Popular Movies/TV

Are we allowed to use popular movies/tv, books, or music as the theme for our campaigns? Would that be considered a trademark violation?

I am thinking of TV shows like Supernatural, or movies like Interview With The Vampire or the Twilight Series. Perhaps we could use Anne Rice novels. Is this kind of stuff allowed?

With all respect, if you need legal advice, you should probably ask an actual lawyer rather than asking random people on an internet forum.

DISCLAIMER: I have no legal training, formal or otherwise, of any kind.

Ok… with that out of the way…

Yes. Essentially, you would be discussing a piece of pop culture with your friends using the framework of an RPG. If you weren’t allowed to do that, it would be tantamount to having children who were pretending to be Frodo and Gandalf and then having the Tolkien Estate kick down the door and arrest them. Unless you live in a dystopian nation governed by some kind of fascist corporation (I sincerely apologize if I just called your elected officials fascists), I’m pretty sure there are free speech laws preventing that. As wagnarokkr said, you should ask an actual lawyer. However, unless you’ve somehow figured out how to monetize playing D&D (please tell me if you have (oh wait actual play exists)) or are somehow plotting to convince people that this is some kind of media-sponsored official D&D campaign (and if you are, you probably already know that this is illegal) then you should be fine.

In personal & private games, the world's your oyster. I've had a few successful oneshots which were based on popular games or movies, which the players worked out about halfway through (one of which culminates in a fight vs the doom slayer, which is heavily foreshadowed, but most players realise only once I get the music playing). Both I have worked hard to keep outside of the official IP, and neither follow the story of their inspiration, but they are packed with references, like the NPC names, the abbreviations of the organisations, and so forth. I have an entire evil corporation in my campaign named Bumbershoot, which is literally another word for Umbrella.

For anything you're going to try to monetise or record, I would avoid it. For one thing, it'll be a minefield for IP infringement etc. For another, people watching will probably appreciate a unique story more than a D&D game based on something else. For one thing, D&D is probably the slowest method of story delivery, where 10 minutes of investigation could take an hour to describe, and a 30 second fight could take an hour and a half. If people are seeing a story they know, they won't be as invested as one which is a stranger to them.