With most games you can see what IPs inspired it. Sometimes they call it more than others. I like a game that dares to be original. There is a difference though between making something new with an existing idea, or just wanting to copy it.

I read a book a few years ago called How to talk about books you haven’t read. One of its points was that if you read enough books, you’ll know what context a book is in, and in that way know everything about it without having to read it. It is a bit the same with RPGs.

On a related note, the first question I got when my game was kickstarted, was: can I run a Firefly-type game with this?