I’m not sure what you’re asking, really. I don’t have a bunch of abandoned WIP threads lying around, just a bunch of stories I’ve worked on in one point or another in my life I’m routinely recycling.
Be really, really careful. There have been examples of “abandoned” WIPs being finished well after they were assumed not to be worked on (like blood for poppies.) No one can stop people taking inspiration from anything as long as it’s your own ideas and work, but if it’s obviously heavily inspired to the point of perhaps crossing the line in closeness of a story premise that is a preexisting game finished or not, your best course of action would be to see if you can contact the owner of the work and get permission. If you’re not outright copying to the point of copyright infringement, in the end there may be nothing the original author can do about it, but as someone whose had it done to them on something they had planned to finish, it’s really not cool and they won’t be flattered.
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I guess it might be a difficult to gauge…
"Abandoned" is a Relative Term
Be really, really careful. There have been examples of “abandoned” WIPs being finished well after they were assumed not to be worked on (like blood for poppies.)
This is worth noting, I changed the title by the way so hopefully it seems a little clearer. I wonder how many more times I will feel it no longer reflects the direction of the conversation.
We kind of realized over the course of the discussion that specifying ‘abandoned’ WIPs is pretty irrelevant.
Seeking Permissions
No one can stop people taking inspiration from anything as long as it’s your own ideas and work, but if it’s obviously heavily inspired to the point of perhaps crossing the line in closeness of a story premise that is a pre-existing game finished or not, your best course of action would be to see if you can contact the owner of the work and get permission.
I guess the question to ask then is where the line is generally drawn. While obviously by it’s nature it is murky to some extent. I personally wouldn’t really know where to draw the line, no one singularly can I presume, but discussion encourages us to find middle grounds or think about it at the very least.
I think that if you are going to try to ‘finish’ a version heavily inspired by or directly taking from someone else’s story than the least you should do is make a concentrated effort to reach out to them.
It's not Copyright Infringement... Technically...?
If you’re not outright copying to the point of copyright infringement, in the end there may be nothing the original author can do about it, but as someone whose had it done to them on something they had planned to finish, it’s really not cool and they won’t be flattered.
Obviously, if you don’t use any names and rewrite bits and bobs you can get out of getting in trouble for copyright infringement. The bigger issue would obviously be reception, to me at least. I think using the bounds of the law is a bit dubious anyway since we are all in different regions, and each nation has their own laws regarding it with some that are exceptionally strict while others do fairly little in terms of intellectual property protection.
Also, I am sorry about something like that happening to you. I personally wasn’t referring to literally ‘taking an old WIP and finishing it yourself.’ But moreso something along the lines of, ‘taking elements or inspiration from stories you like and where the line can be drawn between that and just yoinking excessive amounts of material.’
A good point someone had brought up earlier was regarding how taking inspiration can cause problems in part due to how niche a concept can be. Like, depending on the type of story a mere synopsis can be narrow enough for it to be difficult to separate two works who use it from one another in a hyper-specific genre like psychological horror, while in something generalized like high fantasy or supernatural there is a lot more room for taking conceptual material due to there being more ‘tropes’ involved in those stories usually with what they write.
It seems there are a few different strands of discussion at play here, and all become a bit abstract when talking hypotheticals, but my thoughts are:
I don’t think that taking inspiration from something is a bad thing; I don’t even think that taking “negative” inspiration from something is necessarily a bad thing. (When I was first pitching Creme de la Creme I was hearkening back to Enid Blyton boarding-school stories, thinking about how much they reinforce sexism, gender binaries, colonialism, and homophobia, and wondering how I’d make a school story that didn’t do those things.)
I also believe ideas are the easy part and the way a single idea is executed can diverge so wildly that you wouldn’t think they came from the same seed. That’s not even when you get into games based on popular shared cultural ideas (eg superheroes - I don’t blink twice seeing Community College Hero, Heroes Rise, Skystrike, and Fallen Hero around, because they’re extremely different ways of engaging with the theme) or mythology (eg Arthurian legend - the characters and plots are very well-known story touchstones). Themes do not infringement make and “stealing ideas” is much less common than a lot of people fear.
Also: there are so many stories here, whether written in the past and present, that it would be perfectly possible for similar concepts to crop up without someone even knowing about it. Some elements are so broad that it’s not reasonable to connect them (I have seen someone saying an urban fantasy game, or even a game having four love interests, is derivative of Wayhaven, which is just silly).
There isn’t (nor should there be, especially when discussing so hypothetically) an exact statute of limitations of how old a WIP can be before someone’s allowed to take inspiration from it. I’m not sure there would be a consensus without a specific situation, and even then I doubt everyone would come to the same conclusion.
At the same time: ultimately we’re all writing in a community and I could understand a writer raising their eyebrows if something was beat-for-beat similar to something they’d created. A writer choosing to do that rather than come up with their own story would not endear themselves to the community around them. My general but perhaps not very helpful take is that it will usually be clear whether someone’s writing in good faith or not.
On a related note I am interested to see what games come out of SeedComp, which is a game jam designed around the idea of sharing story “seeds” and taking inspiration from them to make something new. In that, people are all explicitly agreeing to use each other’s ideas and come up with different games. If a writer is struggling for inspiration, seeking out things like that might be of interest.
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Yeah it is grey. I guess some things are common concepts. Like if you were going to write another supernatural school setting game with dating oportunities. But if you start taking quite specific things from that game that if two people read them they’d be wondering which inspired which because they’re very close in some ways… Well that’s where it gets grey. By the copyrite laws can you do it? Probably as long as you don’t skate too close to the source material by copying passages, names etc. Should you? Well I guess that depends.
If you know you’re taking heavy inspiration from another work in progress so there’s some serious similarities that don’t just come down to tropes and common themes, I’d say tread with extreme caution. Doubly no if it’s a niche topic that just hasn’t had coverage in this format unless you know you’ve changed it about enough that there’d be no mistaking the two works. I’ve heard some voices on this thread saying the first author would be flattered in the theme of mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, but I’d say most people will not look on it fondly if it’s outside the realm of fan fiction that acknoledges the original.
It is entirely possible for it to be accidental where both people are inspired by the same genres and come up with very similar ideas separately (with one of mine I was asked by several people if I’d taken any inspiration from a cartoon I’d never heard of, let alone seen for example. There are few things that in broad strokes are completely unique, although the execution of those strokes is), but there’s a difference between accidental and deliberate attempts to make a game that is very like someone else’s.
Anyway, that’s just my opinion. And yeah I guess my views are coloured. In terms of possible damage, that was actually the major cause of me stopping work on that project. I’ve actually had a second one afterwards and given the first experience stopped publically updating for a while to hopefully inspire the other person to write their own way when it was brought to my attention that the storyline and beats were similar enough for there to be a question of who was copying ideas from who. Anyways, this is all way in the past water under the bridge for me, but it does make me quite aware of how unpleasant it can be for inspiration to feel like its crossed a boundary regardless of how well meaning the second party was. Inspiration is fine and natural but you need to make it your own so there’s not any lingering doubts about possible deliberate infringement. If you’re in doubt of if it might be infringement rather than general inspiration, it probably is a conversation you need to have with the person whose work you’ve been inspired by if possible.
Edit- I know of one situation where someone did have to rewrite part of their game after the original author complained the scenes were too close. It sounds like it was done completely accidentally, but that still doesn’t mean that the game won’t need a rewrite of the areas of concern. Best not to risk it really.
I’m actually really interested to see how this one plays out. The idea of having people make their story ideas free to use for a project and see what direction different authors decide to take it in should be a nice little experiment 
I’m actually a fan of a lot of those writing prompt forums where people submit a premise and ask people to write on it. Sometimes an idea that has been freely shared just grabs your attention enough that you want to write it down.
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I think it’s inevitable. If you’re feeling conflicted because a story you read is influencing your current work, put it in the drawer for a few days or a week or two before coming back. In the mean time try to immerse yourself in other projects.
Your brain will be working in the background to organically absorb those elements that spoke to you the most.
Just gonna drop this for fun.
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I’m tempted to go back and remove the original ‘abandoned’ part of the thread prompt entirely because it feels like it is derailing the conversation from a more interesting beat.
Response to @HarrisPS :
Happy to see you comment here! I am using details a lot to make things cleaner hehe.
Similar Concepts Accidentally
Also: there are so many stories here, whether written in the past and present, that it would be perfectly possible for similar concepts to crop up without someone even knowing about it. Some elements are so broad that it’s not reasonable to connect them (I have seen someone saying an urban fantasy game, or even a game having four love interests, is derivative of Wayhaven, which is just silly).
I actually had something similar happen to me personally, I had an idea in mind but found out it already vaguelly existed. Not really the same, but close enough that I felt intimidated out of broaching the subject for my own story. I still worry I am going to find out another IF has been made with a similar concept to my WIP, but I figure that the likelihood is low since it has been released now lol.
Good Faith
At the same time: ultimately we’re all writing in a community and I could understand a writer raising their eyebrows if something was beat-for-beat similar to something they’d created. A writer choosing to do that rather than come up with their own story would not endear themselves to the community around them. My general but perhaps not very helpful take is that it will usually be clear whether someone’s writing in good faith or not.
I guess part of it is the abstraction of our discussion, I am tempted to rewrite the thread so it is easier to kind of ‘test the waters’ per say in terms of discussion.
Response to @Jacic :
Mimicry and Fanfiction
I’ve heard some voices on this thread saying the first author would be flattered in the theme of mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, but I’d say most people will not look on it fondly if it’s outside the realm of fan fiction that acknoledges the original.
I think it would be dependent on the author, which means if you are taking a sufficient amount that differentiating between the two in terms of themes or intent becomes blurry… Then you should probably get permission from the original author first beforehand. I think that is a reasonable middling ground for that kind of thing, even a ‘fanfiction’ might get mixed reception at best if it is building off of someone else’s work without their prior permission.
Continuing on Inspiration
Anyways, this is all way in the past water under the bridge for me, but it does make me quite aware of how unpleasant it can be for inspiration to feel like its crossed a boundary regardless of how well meaning the second party was. Inspiration is fine and natural but you need to make it your own so there’s not any lingering doubts about possible deliberate infringement.
I guess for me where that line is drawn would generally be like you had mentioned how things can get ‘confused for one another.’ If you can make your game have a completely unique identity, than I believe that would be the difference between stepping on toes and finding inspiration, perhaps? The risk is always that you will end up stealing the spotlight from the original work, taking too much of the intent along with the original concept, perhaps? I don’t know if that makes sense, but it is what comes to mind for me.
Response to @poison_mara:
Poison Mara
However, I really think there should be a mechanism for the one if an author believes that they won’t return the story let others continue it always they will credited in the final product as coauthor.
I personally would welcome an addition like this, a lot of people (like myself) if they set it aside might have no intents upon returning to it. If I leave a project behind for long enough it becomes slightly embarrassing to look at after that point. No idea how you would provide checks or the like for that.
Excuse me? I in no way was saying you were not welcome to the discussion, I was just saying that a few people had come in at this point regarding specific use of the term ‘abandon’ and that perhaps it would be better to remove it. You are naturally welcome to participate, this is a public thread. Having a disagreement is not a personal attack on you, it is a difference in opinion, and the nature of threads like this is to discuss difference of opinion.
If you do not feel comfortable in discussing things than that is different, but it is not a matter of you being ‘unwelcome.’
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Sure, but Brooks still deserves to be embarrassed about it, even as he rolls in the money it brought in. 
I think it’s easy to overstate how important Shannara was to the genre as a whole, besides proving that there was a market specifically in highly derivative works. Stephen Donaldson’s contemporary (and deeply problematic but vastly more original) Chronicles of Thomas Covenant showed that epic fantasy had mass market appeal even when it wasn’t just Tolkien pastiche. So did (the ultimately even more problematic!) Xanth, in the USA, whose first book came out that year.
I enjoyed Gene Wolfe’s heart-on-sleeve essay about what Tolkien meant to him, but think he’s much too kind to Brooks. That said, I do quite enjoy the first couple of Shannara sequels, which were part of my discovery of fantasy and were less blow-for-blow derivative of other works. Both Elfstones and Wishsong are definite influences on me. Maybe one day I’ll write a book that mimics their plot beats as closely as Sword does LotR.
At the end of the day we agree that creators shouldn’t prioritize originality above everything else–that mostly yields unreadable experimental works. As with most things, there’s a balance to be found.
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A very complicated topic indeed. Abandoned WIPs are, in my opinion, a tragic and sad waste. So many superb concepts and games, and time wasted… however, it is difficult to offer somebody help to finish the game. There is a bit (massive?) element of trust involved, from both sides… trust takes so much time to build, and an instant to be destroyed. I think that part of the reason why something like this could happen is that both myself and the other author trust each other… but, I don’t think I’d randomly agree to let somebody “new” to the forums to work on one of my games (and by “new” I mean even somebody who may have been here for 2-3 years). I am yet to deliver on my own promises (as I am struggling with so many other stuff). But, the reason I want to help this author finish this game is that… I just love it. I played it the first time and immediately played again… just, it needs a bit more concept (and me trying not to mess up the original vision of the game). But, who knows, maybe somebody I know and trust will one day offer to finish one of my WIPs… which would be great! (as I, like all authors, suffer from starting projects and running out of steam…)
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Response to @Havenstone :
Havenstone
Sure, but Brooks still deserves to be embarrassed about it, even as he rolls in the money it brought in.
Success doesn’t necessarily absolve you from the consequences your actions wrought after all.
I enjoyed Gene Wolfe’s heart-on-sleeve essay about what Tolkien meant to him, but think he’s much too kind to Brooks. That said, I do quite enjoy the first couple of Shannara sequels, which were part of my discovery of fantasy and were less blow-for-blow derivative of other works.
Meanwhile I am just upset that Tolkien’s languages are under copyright for the rest of all time lol. I wish that they could have been incorporated into general fantasy since there is so much you can do with them, (even if I have complex feelings about the author himself, there is no denying the incredible depth to the languages he developed).
Response to @adrao :
adrio
A very complicated topic indeed. Abandoned WIPs are, in my opinion, a tragic and sad waste. So many superb concepts and games, and time wasted…
This is kind of what I felt, too, while we can’t say for certain that every WIP which has been left behind without update for a long time is really ‘abandoned…’ If we are being honest, the I feel the vast majority will not be finished, and that does feel to some extent deeply tragic. Particularly, in my opinion, because it creates a bit of a stigma towards making anything ‘close’ to it since it would get constantly compared even if conceived completely independently of one another.
I don’t think I’d randomly agree to let somebody “new” to the forums to work on one of my games (and by “new” I mean even somebody who may have been here for 2-3 years)
Hah! I must be an infant than in your eyes 
But, who knows, maybe somebody I know and trust will one day offer to finish one of my WIPs… which would be great! (as I, like all authors, suffer from starting projects and running out of steam…)
Someone mentioned a system for people to list a project they no longer are interested in completing or touching again for others to finish and I think that having something like that would be nice. That way, there is a newfound purpose should the author wish for it, and they also can definitively say they don’t want people touching on it. I imagine though that it would be exceptionally difficult to fully trust anyone to handle it (particularly if you are attached to your project, as most of us tend to be). I do think though that the ability to finish works that otherwise might end up never being publishable, with co-author rights or something, would be delightful in the long run for those interested in it.
I disagree with that notion, that’s like criticizing someone for writing a detective duo while Sherlock Holmes was being published.
Or criticizing the golden age in comics in general for being a mad scramble to make iconic super heroes.
In general I don’t think someone own a story concept just because that’s what they are currently working on or have worked on before, that’s way too broad to be reasonable.
You can’t and shouldn’t stop someone from taking inspiration from anything, there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from things and is even a very important part of how we develop as a society. That’s like the dozens of superhero WIPs and finished games we have floating around, it’s pretty obvious they very often influenced and inspired each others and it was a very good thing.
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Stealing is stealing.
Coming to a graveyard open old graveyard tombs and looting the old corpses is illegal by a reason.
Saying that "Oh, it is ancient what a waste I will totally want mi pie and ate it; so I will gain money from it. It’s Immoral. Sadly not illegal but highly wrong.
Take an inspiration is great for art. But inspiration ia not robbing the hell or old wips. Inspiration makes a new thing, bring magic to world, art. Inspired people make Transformative additions to know classical plots in all genre.
A great example, It’s Weird Al entire career. He transforms songs and image making all world happier.
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I think we all agree here that stealing is wrong, its more of a debate as to what exactly should be considered stealing, at what point does it go from similar inspiration to stealing an idea.
Using Wayhaven as an example since its a work that most people on the forum seem to be familiar with. But at what point do people draw the line and say its stealing? Multiple other works are romances with four main romance routes and four primary archetypes for ROs being the lead-broody guy, the nice one, the kind of silly one and the edgy-second-lead, so thats not the line. But where would you draw it? Urban fantasy? Fantasy police procedural? Vampire Romance? A combination of those?
And that doesn’t even bring up the possibility of asking the author for permission. If a WIP is abandoned and you work out an agreement with the author to allow you to finish it, is it still stealing? If an abandoned WIP is 5k words long and you write something with a similar set up and another 200k words on top of that (in a direction you have no way of knowing if the author would take) is that still stealing?
Its kind of, if someone writes a WIP about say, Beowulf and never finishes it, does that mean no one else on the forum can never write about Beowulf?
Its pretty complicated because each reader will have a different line they’ll draw as to what the consider the difference between inspiration and stealing.
Not saying any of these examples are stealing, just that this seems to be along the lines the discussion was going.
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Urban fantasy? Fantasy police procedural?
I personally would be heart-wrenched if no urban fantasy detective stories with romance were allowed post Wayhaven, I feel there is so much room for exploration there. I don’t know if it already exists, but I would love a darker form of that genre, despite the dark themes of Wayhaven for some reason it feels very light to me? If we were to take a look at your example though, I think that the line would be about the point where you have the same character archetypes, genre, and then you making them the same species… That is where it starts to get suspicious to me. Then, if you had taken major plot elements, I would for sure label that a knock off at that point personally. (Specifically, I would call bullshit if I saw the ‘human who has special blood’ part.
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No they don’t, you’re right that would be unreasonable. But there is a difference between trying to write your own version of someone else’s story, and taking general inspiration. So for example if you read a game about vampires attending highschool and thought, yes that was so much fun! I want to write my own vampire game, but set it up with completely different characters and premise etc, then that would likely be fine and no one is going to get their nose out of joint about copying, particularly as it’s not a particularly uncommon topic anyway.
So yeah what I’m saying is not that once someone publishes a game about vampires in a school, no one else is allowed to have one, it’s more that you should be able to tell they are completely different games. If there’s any question about who has copied who due to closeness in concepts, then IMO you probably need to sit down and consider whether the inspiration has become too close to be ok or not. Also need to understand the difference between tropes and themes, and individualised story content and execution that makes each one more unique to an author.
So on the other hand if you’re setting your vampire game up in the same way and hitting a lot of the same situations, themes, atmosphere etc so it’s starting to feel more like a reskin, then yeah, not so cool. In between those two extremes is a grey area. That’s where it can get messy and you need to make sure it is your own inspiration and ideas driving the project rather than a kinda copy. That’s why the superhero games are fine to stand alone. There may be some measure of inspiration happening, but they’re quite distinct from each other. The execution of each is different. There’s a big difference between copying a game concept and taking a theme which is transformed enough to make it clearly your own work. I know this is only part of the question being asked here, but in my mind, rewriting someone’s WIP without permission because you want to see it finished is well and truly crossing that line between inspiration and infringement.
It’s also worth noting, that some book authors say they do not read fan mail when writing novels as they don’t want to be put in a situation where accidentally or deliberately they’ve ended up writing closely to a concept someone has suggested and landing them in all sorts of potential issues with accusations of copying.
Weird Al is great. I think he’d be playing off fair use as parody. In saying that I think even he treads carefully with some artists he thinks might get upset and asks for permission. There was one where the agent refused permission but then the artist liked what he’d made and it got overturned and released anyway.
Interesting point, but you’ll see it’s rare for WIPs to actually get officially canceled. Often authors don’t mean for the WIP’s to get delayed or discontinued, and often intend to come back sooner or later to them (whether or not that happens is another story.) Just be aware, everyone listed as a co-author needs to sign off on the release of a game if being put on HG. This can cause issues if the original author disappears, changes their mind or doesn’t like what you’ve done with their story. As @adrao was saying, there’s a lot of trust involved in working with another author From a personal standpoint, I’d want to know the author and that we’re on the same page, and have seen what they write in a finished game before considering co-authorship or handing over a WIP I might have cancelled. It can be difficult for writers to let go of complete control of their projects.
No, but only if you have gotten the previous author’s permission to use their story in that way. Otherwise it is treading the line of copyright infringement. (Edit- We’re talking specific set ups here, not general tropes or themes as discussed above.)
Nope. Beowulf is in the public domain so anyone can write their own version of it. But lets say someone had written a WIP where Beowulf had been reimagined in a very particular and original way and you used that? Then yes, that is a problem. This already exists in the copyright sphere. Disney is renound for taking CC0 works and putting their own spin on it. If you write a story based on the original fairy tale or myth, you’re in the clear. If you write inspired by Disney’s version than you can expect a take down notice.
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In this I intended less direct copying but more at what point is a work short enough that it covers too vague of an idea to be considered copying. Like if someone wrote a WIP of someone waking up in a dark alleyway with amnesia and abandoned the work there, would it prevent anyone else from writing a story where their MC wakes up in an alleyway with amnesia?
These are mostly just hypotheticals tbh, and the best I could think of off the top of my head.
This is like asking if it still counts as shoplifting when I take something from a store if I go to the register and pay on my way out. Of course it doesn’t. If you obtain permission from a person who has the right to give it, it’s not stealing.
This also has a clear-cut answer. Two people both drawing inspiration from a work in the public domain is in no way stealing. Even if that first work was finished and published, it wouldn’t stop anyone else from writing about Beowulf.
Yes, there are some gray areas, but that doesn’t mean we need to leap to the conclusion that it’s all subjective.
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Response to @Jacic :
Jacic
Just be aware, everyone listed as a co-author needs to sign off on the release of a game if being put on HG. This can cause issues if the original author disappears, changes their mind or doesn’t like what you’ve done with their story.
I imagined it would be more interactive, but I suppose if someone is washing their hands of it then I would suppose that it would mean it is difficult to keep inspiration to collaborate with it for some.
No, but only if you have gotten the previous author’s permission to use their story in that way. Otherwise it is treading the line of copyright infringement. (Edit- We’re talking specific set ups here, not general tropes or themes as discussed above.)
Part of it is whether or not you are literally copying word for word or if you take a similar approach. Right? I feel that if you had some of the same beats but did not really follow it exactly and built from there it is hard er to say, but I am also tired and unfocused because I got pulled from my writing due to curiosity on the thread haha.
Anyway, I think if you changed enough, considering you ended up building off it to such a magnitude it would be harder to argue that it was dependent.
Hmm not exactly. Obviously word for word copying is plagerism. There’s definitely a question mark over how similar you should make a game to someone else’s original idea because you like it (not themes or tropes.) It’s hard to give a black and white ruling here, but if you decided to “take a similar approach” and following a story I really like but “not exactly” that would start to ring alarm bells for me personally if I found myself doing that and I’d want to sit down and decide where it was sitting on that line between originality and plagerism. It’s going to be case by case.
In retrospect, perhaps I did not word it the best. Part of me also thinks that if you built up the story from 5k words to 205k then there is such a divorce from the original base concept that it would cease to really be just the original one anymore, so going back to alter it to fit your own altered vision would mean it would really cease to have any resemblance to the original at that point. Like, 5k to me is less than a scene in terms of my own writing, I struggle to understand how if someone took a singular scene of mine and built an entire story off of it, how that would somehow be entirely plagarized, usually it would mean they would have ample opportunity to develop it into something entirely different… That is my own thought at least.
Response to @AletheiaKnights
Aletheia
This also has a clear-cut answer. Two people both drawing inspiration from a work in the public domain is in no way stealing. Even if that first work was finished and published, it wouldn’t stop anyone else from writing about Beowulf.
Yes, there are some gray areas, but that doesn’t mean we need to leap to the conclusion that it’s all subjective.
I think there it becomes all about the interpretation and changes made to distinguish the new author’s story from the original. If you both made a Beowulf story, and then further if the latter author had seemed to make all the same ‘choices’ as the former author, then it becomes a bit suspicious as to whether or not there is good intentions there.
I’ll admit Beowulf was a bad example, but it was the best thing I could come up with off the top of my head that wouldn’t seem like it was firing shots at anyone or any work in particular.