Day 10 Main Prompt: RPG you’d like to see on TV

What RPG could TV do justice to? It is popular belief, I’m not sure if it has been verified for certain, that the series Firefly was based on a Traveller campaign. I think TV did Firefly justice so maybe this prompt isn’t so crazy after all.

Of my favorite games I think the one that would be well served by a TV show would be Colonial Gothic. It is a time period most people are familiar enough with, there are plenty of great social and ethical dilemmas, plus who isn’t a fan of the Headless Horseman? You could adjust this easily to anytime in the 18th Century if you didn’t want to focus on the American War of Independence.

Day 10 Alternate Prompt: Steampunk and my d10 roll is a 7, Create a simple mechanic.

It is no secret that I am not a fan of steampunk. It just isn’t my jam. That said I do have a great board game called Incursion which mixes steampunk into WWII that I enjoy so I don’t believe that I can claim to actually hate steampunk, how’s that for staying positive?

Reliability for weird science devices.

Here at the tail end of the 19th century most of our products are fairly reliable. Eli Whitney did a great job pioneering mass production and Samual Colt proved that you could apply that to the mass production of things like revolvers. The one off creations of weird scientists don’t have the same reliability as the parts have to be hand crafted and fitted, often by a scientist who is paying more attention to the theory behind their next invention than the fine details of the part they are currently filing down.

Translate the skill of the inventor into a percentage, so if they have 11 with a maximum of 20 that would be 55% or if they have 3 out of 6 it would be 50%. Roll 2d10. If the job was rushed or done without proper facilities or materials use whichever die is higher as the tens digit so a 2 and a 7 would be 72. If they had extra time, special assistance, or otherwise an optimal situation to craft the device use whichever die is lower as the tens digit. If the situation was neither really poor or really good just do a straight 2d10 roll reading them as percentile dice. Success means the device is reliable and failure means it will fail at a time of the game master’s choosing.

That’s all for today, until tomorrow be excellent to each other!

August is #RPGaDay2024 and I am going to posting daily responses to the prompts. You can find more information about #RPGaDAY2024 here: https://www.autocratik.com/2024/07/announcing-rpgaday2024-for-august.html

There are two sets of prompts this year and since I have room to do so on the blog I will answer both. In episode S2E6 of my podcast titled RPGaDAY2024 Panel Discussion I assemble an esteemed panel and we go through the main prompts for the entire month’s so I will try to give different answers here on the blog but may end up repeating myself occasionally.  

On their podcast Mirke the Meek suggested using the alternate prompts to create a setting and that is a great idea so I’m going to steal that. The setting I am going to craft for this month will be a modern, conspiracy style setting. Nominally I think we’ll set it in the 1970’s to avoid the problems cell phones and the internet can cause if player characters have access to them.

Here are the main prompts:

And here are a set of alternative prompts suggested by Skala Wyzwania, look at the day on the left, pick the theme, then roll d10.