What IP would you like to see as an RPG?

[Sacrosanct]

Also the Chronicles of Prydain. I’d play the butt off that.

Supposedly in 2016 Disney bought the rights for another movie, but I have no idea what happened to that. I have no idea who owns the IP rights now for a book (McMillen Publishing company currently sells them, so I'm not sure).

I don't know how these other companies keep getting rights to make RPGs out of IP, because it's been a nightmare to try to track down the IP holders for some of it lol. And my curiosity is killing me to know what the deal was with Free League and the various IPs they licensed (Blade Runner, Alien, etc). We see Blade Runner RPG doing great on KS, but maybe after the licensing, they aren't making much money at all? Who knows?

 

[payn]

 

[Jer]

Or as I like to call it - Unknown Armies The Series.

 

[Jer]

Both Poirot and something like Columbo could be handled really well by the Brindlewood Bay chassis without to much faffing about.

If that's the gameplay experience your table wants this is true. The thing is that Brindlewood Bay assumes a particular style of player who wants to write a mystery narrative - the game expects the whole table to come up with the mystery as a collaborative experience. Which is great when you have players who want that kind of experience - I actually enjoy that play style and would love to play in a Brindlewood campaign.

However the players I have who would like to play a parlor room mystery game (and its a small number of them to be sure) want to play the part of the detectives in the story. They want to be gathering clues, making deductions, and otherwise have the game be about trying to solve the mystery, rather than trying to construct it. And Brindlewood is not built for that. (Not that you can't do that kind of game with PbtA mechanics - Monster of the Week essentially has that framework except in the genre of a Supernatural or a BtVS mystery rather than a Poirot or Murder She Wrote - but the issue with most non-Brindlewood mystery games that I've run across is that they presume that at some point the experience will devolve into a fight or an action scene and that that's where the action/drama will build to and ... that's not how a parlor room mystery works. My attempts to make GUMSHOE work in a setting that doesn't presume that eventually there will be action or violence flounder on the same rocks).

 

[Fenris-77]

If that's the gameplay experience your table wants this is true. The thing is that Brindlewood Bay assumes a particular style of player who wants to write a mystery narrative - the game expects the whole table to come up with the mystery as a collaborative experience. Which is great when you have players who want that kind of experience - I actually enjoy that play style and would love to play in a Brindlewood campaign.

However the players I have who would like to play a parlor room mystery game (and its a small number of them to be sure) want to play the part of the detectives in the story. They want to be gathering clues, making deductions, and otherwise have the game be about trying to solve the mystery, rather than trying to construct it. And Brindlewood is not built for that. (Not that you can't do that kind of game with PbtA mechanics - Monster of the Week essentially has that framework except in the genre of a Supernatural or a BtVS mystery rather than a Poirot or Murder She Wrote - but the issue with most non-Brindlewood mystery games that I've run across is that they presume that at some point the experience will devolve into a fight or an action scene and that that's where the action/drama will build to and ... that's not how a parlor room mystery works. My attempts to make GUMSHOE work in a setting that doesn't presume that eventually there will be action or violence flounder on the same rocks).

So no, it's not for everyone, but BBay very much does a good job at making the players feel like detectives who are finding clues and whatnot. It just doesn't write the ending beforehand. Well, at least it hasn't been my experience that if feels like constructing a mystery rather than solving one. YMMV, naturally.

It isn't to everyone's taste, obviously. I also love parlor room mysteries and there's definitely room for both approaches. I'd agree that investigative games of many stripes sometimes flounder in a couple of ways. The action you describe is certainly one, and in many personal examples I can think of there's that moment where the players are completely stymied because they just missed something the GM thought was obvious when they wrote it. I like having a bunch of different systems in my toolkit for running investigative games, and none of them are one size fits all.

 

[payn]

If that's the gameplay experience your table wants this is true. The thing is that Brindlewood Bay assumes a particular style of player who wants to write a mystery narrative - the game expects the whole table to come up with the mystery as a collaborative experience. Which is great when you have players who want that kind of experience - I actually enjoy that play style and would love to play in a Brindlewood campaign.

However the players I have who would like to play a parlor room mystery game (and its a small number of them to be sure) want to play the part of the detectives in the story. They want to be gathering clues, making deductions, and otherwise have the game be about trying to solve the mystery, rather than trying to construct it. And Brindlewood is not built for that. (Not that you can't do that kind of game with PbtA mechanics - Monster of the Week essentially has that framework except in the genre of a Supernatural or a BtVS mystery rather than a Poirot or Murder She Wrote - but the issue with most non-Brindlewood mystery games that I've run across is that they presume that at some point the experience will devolve into a fight or an action scene and that that's where the action/drama will build to and ... that's not how a parlor room mystery works. My attempts to make GUMSHOE work in a setting that doesn't presume that eventually there will be action or violence flounder on the same rocks).

The Android board game is one of my favorites. Lot of folks hate it though because of its murder mystery system. The detectives have hunches on who did it and they got to find evidence that indicates so. The other Detectives have their own hunches and can find evidence that proves innocence. The fact that there is no correct answer beforehand bugs a lot of folks. Many took it as "framing" a victim and pinning a murder on them. Though, I really enjoyed the experience because there is so much competition and a fog of procedure that you have to gets hints on as the game progresses.

 

[Jer]

So no, it's not for everyone, but BBay very much does a good job at making the players feel like detectives who are finding clues and whatnot. It just doesn't write the ending beforehand. Well, at least it hasn't ben my experience that if feels like constructing a mystery rather than solving one. YMMV, naturally.

I think for my players who are into the idea of mysteries just knowing that there isn't a "true" solution takes the fun out of it for them. Part of the fun for them is trying to solve the puzzle that someone else has created and so without that challenge they're not as interested.

It isn't to everyone's taste, obviously. I also love parlor room mysteries and there's definitely room for both approaches. I'd agree that investigative games of many stripes sometimes flounder in a couple of ways. The action you describe is certainly one, and in many personal examples I can think of there's that moment where the players are completely stymied because the just missed something the GM thought was obvious when they write it. I like having a bunch of different systems in my toolkit for running investigative games, and none of them are one size fits all.

Right - and it isn't just that they might have missed a clue, it's that sometimes they'll have all of the clues and yet they don't make the connection that the GM or the scenario writer thought was obvious. Those are the worst IMO - especially when the players come up with a solution that uses all of the clues and is arguably better than the one I or the scenario writer has.

(Don't tell my players but I'm perfectly willing to "fudge" in those circumstances and take their solution and replace the one I had with it. Especially when it's more fun than what I thought of.)

 

[Dioltach]

And for Shannara, couldn't you just use Adventure in Middle Earth?

Sure, all those rules for demon dimensions, airships and homicidal supercomputers can just be taken wholesale from Middle Earth!

(Sorry, don't mean to be deliberately snarky, but I sometimes get tired of the old "Shannara is a Tolkien ripoff". Not only does this undersell the merits of the Shannara books in their own right, and the fact that after the first three books they have no similarities with ME, it also ignores how much the fantasy genre as a whole owes to Shannara, Terry Brooks and Lester Delrey in creating the genre because of the similarities to Tolkien.)

 

[beancounter]

A "The Expanse" RPG with ship to ship combat mechanics.

 

[payn]

A "The Expanse" RPG with ship to ship combat mechanics.

Does the Green Ronin game not have ship to ship combat rules?