Have you ever wanted to get involved in running tabletop roleplaying games and thought “But I have no ideas!”? The Big Red Couch is designed to show exactly how easy it is to get from random notions that stick in your mind to playable concepts, all through the medium of the kind of casually weird spitballing that gamers engage in at the best of times. In every issue, the intrepid contributors to the Big Red Couch brave the noisome wonders of The Mystery Box to produce a randomly-selected seed idea, then return Some Time Later to share what they came up with and discuss how those concepts might work as games. If we can do it, anyone can: that’s the whole idea. Along the road, we discuss what RPG systems might work for implementing different concepts, together with reasons how or why. This frequently involves adaptation of systems from their original settings to the point where they creak under the strain.
https://hoarde.net/bigredcouch
Episode One Hundred And Twelve – Volcano Day
The tiny band of survivors are all that’s left of Humanity. They don’t have the right skills, or enough people, to rebuild, but they do have a time machine and the ability to pluck people out of history who’d otherwise have died in various disasters, and those people would have the skills.
Everyone in the past knew this sort of stuff, right?
And they’d be really grateful, and be happy to do what we said, wouldn’t they?
Volcanic activity caused by the gravity of a nearby body moves across the planet in a regular and predictable way, so a sufficiently daring crew could take advantage of that to run their heist when they know that everyone will have cleared out.
Of course, that does mean dealing with the eruption.
It’s one thing to find that you’re living in a simulation & try to step outside of it, to meet the entities who created you. What happens when you get access to the controls?
Explorers find the under-construction robotic invasion fleet which someday soon will wipe out Humanity.
Right now, it has no idea they’re there, but that’s going to change if they’re not very careful indeed.
The reason we’ve never found aliens is that humanity from an alternate timeline has been wiping them out to ‘protect’ us, whether we want them to or not. The trail of genocide is, apparently, for our own good.
Without money, the orphanage will close. The folks who should have solved the problem are in jail or on the run, so it’s up to a strange time-traveller and their companions to set things right.
Volcano
Polydactyl Cats
Helensville
Masks: A New Generation
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (rpg)
London is still sinking as it recovers from the Ice Age – Post-Glacial Rebound
Millennium, by John Varley
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Taking of Beverly Hills
Ken Wahl
Matt Frewer
Pompeii
Poor Knights Islands
Timeline, by Michael Crichton
Lemmings (game)
Krakatoa
Taupo Volcano
Elon Musk
Robert Heinlein
Auckland Volcanic Field
Rangitoto
Joe Versus the Volcano
Monkey Island (game series)
Kanamara Matsuri (“Festival of the Steel Phallus”)
( and now “Japanese Penis Festival” is in my search history ~ T. Jones )
Dragon Head (manga)
Cryovolcano
Enceladus
Titan
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Mummy Returns
Plan 9 from Outer Space
The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison
The “To The Stars” Trilogy, by Harry Harrison – Wheelworld is the second book
Fiasco (rpg)
Hard Rain
Twister
Dante’s Peak
Volcano
Morgan Freeman
Christian Slater
Pierce Brosnan
Tommy Lee Jones
La Brea Tar Pits
Big Red Couch Episode 110 – Good news, I have solved the Fermi Paradox. Bad news, I have solved the Fermi Paradox
Dark Conspiracy
Lester Smith
The Appendix
The Gutterskypes – Little Robots, Big World – “Magnificent Constructs”
( episodes 191, 192, 193, & 195 of The Gutter Skypes ~ T. Jones )
The Brave Little Toaster
The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars
( there was also The Brave Little Toaster To The Rescue ~ T. Jones )
There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury
WALL-E
Kuiper Belt
Von Neumann Machines
Astrochicken
Spider Robinson
Spider Jerusalem
Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis & Darick Robertson
Cepheus Engine (rpg)
Traveller (rpg)
Aftermath! (rpg)
3:16 – Carnage Among The Stars
Warhammer 40k (wikipedia link, because it’s kind of complicated)
“The Curse of Chalion” & “The Paladin of Souls“, by Lois McMaster Bujold
( Craig had the book wrong – the reference he was thinking of was in Paladin of Souls, not Curse of Chalion ~ T. Jones )
Paranoia (wikipedia link)
Genestealer
Star Trek (TOS) – Mirror, Mirror
Nelson Muntz
Chicxulub Crater
Big Red Couch Episode 111 – “We’re wearing fezzes, sunglasses, and it’s dark out. Hit It!”
It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To – Lesley Gore
The Blues Brothers
The 11th Doctor
Doctor Who Roleplaying Game
Fate Accelerated
Dan Ackroyd
Cinema Supercollider Episode 126: The Blues Brothers (1/2)
Cinema Supercollider Episode 127: The Blues Brothers (2/2)
Motown
Blues Brothers 2000
The 12th Doctor
Gen Con
The 5000 Fingers of Doctor T
Mr. T
Éclair
Choux Pastry
Gary Gygax