanic.

What’s really wrong with reinventing the wheel, when inventing wheels is so much fun?

Although that’s not to say I don’t draw inspiration. I heavily draw inspiration, but from books and video games and movies.

If I then have to list my top source, it might have to be Darkest Dungeon.

1 Like

Darkest Dungeon is the number one source for the aesthetic and tone for my game, despite the fact that I dont think theres a single mechanic that I would like to convert to a TTRPG.