Back to the 80s

[dragoner]

My first pass was more off the cuff - punkers in the future.

But the actual core loop of this movie is more of an investigation game. So I would say something like Gumshoe, or to combine Delta Green and Gumshoe, Fall of Delta Green...

Those are all good suggestions, I will go look them up. I mean I don't want to say Delta Green for everything 80's, I am just sort of out of the loop I guess.

 

[aramis erak]

If you did a modern campaign set in the 80s what would be your take on it and which system would you use?

I'd consider....
James Bond 007 (Victory Games) Running it straight as the low-end superheroic Bond of the movies
Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes (Flying Buffalo) - be using it for spy type stuff in the cold war era.
CORPS (1e Setting, 2e rules) - again, spy type stuff, or maybe even some of the scenarios from Down in Flames.

I might actually run Tales from the Loop or Things from the Flood, with their YZE system intact, someday, in their native settings.

I lived through the 80's - Jr & Sr high, Basic Training, start of college... It's not a fond remembrance era for me.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hiya!

Well, seeing as I was a teenager through the 80's... I think I might do a Zombie Apocalypse type game; no internet, no cell phones, no "computers" (well, nothing we nowadays would consider 'useful to an average person'...if you don't know how to code in Pascal or BASIC, and have a blank cassette and cassette player, you're SOL... ). Then again, no firk ding blasted car alarms either! So...hot-wire away, survivors!

For the added bonus...I'd have a couple nukes having been used to try and stop the spread in the initial first couple days, or people with their finger on the button just say "What the heck...lets do it! Better than being eaten by a zombie, right?... PUSH". This would let me have not only zombies...but RADIOACTIVE zombies! But why stop there? We have apocalyptic world, irradiated areas with radioactive zombies...might as well throw in some Car Wars while I'm at it! Mad Max...with radioactive zombies. For the icing, dinosaurs. Why? Who knows? It was the 80's! Radioactive zombie T-Rex herds chasing down the PC's in their tricked out, armoured RV with a top mounted rocket launcher? Hell yeah!

Or I'd just run a regular game of Top Secret. That works too.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Here’s the movie you want to plagia...pay homage to:

Night of the Comet - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Oh, another thread inspires me:
How about running a game to emulate movies like Wall Street using the rules for... Monopoly? Especially those terrible house-ruled versions.

That, or the Avalon Hill game, Acquire. Actually, Acquire might be even better, because it allows for hostile takeovers of other players’ businesses, possibly even freezing them out of the bigger paydays. What’s more Wall Street than that?

OTOH, Monopoly has a wider variety of potential occurrence, like going to jail. But that kind of stuff could be handled with the RPG side of the action. I’m not sure what system would work best for this- my default would be HERO, of course- but whatever one is used, the campaign should have a way to have roleplayed actions affect the ability to gain, use or reuse boardgame resources.

It’s gone through several editions with variations in gameplay over its 50+ years of prodiction. I’ve played at least 2 different editions.

Avalon Hill - Games, Products, and Videos

Avalon Hill specialized in producing a variety of strategy-based board games and war simulation games. Browse all classic games published by the Avalon Hill Game company.

avalonhill.wizards.com

Acquire

Acquire - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I'd do a buddy cop movie campaign, as buddy cop movies seem like the most 80s type of narrative there is.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd do a buddy cop movie campaign, as buddy cop movies seem like the most 80s type of narrative there is.

You know what else was big in the 1980s? American and European martial arts flicks and TV series. They started in the 1970s, sure, but they EXPLODED in the 80s. The American Ninja movies. The Master TV show. Bloodsport. Gymkata. Circle of Iron.

And besides the Asian actors who started working in Hollywood, you saw the rise of homegrown talents like Don “The Dragon” Wilson. Cynthia Rothrock. Steven Segal. Jean-Claude Van Damme.

I actually ran a fun but short-lived HERO campaign in which the PCs were all martial artists meeting up in an international martial arts tournament. The combats were a blast- very cinematic. The one that was most memorable pitted a stereotypical wizened blind master against a stereotypical cheating brute. The blind master was dancing around the brute, landing blows at will while the brute swung wildly and fruitlessly. He actually only landed one blow...the last one. Damn near killed the blind master.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

In perhaps one of the most 80s things I ever did, when I was a kid my brother and I had a Trapper Keeper (tropical scene cover) filled with bad ninja art we had drawn.

You know what else was big in the 1980s? American and European martial arts flicks and TV series. They started in the 1970s, sure, but they EXPLODED in the 80s. The American Ninja movies. The Master TV show. Bloodsport. Gymkata. Circle of Iron.

 

[J.Quondam]

In perhaps one of the most 80s things I ever did, when I was a kid my brother and I had a Trapper Keeper (tropical scene cover) filled with bad ninja art we had drawn.

Oh my! I think an enchanted Trapper Keeper filled with cheesy kids' art from the 80s that acts as a portal into fantastical robot/ninja/barbarian worlds could become the basis for my next campaign.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Yesss! At some point we started taking these giant sheets of paper and drawing these epic fights between two ninja clans. Good times. Wish I still had that Trapper Keeper.

Oh my! I think an enchanted Trapper Keeper filled with cheesy kids' art from the 80s that acts as a portal into fantastical robot/ninja/barbarian worlds could become the basis for my next campaign.

 

[J.Quondam]

Yesss! At some point we started taking these giant sheets of paper and drawing these epic fights between two ninja clans. Good times. Wish I still had that Trapper Keeper.

Lol, yeah! I did the same, but they were massive pirate fights and epic fantasy battles.
Except my drawing skills were (are) less than zero, so everyone looked like ambulatory coconuts.