Have you ever snuck references into your game stealthily /tg/?
I once had the players get transported onto an enemy vehicle pretending to be prisoners. They were wearing hoods until an ally vehicle started attacking. That was the signal for them to break out and they started wreaking havoc on the mooks inside. They eventually crashed the transport and managed to escape, but everyone else including their allies died in the fight. It wasn't until way later in the game that one of them realized Ihad them reenact the plane scene
>>46688118
I'm the only player in my group who's had a good deal of non-videogame experience with the fantasy genre. I rip off scenes from books and movies they don't know anything about all the time.
I once inserted a massively powerful DMPC self-insert who could pull powers out of his ass to save the party at every opportunity. It's only later that they realized I stole fromLiterally every shonen manga ever produced ever.
>>46688118
The Orcs in my setting are suicidal followers of their Messianic figure and will gladly employ tactics like igniting themselves on fire or suicide charges/bombings against both military and civilian targets. They also employ chariots which they customize with spikes, skulls, bones and other paraphernalia. They're basically the Brotherhood of Nod with some War Boys mixed in.
I once did a roll20 game with all kinds of references. I had them all be incredible obvious. One NPC was an archeologist in a blue shirt and beige pants that just didn't want any trouble. One time, the party went to a dimension of war (which was on an Advance Wars map). There they met the original characters Blandy and Blolaf. More recently, in a person-to-person campaign, the party hitched a ride across a death swamp with a mysterious man with a magical artifact that allows him to summon a cart and tracks to ride over the swamp. After they all got on and were too far from the shore, they noticed how slow the magic cart was going. The ride never ends. When they tried to escape the safety bars, the driver revealed himself to be a skeleton.
>>46688170
They sound more like Allahu Ackbars
>>46688118
I had a PC whose last name was Getter but who traveled under a false family name of Mazinger. He had a sister named Jun. He was being hunted by a rival house, the house of Lagann.
>>46688976
Shouldn't his sister have been Minerva X?
>>46688118
Pretty much all the time, partly due to being shit at naming things. Tons of random characters have names that sort of sound like other fictional characters.
Also, random quotes. I've had some character speak rephrased song-lyrics, or quotes from movies and games. Sometimes it's not stealthy at all, like when I made the Yu'vath dark energy construct that was mind-controlling people sound exactly like Sovereign from Mass Effect (in my defence, there's only so many ancient alien machines with mind-controlling powers and creepy voice around, and most of his lines fit in way too well not to use), but usually I try to keep it to less obvious things.
Probably the most obscure one was a the following prophesy/creepy rhyme (snippets of which keep getting spoken by followers of a certain chaos lord):
"Faceless Lord ran away, hiding from the light of day/
Found a place out in the night, far away from Emperor's light/
People think they are now safe, protected by the Emperor's grace/
Foolish children, you should know; you will reap just what you sow/
Faceless Lord is coming back, monsters from the endless black/
Wading through a crimson flood, Karrad Vall is out for blood!"
That's lifted almost directly, with only minor alterations (mostly replacing the names), but I doubt most people can place the original source.
>>46688118
I stole a macguffin and plot from Heroes of Might and Magic III the Shadow of Death
Sota. It appeared as like, history, and the players were more concerned with the disposition of the macguffin in the current day and age, but so such things go
>>46688970
>Brotherhood of Nod
>Allahu Ackbar
There's not much of a difference besides the former actually being smart and having super cool tech.
>>46688118
GAME?
>Recent topic
We played a game two years ago that involved tracking down the source of the nothingness that was devouring the earth. We frequently encountered a cult to a god of the void called "Mu the god of Nothing" which was frequently described as Mu is Mu.
Only yesterday, did I realize that "Mu is Mu" was lifted from a single line in Earthbound.
Almost all the time. I don't expect my players to be able to get them either. Half of the time they are movie/tv show/game/anime ideas I want to reuse, half the time it's because I think I'm a smart cunt.
This has been said 101 times before, but I'm definitely one of the people who bases their latest RPG campaigns off media they enjoyed recently.
There was the time a gnoll assassin wearing a gillie suit (low tech, so just a bunch of plant matter) used a crossbow to kill the king.
Eventually it came out that the killing shot came from the grassy gnoll.
Horzy D'Oates & Goazy D'Oates lost their father, but their cousin D'Ivey (being too short for the incoming shots to reach the little lamb,) survived the attack.
>>46689669
Proverbs 17?
The main kingdom in my setting recently underwent a revolution by the young prince of the land, Andthe, called the Prince Andthe Revolution.
He was later deposed by his servant Morisday
