Yo im new. Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is my favorite science fiction series in the world. Its my favorite series in general in the world. Iv'e read every douglas adams book. watched the shortlived tv series, etc. His text adventure is fantastic.

I've messed around with gamemaking in the past. I know the general basics. Iv'e screwed around with a simple BASIC like coding software. But coding is SO boring. A pen and paper Hitchhikers universe would be sweet because its so big, yet so connected. It would be super fun to put Douglas Adam's bizzare laws of physics down on paper. It would be sweet to document all the creatures, objects, and places from the books. But then it would be even more fun to make up more. Each player could have his own copy of the "encyclopedia", their character handbook.

Iv'e never participated in a pen and paper RPG session, and Iv'e never GMd. None of my friends have ever been the type. But I could convince them...

If there are any folks out there who would be down for working on this, that would be pretty sweet. That be all.

Just a random game concept, Infinite Improbability drive: In hitchhikers, there are these fields called, improbablity fields. They pretty much just make improbable things happen.
The ship, the heart of gold,is run by the infinite improbability drive. You plug in the probability of any random occurrence and it happens. When it comes to game mechanics, the field could flip dice rolls. It could make the most unlikely outcomes likely and generate random creatures and objects, or polymorph stuff as well.

I was sure that I heard about one of the bigger roleplaying companies working on something like this...years ago.

A quick google search indicated a few vague threads about Steve Jackson Games dabbling with the Hitch-Hiker's oeuvre before getting quagmired in development hell.

There was also an independent game that has since been lost off the net, but some of the archives can still be found on the wayback machine.

I'd be interested in working on a hitch-hiker's style game, but sorry I've got too much happening at the moment, and a few people I'm already letting down due to overcommitment.

I've read the series; I've even read the original radio version.  I certainly wouldn't mind collaborating with you on your project.

Some initial ideas:

*Players start out as various "specialists" (sorry bastards) who do field work for the Hitchhiker's Guide.  Most of them get eaten by alien monsters, who then get eaten by even larger alien monsters.

*SEP Field Armor Mod - whenever you get shot, bitten, crapped on by a passing pigeon, etc. it becomes somebody else's problem.  If your infinite improbability drive is running, it becomes the problem of your nearest friend.

*Don't forget your towel - If you do, -1 to all rolls.

Basically, HGU is just a mean to put some concepts on the table and make them happen because all peoples think it's normal. The better example is the cow that want to be eaten, i think.

After, i fear the game will be like some Paranoïa : The rules of the universe seem to be strictly want the author want at the moment he want a situation. Then maybe define what type of gaming you want is a good idea to begin with.

I'm pumped with all this positive feedback.  However I'm starting to realize the immense time commitment a game like this will require. It would be really awesome to work on and complete, but I have a bad habit of not finishing projects I start. I'm slowly starting to learn how Pen and paper rpgs work. I fortunately have a beginner Dnd night at a local collectible store that I may start frequenting.

If I were to start this now, I would just focus on designing a hitchhikers physics, and applying these twists to an already well established system like d20 or GURPS. And then documenting some of the people, places, and things that are well known in the books.

DDurand wrote:
Basically, HGU is just a mean to put some concepts on the table and make them happen because all peoples think it's normal. The better example is the cow that want to be eaten, i think.

After, i fear the game will be like some Paranoïa : The rules of the universe seem to be strictly want the author want at the moment he want a situation. Then maybe define what type of gaming you want is a good idea to begin with.