IP's that ought to have their own RPGs

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Heh, I'm sure it's coming just as soon as GMS finishes Far West, his 8 year (as of next month) delinquent Kickstarter.
That's a god damn shame. With a combination of spaghetti Western, Chinese wuxia, and steampunk the stories practically write themselves.

Edit: I found a Far West thread on this board, hopefully it can satisfy my deep curiosity as to how such a promising idea got screwed up.
 
I watched an old 70s TV movie on Amazon Prime today called Where Have All the People Gone. The video quality looked like someone had done a conversion from a VHS tape and then filmed the monitor screen and converted that to digital format to get the streaming version.

Anyway, I think I had seen it before, and it was clearly a source of inspiration for one of my favorite movies: Night of the Comet.

Then I thought about this thread. Dumarest had already done an RPG cover for Night of the Comet, right? I looked through the whole thread and didn't see one. That makes it even more bewildering why I didn't bring it up.

I used to do Night of the Comet RPG sessions all the time. "Something" would happen. The PCs would be untouched by it. The machinery of civilization would still be running on autopilot, but the overwhelming majority of living creatures in the world had been turned to dust, and another percentage of living creatures were mutated into mad monsters.

Scenarios revolved around gearing up and not being eaten by mutants. Other tasks involved looking for other survivors, finding somewhere safe to hide out. And raiding shopping malls.

I had this super simple throwaway system for it. Characters were rated in 4 attributes Body, Reflex, Mind, and Will. Scores ranged from 5 to 9. To do things you rolled 2d6 under the attribute. Body determined Hit Points. Weapons did damage like in either AD&D for melee weapons or in Edge of the Sword d20 table for guns. You also had these other points which I kept changing the name of, but which usually could reduce your die roll by one point for each point spent. Combat was attacker rolled and then the Defender rolled and had to beat the attacker's margin of success. I called it the "Goof Off System."
 
I watched an old 70s TV movie on Amazon Prime today called Where Have All the People Gone. The video quality looked like someone had done a conversion from a VHS tape and then filmed the monitor screen and converted that to digital format to get the streaming version.

Anyway, I think I had seen it before, and it was clearly a source of inspiration for one of my favorite movies: Night of the Comet.

Then I thought about this thread. Dumarest had already done an RPG cover for Night of the Comet, right? I looked through the whole thread and didn't see one. That makes it even more bewildering why I didn't bring it up.

I used to do Night of the Comet RPG sessions all the time. "Something" would happen. The PCs would be untouched by it. The machinery of civilization would still be running on autopilot, but the overwhelming majority of living creatures in the world had been turned to dust, and another percentage of living creatures were mutated into mad monsters.

Scenarios revolved around gearing up and not being eaten by mutants. Other tasks involved looking for other survivors, finding somewhere safe to hide out. And raiding shopping malls.

I had this super simple throwaway system for it. Characters were rated in 4 attributes Body, Reflex, Mind, and Will. Scores ranged from 5 to 9. To do things you rolled 2d6 under the attribute. Body determined Hit Points. Weapons did damage like in either AD&D for melee weapons or in Edge of the Sword d20 table for guns. You also had these other points which I kept changing the name of, but which usually could reduce your die roll by one point for each point spent. Combat was attacker rolled and then the Defender rolled and had to beat the attacker's margin of success. I called it the "Goof Off System."
You mean you don't have the sourcebook TSR put out in the 1980s?
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I just saw this thread and was thinking "No one's mentioned the Drenai books", but it appears that it no longer true.

There is a free rpg.

I could also see it working with a very stripped back Riddle of Steel system.
 
Dumarest Dumarest Can we have a Young Ones RPG? Not sure how it would work but WTH.

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This one would be a lot of fun. I'd include write-ups of the main characters and ships, but encourage referees and players to create their own battlestar that survived the Cylon attack, along the lines of the episode where they discovered Commander Cain (played by Lloyd Bridges) and the Pegasus had also survived. That way you'd have all the background material you need but not be tied to any of the TV series continuity post-"Saga of a Star World" and be free to introduce elements you like and exclude elements you dislike (for me: the "Ship of Lights" rigamarole).
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This one would be a lot of fun. I'd include write-ups of the main characters and ships, but encourage referees and players to create their own battlestar that survived the Cylon attack, along the lines of the episode where they discovered Commander Cain (played by Lloyd Bridges) and the Pegasus had also survived. That way you'd have all the background material you need but not be tied to any of the TV series continuity post-"Saga of a Star World" and be free to introduce elements you like and exclude elements you dislike (for me: the "Ship of Lights" rigamarole).

Still needs a "The Thousand Yaren War Sourcebook"
 
That's a god damn shame. With a combination of spaghetti Western, Chinese wuxia, and steampunk the stories practically write themselves.
I recommend Deadlands:smile:.
Possibly stripped of the setting, and possibly not:wink:.

Yes:gunslinger:!
Though I would actually prefer his Stones of Power/Sipstrassi series, or some of his standalone* novels. Knights of Dark Renown, Morningstar, Dark Moon and Echoes of the Great Song are actually great and underrated...and I like the settings better.
And the Sipstrassi provide a ready-to-use plot device, and a mechanic for corrupting the PCs, Pendragon-style:evil:!

*As much as Gemmell had any standalone novels. There are winks to other works of his in way too many of them.


Why, when the Spanish Alatriste RPG exists? And it arguably represents the novels better, while doing at least as good a job for swashbuckling:tongue:?

If only it was easily available in PDF:grin:!
 
Neon Genesis Evangelion.

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Hard pass. This was nothing more than the director working out his mental problems in anime form. It got so bad that Gainax killed at 24 episodes instead of the planned 40. They gave the director a movie to finish the series, but it was so bad and senseless that the remaining Japanese audience complained so hard that a SECOND movie was made to explain the series and give some sort of closure.
 
Hard pass. This was nothing more than the director working out his mental problems in anime form. It got so bad that Gainax killed at 24 episodes instead of the planned 40. They gave the director a movie to finish the series, but it was so bad and senseless that the remaining Japanese audience complained so hard that a SECOND movie was made to explain the series and give some sort of closure.


Ummm....not really. Whether one wants to believe that it was Hideaki Anno " working out his mental problems in anime form", that's entirely a PoV, I know some people hate the show, some love it, I don't feel any need to defend it (though I will say "working out mental problems in (media) form" just sounds like a generic description of Art in general to me). However, while Gainax studios suffered from budgetary issues the whole series, they were behind Evangelion 100% and did not "pull the plug". , it was the studio itself suffering financial problems, they were not some external producers overseeing anything. What happened was two original ending episodes were produced before a very horrible terrorist attack by an apocalypse cult happened in Japan shortly before they were supposed to be aired. The plot and/or visuals of the final episodes were deemed to be too similar to this event for whatever reason (these have never been seen outside of the studio and widely believed to have been destroyed to prevent a leak), and they were pulled, and on basically no budget or time, the final episodes as we know them were cobbled together. The ending was always intended to be the ending however.

Also, the notion of two movies is incorrect - there was, as is common in Japan, one "film" that basically was an abridged version of the series. It's just highlights from the show to serve as an introduction for an audience who had not watched the series. There was one film that served not totally as a replacement of the original ending, rather it was meant to show externally what was happening in the world, whereas the ending of the show takes plays entirely within the protagonist's consciousness as it is absorbed into the "world soul".

I've heard people say that one or the other is incomprehensible, and all I can say is I understood it just fine. But then, people say the same thing about the final episode of The Prisoner, and that made complete sense to me. So, different strokes and all that.
 
Ummm....not really. Whether one wants to believe that it was Hideaki Anno " working out his mental problems in anime form", that's entirely a PoV, I know some people hate the show, some love it, I don't feel any need to defend it (though I will say "working out mental problems in (media) form" just sounds like a generic description of Art in general to me). However, while Gainax studios suffered from budgetary issues the whole series, they were behind Evangelion 100% and did not "pull the plug". , it was the studio itself suffering financial problems, they were not some external producers overseeing anything. What happened was two original ending episodes were produced before a very horrible terrorist attack by an apocalypse cult happened in Japan shortly before they were supposed to be aired. The plot and/or visuals of the final episodes were deemed to be too similar to this event for whatever reason (these have never been seen outside of the studio and widely believed to have been destroyed to prevent a leak), and they were pulled, and on basically no budget or time, the final episodes as we know them were cobbled together. The ending was always intended to be the ending however.

Also, the notion of two movies is incorrect - there was, as is common in Japan, one "film" that basically was an abridged version of the series. It's just highlights from the show to serve as an introduction for an audience who had not watched the series. There was one film that served not totally as a replacement of the original ending, rather it was meant to show externally what was happening in the world, whereas the ending of the show takes plays entirely within the protagonist's consciousness as it is absorbed into the "world soul".

I've heard people say that one or the other is incomprehensible, and all I can say is I understood it just fine. But then, people say the same thing about the final episode of The Prisoner, and that made complete sense to me. So, different strokes and all that.
He's gone on record that the first series was him still dealing with personal issues (namely depression and nihilisit desires) and was thankful that Gainax gave him the opportunity to make it into an anime, and that Shinji was effectively a self-insertion character. Although given Anno's record of statements...

And yes, it was cancelled at 24, when the plan was 40, because the merchandise sales plummeted hard, so hard in fact that the budget got cut so that they had just enough for a movie/ending. According to a friend I know.

Yes, Gainax was in financial trouble, but that was due to merch sales of a failing franchise.

To be fair, however, a lot of 80s and 90s boys action anime suffered this problem, hence a lot of them had rather rushed endings. Which is why now they do things in batches of 12 to 13 episodes, or up to 26 if they're really confident in the series, getting a renewal mid-season if it's selling decently. Some series break that mold because the manga sells like gangbusters, One Piece, Bleach, Naruto/Boruto, Black Clover, Fairy Tail etc, but most don't. The first ending was considered by all parties to be a jumbled incoherent mess, so they were able to get a second for a better sense of closure.

Anno is a well known to be a self-contradicting... Let's be blunt, the man lies better than a steamrolled rug, he has no real position on anything because of it. But at least, he's apparently happily married now.

However, that's not to say anyone is wrong for liking it. Like I said, I take a hard pass on it. Everyone else can love it, hate it or leave it.
 
He's gone on record that the first series was him still dealing with personal issues (namely depression and nihilisit desires) and was thankful that Gainax gave him the opportunity to make it into an anime, and that Shinji was effectively a self-insertion character. Although given Anno's record of statements...

And yes, it was cancelled at 24, when the plan was 40, because the merchandise sales plummeted hard, so hard in fact that the budget got cut so that they had just enough for a movie/ending. According to a friend I know.

Yes, Gainax was in financial trouble, but that was due to merch sales of a failing franchise.


I dunno, in 20 years I've never heard about merchandise sales having anything to do with anything regarding Evangelion, not that I'm either an insider nor involved in Japanese culture enough to have communicated with any first person sources. It sounds a bit odd to me though, considering Evangelion merchandise has continued to be an ongoing empire for decades afterwards.

 
I dunno, in 20 years I've never heard about merchandise sales having anything to do with anything regarding Evangelion, not that I'm either an insider nor involved in Japanese culture enough to have communicated with any first person sources. It sounds a bit odd to me though, considering Evangelion merchandise has continued to be an ongoing empire for decades afterwards.


From what I had heard, there was a severe drop during it's run, which is why it got cut short, but about... A year? After, it got big in North America, which spurred new interest in merchandise, just not enough at the time to continue, or to reboot it.

ALTHOUGH, they HAVE done so, at least twice more, very recently from what I hear. All I can speak is for the FIRST run of episodes. I am not interested enough to get back into the series so I will not say anything about the second and I THINK third. It's strangely popular for some odd reason I will likely never understand, especially in the West.

And again, I want to reiterate, that I am not, and will not ever, say that because I dislike something, everyone has to agree with me. In fact, I will fight for your right to DISAGREE with me, should you wish to.
 
The second series/remake is ongoing. I don't recommend it to anyone who didn't enjoy the original. The animation/budget is improved but it's so far been pretty faithful to the plot.
 
I call dibs on Lord Flashheart!

Well, you never know (see middle item):
Not in any particular order, and subject to change as these are just off the top of my head:
  • Gamma World, mainly because I only just acquired it in the past year and haven't really read through it all the way yet. I would run it in a post-Apocalyptic world inspired by music videos like Rick Springfield's "Human Touch," Duran Duran's "Union of the Snake," and Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky." I've never played any edition of GW.
  • Flashing Blades set in the theatre world of Elizabethan England, with playwright PCs hustling their wares and clamoring for attention of the Queen and court. Not sure how feasible it would be, but a low-Wit PC fancying himself a Shakespeare or Marlowe would be a hoot and a half.
  • Lucha Libre Hero long-term ongoing campaign set in the psychotronic world of 1960s-1970s Mexican luchador movies. The primary barriers have been (1) unpopularity of Hero System and (2) getting players familiar enough with the genre to play it straight.
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I dunno, in 20 years I've never heard about merchandise sales having anything to do with anything regarding Evangelion, not that I'm either an insider nor involved in Japanese culture enough to have communicated with any first person sources. It sounds a bit odd to me though, considering Evangelion merchandise has continued to be an ongoing empire for decades afterwards.



The SF Encyclopedia is the most reliable factual source on these things I find and it covers the background production issues in its entry on EVA but doesn’t mention merch sales as being the issue.
 
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