Settings you wish had an RPG treatment

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Triumvir

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I'm still a newcomer here, so apologies if this topic has been done to death before: what settings (from fiction, TV or cinema) do you wish had an RPG treatment?

No surprise given my username, Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space-verse is one for me. River of Heaven (BRP family) or Eclipse Phase are probably closest of games I know of, and I am sure I could put together a RS campaign in either. But I would love a glossy hardback dedicated to RS where someone had done the work for me, because I am lazy and like shiny things.
 
The Culture.

A Wizard of Earthsea.

The MCU.
Yup, I know they have a new Marvel game out. It's not great and it's not remotely the MCU.

and, somewhat not for me but for millions of others, Harry Fucking Potter. As long as it didn't use 5e/6e it would change the face of roleplaying overnight.
 
The Culture.

A Wizard of Earthsea.

The MCU.
Yup, I know they have a new Marvel game out. It's not great and it's not remotely the MCU.

and, somewhat not for me but for millions of others, Harry Fucking Potter. As long as it didn't use 5e/6e it would change the face of roleplaying overnight.
I second The Culture and A Wizard of Earthsea.

I sort of want to say China Mieville's Bas-Lag world, from the trilogy starting with Perdido Street Station , but also I don't. Maybe just the first two novels. And there'd be too much detail in a game setting to make it sing the way the novels sing.

Anyone remember the cartoon Ulysses 31? I'd play the heck out of that.

I'd also love a game that covered The Sweeney/Minder/The Gentle Touch/Dempsey&Makepeace/C.A.T.'s Eyes sort of 70s-80s British detective/underworld stuff. And a game that covered the Danger Man>Secret Agent Man>The Prisoner sort of arc, but none of these will happen, so a man can dream.
 
Lovejoy?
Bergerac?
Shoestring?
Yes yes and yes. I'd settle for Lovejoy being a splat-book for playing hookie antique dealers with a heart of gold. Incidentally, one of my mates has a sister that went out with McShane in the early 80s. Mate said he was a pompous prick that never put his hand in his pocket for anything. Which I'd want to see reflected as a trait in-game.
 
I'm still a newcomer here, so apologies if this topic has been done to death before: what settings (from fiction, TV or cinema) do you wish had an RPG treatment?

No surprise given my username, Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space-verse is one for me. River of Heaven (BRP family) or Eclipse Phase are probably closest of games I know of, and I am sure I could put together a RS campaign in either. But I would love a glossy hardback dedicated to RS where someone had done the work for me, because I am lazy and like shiny things.
Being a Hyperpig in Chasm city would be a trip, rev space does seem ready made, so do a lot of his books: Blue Remembered Earth, Revenger, and Pushing Ice. I stole polling cores for my game: "Hey players, go check this out" plus I got Akinya Factors out of Nairobi. He also lists where he took things from. Clear Air Turbulence does seem a shoe in for adventuring party. People said Mindjammer was Culturish and I suppose it is, though it is also a lot different. One thing about Far Future is that that far down the road I have no clue what it would mean. That is also kind of a stumbling block with Revelation Space is getting around by Light Hugger, no world would be the same twice, because of the travel time. I think both Cherryh's Alliance-Union space and some of Norton's stuff would make for a killer setting.
 
The setting that I wish had a good RPG treatment is the Solar System as it was imagined in the works of Leigh Brackett published between 1940 and 1964, or perhaps the rather similar one set out by Robert Heinlein before he became immune to editors (i.e. in his Scribner juvies and before).

Given the perils of licensing, I would be satisfied with a setting with original details if it were broadly faithful to the sci-fi consensus about the Solar System we had before those pesky space probes.
 
and, somewhat not for me but for millions of others, Harry Fucking Potter. As long as it didn't use 5e/6e it would change the face of roleplaying overnight.

Ima have to second Harry Fucking Potter (though, that's kind of a weird premise if we take that literally). Unlike many movies, TV shows or books, Hogwards and the Potterverse have a lot of elements within it that sorta lend themselves to making an RPG game world beyond just the stories set around the protagonist of the published works.

Another one I always thought lent itself to a game setting was the Dark Angel TV series, since the show establishes that there are other transgenic people who also escaped, plus there's a bunch of stuff going on in the world beyond just the transgenic stuff, with the fallout from the blackout, weird breeding cults and such. So you could make up your own character, unrelated to any of the characters in the actual show and it could still work.

In contrast, a world like Dune (one of my favorite novels) doesn't really work very well IMO if you're not Paul "Muad'Dib" Atreides, or any of the other important characters like Gurney Halleck or Lady Jessica. Though, they've tried to make RPGs based on Dune a bunch of times, but I wouldn't really know what to do with them.

EDIT/PS: I think there was another thread with a similar (identical?) premise to this one, but it was very old and people would sometimes just dump massive lists of every show/movie/book they've ever liked, so I think it'd be cool to start a fresh one more focused on discussion IMO.
 
and, somewhat not for me but for millions of others, Harry Fucking Potter. As long as it didn't use 5e/6e it would change the face of roleplaying overnight.

Yep. I don't care for it either, but a Harry Potter RPG would sell like Avatar did, or maybe even higher. But no need to worry about that, as Crazy Lady (tm) isn't ever going to allow dirty role players to touch her baby...
 
I've always thought that a ROM or Micronauts game would be a blast. The latter has such a rich universe, thanks to Marvel's now-classic comics, and it lends itself to various grades of darkness depending on how one likes one's SF.

And ROM's just cool. Come on, wouldn't you want to play a Spaceknight?
 
I second The Culture and A Wizard of Earthsea.

I sort of want to say China Mieville's Bas-Lag world, from the trilogy starting with Perdido Street Station , but also I don't. Maybe just the first two novels. And there'd be too much detail in a game setting to make it sing the way the novels sing.

.
there was a Dragon Magazine in the 3.0 era that did Bas-Lag, before the third book of the trilogy came out.
 
I would be interested in an RPG set in C.J. Cherryh's Aliance/Union universe. I think it's big enough and has enough different things going on that there would be room for PC action that didn't intersect the various books too much.

On the other hand, I really haven't been able to engage in any settings that come from fiction or media. Made for RPG settings seem to work better for me.
 
Those not mentioned already....

Max Headroom
Seaquest DSV
Time Trax (from the TV show)
Continuum The TV Show
Hot Zone (which would be great but would be too hard on the GM and PCs)
Thunderbirds are Go (which would be easier than the old series, but yes)
Invaders/ UFO (and Space 1999). Not quite X-com, not quite X-files, but in between.
Well World Universe - done properly this time. And real notes/ setting for the outside.
Tomorrow People (which could be done in many systems, but it would be nice with the support material).
The OSI series (ala bionics and all the potential spin offs).
Tron movies
If I dug around I could come up with more....
 
The Culture.

A Wizard of Earthsea.

The MCU.
Yup, I know they have a new Marvel game out. It's not great and it's not remotely the MCU.

and, somewhat not for me but for millions of others, Harry Fucking Potter. As long as it didn't use 5e/6e it would change the face of roleplaying overnight.
Lots of great suggestions all through thread.

With my cynical/objective hat on, Harry F. Potter in 5e would surely melt Amazon, even if it's not something I would have any interest in. Presumably the licence is too expensive even for Hasbro.

I do remember Ulysses 31. There is always Hellas. (Likewise Seaquest DSV and Blue Planet or Polaris.) But I started this thread wanting a tailored sourcebook with no further working-up required, so it's only fair I should not expect more from anyone else!
 
I would be interested in an RPG set in C.J. Cherryh's Aliance/Union universe. I think it's big enough and has enough different things going on that there would be room for PC action that didn't intersect the various books too much.

On the other hand, I really haven't been able to engage in any settings that come from fiction or media. Made for RPG settings seem to work better for me.
The roleplaying game Shatterzone (originally WEG, now published by brettmb brettmb Precis Intermedia, along with pretty much every other game you might remember from the old days which may have otherwise been lost for good) has strong echoes of the Alliance/Union books, primarily in the role of the Navy and cyberpunk overtones. It also has loads of things that have nothing to do with those books, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
 
John M Ford's - The Dragon Waiting.
Mary Gentle's - Ash a Secret History.

I want a Weird alternate history 15th century game with magic and miracles and some kind of anachronistically surviving ancient empire.
 
With my cynical/objective hat on, Harry F. Potter in 5e would surely melt Amazon, even if it's not something I would have any interest in. Presumably the licence is too expensive even for Hasbro.
Of course if the Potter people wanted to do 5e they wouldn’t need Hasbro thanks to CC.
 
Has anyone done a rpg for the surreal, decadent, far-future sf setting best represented by Moorcock and Vance (Thomas Disch also did a great series of short stories in this style)?

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Try Worlds Without Number?
Yep. I don't care for it either, but a Harry Potter RPG would sell like Avatar did, or maybe even higher. But no need to worry about that, as Crazy Lady (tm) isn't ever going to allow dirty role players to touch her baby...
I'm actually genuinely not sure it would have done, even in The Past where HP was hyper-relevant. Yes there were a lot of young folks into HP, but they were doing their own thing for free already, and typically didn't have the disposable income for RPG books; even the many HP-but-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off products of the time didn't even make a dent on the market.

And now, after Rowling has destroyed her own legacy with countless low-quality spinoffs? Forget about it. The time for an HP RPG to really blow up was about a decade ago; if the inevitable reboot movies really stick the landing, maybe there will be a second chance, but otherwise it's done.
 

Not familiar with The Sandbaggers, but I saw Into the Badlands a couple of years ago (lost track of it after 2nd season, though) and it was kind of an underrated show with lots of potential—both, as a series and as an RPG if they made one around it. Lots of over the top martial arts and political struggle between the different barons trying to control territory and resources. Characters could be escaped cogs or clippers, or nomads at the periphery of things, operating beyond the barons' control and stealing from them, etc. Could be a fun RPG.
 
Blake's 7.
 
I'd love a "Revelation Space" RPG. It strikes me as a very RPG-friendly setting -- lots of possible adventures during the "Inhibitor Phase" especially.

For many years I wished there was a RPG (or an adaptation of an existing RPG) for Jack Vance's Lyonesse setting. Now there is an excellent on for Mythras!

I can't think of any others that I'm desperate to see. Most of my favourite fictional settings have or have had RPG incarnations (multiple ones for Middle-earth and the Young Kingdoms).
 
There's Robin Laws Dying Earth rpg, but I don't know if it's any good.

I played it a while ago (over a dozen years) and thought it was a lot of fun. I don't remember the details now, but it struck me as a system that would not lend itself well to longer-term play. (I think it's still for sale at the Pelgrane website.)

Apparently Goodman Games is developing a Dying Earth version of their DCC game. I have not checked out DCC (yet) but I will pick a Dying Earth version if it ever comes out (my impression is that it is taking a rather long time).
 
I'd have thought Star Wars D6 would be a fine fit for Blakes 7 (ditch the force and create a few genre specific character archetypes and go).

I think there is a thread for this sort of thing somewhere but here we go with my pitches:







The books of David Gemmell cover heroic fantasy, grim and gritty low magic fantasy, grey characters rather than black/white heroes and villains and topics such a time travel, post apocalypse, making use of myth (a take on the Uther Pendragon story) and more (Troy, Brigante series and great stand alone stories like Echoes of the Great Song and Morningstar). Of course Druss and Waylander are fan favourites.

I think there was an amateur effort to make a game set in the time of Druss but it's a shame there wasn't a system book and splat/lore books relating to the various series. A personal favourite is the Jon Shannow series (the 'Jerusalem Man') which is a western, post apocalypse, time travel, demon war, magic/miracle (sipstrassi stones) crossover.

If you've never read any of his books start with Waylander or Legend or Wolf in Shadow.

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Cthulu esque investigation, group decisions on where to put research and engineering resources and bug hunts with things that can tear you to pieces, take over your mind or disintegrate you. Loot you can't figure out without research, guns that are like pea shooters to alien bad guys and moving up to psychic powers and cybernetics in mid/late game. XCom would have a core book, sourcebooks for aliens (monster manual), modules with different scenarios and enough to create a sense of suspense around the table with anyone prone to panic if their characters are close to the edge having seen and experienced things that mankind was never meant to know about.

Set in a 1930 that never was, the age of Crimson Skies practically writes itself for an RPG, crossover plane combat game (be it with cards, dice, a board or book of tables or whatever). FASA had a good go at creating a fully fleshed universe and Microprose made a great PC Game back in the day.

crimson-skies.png


Marvel are coming out with a new game and listened to fans about the feedback, changing things up. Will it be successful? There'll be an initial flurry of sales but interest will tail off and Marvel will pull the plug. Happened before, will happen again.

DC don't have a current RPG and if they are rebooting the DCU there is an opportunity to have another go at an RPG.

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DC Heroes (MEGs) version 4, anyone?
 
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