I find it hard to imagine asking for help with a character concept. Then again, my imagination is very wild. I'm never really wanting for ideas. Rather, I spend days (sometimes weeks) culling and refining my ideas until I like a character well enough to deem them 'RPable'. And then some characters never get to the point I'm happy with them and they clutter up my list with alts for years...
Personally I think you have a very clever bunch of friends, they're good references to some of the better stories out there! And there's no shame in borrowing ideas from a time tested story! Sure, it leads to the use of tropes and cliches that are tired, but then you put your own spin, your flavor, on it. It's a test of your creativity to do something that has been done into the ground and do it in a way that people will look at and go 'Huh... Well, I've never seen that before.'
And you know, when it's not important enough to be assed going through so much effort, murdered by (bandits, wildlife, etc) and then found amongst their bloodied remains by (villagers, scavengers, etc) is pretty much the fantasy standard. Can never go wrong there.
Personally I think you have a very clever bunch of friends, they're good references to some of the better stories out there! And there's no shame in borrowing ideas from a time tested story! Sure, it leads to the use of tropes and cliches that are tired, but then you put your own spin, your flavor, on it. It's a test of your creativity to do something that has been done into the ground and do it in a way that people will look at and go 'Huh... Well, I've never seen that before.'
And you know, when it's not important enough to be assed going through so much effort, murdered by (bandits, wildlife, etc) and then found amongst their bloodied remains by (villagers, scavengers, etc) is pretty much the fantasy standard. Can never go wrong there.
Please read all the above with a soothing, British accented monotone.
