Ever finish a book and think “This would make a great role-playing game!”? Me too! My shelves are filled with role-playing games based on various books¹. Some were successful adaptations. Others, not so much. Having spent seventeen years selling RPGs, I have some ideas about what sort of stories adapt well to games and which don’t.
The most important element might be narrative space—room for characters other than the protagonists of the books in question. Worlds designed so that only a single or a small handful of characters are able to take meaningful action are too constrained to let players do their thing. Either the player characters will find they cannot accomplish anything or they will simply recapitulate the source material². I think Foundation, for example, would be too limited by the need to stick to Asimov’s Psychohistory to be playable, but the earlier Empire novels could provide an open-enough setting for a role-playing game³.
Here are six series, some new and some old classic, that I think would make interesting settings for RPGs.
Tanith Lee’s Don’t Bite the Sun (also packaged with the sequel, Drinking Sapphire Wine, into one volume titled Biting the Sun) might seem like an odd choice, because in some ways the setting is very constrained: there are just three cities and all of them are apparent utopias where pain and death have been vanquished. The key phrase is “apparent utopia”. In fact, the cities are oppressive machines designed to deny their inhabitants agency, where death itself is no release. Pushing back at this guarantees a firm response from the quasirobots that run the place. Think of it as Paranoia’s smiling cousin, where instead of a laser bolt to the brain, players get a condescending pat on the head. Victory may be impossible but the struggle is worthwhile. Recommended for children of helicopter parents….
The Patternist sequence by Octavia E. Butler is very nearly a classic John W. Campbell-era Psionic Superman series, except for one trifling detail. The characters have been bred to have a variety of extraordinary powers because Doro, their creator, thinks psionic souls taste better. Player-characters would enjoy lives imbued with marvelous abilities, in a drama-rich context in which a wrong step could result in them becoming a psychic slurpee.
If trying to survive Doro doesn’t appeal, there’s a second, post-Doro era available. Gone cruel Doro, replaced by an equally inhumane post-apocalyptic post-human world of contending psychic autocracies. It’s not a happy world, but as they say, misery breeds plot potential.
Next up: the Roads of Heaven series by Melissa Scott. I’ve always regretted the fact that there are only three Roads of Heaven novels. This Hermetic/neo-Platonic science fantasy realm where alchemists guide starships across vast gulfs offers a grand stage for all kinds of stories, whether within the misogynistic Hegemony or one of the smaller polities not yet consumed by the expansionist empire.
Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovsky—Tchaikovsky’s obvious RPG potential inspired me to ask the author if there was an existing RPG for his setting. One part steampunk fantasy Mongol Horde versus the Classical Greek City States to one part insect-themed superpowers and clan politics, the setting offers a myriad of character backgrounds plus all manner of cryptic communities where player characters could find themselves well over their heads.
Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence offers the modern world re-imagined as a magic-rich fantasy realm. Set after the God Wars ended one world order and birthed a new one, this world of eldritch corporations and the masses, of declining gods and triumphant lich-kings spans a diverse range of cultures and settings any player character would want to explore.
Tensorate by JY Yang is the story of two world systems at war, with the reality-bending Tensors, commanders of Slack, on one side of the conflict and the mundane Machinists on the other. The elite Tensors enable the centralized Protectorate, while Machinists offer the masses technologies all can use. This vividly imaged realm of gender-fluid mages and engineers lends itself both to stories of grand struggles against oppression and more personal quests of self-discovery.
1: Yeah, yeah, what about movies? Want a list of all the reportedly top-notch spec fic movies I haven’t seen? It’s not short. It’s not that movies aren’t my thing, just that science fiction movies don’t seem to be.
2: The infamous Indiana Jones RPG squared this circle by limiting the players to four characters from the movies. I don’t know how many licensed characters have to be included in a game before players feel there are enough to present them with a worthwhile selection, but I do know it’s a higher number than four.
3: It’s an academic question since, as he explained in an editorial, Asimov felt people role-playing in his settings were committing a form of plagiarism. As far as I know, he never considered selling RPG rights for any of his works.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is surprisingly flammable.
With regard to point [2] I could imagine that would be the problem with a Doctor Who RPG (I know there is one, I’ve never seen it).
Obviously the most bizarre RPG based on a TV series was ‘Dallas the RPG’. Not one of SPI’s greatest successes.
Thanks for the article; I just have one question: can you link to an interview or article that includes Asimov’s thoughts on this?
As for [2], that’s what I’ve always called the “epic hero limitation”. Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, even Doctor Who have plenty of room in their universes to let you play within them, be your own character while still feeling like your in that universe, run into familiar elements of it, and even occasionally run into the main characters, antagonists, etc. (Even if like you have to make Darth Vader loom in the distance and scare your players to death while still giving them time to fly away on their spaceship because there’s no bleeping way they’ll be able to survive an encounter with him. Yes, I’ve done this as a GM.)
Whereas with stuff like Indiana Jones or Dragon Ball (some friends of mine enjoyed playing that), if you’re not Indy, Goku and the gang, etc, you might as well be playing a generic pulp archaeology game or generic super martial arts an aliens game. Yes, aliens from DB will show up, perhaps some supporting character from an Indy film or the TV show… but, I now realize, it’s not about the heroes, but rather about how detailed the universe is… neither the Indiana Jones universe nor the Dragon Ball one are actually very developed or detailed. (Yeah, DB a bit more than Indy, but still.)
Of course, YMMV.
Sheri S. Tepper’s Land of the True Game
A Doctor Who RPG doesn’t fall victim to (2) because the series establishes a large universe with all sorts of heroic or otherwise characters who don’t have to be the Doctor or his/her companions. Another Time Lord, some aliens fighting off Daleks or Cybermen, cat burglars trying to pull off a heist on a planet guarded by the Judoon, et cetera and so on.
There’s a column in that. Hard to say if SPI or AH did rpgs worse. Actually, no: both DQ and Universe had their points, whereas AH stripped what made RQ neat out of their version, Powers and Perils read like it had been created by translating DQ into Urdu and back by someone who didn’t speak either English or Urdu, and as for Lords of Creation….
But SPI had a thousand-hour wargame with rules about spaghetti….
I don’t have a link to the Asimov editorial because it was in the Before Times but I read it sitting in my rpg store so it had to have come out after 1984….
Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom springs to mind, although to avoid the problems of point 2, you might want to use a setting thousands of years before John Carter found that cave in the Arizona desert …
(Which is also what I’d do if I ever ran a Star Wars RPG — set it thousands of years before or after the films so that I wouldn’t be so constrained.)
I could see an RPG set among Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe, though getting into the heads of Ancillaries or Presger Translators could be challenging (though for some of us, that’s half the fun).
Tony DiTerlizzi’s WondLa series are another setting perfect for RPGs, with multiple alien species (including a faction of techno-utopian humans) trying to coexist on a semi-terraformed Earth, as generational vaults occasionally release unprepared young humans.
Heh. You know what horrifyingly terrible Canadian SF series would have made a much better RPG than it ever did a TV show? The Starlost. As many settings as you’d like and you don’t have to follow that whole “stop the ship from crashing into a star” plot. Particularly since it became pretty clear later on in the series that there were enough high tech cultures on the ship that the whole guidance issue probably wasn’t the big problem the Astro-Amish thought it was. And also someone did change the ship’s course at one point (so he could aim it at a comet because all Starlost scientists are jerks).
Regarding point 3, I completely disagree with Asimov. But then, there is GRR Martin, who is fiercely opposed fanfiction, yet allows role-playing game based on his worlds to be published. Considering these are not “choose your own adventure” games, but actual RPG, I really don’t understand how the players are supposed to play them without creating fan-fiction…
Yeah, now that it’s too late I see I should have specified “table-top” rpgs.
@7 A Barsoom RPG is in the works by Modiphius https://www.modiphius.com/john-carter.html and will have a kickstarter in the near future. It’s based on the same system they made a Conan RPG with.
My first introduction to roleplaging was actually through a Wheel of Time based game that Wizards of the Coast put out. We had a lot of fun for several years with that, although as the last books came out it kind of upended some of our story (we came up with our own end for Mazrim Taim, for example).
I feel like – especially once more books/info come out – anything in the Cosmere would be ripe for a game. Maybe even Reckoners if you want to go the YA route.
James David Nicoll @9: Isn’t that basically just Starship Alpha? OK, the ship is a different shape and Starlost doesn’t have mutants, but the elements are there.
While I didn’t care for the novel itself, the setting for Poul Anderson’s The Makeshift Rocket, with thousands of terraformed asteroids whose relationship to each other was continually changing, would be an interesting place to roleplay in.
Huh. Has anyone written a portal network series where the network is continually changing? Not occasional incidents as in the backstory to Barrayar but frequent and ongoing?
I have no idea how this blank comment was posted. Here, have meaningless text.
YES, Roads of Heaven!! That was my first thought as soon as I finished those books — they should be a game! I’m glad I’m not the only one. :)
@9 – James: Larry Niven’s Ringworld also is chockful of settings to play with.
@10 – Athreeren: GRRM is opposed to fan fiction, among other things, because it might end up using plots he might be using in a future book (provided he ever finishes one again), and the possibility of getting sued, etc, etc. The vast majority of the people who play RPGs based on a work don’t end up publishing stories from it on the web as fanfic. Plus, probably because he’s not getting any money for fanfic; whereas licensed RPG books do generate income for him.
@11 – James: I think we all realized it was about those RPGs. Just edit the article if you’re afraid someone will mistake it for CRPGs. I still would appreciate a link to that Asimov thing. :)
I always thought Garth Nix’s Abhorsen books would be a really neat RPG setting.
There was a Ringworld RPG. Huh, I don’t seem to be able to link to my review of it…
I am not 100% sure it was playable as such but Niven fans may find it worth their time to track a copy down.
I’ve always had a fondness for James Schmitz’ The Hub Universe. I’ve just never figured out how to make it work. It might do well with a FATE conversion?
Now I’m trying to think of this strange “They made an RPG for this?” moment I had once, but I can’t quite twig to the series. Then again, the stuff they put on bath towels, well…
I’d think 1984 or 1985 sounds reasonable, as there was a Gaming column added to the Isaac Asimov magazine about then, by Dana Lombardy.
15, It’s like Sliders, but in space! Well, there is Sergey Lukyanenko and Gates that put you where you want to be, in terms of desire. There’s also the Eye of Terror in WH40K, the Warp is a scary place.
Yes, I know there’s a Ringworld RPG, I’ve thumbed through it. Anyone got a link to anything about Asimov on RPGs?
Simak’s Shakespeare’s Planet had an ancient portal network whose address system had been lost. Pilgrims were mapping it out the hard way by typing in random codes to see where they led. It’s been decades since I read it but now I wonder if the pilgrims’ faith addresses led to consistent destinations was actually supported by the text?
23, best I can offer is this index if that helps you.
“The Mule” in the Foundation RPG was a player outsmarting the DM. That is not supposed to happen. It’s probably a Good Thing that the DM had an undefined all-purpose escape route available in the Second Foundation, but that’s the kind of trick you really only can use once.
( “I just happen to have this secret organization of psionics here … ” )
@25 – LordVorless: Thanks. It’d be nice if the article’s author would pass on his reference, after he ignored my request three times, despite even replying to another of my comments. :)
@Magnus: I believe he responded to your comment in comment #6, if you missed it.
Ah, that comment was showing empty to me earlier, thank you. My apologies.
I’ve always thought Anne Bishop’s Dark Jewels setting was crying out for an RPG. Same goes for Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera. Any fantasy with a rigorously well-defined magic system, really.
Ah, yes. The Codex Alera world would be fun to play in!
The big problem with licensed products, which has killed dozens of RPGs and several games companies over the years, is that the license costs money, a big bite out of each game and supplement sold, and most RPGs are only marginally profitable. If the source material really becomes popular the cost of a license will probably rise steeply, eventually it simply isn’t worth continuing. Then sometimes you get an IP owner that insists on micromanaging every detail that gets into the game – but won’t do it in a timely manner. The games company has to pay authors etc. to write and develop the product, but doesn’t get anything back until the product is approved. I’m carefully not naming names here, but I’m sure you get the idea and can think of examples for yourself.
One of the reason why most of my game settings for Forgotten Futures have been based on copyright-expired sources is that you avoid this problem completely. An author who has been dead for 70+ years really isn’t going to be causing many problems!
When I prep a RPG, I will swipe source material from anywhere that fits into the overall concept; sometimes I mash up several books or series at once. My Cliffhangers players have gone Around the World in 80 Days (as part of a race), fought Nazis in Darkest Africa and dinosaurs in South America, and rescued the lost bones of Peking Man from a watery grave. Another GM has sent the PCs to Skull Island — several times! It’s all good.
Our gaming group contemplated publishing a guidebook to one of our more successful scenarios, but when we tried to work out a deal with the RPG company who controlled the system we used, things rapidly got too messy to proceed.
My problem with games set in fictional worlds is that the PCs should be the main movers and shakers of the campaign, not errand-runners for ultra-powerful NPCs.
That being said, there should be an RPG based on Hugo nominee Chuck Tingle’s ‘Tingleverse’, though I shudder to think what the character ability scores would be.
32, until you’re attacked by Zombie Jules Verne, Vampire L. Frank Baum and the Ghost of Arthur Conan Doyle! Fortunately, they’re easier to deal with than lawyers. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t matter, you just end up with a product that even if it isn’t bad, it’s just not very pleasing.
34, a legitimate problem, though how much so can vary based on the situation. Running a Lower-decks campaign, it can be fun to make something the players did without realizing it was important, work it out to be something that let the Epic Heroes save the world, and throw out a shout-out, and with some of the adventure campaigns, it can be a necessary way to hook the players back on the rails.
@21: I’ve seen an attempt to construct rules for a Hub RPG.
There are actually already two games written by Max Gladstone that take place in his Craft Sequence universe. They were produced by Choice of Games and are entitles Choice of the Deathless and Deathless: The City’s Thirst.
Thus the hasty clarification that I meant table top roleplaying.
Many years ago my AD&D 2 players crossed into a dimension that was Alan Dean Foster’s Spellsinger Universe. It worked well as a diversion from the main AD&D Planescape/Spelljammer setting that I was running at the time; I am not sure it would work as an RPG in its own right. It inspired one of my players to explore the books so that made my happy.
Douglas Muir thought that Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky slower-than-light interstellar trading setting would make a good RPG. He even sketched out a campaign taking place over centuries, with the PCs in suspended animation between stars. I shared this idea with an RPG forum, and there wasn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm. The arbitrary technological stagnation and the centuries-long trading journeys didn’t seem to appeal to SF roleplayers.
40, may just have been the group you encountered, there’s been quite a few “restricted-tech” games out there, and the STL travel isn’t terribly uncommon.
Personally, I’d consider the Tine-worlds to be the more interesting option, but that’s a bit of a different focus.
If I was running an RPG on the Tine’s world, I’d make all the PC Tines. Humans are too rare to allow human PCs enough freedom of action. You could have a wound penalty system that describes how each pack changes as the members are killed off.
I think the setting of The Revenger by Alastair Reynolds would make a terrific RPG.
If you are not familiar with The Revenger: It takes places millions, possibly tens of millions of years in the future. Human civilization has risen and fallen back to barbarism many times; current inhabitants call these waves of civilization “occupations”, and refer to themselves as “Thirteenth Occupation” — previous twelve are just the ones for which they have archaeological evidence.
Some particularly ambitious past Occupation has completely remodeled the Solar System. Planets no longer exist — they all have been dismantled and used to build some 50 million habitats, each 5-20 km in size. Most habitats have a gravity generator in the center, providing more or less 1 g on the surface, although many had stopped working ages ago. Others are in free-fall. Thirteenth Occupation occupies only a tiny fraction of these 50 million habitats, but is slowly colonizing new one every few years; its technology level is about what we have now — ion rockets and solar sails. And many thus-equipped ships are busy exploring (presumably) dead habitats in search of technological treasures.
And these treasures are basically equivalent of magic. Thirteenth Occupation is chockful of ancient technology they cannot replicate and often do not have the faintest idea how it works. The main character receives an artificial arm which dates to Eleventh Occupation; the technician who attaches does not know how it interfaces with living nerves, or even what powers it. The only real skill required of the technician is to provide sterile operation, as infection is a real danger.
That sounds pretty interesting.
43,44, Reminds me of Numenera, which is a somewhat similar vein. Or even the Books of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe.
Different details, similar principles.
The original order of the Knights Radiant from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives would make an amazing MMORPG.
How ’bout Martha Wells’ Raksura series? Endless sentient races, magnificent environments (giant worldtrees! sealing cities!), cool powers and skills, weird ancient magics and ruins to explore. Only trouble would be that she would have to fork over the world map, which the GM would have to firmly hide from the players if they were to maintain that feeling of knowing only a very small part of a vast mysterious world. Oh please Martha, now that I’ve imagined it, I have to have it!!!
I’ve not read them all, but what about a Darkover RPG? It’s been a while, but I don’t recall too many driving characters for players to step in/on/around, so it seems like a good place for characters to be heroic.
I was also going to say Witchworld, but I think GURPS did a version of that.
48, the WitchWorld book would probably work reasonably well for a Darkover series.
Anyone else think the Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman would make a great setting? Sure, the stories have magical elements, but the world(s) could easily be considered as realms sundered by a technologically advanced race, should the GM need a strictly sci-fi setting. After all, it was supposed to be a world descended from the ruins of a nuclear holocaust; one very much like a post-apocalyptic Earth. There were guilds of assassins with ranks that could be filled with rogue characters, endless variations of semi-magical constructs from which to base “alchemistic engineers”, or a large number of rune-based magical users, without even touching into the races of powerful Patryn or Sartan characters, most of whom are never seen in the realms. There was a computer game based on the series that I never played, but I once drew up a campaign for D&D using the series plot as a loose guide. Never got to play it, either, as by the time I ironed out the details and magic mechanics, half our group had moved on, or away. The funniest part for me was that they included a wizard named Zifnab, who was basically Fizban from their Dragonlance series, which is what inspired me to try to adapt it to a game.
I am seriously thinking of trying to find my notes for that game, now, just to see how it works after reading the series for the third or fourth time. Who knows, maybe I’ll run it with a new group, now.
Come to think of it, my connected rune-acquisition system of leveling reminds me of a number of video games that came out later, specifically Final Fantasy 8. Wonder if I could sue and win to get any royalties for that?
Ah, but Petty I am not, and Rich I will not be, so keep the lawyers out of this, and I’ll keep the game for me.
50, I think they were ALL game settings in part. Separate ones, like the Air World would be Skyrealms of Jorune, the fire world would be some jungle-setting, and the Labyrinth would be Paranoia…
If you want to look at the Death Gate Game there are some videos on Youtube. Sadly it is not anywhere like GOG as far as I know.
I always thought World of Tiers by Philip José Farmer would make a great RPG. The concept of various pocket universes has been done many other times but World of Tiers remains my favorite.
I’d love to do an RPG based in Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series. Given the constant shift between magic and tech, it could allow for some really interesting characters and the world is clearly large enough that all kinds of things could be brought in – monsters from mythology and twisted science alike.
52, there is a French-language game that’s based on the setting, but I’m not sure if it’s licensed, or just with the serial numbers filed off.
@43 — Yes, I’d LOVE something set in the world of Revenger. At a minimum, I really, really, really hope we get more books.
@54 Thanks for the info unfortunately my high school French skills are far too many years in the past!
Like Peter M, I used to wish for a Darkover RPG. There seems to be a group running some sort of online (correspondence??) Darkover RPG, or trying to get one started. I want something you can play on a tabletop with four to six actual humans; is that so much to ask?