|
Licensed Games that do their Sources Justice
Old Scratch
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
Licenses for books, movies, television shows and comics have long been a part of the rpg scene. Some games have faithfully or cleverly emulated their sources, others have been less successful. Which games out there captured the essence of their properties?
-
Old Scratch
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
No other game could start at the top of this list. This in my opinion is the first true licensing success story. Before its time, it was an rpg that started with the source and then designed a game around it rather than adapting the source material to an already existing game. Innovative, fun, accessible, this game showed how care, design, and attention to detail can allow rpgs to capture the lightning that made other media properties so successful.
-
-
Old Scratch
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
This game is one of the two Burning Wheel rpgs that demonstrate how closely an artist and game designers can work. This game looks like a Mouseguard comic, and even more exciting, it plays like one!
-
-
Old Scratch
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
This one should come as no surprise. There's a reason that the Artesia rpg is so faithful to the Artesia comic: the writer and artist of the Artesia comic was also the sole designer, artist, and write of the Artesia rpg.
-
-
Tim Mayse-Lillig
United States
Chicago
Illinois
-
For me, this line was the best that anything Star wars ever got. They took all of the little interesting things going on in the background of the movies and expaneded them into a full and vibrant universe.
-
-
Old Scratch
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
-
Like Mouse Guard, the Burning Wheel folks first teamed up with Chris Moeller to produce this beautiful book that captures the feel and story arc of his Iron Empires comics. Not content to just capture the feel of it, there's a big chunk of innovation going on in this game, such as cooperatively building your world in crisis, an antagonistic but moderated structure of PCs vs GM characters, a scene economy, and win conditions.
-
-
-
I love the series and i think Margaret Weis Productions did it right
with this RPG.
-
-
 -
Oh, not to forget the 'Verse. Ok, it's the Cortex-system (also used with Battlestar Galactica). There are better systems out there but it's a nice piece of work for this great property.
-
-
Jakob Bavnshøj
Denmark
Brøndum
DK-9500 Hobro
Visit us at www.osterskov.dk
-
I have to admit, that I have never played this, but it was GREAT reading it. I have never read a rulebook which captured the feeling of the setting so much as this book.
-
-
 -
The Buffy-entry reminded me of another well done Eden Studios RPG.
Ash is cult.
-
-
Wulf Corbett
Scotland
Shotts
Lanarkshire
-
If we're including Buffy, we have to include Angel. The differences in the two books set just the right tone. De-emphasising magic and youth, emphasising instead the variety and mutability of demons, and the bigger world of business and the outside world of the Buffyverse. But still with added humour.
-
-
Robert Saint John
United States
Cleveland
Ohio
-
It's a crime that this is so rare, and so expensive. DCotI is a beautiful book, a solid system and a real tribute to the setting. The only negatives are the fact that no supplements were ever released and (as a result), a bit too much focus on the "prequel" period and a limit to the types of characters one can play. Still, a fine licensed game that deserves its reputation beyond the fact that it's rare.
-
-
Andrea Angiolino
Italy
Rome
European Union
-
I can not say how good the game is, being one of the two authors. But we worked pretty hard on it. It belongs to a collection of one RPG and two boardgames, all compatible. A sign of not-so-badness is that we had to invent a map of Dragonball's world since none existed, for the board of our first boardgame, and now that board is on some fan site to show the geography of the manga/anime.
-
-
Andrea Angiolino
Italy
Rome
European Union
-
This is one of the most successful Italian RPGs, on a very famous Italian comic.
-
-
Andrea Angiolino
Italy
Rome
European Union
-
Very successful Italian RPG based on the comic and cartoon hero Ken the Great Bear Fist, of the Japanese manga series Fist of the North Star. A reprint even went to newspaperkiosks with the VHS collection of the cartoon.
-
-
William Hostman
United States
Eagle River
Alaska
Gaming in Greater Anchorage area, Alaska since 1978. Looking for Indy-willing RPG players in Eagle River (or willing to drive to Eagle River). Geekmail me if interested.
Yes, this really is what I looked like when I uploaded that avatar. Not that it's quite current anymore.
-
First off: I'm not a fan of the Palladium mechanics. But the attention to details especially the Reconstruction era, makes this worth playing.
It meshes with both the video and the McKinney novels.
Note that it goes beyond the sources, and really makes the game playable. If you can cope with the Palladium mechanics, it's great.
The art is top notch, the data some of the best available.
-
-
Lowell Francis
United States
South Bend
Indiana
-
I know some people didn't like it at the time, but we played quite a bit of DC Heroes. Most of our group had played Superhero 2044, Villains & Vigilantes (Boxed Set), and Champions: The Super Role-Playing Game. However DC Heroes gave us a faster system and really made it easy to simulate the high powered adventures. It that respect, I always thought that it did the material justice, managing to have the system echo the nature of the setting-- with scaling power levels. Most of us returned to Champions after the couple of years we used this, but I still have fond memories of it and the sourcebooks. For example Magic was an excellent resources for the DC Universe, as were some other supplements, often working from notes given by the original writer-creators.
-
-
Matt Sturm
United States
Ann Arbor
Michigan
-
WAY different from Top Secret and other concurrent spy-genre games, James Bond 007 was tailored to the globe-hopping, set-piece style of storytelling unique to the 007 franchise. It featured a great, streamlined system that captured the style of the films very well and put forth some new and durable mechanics to boot. The chase system wherein the GM and players bid difficulty ratings against one another created loads of dramatic tension and made that portion of the game feel very cinematic. The "Hero Point" system made sure the good guys usually came out on top by letting you spend one or more points to fudge a die roll at a critical moment, but only if you had earned them by engaging in Bond-like heroics earlier in the game. Even if you knew the movies, adventures based on them always featured some twist that took you by surprise yet felt appropriate to the source material, no small feat considering the weight of the license. My fave RPG of all time.
-
-
Lowell Francis
United States
South Bend
Indiana
-
I was very excited when this came out. It was around the time that Chaosium decided to change their direction slightly, handing off RuneQuest to Avalon Hill. They produced a number of licensed games around this time IIRC Stormbringer (1st Edition, Boxed Set) a couple years before, Hawkmoon a little after, and Elfquest. We had high hopes for the system. And it was pretty interesting-- a nicely elaborate for the Basic Role-Playing System they used a Chaosium, with a new mechanic for skill categories that feed into one another that I still like.
We enjoyed what we read and if you were a Niven or just Ringworld fan it was a great resource. However, once we got playing we realized the setting wasn't as interesting to us to "play" in as read about. Great design, amazing graphics and layout and a rich set of resources for anyone who likes Niven quite a bit.
-
-
Dan Owsen
United States
Redmond
Washington
-
I enjoyed the early stories in the series and always thought this would be a good campaign setting. Would also lend itself to round-robin style DMing, much like the stories where authors shared the characters. The original box was pretty cool, with the map of Sanctuary being usable in almost any campaign setting. The newer Green Ronin materials were also pretty good, but this box has a more nostalgic place in my RPG heart.
-
-
 -
The material of this series makes the lord of the ring even better
-
-
Brian Franzman
United States
Tacoma
Washington
-
Love it or hate it, this is one of the games that really started the indie RPG trend. An RPG with no dice?
 Well, it certainly captured the feel of the Zelazny novels, and there are still die-hard fans that run Amber conventions around the country to this day.
-
-
Pete
United Kingdom
Oxford
Oxfordshire
Brofist
I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox
-
A gem of a game that captures the decadent, cavalier, and sardonic tone of the later Dying Earth novels from Vance.
The core rulebook and the supplements are a joy to read.
-
-
David Reed
United States
College Station
Texas
-
When I think of a game that evokes the atmosphere of the licensed source material, Call of Cthulhu is the first thing that comes to mind. I have played and/or run in campaigns of many of the games on this list, and, yes, many of them do an excellent job of presenting the setting and bringing the players into that world, but, for my money, none of them has done it as completely and totally as Call of Cthulhu.
This is not to say that the game can be goofed up by a bad keeper and stray out of the Lovecraftian setting - it can. Just like any other role player game, the person running the session can make or break the game. But, with a good keeper, Call of Cthulhu comes closer to immersing the players in the lore of the licensed source material than any other game I have been involved with.
-
-
Jamie Herbert
United States
Cedar Rapids
Ia
-
This list is not complete without this one! coming in at 500 pages, and as the game that financially killed guardians of order effectively, This is still one of the greatest license games ever built. a ton of source material, and heavily modifying d20, to make it less "Tolkien with the serial numbers shaved off" and more the medieval gritty of Martin's fabulous works. I own both this and the new Song of Ice and fire RPG set in the same universe by green ronin, and while it is good, it's more about the new system they devised, (which is good) but less about showing you the wonders of the world of Westeros. It's only a shame that Guardians did go out of buisness after this behemoth was released.
-
-
Jamie Herbert
United States
Cedar Rapids
Ia
-
While I am not as ferverent about this one it did a great job of making a viable RPG from a great sci fi series. playing in an alternate universe where your PC's screwed the pooch and put the small rouge one some million lightyears from Earth, with an ai with an IQ of 6000 (roughly equivelant to 12,000 P.E.teachers) the rules light system allowed for just enough comedy, and a bit of action to make it work for the genre.
-
-
|
|
|
