RPGaDay2024 Day 10 - An RPG You'd Like to See on TV

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My initial reaction to this question is that I've seen D&D brought to the screen a few times--and aside from mixed opinions on the old D&D cartoon, and a big win with the most recent movie, it's never been a great experience. Also, fantasy shows are approaching the "done to death" level of creation, having seen 30 years of them, and more if you count anime. So while I'm sure it could go well, what would it really bring to the table?

That means that the RPG on TV would have to be something that would be able to focus on the people, really get the theme, and be able to tell longer stories, all while doing something new.

Paranoia?

My immediate fun answer would be Paranoia. Throw together some likable people in red jumpsuits, put them in unwinnable situations, and kill them off George RR Martin style without any of the trauma you experience when a favorite character leaves the show. Maybe the show could go with a "who is the traitor this week" reveal (since they are all traitors all the time) but finding out could be a twist. I could certainly see it being like the Lucifer TV show. Technically that's a police procedural, but even after watching an episode, you're hard-pressed to remember the crimes, much less who did it; it's about the people and their stories.

The problem with this as a premise for Paranoia is that it would be really hard to pull off well. The creators and writers would have to  have a great angle for execution to avoid becoming a one-trick-pony show like Tru Calling. (In Tru Calling, Eliza Duskhu's character relived days from a given moment, which gave her an opportunity to stop a tragedy. While it sounded great, and I love Eliza Dushku, it ended up setting itself up so blatantly that I could only watch a few episodes before I gave it up.)

Call of Cthulhu?

There is so much paranormal teen romance in media that it's a major category of it's own; it's even an entire shelf unit at Barnes and Noble. But a lot of those are tied to well-known horror elements: vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc. The beauty of Call of Cthulhu is that the horrors are not expected, and often are the result of people looking too deeply into things that they shouldn't have. The problem with this is that I can't picture how to translate this to TV, at least in the form of a 2-5 season, 22 episode show. Unlike Paranoia, protagonists tend to meet a short, ugly end that involves an asylum or morgue.

If someone could figure out how to do this well, I'd be all over it.

Numenera

To be a successful show, there needs to be something new. This is where I think Numenera would really shine. As a reminder, Numenera is an RPG set a billion years in earth's future, and in that time, nine civilizations which are far more advanced than ours. The world that exists has humans at a low technology level--but also incorporate the detritus of all those advanced civilizations, and manage to thrive.

Shanna Germain's book The Poison Eater is a great story told in the background of this world. Characters carry around things that they hope will help them, they work with people who have figured out more, they run into problems that don't have linear (or even Euclidean) solutions--but manage to make due in the rules of the world they live in. Just the characters in this one story could begin a show, and as it expanded out, could make a whole multi-season story, easily.

There's also the MCG Kickstarter-funded short film, The Strand, which without spoilers shows a person who manages to make a living going through piles of junk looking for things that might have value to himself or others. I can see that character in a TV show as the "finder", who knows what to look for, and knows how to use what he finds.

The RPG of Numenera also speaks of a time where things like race, gender, religion and so on are uninteresting, which makes an opportunity for a very diverse cast, without resorting to the utopian ideals of the Star Trek universe. Tiny despots, conflicts with android, partial humanoids, sentient systems that have long since lost their original purpose all offer opportunities for "modern" conflicts.

Best of all, while Numenera is not a magical world, there's nothing in its low-tech science fantasy setting that limits its characters. They might very well pull out what was once a waste elimination module from a hyper toilet, and despite not knowing any of that, still throw it their enemies, as a 1 billion AD fireball that solves their problems.

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