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

[Reynard]

I think a campaign would be difficult but you could follow the law and order template. Just take a news story and case and recreate it. Players would be the investigators and then lawyers. Have some mechanic for the twist that inevitably drops and changes everything in the trial. Rinse and repeat.

That's an interesting addendum question: what genres might work for a one shot, but not for a campaign?

 

[payn]

That's an interesting addendum question: what genres might work for a one shot, but not for a campaign?

I think anything can be designed either way. For example, the law and order RPG could have the same Detectives and DA lawyers in every case that moves forward.

That said, I find much more enjoyment out of one shot Call of Cthulhu games. I think the high lethality of the game adds to the experience and if you lose characters over and over again it starts to lose continuity that makes any sense in the long run. Of course, you could do something like x-files where new agents are replacing the old ones. So, its largely a matter of taste and design.

 

[John R Davis]

Nope. If you can write a novel about it, it is gameable.

 

[John Dallman]

Psychodrama about the interior life of a single character is quite hard as a TTRPG. I managed it by having three players share control of a single character. They ended up playing the id, the ego and the super-ego, more or less.

 

[Krachek]

Any form of PvP don’t finish well most of time because it ends up opposing players to each other.
If player are mature enough to stay in character more opposition can be manageable.

horror can be fun, but in term of pretending and role playing horror. Bullying, stressing and try to scare the players directly don’t work fine.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Psychodrama about the interior life of a single character is quite hard as a TTRPG. I managed it by having three players share control of a single character. They ended up playing the id, the ego and the super-ego, more or less.

Inside Out the TTRPG??

 

[John Dallman]

Inside Out the TTRPG??

Amber Diceless Roleplaying, actually.

 

[Theory of Games]

A post-apocalyptic storygame about SEX!

 

[Deset Gled]

I'm thinking Driving Miss Daisy. Or Leaving Las Vegas. Or Little House on the Prairie. Basically, just daily unremarkable life, "Papers & Paychecks, the RPG".

Along the same lines, small scale coming of age stories. Not the dramatic ones where kids get superpowers, of course. I'm thinking of personal, inner-growth stories like Ban This Book by Alan Gratz, the 2003 movie What Alice Found, or Squashed by Joan Bauer. These stories often lack traditional antagonists, are highly focused on the main character, and have little to no outward conflicts that lend themselves to games.

In another direction, lots of stories about grief and loss could be inappropriate. I'm thinking things like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Or stories about real world disabilities, like Radio. Some stories don't lend themselves to role-playing or gamist or methods.

And traditional Passion Plays. Big entertainment genre; not a good RPG.

 

[Reynard]

A post-apocalyptic storygame about SEX!

Oh, goodness.

God forbid there be sex in an RPG....