Giving yourself ideas (and remembering them!)
I expose myself to a lot of really good stories. I watch films, read books, read comics, watch TV series, listen to audio books, read the news, and hear a lot of really good ideas for stories in my roleplaying game.
Copying isn’t bad
Taking a story that you’ve heard before and using it isn’t bad. There are many ways you can take an idea and use it as a story which is totally legitimate, and might be totally different to the original story that inspired you. Most works of fiction are inspired by other works of fiction. Taking a good idea that you’ve heard and applying it to your own characters might create a very different story.
There are many interesting background stories or settings that you could use, and adding your own characters into the story will create a very different story, and could have a dramatically different outcome.
It’s very likely that people who joined your roleplaying game will choose to leave at some point, and sometimes (or often perhaps) these people will just leave and give no explanation of why. There can be many reasons why people leave, usually they just can’t commit enough time, sometimes they’re lazy, sometimes they have arguments with other members of the game. But the question really is what should you do with their characters once they’ve left?
