Revisiting the What-show-do-you-want-to-run thread

[Norbert Matausch]

Hi all,
though I clicked the "New Topic" button, it's not, but I'm always interested in what other producers have in mind...

What shows do you want to run with PTA? What kind of shows do you like?

Yesterday, while reading the first novel for the umpteenth time, I thought running a Dream Park show could be kind of cool. And Magnum, P.I. And Catweazle...

[Chris Goodwin]

I would like to do Firefly or a show in the 'verse.

Jason and the Chrononauts seems pretty cool to me, as does Jokers Wild. 

I'm all the time having ideas. 

[Bret Gillan]

I'd really like to run/play in a show about space marines a la Aliens. Someday...

[John Harper]

My next PTA game will be set in the world of Shadowrun, and it will be fun. I just used "Shadowrun" and "fun" in the same sentence, non-ironically. Whoa.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Someday, with the right group of heartbroken mavericks:

The Star Wars prequels, done right. Ignore everything Lucas did after 1982, ignore all the comics and novels and videogames and RPG sourcebooks, and say, "All we know is what happened in Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. How did the galaxy get there? Let's find out."

I call dibs on playing whoever Luke's mother turns out to be, myself. (Another Jedi! Or a Sith!)

"Annakin, before we do this..."
"Yes?"
"....you should know: I'm pregnant."
"That doesn't change what I have to do."
"I know. But I had to tell you."
They ignite their light sabers and charge each other.

[Pôl Jackson]

My dream pitch?

Wizards of the Coast licenses the rights to "Keep on the Borderlands" for development as a TV show. But the show isn't about adventurers who kill monsters. It's about the people who live in the Keep, their lives and loves as they struggle to survive in a hostile frontier.

The show is entitled simply, "Borderlands". Writer: Joss Whedon.

Oh MAN, do I want to play this.

[Judd]

Henchmen

About the thugs who work for Joker, Two-Face and Poison Ivy in Gotham.

I'd play one who is just out of jail after being beaten into broken bones and a concussion by Batman, but now is back with his family, trying to keep on the straight and narrow.

The Wire meets Batman: The Animated Series with a touch of Oz.

All that said, a pitch I'm psyched about doesn't mean jack shit unless the table's collective eyes light up and when I've pitched this, they haven't and that is entirely cool.

[Chris Goodwin]

I tossed this one out on my LiveJournal sometime last year and got all kinds of comments. 

Series title:  Out of the Dungeon

25 years ago, a group of eight kids disappeared.  They'd been playing D&D and got sucked into their game world.  Sonds like a fairly typical "crossworlds fantasy" game.  Except the protagonists are not those kids. 

Even at a mystical level, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Someone had to come back for them to go.  That would be their player characters.  The protagonists are not them, either.

The protagonists are the children of those player characters.

The tone of the game is sort of teen drama in the face of the strange, a la Buffy and Smallville.  The protagonists are just trying to have a normal life, but their parents are weird as hell. 

[Twilight Jack]

I tossed this one out on my LiveJournal sometime last year and got all kinds of comments. 

Series title:  Out of the Dungeon

25 years ago, a group of eight kids disappeared.  They'd been playing D&D and got sucked into their game world.  Sonds like a fairly typical "crossworlds fantasy" game.  Except the protagonists are not those kids. 

Even at a mystical level, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Someone had to come back for them to go.  That would be their player characters.  The protagonists are not them, either.

The protagonists are the children of those player characters.

The tone of the game is sort of teen drama in the face of the strange, a la Buffy and Smallville.  The protagonists are just trying to have a normal life, but their parents are weird as hell. 

This is twistedly brilliant.

"Dad, will you please stop summoning fire elementals whenever I have a boy over?!?"

[John Harper]

Oh man, Chris, that is hot. Wow.

[Frank T]

Sydney, count me in. That so needs to be done. Do you think a Skype/Teamspeak game could be managed, given the time difference and all? I would humbly volunteer to play Obi-Wan as he should have been. (Who would have thought I'm still capable of getting excited about Star Wars?)

- Frank

[BlackSheep]

A thread on RPGnet a while back (Cowboy Gods) got me thinking about doing a short Western series set in a frontier town, with the young pantheon as a subtle supernatural element.

[Bret Gillan]

I'd actually like to get another chance with a premise that me and some friends brainstormed awhile ago - Boot Hill, a zombie apocalypse story set in the Old West.

Unfortunately, this awesome premise was aborted by player dislike of the PtA rules. :(

[DainXB]

Some how, some way, I want to run this...

CSI: Innsmouth

Cast ideas:

Detective Captain Robert Marsh
Issue:  Discover the whereabouts of his daughter, who joined a religious cult and ran away from home..

Night Shift CSI Supervisor Donald Gillman, toxicologist
Issue: Dedication to finding the truth, at any cost to his team.

CSI Gena Carter, forensic specialist
Issue:  Keep secret the fact that she has strange and sometimes prophetic visions.

CSI Herbert Waite, dive expert
Issue:  Resist (and conceal) the strange compulsion he feels to dive deeper and deeper...

Dr. Leonard Pickman, Medical Examiner
Issue:  Live down his obscure yet nasty family history.

I envision this as a darkly humorous take on the mythos. :)

--Dain

[Judd]

All of these sound cool but it is so much cooler when this shit comes together at the table.

Honestly, I hate to even suggest hard and fast cool ideas.  I like the snowball effect.

"How about something noir..."

"Noir but with a sci-fi twist..."

and it just builds steam until everyone has had a say in it and everyone's invested.