The Root of Rockin-Roll-Playin'

[Water Bob]

I was sitting here, watching The Thing prequel, thinking to myself, "Man, how cool would it be if I got some players together, didn't tell them what kind of game we were playing other than it would be set in the real (real-ish) world, and that the characters would be scientist and researchers in Antartica. Then, I'd go about playing out the plot of The Thing, and see how it goes."

Back in the day (and really, still today) there are games that are nothing more than a set of rules to play out games in a certain genre.

Traveller started out this way. It was indended that people could read a book, maybe Heinlein's Starship Troopers or Herbert's Dune, and then use the Traveller basic rules to play out your game.

This was before Traveller's The Imperium.

And, I'm talking before setting supplements flood the game's system.

GURPS is like this.

d20 Modern is really like this.

I'm talking about taking a set of rules, and then the GM adapting those rules to a campaign without using setting sourcebooks. The GM makes up everything except the core rules. Or, rather, the source material--which, today, could be a book, or a movie, or even a computer game--is used as the supplement for the campaign.

How many GMs out there still do this?





For example, you play through the five Splinter Cell computer games, then you read the five or six Splinter Cell novels. And, you decide to run a short campaign in this universe.

You grab the d20 Modern rulebook (or some other rules of your choice), and then you use the game and the novels as your source data, creating NPCs, agencies, weapons--the whole kit and kaboodle--and then a campaign to play.

Are there GMs out there that still do this?



Or, is the hobby 100% dominated by players and GM who insist on RPG supplemental books in order to have a game.



Avatar would be a good example. Let's say that you really dug that movie and wanted to play a game in that universe. You grab the Traveller rules. You use the movie as your supplemental material. The rest, you completely make up, expanding the universe as your creative juices take you.

Do you do that kind of thing?

 

[kitsune9]

My dad ran a couple of games like this. They sucked.

 

[Water Bob]

Anecdote...

One of the more interesting games I've run I played just after the turn of the Century. It wasn't long after 9/11. I was thinking about global conspiracy and terrorists and common people getting caught up under heroic circumstances. The West Wing was on TV, and although it was hard to swallow the lefty politics, I did dearly love that show. And, my favorite computer game at that time was the ultra-realistic militar sim, Operation Flashpoint, Cold War Crisis.

I put in a call to several of my regular players. They didn't know this was about gaming. I told them that I was in trouble. I worked downtown, and I asked them to drop whatever they had going to meet me there tomorrow (which was a Tuesday). I said that I couldn't tell them what it was about, but that it was extremely important. Yes, I know that they had to call in to work and skip.

I did this just to see what they'd say. I was setting up the game, unknown to them--they all thought I was serious.

Once they'd agreed to be there, I told them that what we had done was just role played the first scene of my new campaign. They laughed. Everyone understood that they really didn't need to call in sick in order to meet me downtown on the morrow. But, I would not tell them anything else about the game. All they had was the phone call--that I, myself, would call them in the game, as a character, and ask them mysteriously to meet me downtown.

When I got everyone together for the first game session, I had everybody create themselves as a character using the Top Secret/S.I. game rules. We went through and created each person with the skills in the game: Driving, Gun Combat, Stealth, etc. And gave the characters stats based on the real player.

It was an interesting exercise.

With that done, I started the game proper. Everyone was to meet me downtown at a specific time. That's where I started the game, with the players playing themselves, in a downtown skycraper, sitting in a waiting room in front of the receptionist where I really work.

The PCs were all surprised to see the others there.

The receptionist led them back to my office, but before they got there, all hell broke loose.

The PCs were in the corridor next to the men's rest room when they heard a commotion behind them. Then, they heard gunshots!

I had mapped out the real office floor where I work. In the game, I had masked men in body armor, bearing M-15 Carbines, tearing the place up, killing all that had got in the way.

The PCs ended up ducking into the Men's restroom, boosting themselves up, and belly crawling up across the office, with all the slaughter going on beneath them, just above ceiling tiles.

They worked their way to my office--two of them had been to see me at work before--and, as they approached, they heard the loud pop of the M-15's and glass breaking...plus the loud thrum of a helicopter.

In true Hollywood action-movie style, I described how the wind gusts from the chopper blew the ceiling tiles away, exposing the PCs spread out among the girders. They saw me, being taken by two armed masked men, on a line that was pulled up into the chopper. The masked men saw them two and let fly a few bursts from their weapons, but they didn't hit any of the PCs. My character (me) was yelling something. It was, "I LOVE MUSIC!" But, I (GM) told the players that they couldn't hear what I said.

One of the PCs, who in real life is a life long friend I've known since elementary school, wanted a check to try to read my lips. I gave it to him, and he succeeded.

At this point, they could hear sirens going on below. There was chaos in the building. People were running everywhere.

The PCs mingled in with everybody else and got out of the building.

To my surprise, the players didn't go to the cops. I remember this being a major eyebrow leap for me. Since the players were playing themselves in real life, I expected them to fall in with everybody else and go to the hospital then be debriefed by the cops. I was ready for that as a GM.

But, that's not what they did. During the chaos on the street, it was easy for them to get away. They rushed to my house. The PC that had read my character's lips knew that I was into U2 at the moment in real life. At my house, they went through my CD's and found my copy of The Joshua Tree. Inside was a burned CD.

On my computer, they played the CD, and that's when they found the recording of me.

It was cryptic, but I told them that, at my job, I'd gotten into something over my head (I work for a world-wide financial services firm). I didn't tell them everything, but I told them enough to let them know that they were in danger, too, because they knew me. I might have told them something in the bad guy's eyes.

I told them not to go home. Some of the players were married with kids in real life, so their PCs were associated with the same NPCs.

There was a clue they found to go to San Francisco. I had taped some things off of the Discovery channel about the US satellite defense system, and I played that for the players, saying, "This is what you see on the CD."

It was just clues--enough for them to start pieceing stuff together. I described the CD like it was just a place where I'd burned some files hastily in no appearant order.

This next part was really cool. The players pooled their money together--what they could get together that night. Some of them had guns in real life, so their characters went home to get them. The PCs that were married called their wives and, without telling them much, with a lot of "trust me, honey", told their families that they couldn't go home for their own saftey. The players figured out, via atm and whatnot, that they could raise just over $10,000 grand that night among them.

They rented a car at the airport. Paid cash. And, the next thing you know, they were on a road trip to San Francisco. They stopped at a hotel to change the plates on the car they'd stolen. Then, they stopped at Wallmart to buy more guns....

It was a very cool game. I had this huge conspiracy that touched on my financial services firm, Echelon and the NSA, the CIA, Army Intelligence, and the FBI. The players started to figure out that the bad guys were members of US intelligence forces--but they didn't know which one (and this was a long time before I'd read The Bourne Identity).

When they got to San Francisco, I got on Google and printed out real street maps. It was funny because one of my players, who was an auditor at the time for a chemical company, had just returned from that city, and as it so happened, had actually been on some of the streets that I printed out for the game!

There were car chases and shoot outs and lots of intrigue. One clue led to another, and one of the players' wives, as an NPC, almost got killed--which added a real strange dynamic to the game.

All in all, it was definitely one of the more unique campaigns I've ever run.

And, to the OP, I made it all up. I use the Top Secret/S.I. mechanics, but the game was all me--using props, situations, and ideas that I either invented or found on the internet.

It was a lot of work for me as GM (which is probably why I haven't been inspired to duplicate that type of game since), but when we were playing this, it was pure excitement.

Oh....and, everybody lived! One of my friends got shot, but he survived without permanent injury. They rescured "me", and I was suitably greatful. And, in the end, we all went back to our normal lives after the campaign ended (though my character got a new job).

Anybody else ever done something like this with a game?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The best campaign I ever ran was in HERO: it was a supers game set in 1900 as might have been envisioned by HG Wells, Jules Verne, the creators of Wild, Wild West, Kung Fu, and the RPG SPACE:1889.

Plus some anime, James Bond, William Gibson and Michael Moorcock thrown in for good measure.

That setting was also resurrected for use in a M&M game set in 1914. That one didn't go so well.

Right now, I'm using HERO to model the world of M:tG.

 

[S'mon]

My dad ran a couple of games like this. They sucked.

LOL.

Personally I've often homebrewed campaigns, and I certainly use media like films and books for inspiration. Recently I've tended to find the best results come from a mix of published materials and my own ideas.

 

[S'mon]

Anybody else ever done something like this with a game?

Uh, no!

I'm glad your post-9/11 campaign was apparently really cool and went well for you and your players, but it sounds like the last thing on Earth I'd ever want to play or DM. In RPGs I want to engage with real-life issues at several steps remove, not 'in your face' like that. Eg, one of my D&D campaigns deals obliquely with difficult issues of nationalism, ethnicity and fear of racial extinction. That doesn't mean I want to play a 'race war on the streets of London' campaign, or even a 'Bosnian genocide' campaign. I much prefer Altanians vs Neo-Nerathi to Serbs vs Croats or Bantu vs Afrikaners, never mind Jamaicans vs Skinheads.

 

[HandofMystra]

Uh, no!

I'm glad your post-9/11 campaign was apparently really cool and went well for you and your players, but it sounds like the last thing on Earth I'd ever want to play or DM. In RPGs I want to engage with real-life issues at several steps remove, not 'in your face' like that. Eg, one of my D&D campaigns deals obliquely with difficult issues of nationalism, ethnicity and fear of racial extinction. That doesn't mean I want to play a 'race war on the streets of London' campaign, or even a 'Bosnian genocide' campaign. I much prefer Altanians vs Neo-Nerathi to Serbs vs Croats or Bantu vs Afrikaners, never mind Jamaicans vs Skinheads.

XP seems to be broken for me. I agree. My RL politics makes t difficult to engage in modern games.

 

[kitsune9]

LOL.

Personally I've often homebrewed campaigns, and I certainly use media like films and books for inspiration. Recently I've tended to find the best results come from a mix of published materials and my own ideas.

I agree. I think media is a great source for inspiration or if you read a book and you want to emulate the plot but let the PC's do their own thing, that's cool too. I think it's better if it's a book or media that you read and let the players figure it out (or not). However, my dad was just a lousy GM, end of story.

 

[Water Bob]

LOL.

Personally I've often homebrewed campaigns, and I certainly use media like films and books for inspiration. Recently I've tended to find the best results come from a mix of published materials and my own ideas.

Just for clarity, my real life campaign ended up with a story like the Bourne Identity. It wasn't ultra-realistic in the story sense. I mean, I had a helicopter kidnapping from a downtown skycraper, complete with masked bad guys carrying automatic weapons, to kick the game off!

 

[Viking Bastard]

Yeah, we did that a lot pre-d20. Mostly using GURPS and mostly for one-shot games or short "taking a break from our main campaign" runs.