TheRPGSite

Hello Everyone,

Recently I found my homebrew rpg based on Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. At the time I was very excited to run it, but my players were feeling nostalgic for CoC and I never turn down a chance to run CoC. So Neverwhere went into storage. That was back in 2003. Now looking at it, I've no desire to run it and I can't remember why I was so excited to run the setting in the first place.

This got me thinking. There are some settings that I'm really just not interested in exploring as a player or GM. Some of the ones that leave me cold are Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of The Rings (been uninterested ever since MERP camp out), Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dr. Who. The thing is, I can't really nail down why I'm so ambivalent about running them. I certainly enjoyed these fictions when they were first released.

On the other hand I have no problem running Stormbringer/Elric, Call of Cthulhu (technically falls into the category) and my homebrew of John Carter's Warlord of Mars.

So I was wondering if any other players/gms have games based on media that just don't interest them and perhaps why? Note, I'm not really interested in whether or not the game rules are good just if the settings themselves are uninteresting to you.

It is usually because you don't love the setting, you love the characters and the story. Once you are done with it, you are done.

I read about half of Neverwhere. I hated the odd couple god slayers or whatever the fuck they were. The whole book felt like bad Ravenloft GMing to me.

I take your meaning, after a fashion.

For me it's not always about the setting per se, but how open that setting is to further use in games. Like Babylon 5. I love that property and would love to run or play in that universe, but it's a self-contained, and finished, story. Sure, you could tack on another Babylon station, or RP through some of the actual episodes, or just re-write the thing with your PCs as the main cast. But in my mind that ruins the thing. Same for Lord of the Rings. It's a neat, encapsulated story with a defined beginning, middle, and end. The great thing about that setting to me, is that story. And that story is concluded, so fiddling with the story to allow for gaming just spoils it all. To me these are closed settings or properties.

Some open properties, ones that can be used for gaming without any trouble, are the more never-ending episodic stuff. Like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Who (just to keep to your list). I could definitely see DW as a corner case for use in gaming, but damn do I love me some Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space.

But for SW and ST, those are set in such vast universes with so many entertaining and cool possibilities I wouldn't bat an eye dropping into a game of either. For ST, there are hundreds of other ships or stations to work with, and for both there are millions of millions of (yes, twice) planets to explore. Yes, there are "closed" stories in both properties, but they are also suggestive of other interesting stories with other characters.

And as for your homebrew you don't want to play anymore, I chalk that up to the "neat" factor. When you hear a cool idea and say something like, "That's neat," you're there. But, you sit with the idea and it starts to fade a bit. Because it's just neat. Nothing wrong with neat. But it's just neat. Not staggering, amazing, revolutionary, or any number of other over the topic descriptors used in reference to something that can at times quite literally make your jaw drop on first blush. Those are the ones I want to play in.

There are plenty of games based on settings that hold no interest for me at all.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Serenity are two good examples. I'm not a Whedon fan at all, and have found his world and character creation to be grating, at best. I know people love 'em, but they have too much of a hipster-ish attitude of winking at the camera and relying on everyone to be in on the joke. I also don't think either setting is unique enough in its own right to be interesting. A lot of what makes Whedon successful is his dialog and characterization, neither of which can really be duplicated at the table without simply doing a read-through of episode scripts. I think Cranewings hit the nail on the head, and Whedon's material is a good example of that principle.

I would run a Star Trek game, but only one set during the time of the original series. After that, the setting seems too rigid and intent on maintaining the status quo. I could ignore that and do my own thing, true, but if I have to ignore a large part of what I feel is integral to Next Gen and the rest, I might as well run a game in an entirely different setting.

Quote from: Grognard;406105Same for Lord of the Rings. It's a neat, encapsulated story with a defined beginning, middle, and end. The great thing about that setting to me, is that story. And that story is concluded, so fiddling with the story to allow for gaming just spoils it all. To me these are closed settings or properties.

I don't see it that way at all for the Lord of the Rings. The setting is a character in and of itself, one rich with potential for gaming. Don't want to fiddle with the story? Then don't; a Fourth Age Middle-earth campaign has a ton of stuff to do. Just because the One Ring is gone and Sauron with it doesn't mean the setting itself is useless; it just means the MacGuffin for Tolkien's story is gone, and Middle-earth is now an open field like Greyhawk. I did an extensive overview of all the possibilities of Middle-earth as a game setting, specifically in the Fourth Age. If you're interested in why I think all this, check out this thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=18271).

I don't mind using movies or books as springboards for settings. Where I usually run into problems as a player isn't the setting that the GM chooses, but it's when the GM tries to shoehorn us into a prefigured plot that plays just like the movie or book.

Some of the movies I'd love to play in but haven't:

-The James Bond Universe

-Gangs of New York (this just struck me as a cool backdrop for a game)

-Bubba Hotep (playing a bunch of quirky characters in an old age home
fending off supernatural assaults)

-Bladerunner (seemed like it had lots of gaming potential)

-Goodfellas (I've run tons of Goodfellas inspired campaigns, but actually taking on the roles of the characters in the movie seems like fun)

Every time I read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, I start creating a game based around it. Once we used For Faerie, Queen & Country to actually run one, but it fell a little flat.

Seanchai

I'm not a fan of Whedon in general, but I do like Firefly A LOT. Which surprised me at the time. I do not care for Buffy at all, and the rest of his stuff feels dull and teenagey to me.

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;406148I don't see it that way at all for the Lord of the Rings. The setting is a character in and of itself, one rich with potential for gaming. Don't want to fiddle with the story? Then don't; a Fourth Age Middle-earth campaign has a ton of stuff to do. Just because the One Ring is gone and Sauron with it doesn't mean the setting itself is useless; it just means the MacGuffin for Tolkien's story is gone, and Middle-earth is now an open field like Greyhawk. I did an extensive overview of all the possibilities of Middle-earth as a game setting, specifically in the Fourth Age. If you're interested in why I think all this, check out this thread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=18271).

Right, but you're ignoring that the setting itself it utterly changed by that story.

The elves have left for the Far Shores. The dwarves are retreating from Middle Earth and staying in their halls. The Enemy is destroyed, and the orcs scattered. It's called the Age of Men for a reason. So sure, there are more stories to tell in the Fourth Age, but by the mere fact of it being the Fourth Age makes it barely resemble the Middle Earth that is an attractive place to game. Hence the disconnect and the resistance to using "sort of Middle Earth" to game in.

Quote from: Benoist;406167I'm not a fan of Whedon in general, but I do like Firefly A LOT. Which surprised me at the time. I do not care for Buffy at all, and the rest of his stuff feels dull and teenagey to me.

Same here. Benoist. Same here. I almost missed Firefly because of it. S. John Ross slapped me on the head and shoved me at it, for which I am eternally grateful to him, along with many other things more game related. :D

-clash

Quote from: Grognard;406176Right, but you're ignoring that the setting itself it utterly changed by that story.

The elves have left for the Far Shores. The dwarves are retreating from Middle Earth and staying in their halls. The Enemy is destroyed, and the orcs scattered. It's called the Age of Men for a reason. So sure, there are more stories to tell in the Fourth Age, but by the mere fact of it being the Fourth Age makes it barely resemble the Middle Earth that is an attractive place to game. Hence the disconnect and the resistance to using "sort of Middle Earth" to game in.

How am I ignoring anything? I used Tolkien himself as the source for the thread I linked to. I think you're ignoring what Tolkien actually wrote (or just wanting to argue). Read the thread I linked to and check the source material I cite. I reply strongly to this stuff because I've actually done the research.

Tolkien explicitly tells how elves remained in Middle-earth - the Noldor left, but not the Wood Elves. They remained until the present day. So did hobbits. So did dwarves. They became more reclusive over the centuries, but they already had been reclusive anyway.

Besides, he also explicitly talks about how during the Fourth Age the elves and dwarves actually became more visible as they came out to help rebuild what had been destroyed. Dwarves moved into Aglarond. They also helped rebuild Minas Tirith. Elves repopulated Ithilien, as well as cleansing Mirkwood and creating an even larger elf realm.

The orcs have scattered. OK. Scattered tribes of orcs haunting the hinterlands sounds like how orcs are used in a lot of fantasy games.

So Sauron is gone. So are the Nazgul. That doesn't mean all evil has fled; again, look at my thread and see where I quote Tolkien about the decades spent pacifying Sauron's allies. Plus, surely some of his lieutenants survived.

EDIT: I'll just post a couple of relevant quotes here:

"After the fall of Sauron, Gimli brought south a part of the Dwarf-folk of Erebor, and he became Lord of the Glittering Caves. He and his people did great works in Gondor and Rohan. For Minas Tirith they forged gates of mithril and steel to replace those broken by the Witch-king. Legolas his friend brought south Elves out of Greenwood, and they dwelt in Ithilien,
and it became once again the fairest country in all the westlands."

- The Return of the King, Appendix A, part III, Durin's Folk

"For though Sauron had passed, the hatreds and evils that he bred had not died, and the King of the West had many enemies to subdue before the White Tree could grow in peace. And wherever King Elessar went with war King Eomer went with him; and beyond the Sea of Rhun and on the far fields of the South the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard, and the White Horse upon Green flew in many winds until Eomer grew old."

- The Return of the King, Appendix A, part II, The House of Eorl

Can't quite see what I'm ignoring...

Quote from: ColonelHardisson;406197Can't quite see what I'm ignoring...

As you stated yourself, "and Middle-earth is now an open field like Greyhawk." And "The orcs have scattered. OK. Scattered tribes of orcs haunting the hinterlands sounds like how orcs are used in a lot of fantasy games."

The changes brought about in the Lord of the Rings change the very setting that makes it so attractive. All these changes alter the setting fundamentally, so it can be played just like any other generic fantasy setting. Which makes it pointless to do, because you can just skip all the research and just play any generic fantasy setting.

What makes Middle-Earth interesting is the combination of elements in the setting in the Third Age. Once you move past that, once you change it, it's no longer unique. It's any generic fantasy setting at that point, it just has a well documented history.

Using the famous place names may be enough to make it "Middle-Earth" for you, but nowhere near enough for me.

(Note: It's not just that I want to argue. That's a great dismissive attitude by the way. It's that I actually disagree with you. People can do that you know.)

Ditto that Flying Mice. Didn't care for many of Joss Whedon's earlier works, with the exceptions being Alien: Resurrection and Titan A.E. (Both of which are totally awesome!) and am not impressed with the lastest show either (Dollhouse), however have the pilot (is that counted as episode 1?), and all eight Firefly episodes on DvD, as well as Serenity. That show rocked!

Anyone care to comment or have an opinion on Captain America (In filming) & The Avengers (Preproduction)?

Also in keeping with the spirit of this thread, once many seasons ago, ran a campaign based on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, set in The Land, that was very popular, so much so, in fact, I had to calve the group and spin off a secondary campaign to bring the player count to less than ten for each session.

The Urviles with their enchanted staves were fearsome... and I had some great Bloodguard players, as well as some awesome fighters (and fights) in that campaign.

Quote from: GameDaddy;406262*snip*
Also in keeping with the spirit of this thread, once many seasons ago, ran a campaign based on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, set in The Land, that was very popular, so much so, in fact, I had to calve the group and spin off a secondary campaign to bring the player count to less than ten for each session.

The Urviles with their enchanted staves were fearsome... and I had some great Bloodguard players, as well as some awesome fighters (and fights) in that campaign.

I would have payed to play in that! I think it is one of the coolest un-tapped settings for neat games and the first three books are classic IMHO. I recently acquired 'The Atlas of the Land' used (NM condition) and it is a treasure! I read those books almost every year...to play a Bloodguard with ranyhyn (sp.?) companion AWESOME!

Wayland Drews 'Erthring Cycle' tril. would be cool as well.  :)

Quote from: GameDaddy;406262Also in keeping with the spirit of this thread, once many seasons ago, ran a campaign based on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, set in The Land, that was very popular, so much so, in fact, I had to calve the group and spin off a secondary campaign to bring the player count to less than ten for each session.

The Urviles with their enchanted staves were fearsome... and I had some great Bloodguard players, as well as some awesome fighters (and fights) in that campaign.

Sounds pretty cool. Just out of curiosity, what system did you use?

Like Grognard is saying... some popular settings are only popular because of their specific cast of characters and situations... and are otherwise fairly generic. Firefly was great fun... because of those characters... on that ship... remove them and it's pretty much just another Traveller campaign (just add Reavers!)

I'd much rather take inspiration from an established setting, especially one that is well known and loved... I'd hate to run/play Star Trek because I'd inevitably get into bickering with 'fans' at the table over perceptions of the show... but I'd happily run/play a game with Trek-like elements... such as Prime Directive.

Call of Cthulhu doesn't bug me because there isn't much setting there... most of well known 'characters' should NEVER show up in-game... there's no immediate metaplot to deal with... the popularity is more about theme and mood than any particular location/prop/gadget/character.

Thanks everyone for posting your thoughts. I've never had many GMs to talk with about content for my games, so this is a real treat.

The area where I live has always had a fairly small gaming community, with even fewer GMs, and its been even sparser after Hurricane Katrina wiped out most of the gaming stores. So I've kind of been 'winging it' for a long time.

I'm always a little worried that I will get stuck in a particular mindset, since I don't really talk to a lot of other players who aren't directly linked to a game I'm running. So I expect I'll probably be posting again with questions like this one. Please keep going, I'm eager to read more if more is out there to be said.

I've run dozens and dozens of games based on properties of one kind or another. Most are series of one-shots or short campaigns. Most were run with Tunnels & Trolls, Mercenaries Spies and Private Eyes, or Fudge--although I know this isn't about the rules. There have been just a few that became on-going campaigns on their own legs, and the ones that did surprised me a little. Usually for me running a campaign in the world of a movie or novel or whatever is simply a short cut for giving players the background. My only real rule is that I have to like it. My group is disappointed that I won't run Dresden, but as much as I ought to, I just don't like the books. I can't get excited and present the material well. Someone else will have to run that one.

I prefer to like the rules in a licensed product. I can't do Cortex. I have done Stargate, but it was Fringeworthy. I've done Supernatural, but it was Stalking the Night Fantastic. I've done Battlestar Galactica (though it was admittedly the robot dog/Cylon gunfighter Galactica) but it was FTL 2448. Hey--I get to like Tri Tac. A bunch of you fuckers like Palladium, so you don't get to give me shit about Tri Tac. Anyway--this isn't about the rules.

Of my favorite fantasy properties, I've run Middle Earth Rolemaster. Though I enjoy LotR and RM, I just didn't enjoy the campaign. I've run Black Company. Though I don't care too much for d20, we had a terrific campaign. I love the Song of Ice and Fire, but could never get excited about running it. I love The Houses of the Fallen Marzipan, and I could have a dozen people calling off work tomorrow to play, but I'm a little daunted by the width and breadth of the material, I think. It's hard to predict what might inspire you. But if there's a key, that's it. The material can be great on the page, but it has to get inside the gm's and the players' heads and inspire them. It has to spark ownership without drowning external creativity.

The best licensed fantasy campaign I ran was Wizards, the Whit game based on the movie. Now--I love that movie--it has more to do with what I think of when I hear "fantasy" than Tolkien. But I don't expect others to feel that way. It might not even be that great a movie. I don't know or care. And the rules are mediocre at best. And there's no synergy in their combination. I cannot offer a reason for why that worked so well. Maybe it was like The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam--from what I heard in school, a flawed translation of a pedestrian poem which became a nice piece of work in the new language. It's just one of those things. RPG campaigns are more ephemeral and difficult to predict than literature or film or other static art.

Another terrific campaign was based on Cleopatra 2525, of all things. Why did that take off? Unknown. Not much in the show or setting to recommend a shared world. All I can offer is that I liked it well enough to present the material in an engaging way, and the players were not so intimidated by the world to feel shy about participating. If there's a formula for it, that's pretty close.

Quote from: stu2000;406299I have done Stargate, but it was Fringeworthy.

You know what's funny? When I watched the Stargate movie the first time I thought "This really reminds me of Fringeworthy." I'm sure I'm not the only gamer who thought that.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;406302You know what's funny? When I watched the Stargate movie the first time I thought "This really reminds me of Fringeworthy." I'm sure I'm not the only gamer who thought that.

Nope, I had the same thought... and I've never even played Fringeworthy.
I also thought of Gatecrasher (which actually isn't much like Stargate) and Time Tunnel (old TV show).

Quote from: GameDaddy;406262Also in keeping with the spirit of this thread, once many seasons ago, ran a campaign based on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever, set in The Land, that was very popular, so much so, in fact, I had to calve the group and spin off a secondary campaign to bring the player count to less than ten for each session.

The Urviles with their enchanted staves were fearsome... and I had some great Bloodguard players, as well as some awesome fighters (and fights) in that campaign.

I've written two rpgs based on the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. One using the D20/OGL and the other converting the rules from Jeffrey Schecter's Legends of Middle Earth. They were available online for download at one point. Perhaps I'll put them somewhere again.

Quote from: Cranewings;406101It is usually because you don't love the setting, you love the characters and the story. Once you are done with it, you are done.

I read about half of Neverwhere. I hated the odd couple god slayers or whatever the fuck they were. The whole book felt like bad Ravenloft GMing to me.

I have no words.

~

I have In Nomine and I don't love the bible, does that count?

Quote from: The Butcher;406277Sounds pretty cool. Just out of curiosity, what system did you use?

0D&D.

At the time I added in some new character classes, i.e. The Lords of Revelstone (Wizard/Ftrs), Stonedelvers, Woodhelvennin,  and the Haruchai (Bloodguard).

Also added in new spells for the Stonedelvers and Woodhelvinnen so they could work with the elements.

The Illearth Stones were treated as the artifacts that they were, and were written up using the template provided in Eldritch Wizardy.

Earthblood was a source of mana used to increase the power and effects of standard D&D spells. It would also allow the participants in enchanted duels to deliver bonus energy damage.

The monsters and creatures were of course were added, Cavewights and Urviles, Viles, Waynhim, Ranhyn, Griffins (The Lion kind). I used a Demon template to create unique Ravers.

The Giants were ported over pretty much straight up.

Cave wights were statted up just as Orcs with a thieving (and trap setting) abilities.

For the enchanted combat a simple mechanic was used, that was composed of an opposed skills check, When two Lords would fight, or a Wizard and a Pack of Urviles, each side would roll a d20, add their character level, Int modifier, and the winner would deal their character level x d6 damage to their foe. Each 20 Ur-Viles in the Wedge counted as 1 character level, so a wedge of 200 Ur-Viles  would count as a 10th level Lord for purposes of the fight and would deliver 10d6 energy damage with a successful enchanted attack. Characters would get a saving throw for half-damage if they ended up on the wrong end of a powerful wedge...

I treated the damage as an enchanted form of an electrical attack.

This motivated the player characters to engage in melee quickly when facing a wedge to take out as many Ur-viles as possible.

Individually, the threat from Ur-Viles was negligable, when they formed a wedge, they could engage the most powerful of player character parties and were a formidable foe, especially when supported by some of the other monsters described here.

Players, of course, could use all the standard D&D spells... I remember Fireball being a favorite when facing an Urvile Wedge.

I agree with those who make a distinction between a "closed" setting which is basically used up once the story in it is done, and an "open" setting which is just...a setting.

For me, Tolkien is closed because LotR, and everything preceding it, is so strongly about a sequence of events that begins with the Music of the Ainu, and perhaps secondarily, with the theft of the Silmarils and the poisoning of theTwo Trees. Once Sauron's gone, Melkor/Morgoth's gone; once Aragorn & Arwen marry, and the White Tree of Gondor is replanted, the cycle of Feanor is also done.

Funny: if you just read The Hobbit, and forget about everything else, you've got the basis of an excellent open world.

Star Wars is also quite closed, as far as I'm concerned. Even the official continuations strike me as just repeating the same leitmotif again and again instead of revealing a universe with its own life apart from repeated Sith eruptions.

Quote from: GameDaddy;4063720D&D.

:hatsoff:

This should totally be a supplement. File off the serial numbers, change the trademarked names, and sell it on Lulu for $5, and by Jove I'd buy it.

Much as I love grim and gritty S&S, OD&D doesn't get nearly enough High Fantasy love.

Quote from: The Butcher;406454Much as I love grim and gritty S&S, OD&D doesn't get nearly enough High Fantasy love.

Which is really ironic, when you think about it, since the level of OD&D characters translates in a number of Men (with 4 Men = Hero, 8 Men = Superhero, from Chainmail), which clearly indicates that their power is well above and beyond the realm of mortals.

My houserules that give dice of damage that you split between your attacks and burn to perform maneuvers are based on this.

To me Neil Gaiman always read like a second-rate Gothy version of Roger Zelazny.

Anyways, I basically did run Gangs of New York; it was called my Port Blacksand campaign.

I think the trick is not to run the literary/etc. setting itself sometimes, but to run a version of it with the serial numbers filed off, as it were, in a different kind of setting.

RPGPundit

Could you run a version of "Gangs Of New York" in a setting like maybe 'Waterdeep' city from the FORGOTTEN REALMS?

Or would a city like Freeport or Sanctuary be better?



- Ed C.

Quote from: Koltar;406609Could you run a version of "Gangs Of New York" in a setting like maybe 'Waterdeep' city from the FORGOTTEN REALMS?

Or would a city like Freeport or Sanctuary be better?

- Ed C.

You can have "gang wars" in the broadest sense in any urban setting, but I think for specific action, as well as the generational and culture defense themes you see in the GofNY movie and the book that inspired it aren't a great fit for the classic old-and-decadent swords and sorcery type cities. Either not enough newness at all, or in the Sanctuary setup, it's the opposite of what you want. There's just no future to be fighting for, no desperate struggle to have a part in what's on the horizon, just decline and trying to shave as much as you can on coins stamped with faces of steadily fading importance. And it's hard to get in the political game - Lankhmar, Arenjun, Sanctuary, etc., usually your ruler is some kind of tyrant.

I could see Waterdeep, loosely, working. I am not hugely knowledgeable about the FR, but from the Grey Box and computer games, at least, the Sword Coast has always had more of a new world than old world flavor. The weird "guaranteed against corruption" oligarchic model seems bound for failure after campaign day one and you have good leeway to get the PCs and the NPCs in the mix there.

Quote from: RPGPundit;406605I think the trick is not to run the literary/etc. setting itself sometimes, but to run a version of it with the serial numbers filed off, as it were, in a different kind of setting.

I strongly agree with this. You have (at least) two major advantages here.

First, you get the benefits of general familiarity to people who like the work that inspired your campaign without the preconceptions (and conflict of preconceptions) that using the original brings to the table.

Second, any ideas and changes that are good for the campaign, or the specific moment at the table, strengthen the setting - whereas with the original, you often have the dilemma of picking the element that's more fitting to the setting vs. the one fitting to the game. My position is "always choose the one that fits the game," but it can be hard to "betray" a setting you loved enough to want to game in in the first place.

Settings that work for books and movies tend to work because they're settings that are good for books or movies. Ever had a favorite book that you kind of hoped they'd never make into a movie, because it would be impossible not to fuck up? With gaming, it can be like that, but worse - books and movies are forms in most ways far more like each other than either are similar to the RPG form. Both of those at least have plots that everyone involved has agreed to follow, and both are completely done ahead of time.

Also, Often a large part of what's compelling in fantasy or SF material is style -or at least it's a stylistic point that differentiates a favorite setting from another writer's. But it's extremely hard to do style in an RPG. You have no visuals - the best you can do is stop the action and show a picture, or maybe point at the miniatures. Improvising the right dialogue for the campaign's "writer" AND to suit the table action is very hard. You really can't do much to capture the narrative voice of a novel - how much of Neverwhere is Neil Gaiman's tone of tea-time irony? How much of Firefly is the frontier production design and Joss Whedon's stylized dialogue?

Quote from: RPGPundit;406605To me Neil Gaiman always read like a second-rate Gothy version of Roger Zelazny.

Zelazny seems to be a big influence on Gaiman, as is, obviously, Moorcock. It took me a while to figure out why reading Gaiman wasn't working out that well for me. Best I can describe it is that I can't help but smell a rat when a writer concentrates so much on "the power of stories" or the power of imagination; that just feels so self-adoring, and divorced from anything visceral.

Quote from: RPGPundit;406605Anyways, I basically did run Gangs of New York; it was called my Port Blacksand campaign.

RPGPundit

What system did you use, and did you find any good background material on the subject aside from the movie itself?

Quote from: Koltar;406609Could you run a version of "Gangs Of New York" in a setting like maybe 'Waterdeep' city from the FORGOTTEN REALMS?

Or would a city like Freeport or Sanctuary be better?

I'm no FR connoisseur, but I vaguely recall seeing Waterdeep all too often portrayed as a very lawful (and Lawful) city. FR has no shortage of "wretched hive of scum and villainy" cities, though; I suppose places like Luskan in the Sword Coast, or Amn to the south, would do nicely.

Assuming, of course, that you intend to adhere to canon.

Quote from: The Butcher;406675I'm no FR connoisseur, but I vaguely recall seeing Waterdeep all too often portrayed as a very lawful (and Lawful) city. FR has no shortage of "wretched hive of scum and villainy" cities, though; I suppose places like Luskan in the Sword Coast, or Amn to the south, would do nicely.

Assuming, of course, that you intend to adhere to canon.

Heh - without knowing anything about the Forgotten Realms canon, I have written a couple of convention D&D scenarios set in Forgotten Realm.

Reservoir Elves, set in Waterdeep - leading to the coining of the term "Waterdeep standoff" - when everybody is pointing fucking crossbows at every motherfucker in the room.
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f98/DKChannelboredom/Reservoirsmall.jpg)

Magician: Impossible, set in Marsember, Cormyr. The players were a special ops group from Sembia raiding Castle Obarskyr.
(http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f98/DKChannelboredom/MIForsidesmall.jpg)

so sure, you can do movie inspired games in Forgotten Realms, with a cast of elves, with nothing but the FR-wiki :)

very cool DK...:rotfl:

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;406632What system did you use, and did you find any good background material on the subject aside from the movie itself?

I used Blue Rose, and I did not use any source material, just inspiration from that movie.

RPGPundit