During a game of Star Wars d6 rpg i ran a group through basically the train job episode of firefly (that was in solo 12 years later) and they did not realize it until we were watching firefly together. I also ran them through the cloud city plot from ESB while they were on cloud city.
That’s what I mean though. If they are even somewhat aware of the characters you are borrowing from, they’ll know the NPCs are rip-offs, regardless of a name swap. I feel like you would have to do more than just change their name. Perhaps combining characters to make 1, or modifying character traits so they’re not 1:1.
I suppose it also depends on whether or not your players care about that sort of thing though, and if you as the DM don’t come clean about your shenanigans when caught.
During a game of Star Wars d6 rpg i ran a group through basically the train job episode of firefly (that was in solo 12 years later) and they did not realize it until we were watching firefly together. I also ran them through the cloud city plot from ESB while they were on cloud city.
That’s what I mean though. If they are even somewhat aware of the characters you are borrowing from, they’ll know the NPCs are rip-offs, regardless of a name swap. I feel like you would have to do more than just change their name. Perhaps combining characters to make 1, or modifying character traits so they’re not 1:1.
I suppose it also depends on whether or not your players care about that sort of thing though, and if you as the DM don’t come clean about your shenanigans when caught.