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 Sixty One – Cognitive Dissidents
A transhuman detective story in which agents are compelled to pursue a number of subversive impulses floating around the network, and behaving in suspiciously familiar ways.
When a young mind is being shaped by a repressive environment, elements within struggle to survive and maintain a precious sense of identity.
Your crack team has a hijacked the protagonist’s nervous system, on the precipice of victory or disaster. It’s just a shame you had plans other than racing to save the world.
Kia Ora – A greeting in Māori, wishing good health.
Waikato Role-Playing Guild
(Football’s something something? ~ T. Jones )
Dissidents vs Dissonance
Critical Roll
Dimension 20
The Satanic Panic
Hamilton – Kirikiriroa
Waikato River
Hamilton Gardens
Transhumanism
Cyberpunk
“Transhumanism is how science will make the future better, cyber punk is how it won’t.”
Eclipse Phase – Transhumanity’s Fate
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Webcomic – Crimson Dark
TV – Loki
Roko’s Basilisk
Pascal’s Wager
Why it’s probably a terrible idea ~ T. Jones
RPG – Psi-Run
TV – Century City (2004)
Video Games series – Ace Attorney
TV – Star Cops (1987)
(Apparently it’s freely up on YouTube. An age of wonders, this truly is. ~ T. Jones)
Paris Catacombs – (Episode 5 is set in Rome – so these are probably not them. Also, it’s one of the questionably Italian ones. ~ T. Jones)
Film – Inside Out (2015)
RPG – Apocalypse World / Powered by the Apocalypse
Manga / Anime – Cells At Work
RPG – Misspent Youth
Film – Osmosis Jones (2001)
Gencon
PTSD
RPG Safety Tools
TV – Herman’s Head (1991)
RPG – Headspace
Grell – (They even look like a brain? ~ T. Jones)
Film – Fantastic Voyage (1966)
Film – Innerspace – (1987)
Video Game – Psychonauts
Tron Identity Disk
Olivia Wilde or Bruce Boxleitner
Ka Kite Anō – An informal farewell in Māori.