Books You'd Love To See Adapted Into CRPG's

[Storyfag]

Niven's Known Space

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I don't want to see any literary work adapted into a computer role-playing game, as the narrative thrust of a short story or novel is directly at odds with the ludic requirements of a CRPG. However, I would like CRPG developers to take inspiration directly from classic fantasy literature, rather than their current state of being filtered through D&D and other table-top RPGs, then passing through older CRPGs, and finally influencing recent CRPGs third-hand via their influence on an influence of a influence.


H. Rider Haggard- King Solomon’s Mines, She

William Morris- The Well at the World’s End

W.H. Hodgson- The House on the Borderland, The Night Land

Lord Dunsany- Various short story collections

Abraham Merritt- “The People of the Pit”, The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, Creep Shadow Creep

Eric Rücker Eddison- The Worm Ouroboros

H.P. Lovecraft- Various stories

Robert E. Howard- Conan the Cimmerian stories, Solomon Kane stories

Clark Ashton Smith- Various stories

J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Fritz Leiber- Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories

Mervyn Peake- Titus Groan, Gormenghast

Jack Vance- The Dying Earth stories, Lyonesse trilogy

Poul Anderson- Three Hearts and Three Lions, The Broken Sword

Michael Moorcock- Elric stories

Roger Zelazny- Lord of Light, original Amber novels, Dilvish stories

Gene Wolfe- Book of the New Sun

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Brace yourselves, I'm definitely not as well-read as many of you, but I think I have some good shit:

Richard Matheson's 'I Am Legend':

This is the quintessential modern vampire/zombie apocalypse story. Just like in a RPG, Robert Neville goes from nobody to nightmare (in the eyes of real fuckin vampires). He starts out as an average factory worker and a veteran, but through necessity he becomes his own doctor, dentist, mechanic, and vampire biologist/exterminator. Every night he has to hold on for dear life to his sanity and sleep as people he knew taunt him and proposition him for sex to come out and be sucked dry (double entendres intended) at least until he sound-proofs his house/survivalist bunker. Each day is a hunt for resources and vampires to stake as well as checking for and repairing damage to his bunker. He also heads to the library and learns skills like a BOSS!

The game would obviously be a real-time survival horror RPG. Progression would focus on knowledge, survival skills, and bunker building. You have no chance in combat. Getting stuck outside dusk will take running/driving and clever use of the environment to have a chance of getting to safety. The goal of the game is to kill as many vamps as possible and confront your death at the hands of the new vampire society with a reputation score of 'Legend'.

Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain':

I had to read this in high school, but it is an awesome story set during the American Civil War. The protagonist, Inman, is a Confederate defector escaped from a filthy hospital after having his neck torn open in combat. He just wants to get home and see if the woman he loves is still alive and available still. Along the way he has to contend with bounty hunters and Confederate defector death squads trying to kill him. The relevance to RPGs comes in the fucking awesome historical (but impractical in actual history) weapons he comes across and uses to satisfying effect, including a big ass revolver with a shotgun barrel secondary fire and a scoped sniper rifle (in one fight he also wields a scythe!). My book report was on interesting weapons and equipment carried by soldiers during the war and those used in the book. To some up, the book has a badass protagonist, interesting non-combat encounters, absolutely nightmarish pursuing antagonists, and cool loot! Make it turn-based, and give the CRPG some stealth elements. For some survival/psychological horror flavor, see Stephen Crane's 'The Red Badge of Courage'.

L Frank Baum's 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz':

I know there was already a pretty godawful NDS RPG based on this, but I can't stress enough just how surprisingly awesome the original story was. For one thing, the book has the concept of the adventuring party in a fantasy land long before Tolkein (though 'Journey to the West' is even older and does have an average-playing Final Fantasy Tactics clone https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/480705-saiyuki-journey-west/reviews ). The characters are seeking to improve themselves within society (not to become "stronger"), or in Dorothy's case she is just trying to get home. Very few of OZ's inhabitants are outright good or evil (in the book, the "Wizard" also conned everyone into wearing green-tinted googles for a BS reason to make them think the Emerald City is actual Emerald in color).

Anywho, I just think this is a pretty interesting world that CRPG quests could be set in. The original story wasn't some ordinary saccharine childrens' affair either. More like a classic fairytale, there is violence present just as in the real world (the tinman, who is really a ship of Theseus made out of body horror, decapitates fuckin tiger-headed bears and other unlucky denizens in the party's way), so the world does not thematically hinder story possibilities. Imagine a cynical and sometimes bizarre world in a QfG type adventure CRPG... with lots of axe-murder...

H G Well's 'War of the Worlds' and 'The Time Machine':

WotW would be a fun game to try and survive in. Plus, there could be strategic battles where the military can actually fight back and win against the tri-pods, which are simply really fast compared to the artillery units at the time and far better armed rather than armored or energy shielded. The progression system has to do with the enemies becoming weaker as they begin to get sick rather than your humans becoming legendary heroes. Nonetheless, the military become more effective, and the challenges your civilian refugees face as the aliens get sicker and more unpredictable would change the longer you play.

The time machine would be fun with an exploring party of experts going to different times to explore the fantasticly altered world and help people along the way.

I'm not sure if Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot' stories' world would work for a CRPG, but I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Last book I can think of right now is Austin Grossman's 'Soon I Will Be Invincible':

It's a funny cynical take on super heroes and villains with warped takes on the JLA (Catman, the Batman expy, gets his standoffish and analytical behavior from having autism!), and corny old comic book superhero plots happen, but the book's universe takes them seriously when not lampooning them in-universe! It's a vey fun relatively short read, and I would love to play an aspiring super hero or villain in that verse!

 

[Strange Fellow]

I don't want to see any literary work adapted into a computer role-playing game, as the narrative thrust of a short story or novel is directly at odds with the ludic requirements of a CRPG.

Then again, Betrayal at Krondor is good.
Anyway, if Divinity Original Sin had ripped off Terry Pratchett with some success it could have been something really special, without sacrificing the humour that Swen seems to love so. So that would be my pick for something vaguely realistic. Not that Larian would have been successful in a million years

 

[Life of the Party]

Clark Ashton Smith

Beneath the skies of Saturn, pale and many-mooned,
Her palace is;
Her wyvern-warded spires of celadon, enruned
With names benign and mightier names of malefice,
Illume with saffron phares
A marish by the black, lethargic seas lagooned;
Her dragon-holden stairs
Go down in coiling jet and gold on some unplumbed abyss.

Long as a leaping flame, exalted over ail,
Across the sun
Her banners bear Aidennic blooms armorial
And beasts infernal on a field of ciclaton;
Amid her agate courts,
Like to a demon ichor, towering proud and tall,
A scarlet fountain spurts,
To fall upon parterres of dwale and deathly hebenon.

From out her amber windows, gazing languidly
On a weird land
Where conium and cannabis and upas-tree
Seem wrought in verdigris against the copper sand,
She sees and sees again
A trailing salt like leprous dragons from the sea
Far-crawled upon the fen;
And foam of monster-cloven gulfs beyond a fallow strand.

Or, looking from her turrets to the south and north,
She notes the gleam
Of molied mountains and of rivers pouring forth,
Clear as the dawn, to fail in fulvous rill and stream
The widening waste amid;
Or swell the fallen meres, abominable, swarth,
In green mirages hid,
To be the unquested grails of bell, of death and deathful dream.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Swampy_Merkin]

CRPG set in an actual Plato's Republic.

 

[octavius]

Clark Ashton Smith

Beneath the skies of Saturn, pale and many-mooned,
Her palace is;
Her wyvern-warded spires of celadon, enruned
With names benign and mightier names of malefice,
Illume with saffron phares
A marish by the black, lethargic seas lagooned;
Her dragon-holden stairs
Go down in coiling jet and gold on some unplumbed abyss.

Long as a leaping flame, exalted over ail,
Across the sun
Her banners bear Aidennic blooms armorial
And beasts infernal on a field of ciclaton;
Amid her agate courts,
Like to a demon ichor, towering proud and tall,
A scarlet fountain spurts,
To fall upon parterres of dwale and deathly hebenon.

From out her amber windows, gazing languidly
On a weird land
Where conium and cannabis and upas-tree
Seem wrought in verdigris against the copper sand,
She sees and sees again
A trailing salt like leprous dragons from the sea
Far-crawled upon the fen;
And foam of monster-cloven gulfs beyond a fallow strand.

Or, looking from her turrets to the south and north,
She notes the gleam
Of molied mountains and of rivers pouring forth,
Clear as the dawn, to fail in fulvous rill and stream
The widening waste amid;
Or swell the fallen meres, abominable, swarth,
In green mirages hid,
To be the unquested grails of bell, of death and deathful dream.

Clark Ashton Smith this, Clark Ashton Smith that. Give me 2000 years and a thesaurus and I will kick his arse.

 

[Life of the Party]

Clark Ashton Smith this, Clark Ashton Smith that. Give me near-photographic memory and a thesaurus and I will kick his arse.

None other saw them when they came
Across the many-clangored mart,
But in mine eyes and in my heart
They passed as might the pillared flame
Of lightning loosened on the tombs,
Or errant suns that wander by
To dawn on the Cimmerii.

Great monarchs, proud and cypress-tall,
With zones and crowns of argentry,
They were, who proffered royally
Full urns of pulsing gems to all:—
The blood-warm gems of lunar wombs,
Pale ores, and opals pavonine,
And beryls like to leopards' eyne.

Their eyes were lit with alien day,
Were filled of alien worlds; their feet
With starry splendors paved the street,
And silver dust of some bright way
Fell from their garments, with perfumes
More strange than breath of vernal gales
From Saturn's moly-cinctured vales.

What embassy were they, from suns
Of Algebar or Capricorn—
From planets of remoter morn
In flaming fields where Taurus runs—
Or haplycome, immediate,
From out a four-dimensioned world
Within the occlusive ether furled?

They strode upon the swooning pave,
They towered by the trembling spires,
Tall as apocalyptic fires
Above the peoples of the grave:
But, sightless and inveterate,
To Mammon vowed, the throng went by,
Charneled beneath an iron sky.

Yea, blinder than the steel and stone,
Men took not from their proffered store
One gift of all the gifts they bore,
But sued for gold to gods foreknown.
I, too, bemused, inebriate,
Amort with splendor, could but stand
And see them pass, with empty hand.

 

[Arctrax]

4. The Adventures of Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte. In comparison with the above mentioned three, this one might be a tad difficult to pull off because of copyright issues, but I for sure would love to play as a 17th century Spanish mercenary who was "a swordsman for those people who did not have the skills or the courage to be".

A good RPG with the Captain would be awesome.... what a fucking dream would that be

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

OH HFS! It was late. I forgot the book series that I first thought of when I began reading this thread. One of favorite action/sci-fi series of recent times are the Jonathan Maberry 'Joe Ledger Novel's. Take one part mouthy Baltimore detective, an awesome secret agency, great villains, well-written plot twists and secondary characters, and some nice homework about stuff in the real world that informs the plots to sweeten the deal. The final products are modern pulp-action hero novels with flare, genuinely funny character commentary, and signature detailed combat descriptions in man vs man/wtf is that?!!? fights. You definitely want to start with the first book, 'Patient Zero', a unique take on a zombie outbreak. From what I have read about JA2, a mod of that game would do nicely for the squad combat.

 

[Life of the Party]

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

 

[sparrowking]

The Man who was Thursday.

 

[Life of the Party]

In Lemuria

Rememberest thou? Enormous gongs of stone
Were stricken, and the storming trumpeteers
Acclaimed my deed to answering tides of spears,
And spoke the names of monsters overthrown—
Griffins whose angry gold, and fervid store
Of sapphires wrenched from marble-plungèd mines—
Carnelians, opals, agates, almandines,
I brought to thee some scarlet eve of yore.

In the wide fane that shrined thee Venus-wise,
The fallen clamors died... I heard the tune
Of tiny bells of pearl and melanite,
Hung at thy knees, and arms of dreamt delight;
And placed my wealth before thy fabled eyes,
Pallid and pure as jaspers from the moon.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Sometimes when it's showing up in my alerts, I read the title of this thread "Boobs You'd Love To See Adapted Into CRPG's".

I don't know what I was thinking.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I would like CRPG developers to take inspiration directly from classic fantasy literature,
...
J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Orcs and elves might work in a rpg, at least it'd be something new.

 

[octavius]

Very limited us of magic might be something old, though.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I would like CRPG developers to take inspiration directly from classic fantasy literature,
...
J.R.R. Tolkien- The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Orcs and elves might work in a rpg, at least it'd be something new.

Even for Tolkien, despite numerous CRPGs based on his books, none of them have been worthwhile, and they largely fail to capture the spirit of his fantasy epic.

At any rate, I'd like to see CRPG developers use first-hand knowledge of classic fantasy literature to create something new from a mixture of authors, as was done with Dungeons & Dragons, rather than base their games on increasingly remote imitations.

 

[Sacred82]

A LotR RPG set in a phase of the Third Age where the world is largely peaceful would be great. Creatures of darkness exist, but mostly in the deep places. On the surface of things, all seems mostly well.

 

[Spectacle]

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It features a cybeepunkish North America split into tons of corporate microstates, with no real centralised law enforcement, which would make it a great place for your typical murderhobo adventurers. That usually doesn't fit so well in a modern era game.

 

[Wysardry]

I'm a little surprised that nobody has suggested The Stand by Stephen King, considering how many Fallout fans there are here.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Age of Decadence was a great CYOA book, can't wait for the crpg adaptation.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[ManaJunkie]

Alastair Reynolds - Revelation space
Crpg takes place in the rust belt and on resurgam...100 years later

 

[Life of the Party]

Longer ago than Eden's oldest morn,
Ere beast or man was born,
I chose for mine
The love whereto some ancient evil clings,
With sombre spectra barring still the wings
That wear the irised flame of suns divine—
The love whereto some ancient evil clings.

Down all the planet-paven ways of time,
Lengthening from the prime
A shadow falls—
A thing that climbs the pharos-guarded gates,
Or by the wizard's dying brazier waits,
Or lairs amid the many tapered halls—
A thing that climbs the pharos-guarded gates.

Have we not known, O witch, O queen, O maid,
The stain that creeps unstayed
In love's alloy?
The fretful moth that frays the bed of lust?
The wingless and unweariable disgust
That overtakes the philtre-goaded joy—
The fretful moth that frays the bed of lust?

Though proud as gardened Babylon our bliss,
Mortal corruption is
The seed self-sown
Amid the rampant flowers and the founts....
The laughter of some blind eidolon mounts
Where the self-deluded mourner sobs alone
Amid the ruined flowers and the founts.

Dark loves of all the vanished avatars,
What candor-heated stars,
What crimson hells,
Consumed us long ago but cleansed us not,
Nor could absolve us of the sombre blot!
Yea, all the Moloch-hearted suns and hells
Consumed us long ago but cleansed us not!

Where limbos of unfathomed ice immure,
Shall yet we couch secure
Our sundered day?
What sea wherein the unshapen planets sleep
Shall make us one in its potential deep—
Washing the lethal dross of self away—
What sea wherein the unshapen planets sleep?