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 Twenty Six – Stranded
In which Ben goes back to a Big Red Couch standard notion of “something on a spaceship”, despite Craig having taken the approach of deliberately NOT doing something set on a spaceship.
Not only is the ship fractured, but so is the crew, so turned against each other that they can’t save themselves. If you can just get these knuckleheads to work together, or even just get the hell out of your way, they’ll be rescued, the salvage prize is yours, and you’ll be set for life.
The crew are glad that help has shown up, and are keen to be rescued, but for some reason they’re not keen on doing the very things that would make that happen; Why?
An arcade lined with shops is fine to walk through, or even to hang out in and enjoy a cup of coffee; What if you found that you couldn’t leave?
Maybe you fell through the cracks and can see the monsters lurking outside.
Maybe you shouldn’t have belligerently declared that you’ll never leave while arguing with the Fae Lord of the Strand.
Or maybe breaking in at night to steal the fantastic items in the shops was just a really bad idea.
People trapped in a dimension-hopping shopping arcade, trying to trade with the folks outside for the things they need, hoping to one day make it home.
In The City, you can have every basic need taken care of … So long as you have the chip installed in your head. Somewhere outside the city is a place where the unchipped can live freely, however they want, and all you have to do is get there.
Somehow.
Elmo (Sesame Street)
Elmo Putney (Brush Strokes)
Robinson Crusoe
Cast Away (Movie)
Bottle Episode
Doom Patrol (TV)
Doom Patrol (Comic)
Law of Salvage
Generation ship
System Shock
BioShock
Waiting For Godot
Mythopoeic
The Thing
Flotsam RPG ( Kickstarter link, because there’s a bunch of information there. Also a preorder link ~ T. Jones )
Apocalypse World (RPG)
Chris Grayling
Neverwhere
Midnight Nation
Queen Street, Auckland
GURPS Goblins (RPG)
The Fades (TV)
Changeling: The Dreaming
The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher
Walmart
Doctor Who
Are You Being Served?
Tales of the Floating Vagabond
Wraith: The Oblivion
The Simpsons
The Tracey Ullman Show
Karl Marx
Black Mirror
Late-Stage Capitalism
Joseph Stalin
Stalinism
Chernobyl (TV)
Invader Zim
Foodcourtia
Urchin (RPG)
Trantor
Coruscant
The Tripods, by John Christopher
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
Augmented Reality
Hostile Architecture
Logan’s Run
Hobo
Caste Structures
Stargate SG-1
Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus!
Infinity Train
Fringeworthy ( Tri Tac Games )
Sydney, Australia
Jacob’s Ladder
Birmingham New Street Station ( Yeah, Craig got the name wrong. It’s amazing he doesn’t get lost more often. ~ T. Jones )
P-Zombie
Iain M. Banks
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
AOL
Endless September
Shaper/Mechanist Universe, by Bruce Sterling
Pokémon
Winston Churchill
Isaac Asimov
Psychohistory
Shadowrun ( Catalyst Game Labs )
Shadowrun ( Wikipedia )
RPGnet Forums
Black Bug Room ( WARNING: TV Tropes Link – It may consume hours of your life ~ T. Jones )
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
Cutie Mark Crusaders
Annette Funicello
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Little Witch Academia
The Authority
Stormwatch
Jack Hawksmoor
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Van Allen Belt
Van Halen