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Jul. 14th, 2003 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bryantSo this is an experiment.
I like genre-mashing. I also like drawing on the tropes of Western media to give genres a new spin. I also think the Game WISH is the bee’s knees.
Thus, I’m kicking out Monday Mashup as a writing exercise. The format is pretty simple: I’ll toss out a roleplaying game/setting and a piece of pop culture, and you write up a brief rendition of a possible campaign that incorporates ‘em both in whatever unhealthy form you prefer. If people dig it, I’ll keep going, and if not, I will continue to chortle about my weird ideas in privacy.
This week: the forensic scientists of CSI meet Greyhawk. Go!
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Date: 2003-07-14 07:31 am (UTC)I don't know if I have the time to do this officially this week, but I did have a very close analog to what you're talking about when I ran my classic Greyhawk game in high school.
I basically lifted the plot of Twin Peaks whole hog and transplanted it to a logging town west of Greyhawk.
The protagonist was the wizard who basically was the star of our campaign; these "Five Oaks" episodes were meant as solo games to play when we couldn't get the Company of the Wyvern together. A lot of fun, considering that the player didn't even ever watch Twin Peaks. A quick primer to explain how it all worked out, which will probably mean a lot for the folks who are fans of both Twin Peaks and Greyhawk: Tharizdun = the Black Lodge. Heh.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 08:00 am (UTC)Now, I don't actually watch CSI and I gave up Greyhawk for Krynn in about 1986, so I don't have much to add to this one specifically, but I do think it could be fun, especially for players that are more up on their D&D lore than I. A lot of the fun might be in the battling ingenuity of the GM and players in coming up with / puzzling out bizarre death scenes - Grimtooth-esque dungeon traps, elaborate spells, weird forensic foiling monsters (rust monsters, psionic attacks, etc. etc.)
It's one setting that would actually benefit from D&D's mechanistic sort of magic-as-technology vibe: this spell always works like this, this bizarre monster always does this, etc. And a given player's encyclopedic knowledge of the Monster Manual, usually so irritating, would be a natural and expected part of the game: I could easily imagine a case turning on the precise distinctions between Green Slime, Ochre Jelly, and Grey Ooze.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 08:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-14 08:57 am (UTC)However, Planescape's Sigil has always been my favorite urban setting. I was ::THIS CLOSE:: to co-GMing a Planescape game earlier this year with a buddy- it was going to be an amalgam of CSI, The Shield, Law and Order SVU, what have you... the PCs were going to be the Special Crimes Strike Team, all members of various factions, operating outside the juristiction of the usual law and order factions. I was really digging this setting for a cops n' robbers game because it helps level the playing magical playing field in many ways- didn't want the PCs relying on divinations to give them all the answers. Plus all of the possibilites for political intrigue in Planescape are fantastic...
Also, in the Planescape vein: mgrasso ran a really great Sigil murder mystery for our group a few years ago... Sensate prostitutes turning up dismembered, but with no blood or actual wounds on the body parts! It was a great scenario and a really clever use of magic as both a motive and as a murder weapon...
t.rev
Date: 2003-07-14 10:55 pm (UTC)What would you do about game-breaker spells like Detect *, True Seeing, and so on?