On characters that aren't quite yours.

Okay, here's something I was thinking about on my way home today. As we all know, we're supposed to only make characters in this game that are 100% our own creations. As we also all know, not everyone does that... and sometimes, it's okay.

No, really, it is. Hear me out on this.

There are a few different types of not-fully-original characters: The bad kind, that everyone thinks of first, is when someone makes a clone of a character specifically from another canon (Batman, Vegeta, Darth Vader, etc), which gets you generic'd as soon as you're caught. Some such characters can squeak by - I met a katana scrapper named "Force Knight" with a Vanguard sword once, who said that he'd spoken to a GM about this and was told that it was OK since he didn't use the words "Jedi" or "Lightsaber" or anything and wasn't supposed to be a specific character - but usually they get whacked. That's fine. That's as it should be. But there are others... after all, not all famous characters are copyrighted, and historical figures certainly aren't, but saying that you invented Samson or Ulysses or Glooskap or Benjamin Franklin is a patently ridiculous claim. Making them as characters in game, however, is perfectly fine. Even the ones that have already been grabbed by professional comic artists can still be used, if they're not used in the same way; while a Hero who is meant to be the goddess Diana would surely be generic'd if she were a martial arts scrapper who looked like this would get hit with the Generic Stick pretty fast, this archery blaster is not likely to receive the same treatment.

But then I thought, What about classic literary characters? Can I make Ichabod Crane? Disney put him in a movie (that was Disney, right?) but what if my Ichabod Crane is different? And what's the copyright status on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats? Am I allowed to make Macavity and the Great Rumpuscat if they bear zero resemblance to the Andrew Lloyd Weber versions? Will my character named Xerxes get generic'd due to the sheer recentness and popularity of 300, even though he looks like this?

Where do you draw the line?

I don't think anyone knows where that line is.

My main is an obvious ripoff of a mythological character, but no one has ever tried to get me genericed that I'm aware of.

I see nothing wrong with your Xerxes nor the blaster Diana.

I know that the blaster Diana and Xerxes SHOULDN'T get generic'd, it's jsut that sometimes I wonder... I heard a story of a person who was generic'd for having the name "Mako Kino," even though she'd never watched Sailor Moon and bore no resemblance to Makoto Kino.

Just because you know it's a public domain character doesn't mean the person petitioning you knows it's a public domain character, nor does it mean the GM smacking you with the generic-stick knows it's a public domain character.

Ultimately it's their game, and they can generic you if they feel like it. I'd argue that Disney doesn't own Ichabod Crane, but Disney would claim otherwise, and Disney has lawyers and I don't, so if you're going to make him, don't be too surprised if you get nailed.

I've run into this before.

Trademark and copyright are the legitimate concerns of GMs, as are actual people, as these things can lead to ugly lawsuits. As far as characters from books are concerned the question you need to answer is "has the copyright expired"?

A clone of Lara Croft is going to get the generic stick.
A clone of Ichabod Crane (from the book, not based on the movie "Sleepy Hollow") shouldn't. You would have a valid argument that the character should not be genericed.

When I was in PERC I wrote the event "Follow the White Rabbit", which was held in Spring 08. We based the event, including characters and dialogue, upon the book "Alice in Wonderland". We worked from the book's illustrations rather than the Disney movie, thus avoiding copyright and trademark problems.

Contrarily there was a "George W. Bush" character on Liberty for years. He kept the name despite numerous petitions. I have no idea why.

I have one tribute character on Liberty named "Avenger America". It's female, not male (will eventually be 5 different people in the same costume - a team in itself) and while patriotic themed does not copy Captain America's costume. Not a clone, but a tribute meant to make you think of Captain America. She doesn't pretend to be him.

As I recall, there was once something to the effect of a three-point criterion: Appearance, Name, Bio. If, for some reason, you were two out of three for a copyrighted character, you got generic'd.

Now, my memory's a pretty fickle thing, so take that with only half a grain of salt. Also, I seem to recall it being much harder to reverse a generic than it is to prevent one, so I'd err on the side of caution.

Yeah, basically the "line" isn't drawn first, it's only drawn after the petition has been sent. You can get away with most anything as long as nobody bothers to report it as a violation. Or knows it is one. The GMs err on the side of caution, if the stories I've seen are any indication.

I have mostly entirely-original creations (or at least as anything at all can be said to be original), but I do have a few characters who are unofficially part of an existing world. They're originally-named and have their own stories but I had a setting in mind already. I have an ogre who was part of the Dark Brotherhood (Elder Scrolls), and a demonic axe-wielder who'd be right at home in a Conan comic. Their bios merely suggest without making it explicit. Plausible deniability, heh.

For that matter, several of my originals have a known flavor to them. My DP/Energy is very Lara Croft, although she looks different and is actually more influenced by Hong Kong action movies, but the Laraness has been pointed out to me several times.

I've never been genericed. If it ever happened I'd just accept it. I'm pretty sure though that all my characters are different enough. For one thing I never, ever use a known "costume", I make all those up myself.

I know I can't create Thor and it cheeses me off no end.

Not Marvel's Thor....the mythological Norse deity Thor, who has existed in legend since at least 1200 years before there even WAS such a thing as a trademark. Marvel has a trademark on his appearance, but there is NO WAY they can claim he is an original creation of theirs.

The name is completely blocked from anyone using it. Not taken, but actually blocked. If you try to use a name that someone else already hasthe message says "That character name is already in use". If the name is blocked the message says "That character name is unavailable"

There are a lot of things that shouldn't get genericed, but they do. Marvel wouldn't have a leg to stand on in a suit claiming that they own te name Thor, but NCSoft behaves as though they do.

What about characters based on silly Internet memes? Are those okay?

DKellis has a character named Highly Visible Ninja. So apparently.

Wait, Gravity Cat? I have Buttered Cat.

I had a WP/SS tanker called Ralph Rackstraw. I ended up deleting him because I didn't enjoy the powers (and because there is no staw boater available in the editor).

I'd just like to point out that there's no such thing as a character that's "100% yours" in CoH. Quite the contrary actually, any and every character you create on any CoH server is property of NCSoft.

This isn't quite the same thing as you're talking about, but I have a Rad/Rad Corruptor named Human Reactor. He's based on a character I made in high school some twenty plus years ago who gained his powers after being accidentally bombarded by a special kind of radiation that gave him the ability to generate tremendous amounts of energy, but also left him unable to exist in the outside world without wearing a special protective suit that cut him off from all physical contact.

To make him a villain and to fit into COX Lore, I made him a former Crey Employee who went a little bonkers when he found out that his "accident" was no such thing. Imprisoned for his crimes, he went bad in spite of the fact that he originally risked his life to save other people by voluntarily entering the irradiated control room to shut down the reactor before it could destroy the city.

About a year or so after I made this guy, I found myself thinking, "Oh crud. This sounds a lot like Positron's origin!"

Nowadays, he doesn't wear his containment suit very often. Since he went evil, he's not as concerned with dosing innocent people with radiation.

So far no one has said boo about (for example) Cyrano De Bergerac (Dual Blades/WP scrapper, of course).