
Originally Posted by
RPG-Advocate
Thinking about making "Final Fantasy VI-2" or other such claptrap? Think twice before making sequels or side-stories to commercial RPGs.
In general, they tend to suck more than originally conceived ideas. The reason is that people who resort to this kind of game are typically not very organized thinkers, and their stories come out disorganized, contrived, inauthentic, and sometimes even at odds with the material they're deriving the ideas from.
Furthermore, when you make a sequel or fangame, people come in with preceonceived notions about what your game "should" be like. If you deviate too far from the series' established design, people will trash your game. The practical effect of this is that you're working within a constrained design space. Working with an original idea makes it so your imagination is the only limitation.
In general, think long and hard before making a derivative work of an existing RPG. 99 times out of 100, a game based on an original idea will be better crafted and better received.