Is there any genre or theme that the TTRPG medium does not work for?

[Deset Gled]

Silents film was a dunk but I'll add a foul shot: P O E T R Y.

You just can't RP rhymes and stanzas and verses.

Whose Line Is It Anyway, Play It By Ear/Make Some Noise, freestyle poetry slams, rap battles, The Improvised Shakespeare Company, Off Book the Improvised Musical... Improv rhyming, even improv musicals, are totally a thing. Hard to do, but they have existed since before RPGs. I'd be very surprised if there wasn't an RPG podcast/live play based on this already. Or at least one with a bard that uses this as a gimmick.

 

[Thomas Shey]

"True" isn't a qualifier. The genre is True Crime, and that genre isn't just a historical telling of an event. The whole point of the genre as an entertainment mode is to draw the audience in and get them theorizing and engaged. There is no better way to do that than through an RPG.

I disagree. "True" is what it makes it distinct from just generic crime fiction, of which there is no lack. Now as I've noted, some people play fast and loose with the facts involved, but that's not exceptionally uncommon with popular forms of documentaries not from sources that pride themselves on the facts.

In fact, the more I think.about it,True Crime is a pretty perfect RPG genre. The GM chooses a (preferably obscure, but pretty detailed evidence wise) crime and the players take on the roles of amateur investigators trying to solve it. They do research and interview witnesses and the GM feeds them details and clues in response. Ultimately the players present a theory, which may or may not align with what the police think.

I'd argue that's "based on" not the same thing

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm going to win this. For all the little people.

I have a genre ttrpgs can NEVER do: Silent films. Cannot be done!

You've obviously never RPed by text.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Another sub-genre that is not impossible, but is hard: time travel.

Its hard to make time travel stories work right in normal fiction. That's what happens when causality is not sequential.

 

[Faolyn]

There’s different levels of fact. Wolf Hall and it’s sequels is extremely well researched. Certainly the dialogue and the perspectives are fiction but the events are not. And the first two are extremely well considered. Nonetheless it’s a good example fiction filling the gaps.

Sure. But how likely is it that all the players at the table are going to do that level of research and will stick to the actual history?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

musicals. how the hell do you improv a musical?

 

[John Dallman]

musicals. how the hell do you improv a musical?

You don't, but nor would I expect a group of RPG players to perform a musical. I've played scenarios about the production of operas, and they were about the production: getting finance, finding cast and crew, developing special effects, and so on.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I disagree. "True" is what it makes it distinct from just generic crime fiction, of which there is no lack. Now as I've noted, some people play fast and loose with the facts involved, but that's not exceptionally uncommon with popular forms of documentaries not from sources that pride themselves on the facts.

I'd argue that's "based on" not the same thing

What you say here re: distinct was arguably true like, 30 years ago, maybe even 20, but at this point True Crime has absolutely become a genre unto itself, with its own rules, tropes, and so on rather than really being about real crimes. And most True Crime TV/podcasts absolutely play fast and loose with the facts, at this point (even well-meaning ones). We're also increasingly seeing crime drama TV pick up some of the tropes, aesthetics and ideas of True Crime stuff (the amusing No Murders In the Building plays with this idea, albeit it's mostly a trad whodunnit in the end), just as True Crime has picked up the aesthetics and tropes of crime drama itself.

So I think you could absolutely do True Crime as a GENRE without like, true crimes. Because it's genre. It's doesn't actually rely on the crimes being true. You can have an entirely fictional crime, and present it in a True Crime manner, and interact with it as if it were true. I'd be shocked if that hasn't been done (I can't think of an offhand example, but surely), and even without that True Crime frequently distorts or misrepresents real crimes so badly they might as well be fictional.

So I would suggest True Crime is 100% doable as a TT RPG, so long as you realize True Crime has become a genre with these tropes, patterns, and so on. It would require either pre-written adventures or high effort from a smart DM I would suggest, to construct a crime that was twisty enough to be engaging in this format. Presumably the PCs would be podcasters or something at this point, so with limited power, which might help.

It is, I would argue, a distinct genre from pure police procedurals and whodunnits/howcatchems, but with considerable crossover from crime drama in general.

 

[Bedrockgames]

musicals. how the hell do you improv a musical?

I suppose you could wing it if people are sufficiently musically talented or have a lot of exposure to musicals, but I would think it would tend to be a train wreck in terms of actual game fun for everyone involved lol

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I suppose you could wing it if people are sufficiently musically talented or have a lot of exposure to musicals, but I would think it would tend to be a train wreck in terms of actual game fun for everyone involved lol

I think you and some others are effectively confusing LARPing and TT RPGs. This thread is about TT RPGs.

In TT RPGs you don't generally break into actual song when your Bard or whoever sings a song. Most groups don't RP literally every single sentence of every discussion or negotiation - indeed, my experience is that the majority of stuff you could potentially RP out isn't.

Why would it be different with musicals? Musicals are still a genre, and that genre has its own rules and tropes and so on, even if you have to be pretty into musicals to realize that.

So the real question is, would a "musical" genre TT RPG be about making a musical, and the tropes around that, or would it be about being a world governed by the rules of a musical? I think the latter seems more like as a TT RPG concept, and we've seen it done on TV before - in that case, it's very much about following the structure and concepts of a musical, and looking at what conflicts would be and how they'd be resolved and so on.

It would take someone extremely familiar with a wide variety of musicals to design such an RPG, and I wouldn't be the person to do it, but I'm pretty confident it could be done, and you could mimic the genre and the vibe pretty well. The singing? Not so much but that's like saying you can't do an action movie well because you can't see the action - I think people would be able to imagine it.

So you wouldn't need musical talent, and the players wouldn't necessarily need "exposure to musicals" any more than D&D players need "exposure to generic high fantasy", if they could parse the rules, setting, etc. - which is to say it's beneficial, but not vital. Nobody would need to make up entire songs at the table, you'd just want to be able to make up what your character was singing about and so on.

I think if you designed the structure right, it could be a lot of fun.