Monday 30 August 2021

#RPGaDAY2021 30: MENTION

#RPGaDAY2021

30: MENTION

Recommended reading and viewing in roleplaying games, and retelling staple stories.

Starting with Appendix N in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons it’s common for RPGs to list some examples of their influences and stories that could fit in the setting and tone. Vampire: The Masquerade first edition added quotes as well, from Schopenhauer to the Cure (and a surprising amount of Indigo Girls) and the original Storytellers Handbook had a piece on song choices.

You can also find references, in-jokes, expy characters and direct lifts in the public domain. Many superhero games with a new setting have “cover versions” of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Iron Man and some others, with various degrees of difference, as example characters to show what they look like in the system. Given how many Superman expies there are in the DC, Marvel and other comics universes they’re in good company.

Licenced games have an obvious list of relevant works, but they can also refer to additional sources the work draws from, like Star Wars games talking about The Hero’s Journey and The One Ring discussing historical sources of stories that influenced Middle-earth and using them for artistic references.

And it goes the other way too. There’s a lot of Dungeons & Dragons in fantasy fiction created since it came out even in series that aren’t based on the creators’ campaigns, and a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade in some vampire media in the last thirty years - and John Wick is a Vampire: The Masquerade movie without being a vampire movie.

There are also well-known storylines that get regular workouts as well. It can be a lot of fun to see how these particular characters deal with a familiar plot. The trick with an RPG is to change it enough that the players don’t just go “oh, it’s this” and proceed from there.

Buy-in helps as well. “Hey, do you want to do The One Where Everybody Acts Out Of Character?”

With multiple protagonists, RPGs are more likely to do Seven Samurai / The Magnificent Seven / Battle Beyond The Stars than Red Harvest / Yojimbo / A Fistful Of Dollars / Last Man Standing (the last one taking the story back to its original milieu by accident) or its comedy subset ¡Three Amigos! / A Bug’s Life / Galaxy Quest.

I’ve seen a few adventures which fit the Die Hard In An X model too.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer has quite a few obvious influences overall and in specific episodes, doing most of the genre series staples like evil twins and What If...? parallel universes and time loops, so with The Watch House I picked up some other genre classics like “discovering you’re in a TV show” and “Days Of Future Past” and “everybody gets what they always wanted”.

The fact that Supernatural went on to do all of these as well kinda proves my point...

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