Reflections

As some of my favorite RPG titles are celebrating their 20th anniversary, it gives me pause to reflect over the last almost 3 decades I've spent with role playing games.

If I hadn't gotten in to RPG's...

• I would not have met most of the people I currently or have called friend. (For the good or bad)
• I would never have experienced LARP. (For the good or bad)
• I wouldn't have gotten interested in CCG's.
• No going overboard on collecting CCG's like Magic: The Gathering, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Wars, Jyhad/Vampire: The Eternal Struggle and (to a lesser extent at one time) Yu-Gi-Oh.
• I probably wouldn't have survived the times of unemployment I have gone through since I wouldn't have had the books to sell to pay the bills.
• I'd probably have a larger comic book collection. (The extra $$ I would have from not buying RPG books has to go somewhere, right?)
• I wouldn't have to break my back moving my book collection when I've moved.
• I would have so much extra space on my hard drives from not having so many RPG books in digital format.
• I wouldn't have had such a great creative outlet for my ideas.
• I wouldn't have a little, dark piece of guilt about Creative Pastimes going out of business.
• I probably wouldn't have had as much fun in my life as I've actually had.
• I wouldn't have this blog to post items like this. :-)

All-in-all, I have no huge regrets from getting into role playing. In my life, the PRO's outweigh the CONs.

The Games We Play: Drawing Concepts from Movies, TV & Literature

I know that I've mentioned that I've taken character concepts from characters in movies, books and television; but I'm not sure that I've ever run a game where it was entirely based off of one of those mediums. I've never run a Star Wars "A New Hope" campaign based primarily around the movie or an "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" campaign... although the later might be incredibly fun if done right. :-)

The closest I've come to this is bringing my players into the game as their characters similar to the 80's Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. That was the extent of taking from the cartoon and I never introduced a little Dungeon Master character... even though that would have been cool.

As I was driving home from work today, I started thinking that a couple of books that have been made into movies would make a great campaign. I'm going to try and connect with someone who can help me bring my idea to life, and I think the finish product will be exciting.

My question to you... Have you ever run, or been a part of, a game that was directly based off of a movie, book or television program? And no I don't mean have you run or played in a licensed RPG system but rather the campaign was designed around a specific book, movie or TV program. (i.e. Campaign was "A New Hope", but not necessarily set in one the of various Star Wars RPG systems.)