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 Forty Six – T’is A Pity She’s The Queen
A member of a high-level adventuring party becomes Royalty, and discovers that it’s made their life terrible.
The Kingdom is in deep trouble, the newly-crowned King & Queen are still teenagers, and the King is, at best, totally useless.
In the early hours after a long drinking session, a member of the Guard remarks that Queen would be a much better ruler, and a terrible plan forms.
When there’s a conspiracy against the King, but the King simply won’t believe it, it’s up to the Queen & her Guard to counter the threat to the Realm.
When the Queen takes an interest in the entirely fake Pagent of the Dead, and commissions a Command Performace to contact her beloved late husband, the very real supernatural entities running the show have a fine line to walk between exposure as frauds, and exposure as undead.
Mac has an awesome idea for how to do the ‘multiple iterations of the same team in the same time period’ time-travel game.
Episode One Hundred And Thirteen – Never Go Full-Force On An Éclair, Son
Episode One Hundred And Twelve – Volcano Day
The A Team
Hogan’s Heroes
Die Hard
Teenagers From Outer Space
https://mcnostril.tumblr.com/post/190703105756/author-sam-sykes-has-many-good-tweets-but-theseOnward
The Three Musketeers
Castle Falkenstein
The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power
The Cincinnati Privy Disaster of 1904
The Great Molasses Flood
For The Queen
Blades In The Dark
Anglican Church
Queen Victoria
Prince Albert
House of Hanover
House of Tudor
Brave
Fiasco
The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! / The Pirates! Band of Misfits
Shaun The Sheep
Ravenloft
Gumshoe
Warhammer 40k