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Synopsis: You know you’re a true tabletop gamer when you see everything in terms of how gameable it is. In this episode, Tom and I discuss what makes something truly gameable or not. From action films to history books, there’s a lot of gameable material in the world, but some things are more gameable than others. Find out what works and what doesn’t. Plus, shout outs, anecdotes, and more!
Shout Outs
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle: An excellent novel about a most unusual pair of sisters.
- Mysteries at the Museum: It’s a TV show, about mysterious things in museums. Not really though. They explain what the thing is.
- Death Skid Marks: Drive! Shoot! Take Drugs! Die! Play Again!
- Nazi Mega Weapons: Nazis built really big guns. Mega usually means one million but here it means big. Not that I’m being pedantic.
- Binary Domain: Shoot robots! Chat with teammates! Shoot more robots! Not that French robot, he’s cool.
- Fordlandia: A book about Henry Ford’s failed rubber plantation in Brazil. Fascinating history and great writing.
- Plague Evolved: Kill people with plagues in video game format.
- Save Game: A new setting for Fate Core. Fun, although it needs a few tweaks. Pay what you want, so no excuse not to get it.
- Earthworm Gods I and II: Apocalyptic horror novels about a rainy end of the world.
Song: The Getaway by Stellar Dreams from The 80’s Dream Compilation Tape – Vol. 2
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:30:07 — 62.1MB)
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Cool Episode. So the most gameable thing I have never done anything with is the comic series DMZ. I am through the first four series, and the idea of Manhattan Island being a massive refugee camp/failed state, stuck between two sides of a civil war…utterly amazing. I am sure there is something in it, but I just haven’t gotten around to playing with the idea.
DMZ is great. Making me think of The post ww2 A Dirty World game rppr did.
my thing is when I’m comfortable as a gm I wanto to do a group version of the office escape from The Matri. Thinking Shadowrun or Eclipse Phase etc.
speaking of. Have you guys read The Sprawl? It’s the Apocalypse World cyberpunk game. It’d be great if you do Lady Gaga 2.5.
That looks really interesting Adam, but it doesn’t seem to be out yet, at least not on my brief search.
I actually did a Die Hard type of adventure once. Though it was much more about the setup in Die Hard than a lot of the themes or actual story elements. I was helping someone playtest a Halo homebrew, so I devised a situation where rebel UNSC troopers had taken over a massive skyscraper and were trying to break into the vault filled with alien relics while using hostages as cover. The players were Black Ops inserted into the situation to combat the threat, rather than already on site, however, which I think is part of what made it work. It was definitely a bit action-movie, though. The token Elite on the team one-shot the Big Bad with a single Energy Sword charge. The use of a military setup and codified mission goals probably helped keep it much more on track and not just devolve into typical murderhoboing.
Beta’s up still.
http://www.ardens.org/The_Sprawl_beta.pdf
Sorry for the poor spelling prior.
Die Hard is totally gameable, but you have to play the terrorists. If you look at it from their perspective, it’s like Alien or Friday the 13th, a horrible unkillable monster hero lurking in the shadows and picking them off one by one. You could play it in that horror movie sim game system you guys played once the name of which escapes me atm.
Great topic guys & for the Look around you idea, maybe Unknown Armies would be good for that (or Paranoia or Eclipse Phase). I too like the idea of the morph museum & maybe with some of the smaller morphs (or intelligent separate nanoswarm) that can either puppet or link to jump from people.
A link for the too many cooks video they mentioned in the that has to be seen as it goes from predictable to insane
Die Hard using Slasher Flick (the horror movie RPG) is a great idea.
You should definitely invite Caleb for the D&D episode.
Yeaaaah.
The D&D episode has already been recorded with Sean and Bill. Caleb has not played or read D&D, so there was no point in inviting him to the episode.
It occurs to me that everything that we take for granted as a staple of the RPG hobby was once a wild and crazy idea that somebody saw and said, “I think that’s gameable!”
Gygax & Arneson: “Let’s see if we can use these medieval wargaming rules to run the Mines of Moria scene from Fellowship of the Ring!”
Sandy Peterson: “You know what would make a fun game? HP Lovecraft stories, where all the monsters are impossible to kill and everybody ends up dead or insane. I’m gonna write it for Runequest!”
FASA: “What if we smashed together D&D tropes and William Gibson’s Neuromancer? Let’s call it ‘Shadowrun’.”
Mark Rein-Hagen: “I got this cool adaptation of the Shadowrun rules I cooked up, now I need a setting. How about this: Everybody’s a vampire. Like, a goth modern punk vampire. Yeah!”
Speaking gameable, did some one mention underwater ballroom, cyanide pill swallowing, victorian scoundrels?
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/witley-wonder-underwater-ballroom
Also https://www.flickr.com/photos/cybergibbons/sets/72057594107271287/
Listening to Tom’s letter this episode, I cant help but recall the “On Day at Horrorland” the “Goosebumps” story (prominently the TV episode) and the Horror’s entertainment.