Dumb Game Ideas: Mash-Ups

[DammitVictor]

What are two (or more) genres, IPs, setting or otherwise that you could, would, or even have mashed up together to create a campaign or adventure?

Shameless Plug: This is my modus operandi. I've got two major WIP settings (to go with my hot mess of a house system) that are basically this:

• Shroompunk is basically Mario + He-Man as a brutal sword & sorcery setting.
• Cosmic Rangers is Phantasy Star, except taking a couple of steps closer to its D&D and Star Wars roots.

Less professionally, and thus with the serial numbers wholly intact:

• Star Trek + Pathfinder. It's a PF1 game with the PF1 rules, but it's the Star Trek setting translated into a romantic fantasy medieval world.
• The White Whale: two concurrent campaigns, using the Alternity rules, set in the Planescape and Star•Drive settings. As they slowly merge.
• Unsecret World. Urban Arcana and Dark•Matter took place on the same Earth, but Dept 7 and the Hoffman Institute broke each other's Masquerades. Thirty years ago. Now it's all out in the open.
• Gamma World + Dark Sun.
• Spelljammer + Buck Rogers.

My Big Dumb 3.PF Thought Experiment turned into a Rokugan + Spelljammer (with a little Starfinder) thing, just because of where most non-core classes and races in 3.X came from.

 

[DammitVictor]

Masters of the Universe +  Shadowrun. Basically all of your PCs are (4e) Magician Adepts, get to split their Magic rating accordingly. Eternia is a massive city-planet... and  you are not the Masters of the Universe.

You can do a lot of crazy stuff with SR4.

You can take basically any WW/OP game or game line and cross it with Street Fighter: the Storytelling Game. This actually works really really well with the "mortal" splats for a different take on urban fantasy. Or Mage, for an even more esoteric game.

 

[SkidAce]

Final Fantasy medieval flavored Fate based game mixed with Magic the Gathering lore and the Phyrexian invasion.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mage: The Ascension/Spirit of 77

Esoteric Magic + well…a bunch of stuff from the 70s. Bruce Lee films. Shaft. The Rockford Files. Starsky & Hutch. Dukes of Hazard. Return to Witch Mountain. Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Columbo.

 

[Umbran]

The campaign I started just last week is a space opera, wild west, horror mashup - Deadlands: Lost Colony.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I can't be the only person who've done a Halloween vs. Christmas adventure?? My twist was that the players were saving Halloween from Christmas. Relevant song cause it's a banger.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Fantasy Celtic Barbarians + Mad Max = Woad Warriors

Rats of NIMH/Pinky & The Brain/Ratatouille + Robotech/MechWarrior/etc. = Big World Small Mechs

 

[BookTenTiger]

Another one I have always wanted to do is run a grounded, realistic game and then have a Terminator appear. It goes from a heist or murder mystery to a slasher film.

I had a DM who would always manage to work xenomorphs into any kind of RPG campaign we were playing.

 

[nevin]

What are two (or more) genres, IPs, setting or otherwise that you could, would, or even have mashed up together to create a campaign or adventure?

I really want to do a Delta Green style modern technothriller, except the squad (PCs) is making sorties into Oz.

Or, War of the Worlds but set in Ars Magica.

Or, a Star trek adventure that turns into Aliens (although the whole SNW Gorn arc did this already, so it wouldn't be as much of a fun surprise).

What fun mash ups have you done or would you like to do?

Somewhere I have a historical timeline that goes from TNMT and events flow through to shadowrun, then to the after the bomb and into the Renaissance of civilization only to be collapsed by a war with aliens leading to Gamma World. I did it in college long ago.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I had a friend who once claimed that a stereotypical 4-color Superheroes setting was inherently a mashup of All The Genres, albeit at a high power level. He wasn't wrong.