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Your Ideal RPG Series or Campaign

Saw a discussion on reddit today and thought it might be interesting. Name the system, media influences, and basic plot ideas. Mine is: Over The Edge, Film Noir: Four friends in 1935 are involved in a plane crash in the desert and end up in Al Amarja. Stuck without papers or passports, the group is forced to take piece work from the criminal element to survive. A cross between The Maltese Falcon, Naked Lunch, The Lost Weekend, and Sullivan's Travels.

5 comments
  • Sky island swashbuckler. Set on a floating archipelago where people travel by airship, the party are each given a classic swashbuckler motive and set to adventure.

    I don't care specifics or ruleset. I just want the heroes to throw a villain over the edge and let him fall a thousand feet into the ocean.

  • A modern day police procedural, likely using either CORPS (if I want crunch) or FATE (if I want drama). Think something like Law & Order without the fascist apologia (but WITH Jerry Orbach!) expanded a bit to include peripheral characters including the criminals, the families of both sides, etc.

    And then the world ends.

    Well, not quite ends, but there's a rather sudden drop in the standard of living as the half of the world facing the sun gets burned to a crisp, in effect, while the ensuing massive wave of fire and plasma scorches most of what is left. Only very small portions of the world survive (and that only barely). Nobody IC will know how or why it happened (I naturally will—it's one of the scenarios taken from CORPS Apocalypse) but when it does, the characters will have to face living in a world where most of humanity is dead, the trappings of civilization are gone (most important of those being the supply chains that keep cities alive!) and all that's left are the buildings and a rapidly-dwindling supply of essentials.

    I tried doing this once when some players were saying they wanted a campaign that would surprise them. And surprise them it did, but apparently this was not the kind of surprise they were looking for. I want to try it again with players who will be strongly warned in advance that the campaign will go completely off the rails and change genre after a few sessions of play establishes their characters, their personalities, their relationships, etc.

  • I'm running mine. I'm playing Pokemon Tabletop United with my friends. Going for Pokemon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon vibes, but in an industrial revolution time period, with the main quest being a One Piece-style journey to the other end of the world, to conquer the unknown Wilds and meet the gods. As my players Trek through the wilderness, they'll have the opportunity to impress the gods, earn their favor, and compete against other Explorers to be the first to reach the End of the World