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 Seventy One – It’s a Mad Max Utopia!
Be Our Guest? – Ever since the actual apocalypse, the Hosts at the Apocalypse World park really haven’t had a lot to do. Now that some Guests in dire need of help have arrived, a group of ‘wasteland marauders’ and ‘besieged remnants of civilization’ have to figure out how to bypass their own programmed scripts so that they can keep those Guests alive & get them to SOME kind of safety.
When The Wind In The Willows – Cute animals in their V8 Interceptors & War Rigs travel in search of a possibly mythical better place, with clean water and non-radioactive food.
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Max World! – With his last breath, Max pointed everyone at the utopia somewhere over the mountains. Now the race is on to get there & claim it.
NZ Parliamentary Protest
Freedom Convoy
Ram Ranch (song) (wikipedia)
Utopia (concept)
Sir Thomas More
Utopia, by Sir Thomas More
Mad Max Franchise
George Miller
Babe: Pig In The City
Happy Feet
The Lord Of The Rings
Episode One Hundred And Thirty Five – Things Are Going Down At Disney Town
Westworld (tv)
Westworld (movie)
Futureworld
Shōgunworld ( Craig called this Samuraiworld in the show, presumably based on the SW logo seen in an episode in season 2 ~ T. Jones )
Apocalypse World
Fallout Franchise
Jericho (tv)
Sawney Bean
Wanderhome
Journey Away (Kickstarter link, because it’s all I could find ~ T. Jones)
The Bicameral Mind
Fellowship (rpg)
Samurai Jack
Big Rock Candy Mountain
Hobo
Railroad Bull
After The Bomb
When The Wind Blows, by Raymond Briggs
The Wind In The Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
Grave Of The Fireflies
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Peter Rabbit (movie)
Zealandia
Mad Max Furry Road – image by Tumbler user Uncalar
Mad Max Muppets – image by DeviantArt user JoppaDoops
Wacky Races
Fiasco
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
A Boy And His Dog
Harlan Ellison
Misspent Youth
Snarfquest
Threads
The Hundred Acre Wood
TTRPGS for Trans Rights in Texas
Noirlandia
Space Train Space Heist
Jonathan Frakes Wants Your Attention, And You Must Not Give It To Him
Garfield ± You
Cruller
(Oh, and there’s a faint chance that Ben’s attempt at sporting humour at the start of the episode was something to do with Ricky Ponting, though they are Australian, a cricket coach, and proof that Ben is somehow in posession of negative knowledge about sports. Stick to your lane, will you? ~ T. Jones)