Old Boardgames that might make fun RPGs

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Simlasa

Simlasa

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I've started working on a Halloween game for friends next Fall. We're going with a 'traditional' theme (old school Halloween decorations and costumes)... so I was poking around for inspiration and remembered this old thing:

Green_Ghost.jpg

We had a copy at our house... but the game itself was less than the sum of its parts. As kids we'd sort of proto-roleplay the part of the creepy pets and make up more of a story to it all... because the board and pieces were quite evocative.
So I've decided to expand on its themes and plot (what there is of one) for my Halloween project. I'm aiming for creepy-cute.

Many moons ago I also ran a game based on Candyland... and all the sinister horrors it implies.

I'm thinking there are lots of old boardgames with fun themes but relatively crap gameplay.
So what other boardgames might be suitable fodder for expansion into a full-fleshed RPG... if not a campaign, at least an adventure.

NOTE: I'm thinking more of basic old games... not so much the elaborate modern games like Descent that are quasi-RPGs already. But maybe some abstract modern Eurogame...
 
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Heroscape

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Heroscape Master Set: Rise of the Valkyrie

Distant worlds collide through time and space to battle on 3D landscapes of Valhalla.
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Or maybe more in keeping with the original post, Shadowlord. For that one the background and art was far more interesting than the game.

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Shadowlord!

The Object To become Master of the Universe by defeating your opponents before the timer declares the Shadowlord has won. Each player assumes the identity of one of the Masters of Earth, Air, Fire or Water. Starting with two allies, you'll travel through the galaxies of the Universe in search...
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I had Horror House, it was a great game. Seeing that gameboard again gives me a flood of nostalgia. I loved all the various monster cards and the big poster sheet with descriptions of them, drawn from folklore from around the world. We used to use Monster in my Pockets figures as tokens for the game.

I've always wanted to set one of my Mythos one shots in the setting of the boardgame Mystery of the Abbey, taking Brother Caedfael series and Eco's Name o the rose as inspiration and using the gameboard as the map during play...

51130915449_407a6c0172_o.jpg


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This is a much more recent card game, but if there was a Twisted Faerie Tales type RPG with art similar to this card game, I'd be in for it.

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Dark Tales

Play cards to construct the darkest fairy tale story using character and event cards.
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Incidentally, is the RPG based on this EVER going to get released? Hasn't it been 2 or 3 years now?

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Talisman

Pick a hero, then roll and move through 3 levels of danger, battles, and treasures.
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Monopoly was created as a Georgism teaching tool.
 
CLUE (The roleplaying game of solving mysteries.) Inspired a bit by the Clue film, in the game RPG, you'd gather clues, interpret them, then. You could create endings from the clues (no preplanned plot) the best one players come up with is voted on, and wins as the "real" ending, but everyone gets the same clues, a bit story game sounding though and they all give their interpretations of who killed Mr. Body. The more humorous the better?

Chainsaw Warrior RPG!

Seige of the Citadel (I know it's tied to the Mutant Chronicles, and they just released a new board game,) but one that is a tighter, simpler set of rules to do what SotC did would be awesome.

I was also thinking Heroquest, but there is a serial number filed of version hybrid out already (Broadsword!) Though an official RPG might have been nice. (No, not Warhammer related either :grin:)
 
Funny, the second RPG I ever created, with friends in Junior High, was based on Clue (my first hand at RPG creation was with two other friends a year earlier based on the Groo comic books). We took heavy inspiration from the Tim Curry film and had random generators for rooms in a manor and secret passages,

Neither of those games were ever completed, as not long after we were on to creating an RPG based on Duck Tales & Darkwing Duck.
 
Simlasa said:
Many moons ago I also ran a game based on Candyland... and all the sinister horrors it implies.

...So what other boardgames might be suitable fodder for expansion into a full-fleshed RPG... if not a campaign, at least an adventure.
Click to expand...

What sinister horrors are implied by Candyland? My memories of that game are the vaguest of vague, so I have no idea.

As for a board game I'd want to turn into an rpg... Chess, maybe?
 
This game would be a really fun RPG, at least as a one shot.

DWTK.jpg
 
Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs is a HEX scenario in boardgame form.

Sea Fall could easily be a varient world for 7th Sea.

I have actually been tempted to run A touch of evil as an RPG by pre selecting encounters at particular map locations and adding more RPG style management of the game descriptions, events and timing.

Of the board games I have that are not already RPGs or dungeon crawlers I think that Mission Red Planet might make for the most interesting RPG. A steampunk, colonial cold war over Mars and it's limited resources.
 
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All that comes to mind is Junta as an especially brutal game of politics.
 
E-Rocker said:
What sinister horrors are implied by Candyland? My memories of that game are the vaguest of vague, so I have no idea.
Click to expand...
Look at it!

CandyLand.jpg

Those candy hearts are blood red for a reason! What sort of jelly troll monstrosities lurk in the Gumdrop Mountains?!!! The horrible man in the Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House hates children with a passion! Those ice cream floats certainly aren't safe for boating in the frigid ocean... and what about the Molasses Swamp?!!! I don't want to think about the sticky fate of toddlers who fell in while trying to cross that particular tar pit :shock:.
 
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Time Agent. Six species of interstellar society discover time travel and use it to try and ensure history favors them. Send lone agents or whole squads back in time to change history in your favor, or stop others from changing it in theirs. The game ends when the past is changed so much that the invention of time travel never happens. A rather uninspiring board design and complex gameplay (today there's an app that helps you keep track of all the changed events in history and their effects on the game) but very fun and the concept is an interesting fit for an rpg.

Time Agent Box.jpg

Time Agent board.jpg
 
I was thinking of adding stats and dice to chess. Pawns start with 1D4 'Attack', 1D4 'Defence' and 1 life. When trying to take them dice are rolled and depending on the result the piece is taken or nothing happens (and the piece stays where it is). Rooks, Bishops, Knights, Queens and Kings will have their own scores and when the game ends (a King is taken) those surviving pieces get an upgrade (different colour piece so instead of white or black, red, blue, green, yellow etc depending on where I can find coloured chess pieces). Upgrades could be +1 to attack/defence or at higher levels, more than one life. Also for taking other pieces exp points are granted/noted and help to level up.

Stalled a bit when I could only find multi coloured pawn pieces. Still looking. Hoping to try it out on my 11 year old son to drag him away from computer games...

Edit: Just seen the title of thread again. Not strictly an RPG but with RPG elements in it...
 
Jenx said:
I was thinking of adding stats and dice to chess. Pawns start with 1D4 'Attack', 1D4 'Defence' and 1 life. When trying to take them dice are rolled and depending on the result the piece is taken or nothing happens (and the piece stays where it is). Rooks, Bishops, Knights, Queens and Kings will have their own scores and when the game ends (a King is taken) those surviving pieces get an upgrade (different colour piece so instead of white or black, red, blue, green, yellow etc depending on where I can find coloured chess pieces). Upgrades could be +1 to attack/defence or at higher levels, more than one life. Also for taking other pieces exp points are granted/noted and help to level up.

Stalled a bit when I could only find multi coloured pawn pieces. Still looking. Hoping to try it out on my 11 year old son to drag him away from computer games...
Click to expand...

Piece, Attack/Defense
Pawn, 1d4/1d4
Queen, 1d20/1d6
King, 1d20/1d4
Rook, 1d10/1d12
Bishop, 1d8/1d6
Knight, 1d12/1d8

As for the different colors, you could just buy a few cheap chess sets from the grocery store, and paint the figures. You'd need two colors for each upgrade in order to represent side.

Red/Blue = +1 or next die step up in attack
Green/Purple = +1 or next die step up in defense
silver/gold = additional movement. Pawn can also move as a Knight. Knight can also move as a bishop, Rook can also move as Queen, Queen gets to make a second move after the first, but as a King.
yellow/brown = Piece gets two defense rolls against each attack.
etc.
 
raniE said:
Time Agent. Six species of interstellar society discover time travel and use it to try and ensure history favors them. Send lone agents or whole squads back in time to change history in your favor, or stop others from changing it in theirs. The game ends when the past is changed so much that the invention of time travel never happens.
Click to expand...
This reminds me of Chrononauts, which has a similar premise (time travelers competing to make their timelines the official one, then locking it in by uninventing time travel), as well as a Back to the Future version, which is all I really want from a time travel game. Oo, there's a Star Trek version now, too!
 
tannhauser.jpg
Tannhauser, a fun expandable miniatures skirmish board game. The setting is a fascinating one, it's a parallel universe where the Great War continued all the way to 1949. The German Empire developed magic (which works) while the Union, a fusion of Western Europe and the United States developed technology based on the alien tech from the Roswell Crash.

The setting feels like it has a lot of potential, but was never built upon. It's a shame the game just kind of petered out in the 2010's. The setting could be a fun one for some magic vs super-science dieselpunk spy games.

Supposedly it was going to get a GENESYS Setting book but I haven't seen hide nor hair of it since.
 
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