Whether you’re the Dungeon Master, the Storyteller, the Game Master, the Director or the Grand Poobah; the most important aspect of fashioning your game is the Story.
You can have written the rules yourself. You can have engaging, fascinating locales and NPCs. But if there is no interesting reason for the PCs to interact with the set pieces in your game, then your game will be boring. The Story is what draws players into the game; what they talk about in excited tones years down the line; the common thread that ties them together and binds them into a team. A good Story can overcome sub-par rules and slipshod setting. If everyone is engaged by infiltrating the enemy castle under the cover of darkness to assassinate the grand vizier, they won’t notice that the guards have the same stats as the orcs they slaughtered on the field of battle 3 sessions back.
All that said, I find story creation difficult. It’s hard! Players tend to have read the same books, played the same video games, and watched the same movies and TV shows. And why shouldn’t they? They’re my friends. They have similar interests. So I can’t steal anything from these concepts in our common experience, right? They’ll expect it and it will be boring, won’t it? Surprisingly, no; it’s some of the most fun I’ve had.
The reason it’s still fun to play through a scenario that everyone is familiar with is primarily because everyone is familiar with it. In a Role Playing Game, the Players are not only the primary protagonists, but they are typically the only audience. When the players understand the situation their characters are in, then they can either follow the precedent they’ve seen before, or turn the entire situation on its head and see what happens. The easier it is for the players to understand what’s going on, the faster they make the decisions that make the game fun!
For example, I’ll outline a rip off in the classic tradition. Party meets in a tavern and is going to meet up with a princess in a fairytale kingdom. They reach the fairytale kingdom to find that the kingdom has been magically destroyed right before they are captured by the dark knight of the evil hegemony. They escape and take the princess with them. She has learned of the weakness in the hegemony’s pet dragon, and they launch an assault against it to rid the world of the dragon’s evil forever. This is, of course, a Star Wars rip off.
With this general outline of the plot, it becomes very easy to foreshadow, develop NPCs, and have combats at dramatically appropriate times. This simplifies the difficulties of running a game, somewhat, and gives you more time to focus on involving the PCs in the game.
Of course, if you just rip something off directly and the party figures it out, then they know what’s coming next and will jump ahead or change things up. The young fighter-mage with a destiny may decide that he wants to join the black knight of the hegemony and attempt to rule the lands as father and son. If this happens, the first thing to do is let it happen. This is the part of role playing that is fun! Making decisions and having them impact the game world. The second thing to do is: beat them to it. Make the princess evil, and secretly in league with the hegemony. Have her betray the heroes and laugh at the dashing rogue who she pretended to have feelings for. Suddenly, when you turn the players’ expectations on their heads, you make the story your own. Players begin to wonder what will be different, whether everything was as simple as it seemed. They will create conspiracy theories about what you’re actually playing at. They will become even more involved.
And with more involved players, your story will be even better. Role playing is about mutual story telling. The more interested that everyone is, the better your game will be.
So steal what you want from your favorite stories, apply it to your game, and then turn everything on its head. It will ease your load as a GM; lessen the amount of data your players must absorb; and set them up for you to haul the rug out from under them.
Have Fun!