Quick Note – Pre-Existing Properties I Would Love to Game In
I love to game. True I don’t get to do it as much as I used to too, and also true I am a dad and therefore have more important things to do, but in the end I love to game. I love the pre-gaming jitters, the anticipation the social euphoria from rolling dice and just enjoying the company of others and so many other things that I don’t have the time to write down.
I also like when I get the opportunity to play with other people in worlds created for movies, television, videogames and so forth. The idea of interacting in a new way with that world with friends excites me on many different levels. So, since I have nothing else planned for today:
1. Castlevania
a. One of my all time favorite game series. I spent months as a kid playing Simon’s Quest over and over again just for the pure enjoyment of the adventure and all things that I could do (for an 8-bit game). Later games like Super Castlevania, Rondo of Blood, Symphony of Darkness and the Lords of Shadow series kept me enthralled with the stories of the Belmont family.
b. How would I do it? There are two ways to go about it in my mind, but one thing remains the same either way in that is that in a classical sense this would be a mega-dungeon campaign with Castle Dracula and its surroundings acting as the dungeon. As for the two ways the one way would be that the party is a group of mercenaries in way over their head in a classic teen horror movie/hunted house story kind of way. The second would be a Belmont Family last stand were every character is a Belmont come together for one final push against Dracula.
2. Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewels Series
a. One of my all-time favorite dark fantasy novel series. The original Trilogy and the Surreal one-shot book have been read over and over by me. I enjoy the family and politic dynamics as well as the social situations of a world so different and yet so the same in many ways than ours.
b. How would I do it? Essentially I would use World of Darkness with a homebrewed/house-ruled magic system that matched that of the series. There is combat in the series, brutal combat but what makes it is the social and political actions and thus that is how I’d go.
3. Transformers
a. I think I’ve spoken enough about the long lasting Cybertronian civil-war as well as my utter love of the ‘bots.
b. How would I do it? Two ways spring to mind. The first is to set it in the Prime continuity during the first years of the civil war, a time when the Caste system is still breaking down and ‘bots are still taking sides. The second would be in any continuity in which the Autobots had human companions and set it from their perspectives.
4. Pacific Rim
a. Giant Robots vs Giant Monsters, what else can be said.
b. How would I do it? I have no clue.
5. Tron
a. What can be said about Tron? The world inside our computers created by Disney is some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The aesthetic alone makes me want to explore and fight in the name of the Users and downtrodden programs.
b. How would I do it? I believe that Tron can be faithfully created using OSR or 3.5 style mechanics with races and classes being replaced with program types, Repair Programs, Maintenance Programs, Anti-virus Programs all serving the functions of Magic-User, Cleric and Fighter. This could branch out into other classes as well MP3 program being a Bard, A Search Engine being a Ranger so on and so forth. As to when I set it, I am really jiving with the short-lived Tron cartoon show and it’s visuals so that is where I would probably place the game with the beginnings of the Resistance.
