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 Thirty One – We HAVE Had Multiple Donkey Upgrades At This Point
Taz suggests a solo hex-crawler about exploring & prospecting to supply a newly founded colony.
“We have to remake the world in order to save it” isn’t a situation that anyone wanted to get to, but once we found ourselves at that point, it’s understandable that the panicked re-making might not go 100% as planned. Now, hand me that update for equine bio-accumulation & oxygen transport, and we’ll see whether we can get your donkey feeling better.
A group of folks transformed into beasts of burden come up with a cunning scheme to get greedy knuckleheads to drag them, braying and kicking, into the locations they’re cursed not to be able to approach.
Brexitcast
Parliament of Northern Ireland
Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction
M.U.L.E.
Opium Wars
Torchbearer RPG
Man Plus, by Fredrick Pohl
Mad Magazine
Dead Space
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Earth Abides, by George R. Stewart
Yokohama Shopping Log / Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō
Geoengineering
Wall-E
Orbital Elevator
The Peace War & Marooned In Realtime, by Vernor Vinge
Dayworld, by Phillip Jose Farmer
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust
Pompeii
Thundarr The Barbarian
Thongor of Lemuria, by Lin Carter
( Oh Dear God, it’s one of a series. Craig, you are a monster for making me look this up ~ T. Jones )
Whangarei
Flatpack: Fix The Future
Numenera
Log Horizon
Red To Green: The Evolution Of A City’s Abandoned Acres
( Christchurch Suburbs being reclaimed by nature ~ T. Jones )
Apocalypse World
Masks
Diaspora, by Greg Egan
Sayer (podcast)
Paranoia (Wikipedia)
Paranoia (Mongoose Publishing)
Red Markets: A Game Of Economic Horror
Boston Dynamics Big Dog
( ‘Dynamics’, not ‘Robotics’ ~ T. Jones )
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
Feast Of Legends : Rise From The Deep Freeze
( Never thought I’d be show-noting The Wendy’s RPG ~ T. Jones )
Episode Thirteen – The President’s Earth Chakra Is Missing!