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 Two – Song of the Old Gods: The Colour Out of Space Album
Craig keeps thinking of ideas he really doesn’t want to make a game of.
What happens when the worship band for a Cthulhu Cult get noticed by a producer & start to make it big?
What about when the band start to see that there’s a much bigger world out there, and want to move away from the cult that’s literally in their DNA?
What happens when your quaint & folksy chant to Dagon goes Platinum.
And they left off the portal-closing hymn because it didn’t fit the back-beat.
Nobody know who the band Song Of The Old Gods were, nor why they chose to release so few pressings of their Colour Out Of Space album. What we do know is that odd things happen when you play more than one copy at once, and someone out there is trying to collect them all.
The Color Out Of Space, by H.P. Lovecraft
Headless Body in Topless Bar (movie)
Vossoff and Nimmitz: Just a Couple of Idiots Reupholstering Space and Time, by Adam-Troy Castro
Glampire
Episode Twelve – Starbutt Magic-Horse And The Existential Vacuum Of Modern Acquaintance
Christchurch Mosque Attack
YouTube Video from NonCompete describing the idea of “the pyramid of violence” and “stochastic terrorism”.
Parihaka
New Zealand Wars
Featherston Prisoner of War Camp
Battle of Gate Pā
Worship Band / Church Band
EDM (Electronic Dance Music)
Guy Ritchie
Black Panther (movie)
Tomorrowland (festival)
The Shadow Over Innsmouth, by H.P. Lovecraft
The Shape Of Water
Walk Hard: The Dewy Cox Story
Soth (a long-form example of play)
The Fortune Cookie Incident – how to accidentally be huge racist.
Gloriavale Christian Community
Dogs In The Vinyard
Paul Simon
Cocteau Twins
Peter Gabriel
Gremlins
Mr. Vampire
Gremlins 2
Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
Cast A Deadly Spell
La Monte Young
John Cage
The Beatles (The White Album)
Weezer
Octarine
Klaatu (band)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
The Blood Drained Cows (apparently the “Gregg Turner And” part is descriptive, not the band name ~ T. Jones)
When People Were Shorter And Lived By The Water
Dearly Beheaded (the only thing I can find about this group from Manchester is in German. good luck. ~ T. Jones)
Cyber Way, by Alan Dean Foster
The Black Tapes (podcast)
The Black Tapes (wikipedia)
Episode One Hundred And Twenty One – It’s promotion time for the Royal Gardeners of the Emperor. Only one will advance.
Phil Tippet
Jurassic Park
The Trouble With Rose