Roll-a-Genre

I was watching Father Ted and for some reason, I started thinking about what parts you could use in a game (Burping Sheep?). This got me thinking about TV shows in general and more out of boredom than anything else, I decided to pick my twenty favourite(ish) Books, Movies and Television shows; group them into three lists; roll once on each chart and hit puree to see what I came up with.

Random Roll: 13-20-5

•Time Bandits, Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, Freakazoid

When earth is destroyed in a freak accident involving the CERN Collider and a foil-wrapped potato in the staff microwave, the few survivors (the PC party) are bathed in strange radiation and gain bizarre cosmic powers. Soon after, they are recruited by an ancient civilization known only as the Mentaloids and trained to become members of the Galactic Secret Security Service (The SSS). But the evil Warlord Zho has used the Bridge of Time to go back in time to learn how Earth was destroyed so he can use the knowledge to build the Ultimate Thing and conquer the universe!

Random Roll: 7-19-1

•Silverado, Beowulf, Transformers

On a frontier planet menaced by an alien threat known only as the Grendel, the party discovered the ruins of an ancient vessel. Inside are a group of giant robots that they can use to fight back!

Random Roll: 15-16-7

•The Day the Earth Stood Still, Conan, Red Dwarf

It has been ten years since the Emperor Klaatu came down from the heavens in his silver star-ship and with his men of metal conquered the known worlds. The last of the free people are a few small mobile barbarian tribes lurking at the fringes but the Mad Emperor has turned his metal armies on them and they to were soon facing domination, until the day the PC party too arrived from the stars with the promise of freedom. It’s too bad they only came down because they were running low on beer, but are you going to tell the nice men with the big axes that?

Random Roll: 10, 11, 19

•My Neighbour Totoro, At the Mountains of Madness, Max Headroom

In the near future the environment is ruined by global warming and most people spend their time online in a VR environment known in street slang as the Headroom. Lately, a new form of avatar, that appears in the form of giant, cuddly creature has been seen by people in the Headroom. At the same time, people have been mysteriously disappearing. Does the party dare risk their sanity by following the giant creature into a part of the Headroom that was not created by humans?

MOVIES	BOOKS	TELEVISION
1          Monster Squad 2          The Godfather 3          Ghostbusters 4          Raiders of the Lost Arc 5          Tron 6          The Black Hole 7          Blazing Saddles/Silverado 8          The Seven Samurai 9          Mystery Men 10        My Neighbour Totoro 11        Mad Max 12        Clash of the Titans/300 13        Back to the Future/Time Bandits 14        Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 15        The Day the Earth Stood Still 16        Rocky Horror Picture Show 17        Big Trouble in Little China 18        Buckaroo Banzai 19        This is Spinal Tap 20        Godzilla	1          Calvin and Hobbes,       by Bill Watterson 2          The Arabian Nights 3          The Hunger Games,        by Suzanne Collins 4          The Jungle Book,        by Rudyard Kipling 5          The Gaea Trilogy,        by John Varley 6          I, Claudius,        by Robert Graves 7          The Chronicles of Master Li and Number-Ten Ox,        by Barry Hughart 8          The Dying Earth,        by Jack Vance 9        Villains by Necessity        by Eve Forward 10        John Carter of Mars,        by E.R. Burroughs 11        At the Mountains of Madness,        by H.P. Lovecraft 12        Musashi,        by Eiji Yoshikawa 13        Peter Pan,        by J.M. Barrie 14        Where the Wild Things Are,        by Maurice Sendak 15        Conan,        by Robert E. Howard 16        Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,        by Jules Verne 17        Neuromancer,        by William Gibson 18        Watership Down,       by Richard Adams 19        Beowulf 20        Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,         by Douglas Adams	1          Transformers (I wanted something with big robots) 2          Baian the Assassin (Ken Watanabe series about an acupuncturist/assassin) 3          Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes 4          Invader Zim 5          Freakazoid (goofy animated series about an insane superhero) 6          Father Ted (Irish sitcom about priests on a remote island) 7          Red Dwarf (The adventures of the last earthling, his cat, his dead roommate and a neurotic robot) 8          Sons of Anarchy/Breaking Bad 9          Mad Men (the sixties will never die!) 10        Community (genre bending comedy at its best) 11        The Sandbaggers (a gritty British spy show) 12        The Mighty Boosh (surreal comedy with dream-like logic) 13        Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (probably closer to most people’s games than they’d like to admit) 14        The A-Team/GI Joe Renegades (framed for a crime they didn’t commit they go in the run, yadda yadda yadda) 15        The Pirates of Black Water (cartoon about pirates on an alien world) 16        Blake’s 7/Farscape (escaped criminals on the run from an Evil Space Empire!) 17        The Walking Dead 18        Robin of Sherwood (my favourite take on Robin Hood) 19        Max Headroom (the first cyberpunk show) 20        The Muppet Show

Seriously, if you can ever track down a version of  Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace I can't recommend it enough. You'll never look at your PC party the same way again.