TV series with ideas for GURPS

[CeeDub]

Originally Posted by scc

I think the worst problem with the entire Mad Max franchise is the problem of where the bad guys get their fuel from, the foundation of the series is that there is basically no more fuel in the world

I present to you... Mad Max: Out Of Gas

[Nexahs]

Originally Posted by pestigor

Steve Universe seems like a great place to have a semi-supers game.

This could be brilliant, but any of the gems would have point values well into the thousands. And how would you even begin to build a fusion ability?

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

I present to you... Mad Max: Out Of Gas

Heh. How very true.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I think you guys are taking the Mad Max franchise entirely too seriously, really.

It's not meant as an intellectual drama about survival and reconstruction of society in a post-nuclear holocaust setting.

It's a series of kick-butt action flicks that wholly operate on the Rule of Cool. To the extent it has any more intellectual depth than is required for a Rule of Cool kick-butt action flick is a bonus, because the lack of such depth is what one should expect.

There are action flicks which make some kind of sense, at least a fair amount of the time, in which the choices and actions taken, and their results, tend to make sense or at least are somewhat plausible.

There are other action flicks which frequently, persistently, and/or in crucial places show choices, actions, and results which would never happen for any established reason other than because that's what is shown in the film. Where in reality one would be certain of very different results, unless some divine miracle or paranormal phenomena or cosmic force (not explained in the film), or if crazy luck or comic-book logic or ignorance or apathy or deus ex machina hand-waves the outcome.

There are viewers who notice and whose suspension of disbelief and/or interest are ruined by the abandonment of sense-making. There are other viewers who are bored by realistic violence and those who embrace zany unrealistic action. And there are many who don't really notice or care.

Mad Max and The Road Warrior seem to me actually to stay remarkably self-consistent and be more or less (dare I use the word? yes) realistic, within the established alternate-world settings and situations. I very much appreciate the realism of the vehicular mayhem in those films, for those reasons. The action does a good job of showing what the given situation would be like. Practically everything happens the way it does for some reason that makes some degree of sense, and without super-human acrobatics.

In fact, I don't really care much for the other aspects of those films, except that the background seems to know it's just there to give a context to the violence, and it nicely stays almost entirely out of the way.

In Fury Road, the reason that most of the action happens the way it does, seems to be "because it's most extreme and visually exciting if it happens this way", and almost never "because if we have it make sense and be believable, it will be far more interesting and immersive".

Returning to the topic of this thread, I am inspired by Mad Max to want to play in a game that plays like Mad Max. In fact, I bought GURPS Autoduel wanting to do exactly that (whoops - I didn't know what I was in for with the Car Wars setting, but I tried). Mad Max also inspires me to play the Fallout games (which I then get sick of when I find out how much less realistic their combat system is than GURPS, as people shrug off multiple gunshot hits to the head and exchange hitpoints - groan). Mad Max of course also inspired me to watch Fury Road (groan again).

And again, Fury Road inspires me, almost, to play it out in GURPS realistic tactical combat, in which case, as I said before, I'm sure there would be people picking off drivers with guns, and the silly people climbing on the outside of cars would be falling off and accomplishing little. I like the idea of playing Fury Road in GURPS because of how it would tend to automatically illustrate everything wrong with Fury Road's action logic.

But I get that there are other players who don't care, such as a recent person somewhere suggesting that the way to resolve naval combat and pirate action in 0D&D would be to just give all the ships hit points and armor classes and resolve it like a land monster combat. Doesn't inspire me, except to want to play something else.

[CeeDub]

To contribute a little to the thread:

Lost Girl. While the setting is not terribly original, it is detailed enough to work as campaign backdrop, but not so set in stone as to make original content difficult. For example, the main characters are (as of the first season) not so central to the setting that everything revolves around them.

Defiance also has an interesting setting, with multiple races with distinct cultures and a schizo-tech post-apocalyptic world that allows for everything from political intrigue to treasure hunting.

[Fred Brackin]

The animated show Star Wars:Rebels currently on DisneyXD. It's a really clever example of how to put together a PC group and set adventures in the Star Wars universe without treading on any overly familiar ground.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Well yes, there was an invasion. It's hard to have a Nazi allegory without an occupying force...

However I was always under the impression that once their water tanks were topped off and the meat freezer full of tasty earthlings (human and non-human) they were headed back to the Homeworld.

The only reason they didn't was the damage the Resistance did to the mothership.
....

Like Nazis, the leaders of the invasion were racist and wanted to smash humanity but couldn't be overt. But the alien home command just wanted empire extension without inefficient nonsense aka war crimes.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by trooper6

My friends and I actually played a no-dice V RPG for years--so inspired we were by the show. It worked great! I'd certainly run it again in GURPS. Various posters have brought up different issues with the show...some of which aren't that big of a deal to me...for example, Visitors actually aren't cross-fertile with humans. The only way the Robin was able to become pregnant was because Diana (the chief science officer) did high-tech medical experimentation to make it happen. That pregnancy was the only one that occurred--and it wasn't a natural occurrence.
...

That merely lampshades the problem. It would still be orders of magnitude easier to crossbreed pond algae and a human than either with an extraterrestrial.
Besides, the girl hybrid was a messianic figure, so mere biological hindrances mattered not.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That merely lampshades the problem. It would still be orders of magnitude easier to crossbreed pond algae and a human than either with an extraterrestrial.
Besides, the girl hybrid was a messianic figure, so mere biological hindrances mattered not.

However, if players/GM can accept that messianic figures with supernatural powers can exist, I don't think the cross-breeding of Visitors with Humans through medical experiments would be a problem.

By extension, if one can accept messianic figures with supernatural powers, I think aliens whose motivation is to strip mine the planet of its resources (water/humans) with as little resistance as possible (hence the ruse and all the mind control) to bring back home to an empire that is at war with a larger and more dangerous foe (the humans being a resource both for food and canon fodder) should be too big of a problem either.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

I was just thinking today that Z Nation is very much a DFed Zombie Apocalyspe game with several campaign switches set to "not as important as DF makes it" (like ammo, rations, and equipment).

I will not entertain any suggestions that either of the two zombie shows have any 'new' ideas for t.v. let alone ideas for GURPS.

(Ill actually give one to walking dead everyone is infected and that's it, but you already had that in the comic book)

I suppose the other other zombie show (izombie) might be full of ideas though. I'm yet to see it.


Likewise none of the superhero shows have much of anything for GURPS that you can't find in the comic books or movies