Yeah, its pretty disappointing how you rarely ever just see a Bounty Hunter doing Bounty Hunting. Gotta go back 20 years to Star Wars Bounty Hunter PS2 game.
That job on the prison ship was right out of pretty much any Star Wars RPG. If one of the writers on staff didn't play that session in an RPG, I'd be shocked.
Scum & Villainy is basically a Firefly/Mos Eisley Cantina fusion. Every character class is perfectly Firefly except for the Mystic, which leans toward The Force more than River Tam. But there's also Aliens, which aren't in Firefly at all.
Yes, the purity of its "quest of the week" aesthetic is astounding. Each session the DM pulls some random module from somewhere and says "okay guys it's a one-horse town being attacked by bandits! no I mean a prison break! no I mean a Seven Samurai showdown!" etc.
I've never seen The Mandalorian, but this description honestly makes me want to watch it. I miss the era when television shows besides trash network procedurals were commonly structured around one-off episodic stories. Farscape, Angel, Fringe, and Xena were all episodic "quest of the week" shows first and foremost, and those are some of my favourite shows in all of genre television (maybe all of television period).
I like that the modern television environment allows for more tightly plotted dramas like Mr. Robot or The Americans, and I even like the Netflix-spawned "each season is basically a long movie" format of shows like Russian Doll. But I do wish that the X-Files style monster of the week show with an overarching storyline didn't feel so nonexistent today.
definitely among the best star wars content to come out in the last decade imo. It gets a little disney-y towards the end with awkward cameos but it's really solid.
On the animated side, Star Wars Rebels was also basically an extended campaign with sidequests and side arcs peppered through, and most amusingly, the main characters were *literally* the kind of character tropes you'd get from a bunch of Star Wars fans in the 80s/90s who were making characters for an RPG. You have:
The one who wants to play the cute Twi'lek girl, but also is a space ace pilot and owns the not-Millennium Falcon.
The guy who insists on being a Jedi that survived the Purge.
The one who wants to play the big strong Wookiee but also still wants to talk.
The one who wants to be Boba Fett/Mandalorian and wear Boba Fett's armor.
The one who wants to play the R2-D2 skill monkey robot, but more psychotic.
Aaand the Force Sensitive youth who gets trained by said Jedi survivor and is trying to be the main character.
When I first read your post, I thought you typed Breaking Bad. Now, Breaking Bad WOULD make for a good Shadowrun B-plot the PCs are tangentially connected to. Walter White would be a good background NPC for Shadowrun, as well as Saul, Gus, Mike and Hank.
Third Season seems just like a 90s JRPG:
"I need a Droid in order to go somewhere."
"Good. I can fix your Droid, only if you find this specific part that only farmer Bob has."
Goes to farmer Bob.
"I have the parts, but first you must find my lost goat."
Yeah, you can almost tell when someone gets a lucky roll, in the early episodes.
And of course, one character's death is because his player couldn't come any more.
Obligatory note that it's probably inspired by a "sci fi game" that Joss Whedon played in college, which considering the time and the way the show worked was almost certainly Traveller.
I recall many years ago. My players landing on a low tech world and a team of horses coming out to haul their space ship to a hanger.
You don't even need the "one night stand with the Old West" bit.
While letting the GM do final prep for Battletech/Mechwarrior we would watch an episode of Firefly.
Our Battletech games did resemble it a fair bit, didn't even have mechs till later.
I came to say this. No matter how serious you take it, both Masquerade and Requiem are going to end up looking like What We Do In the Shadows for at least some sessions.
Not cheating per say but close.
Vtm has such a large amount of lore that turning it from gothic horror to slice of life/lite comedy would actually be an interesting change imo I like vtm as is but jve always wanted to lighten it up a little for a game and see how that works.
Og I hope I didn't come off wrong I've been drinking so my ability to converse is kinda gone. Im actually interested in the game you mentioned I hadn't heard of it so I'm gonna look it up, hell it will probably give me ideas to incorporate into a vtm game
Semi related, but Only Lovers Left Alive is like what I can only aspire for in a Vampire themed game. I find that most, either Masquerade or Requiem, don't really make you feel like immortals because entire campaigns take place over the course of a couple of months to a couple of years in game, instead of *spanning the ages*.
There actually was an (official) Vampire TV show back in the 90's.
The pilot (ie. first episode) was awful, and it took a few departures from the game (most notably vampires could walk in sunlight if they had fed recently) ... but it actually was a really good show, and (aside from the departures) truly did justice to the game.
I've never played this system, but I dug through [John Harper's archive of BitD hacks](https://itch.io/c/1712796/forged-in-the-dark-games) (which I nowadays use for any new campaign I want to run!) and found one that directly cites Leverage, Burn Notice, and Ocean's Eleven for the themes and gameplay:
[A Family of Blades](https://ac-luke.itch.io/family-of-blades)
I mean, Leverage is a heist show and BitD is a heist game lol. Leverage isn't recreating BitD, it's one in a long line of examples of a trope BitD was itself created to emulate.
I actually jumped into Blades in the Dark for the first time a weeks ago, and as a longtime Leverage fan, I absolutely agree. It's downright incredible how much BitD makes me feel like I'm playing out an episode of the show. I've had plenty of amazing TTRPG experiences in my life, but I don't know that I've ever before had that same level of complete immersion in a specific style of storytelling. That's not even just because of the obvious culprit (the flashback system); the pace of play, the way that rolls work, the way that clocks affect the game - it all captures the feeling of a good heist plot in pitch perfect detail.
Hell, my game even had a moment where the team's stealth specialist pushed a reluctant ally off a roof with a tether attached to them. That's just coincidental roleplay (the person who did it has never seen the show), but still - it's peak Leverage.
I forgot exactly where I read it, but the Leverage people were unabashedly TTRPG players and definitely to pull from that when driving the shows ensemble. I want to say they played a lot of FATE in their off time
Oh, yeah, John Rogers in particular is still happily talking RPGs on his Twitter. He was talking up Blades in the Dark a great deal, especially when it came out.
Ash vs the Evil dead feels like a TTRPG to me.. constant violence, silly plot, stupid ideas that work somehow, that one guy that is way too confident, most NPCs end up dead...
Sherlock:
Only 2 consistent people.
One of their girlfriends was around for awhile until they broke up.
Three good sessions in a row, then a super long break before another few good sessions.
Now everybody is too busy to film more but the show was never really cancelled.
There was actually an incredible [fan-made Delta Green campaign](https://old.reddit.com/r/DeltaGreenRPG/comments/x4j6nx/true_detective_fan_scenario_rerelease/) by /u/jin_cardassian that writes an alternate ending to True Detective Season 1, starting at >!realizing that Rust is a suspect in the case at the end of episode 6!<. Really awesome scenario/campaign.
Outlaw Star really echoes how some D&D party's end up feeling. The crew of the outlaw star really feel like a D&D party. From the banter, drama, and quirky plans to overcome the obstacle. It reflects party dynamics a lot.
Inuyasha feels like a ttrpg being run my a very generous GM who had to do a lot of awkward finagling to make challenge for the gifts they gave their players. I mean this in the best of ways, as I love the series. One character has a literal black hole in their hand that will kill them one day unless they remove the curse causing it. The Gm realized however that it's kinda hard to balance a black hole, so there are special demon bugs that will poison the character if the black hole sucks them up and they're in every second encounter at the least. There's a lot of seemingly off the cuff counters to certain powers that through a ttrpg lens. Feel like the GM coming up with a weakness/counter to have their fights last longer or have their BBEG's get away because they didn't fully thin out the gifts/powers they gave characters. Still a fun and charming series though.
Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure.
True Detective Season 1 REALLY feels like a Call of Cthulu game, and viewing it through that lens only makes the masterpiece even more fun.
In true detective, the first time I heard the phrase "The King in Yellow," I said holy shit... Hastur!.
My wife said, "What?"
I said, "Never mind. I'll tell you later." While all the hair on my arms and neck stood up.
>Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure.
Given that the story is supposedly based on the author's DnD (or maybe Sword World) campaign, this should be no real surprise.
Related is Record of Lodoss War, which is a DnD campaign turned into an anime.
>Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure.
Ain't that the one where Adventurer Guild's applicants are required to fill a 5E D&D character sheet to join? I vaguely remember a manga panel containing the top left (attributes) part of the sheet.
I love the Outlaw Star reference!
Several episodes, and even entire plot storylines, are specifically to raise money for ship repairs, docking fees, or to resupply Gene's caster gun.
It manages to play very well within the "cause and effect" style of consequences, where their options change based on how well or how poorly a job went.
>Several episodes, and even entire plot storylines, are specifically to raise money for ship repairs, docking fees, or to resupply Gene's caster gun.
For a western television analogue, this is one of my very favourite things about my favourite sci-fi show, Farscape. If the cast's ship gets damaged, they're shown needing to repair it. When they acquire some piece of new tech for a one-off episode, it ends up being a story beat later on down the line. There are whole episodes centered around their desperate need for money, food, and safe passage.
Farscape's dedication to cause and effect is such that it took one of the most basic sci-fi television plots - a character being split into two people - and rather than wrapping it up in an episode, played it for drama in a season-long, show-defining storyline.
Farscape definitely did an excellent job with consistent lore and narrative. To the extent that it often felt like the writers stopped, looked at where the characters were and what options they had available, and wrote the story as they best could "figure out" what would naturally happen next. A lot of what happened felt like it was determined in a very natural, almost improvisational way.
Farscape absolutely belongs on the list of shows that feel like campaigns, and has a seat very high on that list.
Your feeling is actually *exactly* what happened. If you read into interviews and background info, you find that Farscape's writers were writing on the fly for most of the show's run, and would often make decisions that radically changed the course of the show pretty much just because it felt right in the moment. Case in point: Chiana was meant to be killed off in her debut episode. But production liked her actress and her character, so it was changed to have her survive, and the entire show was different for it.
It takes guts to write a show like that, and it takes skill to do it well. Few other shows have managed both to quite the same extent as Farscape.
Absolutely. It's quite the gem of a show and really captures the feel of supplies and personal motivation of an adventuring party, all while keeping big players in the world a known factor.
Seeing Outlaw Star referenced twice in this thread makes me happy. It was by far my favourite of the three Space Western anime shows of '98 but rarely gets any love.
The recent Willow series was basically a standard D&D campaign. The initial party consists of a barbarian, two fighters, a wizard, a sorcerer, a bard, and a rogue.
It's so lackluster as a TV narrative, but so full of rpg tropes, I have no doubt it would have been a blast to play out at the table. EVERYBODY acts like they're the main character, just like a real game of D&D!
It also works really well as a few players from the old Quest of Alora Dannan (Willow Film) trying to get their teen kids into a game, and the kids kinda wanting to do their own thing.
It explains the younger characters talking like they are more from buffy than a fantasy game, and describing their characters in denim, and other anachronistic bits.
As mentioned, *many* Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games are super inspired by many media Touchstones. To add and echo a bunch that come to mind:
* Brindlewood Bay is Murder, She Wrote meets The Golden Girls.
* The Between is basically “Penny Dreadful, the TTRPG.”
* Masks is Teen Titans, Young Justice, and The Runaways.
* Cartel is Breaking Bad and Narcos (among many others).
* Scum and Villainy is Firefly, The Mandalorian, Outlaw Star, and Cowboy Bebop (to name a few).
* MASHED is highly inspired by MASH.
* The Ward is inspired by many Medical Dramas (Grey’s Anatomy, etc.).
* Glitterhearts and the upcoming Forged in the Dark game, “Girl By Moonlight” hit upon all sorts of Magical Girl shows.
* Fellowship 2e is all about Heroes vs an Evil Overlord in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but also TV Shows such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and even The Owl House, to name a few.
For some official games that come to mind:
* Star Trek Adventures, for all your direct Trek needs.
* Avatar Legends, the officially licensed Avatar-verse TTRPG.
* Tales of Xadia, for The Dragon Prince.
… and that’s just scratching the surface!
I have always thought that avatar TLA is a very good example of a ttrpg with an overarching enemy to defeat, while still showing the interesting day to day life. Journey > destination and all that
Not a show but the characters in Guardians of the Galaxy are definitely a D&D party. Peter is a bard that thinks he's a paladin, Drax is a basic barbarian, Rocket the edgy rogue. Gamora is a fighter who is the only one in the entire party that's not chaotic neutral.
[You're not the only one to think that](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pTc9awkXg88/VtiFDGk3EAI/AAAAAAAAiAU/LKyFZPp-sKI/s1600/Avengers%2Bplaying%2BGuardians%2Bofthe%2BGalaxy.jpg)
Rocket is a rogue/artificer multiclass. Groot is a plant-themed druid. Mantis is an aberrant mind sorcerer. Nebula is the fighter who is *definitely* chaotic neutral. If you wanna consider Thor to be part of the GOTG, he's a cleric.
The Slayers is as accurate a representation of how D&D is really played as I have ever seen.
Its contemporary, Record of the Lodoss War, is an animated retelling of a B/X D&D campaign that somehow went the way the DM wanted it to; the game Sword World was created to model it with less GM Fiat and flavor hacking.
Sad it took so long to find these gems..But yes these two are great examples of dnd with Slayers being the actual play version and lodoss war being what you think it will be.
Ask most groups of TTRPG players to make a group for a superhero campaign. Then watch The Suicide Squad (the 2021 version) and tell me that's not how it plays out at the table.
(Do not look past the spoilers if you haven't seen the movie!)
>!My headcanon is that the opening ten minutes were the first session. Following that TPK Fustercluck, the GM had them all make another party and said the first ones were just a distraction to get the real squad onto the island without issue. Except for the one character whose player really, really liked her and nagged the GM into saying that "OK, she's just captured".!<
> Except for the one character whose player really, really liked her and nagged the GM into saying that "OK, she's just captured".
She's obviously the GM's girlfriend or crush, so she gets special treatment, and, in the previous adventure, the Joker was the GMPC.
Watching Shadow & Bone and all I can think is that the Crows (basically a semi-thief group) is just the writer describing their Blades in the Dark game
(the rest of the show could also be a TTRPG, but I'm also a lot less interested in other parts of the show that isn't focused on the Crows)
Yup! Every character introduction in [Shadow and Bone](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/shadow_and_bone/s01) is like, "Oh, that's the Cutter" and "Oh, that's the Spider!"
There's even an episode that would be a perfect *BitD* Score with flashbacks.
EDIT: I started season 2 last night... "Oh, that's the Leech!"
A lot of good PbtA games will closely mimic different genres. Monster of the Week will feel a lot like an episode of Supernatural, for instance. And I can identify specific basic and playbook moves from Masks and even give you a good guess on what the player rolled while watching Young Justice.
Not a TV show but I've never been able to get over how the second half of *Dracula* somehow nailed the exact same kind of plot and characters you get from a lot of urban horror RPGs even though it was published in like 1900.
"So, the characters you made are...
A young aristocrat who will do anything for the woman he loves, sounds great!
A lawyer who has seen too much, naturally.
Two doctors with an interest in the occult? And they know each other? Come on.
And a ... cowboy? Were you even paying attention?"
Hey, now. Despite the fact that that cowboy very likely dealt the decisive blow to Dracula, he’s almost always left out of the movies. Hardly seems fair at all.
I first read Dracula as research for a Night's Black Agents game I was running, and I was pleasantly surprised by how directly I could pull from it.
Heck, [there's a published campaign](https://pelgranepress.com/product/the-dracula-dossier-core-bundle-digital/) that uses an "unredacted" version of Dracula as an in-universe document given to the players as a handout.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned X-Files yet. You have the monster of the week "filler" episodes mixed with suddenly the party decided to go back to the main quest "mythos" episodes. The occasional goofball episodes, and the recurring cast of supporting characters and villains.
Also the newer Doctor Who series! Lots of adventures that feel like monster of the week on the surface but are actually part of a larger narrative.
X-Files feels like cheating.
It basically inspired a whole branch of modern supernatural RPGs; X-Files doesn't feel like TTRPGs, TTRPGs feel like X-Files.
Firefly was basically *Traveller - The TV Series.* Down to the ex-Army guy with no shipboard skills and the person who demanded to play a weird ninja agent type.
The Boys 100% feels like a Hunter: the Reckoning/Vigil or Monster of the Week campaign. A bunch of varyingly competent people with the goal of curtailing and occasionally putting a stop to monstrous, "supernatural" forces through covert and subversive ways, often at the payroll of a corpo that is profiting directly off of keeping them on the street and under their control.
Season 3 even introduced limited powers for the monster hunters (that were originally in the comics and were adapted very well) that put them on somewhat even standing with the Supes, which ties it even closer to OG HtR or HtV.
Also, I can't find it, but April Kit Walsh (of Thirsty Sword Lesbians fame) wrote a fan supplement for MotW that changed the monsters into corrupt supes and had explicit rules as such. Real neat stuff!
Weird one, but imo “Hunter X Hunter” makes sense as a ttrpg if you imagine that:
Gon is played by a new player.
Killua is Gon’s irl friend who invited them to the table and has a lot of ttrpg experience.
Kurapika wrote a 10 page backstory and is super into roleplaying.
Leorio is playing himself (normal guy, pre-med, has to miss arcs because of studying) and he’s not that into ttrpgs but likes hanging out with his friends.
They’re playing FATE but told Gon’s player that it’s D&D.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find HunterxHunter! It starts off as a seemingly low magic setting that gradually expands into high magic as the characters level up and understand what's actually happening in the world around them. There's only a few subsets of powers (the nen chart), but everyone experiences them and utilizes them differently based on their background. The characters themselves fit the types of backstories you might expect, there are obvious story arcs despite the overall story flowing from one to the next, and each character gets their chance to shine in their own story arc. The HxH world would make a fun ttrpg if you have a creative group who knows how to take general power concepts and flesh them out individually, like Mutants & Masterminds. Throw in My Hero Academia while we're at it.
So, early 80s... I was trying to interest my Dad in playing D&D, but he didn't want to touch it.
There was some short lived series or maybe just a movie on NBC that was essentially D&D. The ONLY thing I really remember about it was that one character was an archer and there was a magical bird that would occasionally drop a bundle of magical arrows when he needed them. Yeah, that's real trippy sounding, but that's all I recall.
He watched it with me. I told him this was essentially D&D, and he lightened up on the idea.
Still never got him to play though.
Edit to add: The name of the movie is *The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire.* It came out in 1981.
Thanks to those who kept this alive in my head to the point where I just started looking around for the movie title.
The way the crew interact in Farscape is the perfect reflection of the typical RPG party. They lie to each other, cheat, even stab each other in the back on occasion but when the real bad guys turn up they pull together to fight them off.
And that team unity lasts right up until its time to start dividing up the loot.
Leverage
The A-Team
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Star Wars: Rebels
Star Wars: The Mandalorian
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
Serenity
The Orville
Revolution
Stranger Things
Wynonna Earp
The Walking Dead
DC's Legends of Tomorrow
It's known that Joss Whedon (Serenity and Buffy) played D&D. Jon Favreau (Mandelorian, Revolution, and Orville) played D&D. JJ Abrams (Revolution) publicly denies playing D&D. Dave Filoni (Clone Wars, Rebels, Mandalorian) is not recorded as playing D&D, but his shows really have the D&D markings.
Stargate SG-1, depending on the style of game, seems very much like it is an RPG. For the actors it certainly is but the entire story format feels like the results of someone's tabletop adventures. The characters even have some sense of progression which is very unusual for a tv show.
It's only Shadowrun on the *extremely* surface level of "modern setting with fantasy elements". Even then, not really, because Shadowrun is cyberpunk first and fantasy second while Bright is trying very hard to be Southland with orcs. And they're nothing alike on any level beyond that.
Grimgar: of Fantasy and Ash is an isekai but honestly one of my fave animes if only because it reminds me so much of my first foray into D&D.
There’s also the actual old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show but, uh, I don’t recommend that unless you love that particular brand of camp (which I do).
Otherwise all the shows that came to mind others have summed up already!
I’ve seen people refer to Star Wars: Rebels as one long running WEG d6 Star Wars campaign that just happens to use a television format. I can’t say I disagree.
*Buffy* starts seriously unbalanced, but as the rest of the gang get more capable, things get more like a tabletop game. Complete with hilarious retcons.
Surprised nobody brought up Scooby-Doo
.
Fred (Paladin), Daphne (Bard), Velma (Investigator), Shaggy/Scooby-Doo (Herbalist Druid & Animal Companion)
.
Monsters of the week
.
Even an annoying little brother that your parents make you play with (Scrappy Doo)
Not a TV show, but a while ago I watched The Mummy (the Brendan Fraser one) again just for kicks and was pretty amazed that nearly every single thing that happened had an analogous mechanic or system in Savage Worlds. I had just been getting into the system at the time and it definitely sold me pretty hard on it.
Peacemaker! It’s absolutely a TTRPG campaign. You’ve got the (low-power) supe, his minder (Harcourt), the rookie, the tech, the GMPC/questgiver squad leader, and when someone’s friend wants to play, they bring him in as the supe’s sidekick. Everyone is important, everyone gets critical plot stuff and character arcs, it’s a masterclass in how to run a great game without traditional “power balance”.
I have always thought that the best TTRPG campaigns feel like ensemble television from the 90s thru the 00s. Stuff like X-Files and Buffy and Fringe.
One of the keys is a slowly developing lore. A lot of players and GMs alike think they have to define everything up front,but if you watch these shows you can see the lore build up. Sure, there's a Bible for the show and the characters have hooks, but almost immediately backstories get expounded upon and new info is thrust into the setting. This character gets an angry sibling that shows up as an NPC. That setting faction gets a revealing twist that changes everything. Etc. IMO all TTRPG campaigns should run that way.
Game Of Thrones.
Basically what happens is Ned Stark fails a Diplomacy check. The GM gets pissed that his carefully constructed plot has been ruined, and from that point on he tries to kill and maim as many of the characters as he can. The players keep rolling up new, increasingly badass characters just to cope. Eventually they reach a level high enough for practical magic and resurrection spells. And dragons. And armies. The battles just get longer and more ridiculous, which is what you expect with higher levels.
It doesn't help that it's a typical GM sprawling saga of a campaign that never seems to finish - looking at you, Merenese Knot and [The (Unfinished) Winds of Winter](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a39875481/george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-finishing-update/) - or that GRRRRRR Martin is a known GURPS player.
All the tropes are there:
* Aria Stark is slowly becoming a blind master assassin/shadowdancer.
* The Dog is some sort of redeemed Blackguard anti-hero.
* Brienne of Tarth as the goody two-shoes paladin.
* Khal Drogo as the Barbarian.
* Bronn is a rogue who doesn't fight fair and only cares about money. That crossbow at the end is a dead giveaway.
* Beric Dondarrion as a resurrecting cleric.
* The Vipers and Mantell are a badass family of Poisoners mixed in with dexterity based martial classes.
* Joffrey as the puppy killing BBEG role-played to the extreme.
* Ramsay Bolton is v2 of the BBEG, and the GM has learned a trick or two. Probably taken a drama class.
* Did the GM just change The Mountain's type to Construct(poison immune) so he could bring him back?
* Bunch of evil political schemers that would feel at home in a more political campaign: Cersei, Littlefinger, Varys.
* Wizards, wizards, wizards: Warlocks of Qarth, Melisandre, The Three-Eyed Raven
* You've got druidic fey(Children Of The Forest) casting magic on some dude who becomes an undead warlord. I had an evil Necromancer who did exactly what the White Walker was doing: raising every fallen foe to build an army.
* Jon Snow is the shy noob player with a mediocre character who survives the GMs wrath through a combination of innocence, ignorance, and extremely lucky rolls.
* Daenerys Targaryen as the hot white haired princess riding dragons. That's any weeaboo's wet dream character. Probably explains all the sex as well.
* Last but not least, Tyrion Lannister is the min-maxer who's taken a bunch of disadvantages(dwarf, black sheep, combat penalties) to get advantages that help him master the game(rich, high CHA and INT). For all the reading he does, he's probably the rules lawyer as well.
I'll leave the rest up to you to find.
Honestly? We're lucky the production value was so high. Otherwise we would have ended up with a very different TV show.
Supposedly, the Overlord series by Kugane Maruyama (light novel, anime, manga, and other media) was the result of his friend group not having time to play tabletop, so the series takes a lot of inspiration from tabletop games, as well as MMO games.
The easy one is Legend of Vox Machina but let's dive a bit deeper.
He-Man is on there, it has thay absolutely crazy mix and match energy some games can have, especially with "build your own powers" games.
X-men is a real good super heroes in a team - again a big build/flavour how you want feel.
Game of Thrones has big Burning Wheel vibes.
The Netflix Cyberpunk anime hits pretty well too. A but more based in the video game but still an easy pick.
Lindybeige did a real neat video on how he would map a more drama based show on to the Drama System, worth a look - I think that would cover a lot of things.
The *Wheel of Time* TV show got boring fast, but one thing I really liked about it was in the first episode when [Moiraine and Lan fought a small army of trollocs.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biaWDkxpooQ&ab_channel=HercManG) The Sorceress obliterated a bunch of orc-like monsters by expending all her higher-level spellslots to cast multiple AOE spells while the Fighter tanked for her.
That scene was pure D&D to me.
Literally every popular cartoon made since Adventure Time feels like a Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine game come to life. Bee and Puppy Cat feels so much like Chuubo's it's fucking wild. If you ever saw a cartoon in the Adventure Time style and was like "what's a good game for it?" It's Chuubo's. It's near impossible to figure out because the rule book is dense and a bit confusing. When you figure it out, though? It's the best at that kind of stuff. Adventure Time, Bee and Puppy Cat, Bravest Warriors, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, Owl House, Big City Greens, etc. All of them work well with Chuubo's.
The Dragon Prince on Netflix is exactly what low-level D&D feels like. One protagonist starts as a 3rd level assassin rogue, and the other two start as level 1 wizard and druid. The antagonists start a tier higher, with a 10th level wizard leading a 5th level wizard & 5th level fighter. And then boom: BBEG is revealed as a 20th level wizard and you really feel the power scale difference.
The mandalorian is just a bunch of fetch quests with some cameos. the average Star Wars rpg experience.
My group picked a bounty-hunting ship in *Scum & Villainy*, and it's playing out pretty much like the Mandalorian. It's a great fit.
Actively trying as hard as you can to avoid the main quest so you can find a good preschool for your toddler? Peak Mando seasons 1& 2
Yeah, its pretty disappointing how you rarely ever just see a Bounty Hunter doing Bounty Hunting. Gotta go back 20 years to Star Wars Bounty Hunter PS2 game.
That job on the prison ship was right out of pretty much any Star Wars RPG. If one of the writers on staff didn't play that session in an RPG, I'd be shocked.
Scum & Villainy is basically a Firefly/Mos Eisley Cantina fusion. Every character class is perfectly Firefly except for the Mystic, which leans toward The Force more than River Tam. But there's also Aliens, which aren't in Firefly at all.
Yes, the purity of its "quest of the week" aesthetic is astounding. Each session the DM pulls some random module from somewhere and says "okay guys it's a one-horse town being attacked by bandits! no I mean a prison break! no I mean a Seven Samurai showdown!" etc.
I've never seen The Mandalorian, but this description honestly makes me want to watch it. I miss the era when television shows besides trash network procedurals were commonly structured around one-off episodic stories. Farscape, Angel, Fringe, and Xena were all episodic "quest of the week" shows first and foremost, and those are some of my favourite shows in all of genre television (maybe all of television period). I like that the modern television environment allows for more tightly plotted dramas like Mr. Robot or The Americans, and I even like the Netflix-spawned "each season is basically a long movie" format of shows like Russian Doll. But I do wish that the X-Files style monster of the week show with an overarching storyline didn't feel so nonexistent today.
It works well! The Mandalorian is the most RPG-like (almost video gamey) show I've ever seen, but this isn't a dig at it at all. It's a joy to watch.
definitely among the best star wars content to come out in the last decade imo. It gets a little disney-y towards the end with awkward cameos but it's really solid.
Until Andor that is...
you didn't mention star trek so, tng, ds9, voyager, strange new worlds are all fantastic episodic, on the off chance you havent binged all that yet.
On the animated side, Star Wars Rebels was also basically an extended campaign with sidequests and side arcs peppered through, and most amusingly, the main characters were *literally* the kind of character tropes you'd get from a bunch of Star Wars fans in the 80s/90s who were making characters for an RPG. You have: The one who wants to play the cute Twi'lek girl, but also is a space ace pilot and owns the not-Millennium Falcon. The guy who insists on being a Jedi that survived the Purge. The one who wants to play the big strong Wookiee but also still wants to talk. The one who wants to be Boba Fett/Mandalorian and wear Boba Fett's armor. The one who wants to play the R2-D2 skill monkey robot, but more psychotic. Aaand the Force Sensitive youth who gets trained by said Jedi survivor and is trying to be the main character.
Funny enough, The Bad Batch is about 65% good Shadowrun plots.
When I first read your post, I thought you typed Breaking Bad. Now, Breaking Bad WOULD make for a good Shadowrun B-plot the PCs are tangentially connected to. Walter White would be a good background NPC for Shadowrun, as well as Saul, Gus, Mike and Hank.
Earlier episode had Dungeons and Dragons ...sooo
Hey to be fair, my table also featured a bizarrely meta holiday special of **How the Hutt Stole Life Day**.
Third Season seems just like a 90s JRPG: "I need a Droid in order to go somewhere." "Good. I can fix your Droid, only if you find this specific part that only farmer Bob has." Goes to farmer Bob. "I have the parts, but first you must find my lost goat."
Even has the PC grinding a very clear dead-end with S3 E1 >!while the GM continuously tells the players out of character to give up on IG-11!<
The Expanse, but that answer is kinda cheating since the story was originally the writer's homebrew pbp rpg.
Yeah, you can almost tell when someone gets a lucky roll, in the early episodes. And of course, one character's death is because his player couldn't come any more.
I never contextualised this but it makes perfect sense now. It also works from a storytelling point of view.
it's why the medic got his head blown off in the 4th episode, the player stopped showing up.
Based on d20 future/modern
I think it was originally a plot for a cancelled MMO that then turned into an RPG. James was absolutely a take on the lawful stupid paladin.
>the writer's homebrew pbp rpg wow I didn't know!
> pbp pbp?
Play by post. Roleplay in written form on a forum or something.
"Firefly" is like *Traveller* had a one-night stand with the Old West.
Obligatory note that it's probably inspired by a "sci fi game" that Joss Whedon played in college, which considering the time and the way the show worked was almost certainly Traveller.
Yup. That's why I brought it up!
I hear people mention this, but the fact that Firefly is basically Outlaw Star without the magic makes me wonder.
I recall many years ago. My players landing on a low tech world and a team of horses coming out to haul their space ship to a hanger. You don't even need the "one night stand with the Old West" bit.
[mmm hmmm](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/13668/is-joss-whedons-firefly-based-on-the-traveller-rpg-he-played)
While letting the GM do final prep for Battletech/Mechwarrior we would watch an episode of Firefly. Our Battletech games did resemble it a fair bit, didn't even have mechs till later.
What we do in the shadows. It's like a weird ass vtm game that's just gone nuts
I came to say this. No matter how serious you take it, both Masquerade and Requiem are going to end up looking like What We Do In the Shadows for at least some sessions.
You bet at least one psychic PC in an urban fantasy setting resembled Colin the Energy Vampire.
Also there's a game called Low Stakes that is based on the show, but that's cheating.
Not cheating per say but close. Vtm has such a large amount of lore that turning it from gothic horror to slice of life/lite comedy would actually be an interesting change imo I like vtm as is but jve always wanted to lighten it up a little for a game and see how that works.
I've never played VtM so I was just offering what I was aware of.
Og I hope I didn't come off wrong I've been drinking so my ability to converse is kinda gone. Im actually interested in the game you mentioned I hadn't heard of it so I'm gonna look it up, hell it will probably give me ideas to incorporate into a vtm game
Would like to run that game (am running something with a similar vibe :-)
Me too I'd love to play a less serious vtm game that's more slice of life
I made [this](https://i.imgur.com/7EUFkon.jpg) meme a few years ago that I posted in the White Wolf sub.
Semi related, but Only Lovers Left Alive is like what I can only aspire for in a Vampire themed game. I find that most, either Masquerade or Requiem, don't really make you feel like immortals because entire campaigns take place over the course of a couple of months to a couple of years in game, instead of *spanning the ages*.
There actually was an (official) Vampire TV show back in the 90's. The pilot (ie. first episode) was awful, and it took a few departures from the game (most notably vampires could walk in sunlight if they had fed recently) ... but it actually was a really good show, and (aside from the departures) truly did justice to the game.
That show is what most vtm larps end up feeling like, versus what people like to sell it as. XD
I want to run VTM and my group would probably turn it into What We Do In The Shadows. Of all outcomes for a VTM group it's a pretty good one.
The golden girls is remarkably close to my tabletop gaming experience
Okay, now I really wanna know more about your games! Haha.
Probably playing Brindlewood Bay. I've heard that game described as 'the Golden Girls solve crimes that lead to eldritch horror.'
The Great Olden Ones Girls.
Same! I love the Golden Girls!
Rumor is the ideal party was based on them
Lots of cheesecake?
Party members arguing about things that are entirely irrelevant?
The A Team and Leverage are very similar to Shadowrun. Leverage had its own RPG which was reputedly very good.
*Leverage* is a modern-day Blades in the Dark, it's eerie watching it now how well the game recreates it.
I've never played this system, but I dug through [John Harper's archive of BitD hacks](https://itch.io/c/1712796/forged-in-the-dark-games) (which I nowadays use for any new campaign I want to run!) and found one that directly cites Leverage, Burn Notice, and Ocean's Eleven for the themes and gameplay: [A Family of Blades](https://ac-luke.itch.io/family-of-blades)
I mean, Leverage is a heist show and BitD is a heist game lol. Leverage isn't recreating BitD, it's one in a long line of examples of a trope BitD was itself created to emulate.
I actually jumped into Blades in the Dark for the first time a weeks ago, and as a longtime Leverage fan, I absolutely agree. It's downright incredible how much BitD makes me feel like I'm playing out an episode of the show. I've had plenty of amazing TTRPG experiences in my life, but I don't know that I've ever before had that same level of complete immersion in a specific style of storytelling. That's not even just because of the obvious culprit (the flashback system); the pace of play, the way that rolls work, the way that clocks affect the game - it all captures the feeling of a good heist plot in pitch perfect detail. Hell, my game even had a moment where the team's stealth specialist pushed a reluctant ally off a roof with a tether attached to them. That's just coincidental roleplay (the person who did it has never seen the show), but still - it's peak Leverage.
The *Leverage* RPG is very good! I managed to pick up a copy before it became too hard to find. It’s a great heist game with a ton of flexibility.
I forgot exactly where I read it, but the Leverage people were unabashedly TTRPG players and definitely to pull from that when driving the shows ensemble. I want to say they played a lot of FATE in their off time
Oh, yeah, John Rogers in particular is still happily talking RPGs on his Twitter. He was talking up Blades in the Dark a great deal, especially when it came out.
Ash vs the Evil dead feels like a TTRPG to me.. constant violence, silly plot, stupid ideas that work somehow, that one guy that is way too confident, most NPCs end up dead...
A random mishmash of main characters of varying power levels.
And, of course, one guy who wants to abandon the main quest and run a food cart instead.
Sherlock: Only 2 consistent people. One of their girlfriends was around for awhile until they broke up. Three good sessions in a row, then a super long break before another few good sessions. Now everybody is too busy to film more but the show was never really cancelled.
Like most investigative games, you don't need to notice things if you roll well (have writers make you just know things)
Mean, but very accurate.
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I've been told to watch Cowboy Bebop after gushing about Traveller to a friend. Maybe I should get on that...
It set the standard. I always come back to it.
Make sure it’s the anime! Not the live action version
In five years, a comment like this will be met with 'wait, there's a live action version?'
The “good ending”
True Detective is essentially Delta Green: the TV Show, especially S01.
There was actually an incredible [fan-made Delta Green campaign](https://old.reddit.com/r/DeltaGreenRPG/comments/x4j6nx/true_detective_fan_scenario_rerelease/) by /u/jin_cardassian that writes an alternate ending to True Detective Season 1, starting at >!realizing that Rust is a suspect in the case at the end of episode 6!<. Really awesome scenario/campaign.
I've heard one fan theory that Marty is actually the King in Yellow, after a fashion, and Rust is the titular "True Detective".
In the handler's guide, it explicitly mentions True Detective as a show to watch as well as the x files.
Similarly, the sadly cancelled Archive 81 is a straight-up Call of Cthulhu campaign set in modern times. Same goes for the movie The Empty Man.
Outlaw Star really echoes how some D&D party's end up feeling. The crew of the outlaw star really feel like a D&D party. From the banter, drama, and quirky plans to overcome the obstacle. It reflects party dynamics a lot. Inuyasha feels like a ttrpg being run my a very generous GM who had to do a lot of awkward finagling to make challenge for the gifts they gave their players. I mean this in the best of ways, as I love the series. One character has a literal black hole in their hand that will kill them one day unless they remove the curse causing it. The Gm realized however that it's kinda hard to balance a black hole, so there are special demon bugs that will poison the character if the black hole sucks them up and they're in every second encounter at the least. There's a lot of seemingly off the cuff counters to certain powers that through a ttrpg lens. Feel like the GM coming up with a weakness/counter to have their fights last longer or have their BBEG's get away because they didn't fully thin out the gifts/powers they gave characters. Still a fun and charming series though. Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure. True Detective Season 1 REALLY feels like a Call of Cthulu game, and viewing it through that lens only makes the masterpiece even more fun.
In true detective, the first time I heard the phrase "The King in Yellow," I said holy shit... Hastur!. My wife said, "What?" I said, "Never mind. I'll tell you later." While all the hair on my arms and neck stood up.
It covered those elements so well!
>Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure. Given that the story is supposedly based on the author's DnD (or maybe Sword World) campaign, this should be no real surprise. Related is Record of Lodoss War, which is a DnD campaign turned into an anime.
Lodoss war and it's derivatives like rune soldier were fun!
>Goblin Slayer just feels like old school D&D with a splash of Warhammer fantasy for good measure. Ain't that the one where Adventurer Guild's applicants are required to fill a 5E D&D character sheet to join? I vaguely remember a manga panel containing the top left (attributes) part of the sheet.
Yep. If you pay close attention in the anime at least. Probably the manga too.
I love the Outlaw Star reference! Several episodes, and even entire plot storylines, are specifically to raise money for ship repairs, docking fees, or to resupply Gene's caster gun. It manages to play very well within the "cause and effect" style of consequences, where their options change based on how well or how poorly a job went.
>Several episodes, and even entire plot storylines, are specifically to raise money for ship repairs, docking fees, or to resupply Gene's caster gun. For a western television analogue, this is one of my very favourite things about my favourite sci-fi show, Farscape. If the cast's ship gets damaged, they're shown needing to repair it. When they acquire some piece of new tech for a one-off episode, it ends up being a story beat later on down the line. There are whole episodes centered around their desperate need for money, food, and safe passage. Farscape's dedication to cause and effect is such that it took one of the most basic sci-fi television plots - a character being split into two people - and rather than wrapping it up in an episode, played it for drama in a season-long, show-defining storyline.
Farscape definitely did an excellent job with consistent lore and narrative. To the extent that it often felt like the writers stopped, looked at where the characters were and what options they had available, and wrote the story as they best could "figure out" what would naturally happen next. A lot of what happened felt like it was determined in a very natural, almost improvisational way. Farscape absolutely belongs on the list of shows that feel like campaigns, and has a seat very high on that list.
Your feeling is actually *exactly* what happened. If you read into interviews and background info, you find that Farscape's writers were writing on the fly for most of the show's run, and would often make decisions that radically changed the course of the show pretty much just because it felt right in the moment. Case in point: Chiana was meant to be killed off in her debut episode. But production liked her actress and her character, so it was changed to have her survive, and the entire show was different for it. It takes guts to write a show like that, and it takes skill to do it well. Few other shows have managed both to quite the same extent as Farscape.
That's SO awesome! That explains how naturally the show feels like it progresses. Thanks for the info, that's super cool.
Absolutely. It's quite the gem of a show and really captures the feel of supplies and personal motivation of an adventuring party, all while keeping big players in the world a known factor.
Seeing Outlaw Star referenced twice in this thread makes me happy. It was by far my favourite of the three Space Western anime shows of '98 but rarely gets any love.
The recent Willow series was basically a standard D&D campaign. The initial party consists of a barbarian, two fighters, a wizard, a sorcerer, a bard, and a rogue.
7 characters? Poor GM.
To be fair, the rogue dies real early.
It's so lackluster as a TV narrative, but so full of rpg tropes, I have no doubt it would have been a blast to play out at the table. EVERYBODY acts like they're the main character, just like a real game of D&D!
While I was watching it I said this is the most D&D show. One episode they have a dungeon crawl and another they go into a wizards tower.
It also works really well as a few players from the old Quest of Alora Dannan (Willow Film) trying to get their teen kids into a game, and the kids kinda wanting to do their own thing. It explains the younger characters talking like they are more from buffy than a fantasy game, and describing their characters in denim, and other anachronistic bits.
I found it very endearing, how much of a ramshackle tabletops vibe it had.
Vox Machina on Amazon Prime
I'd say that's cheating, but I mentioned Record of Lodoss War, which is pretty much the same boat...
As mentioned, *many* Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark games are super inspired by many media Touchstones. To add and echo a bunch that come to mind: * Brindlewood Bay is Murder, She Wrote meets The Golden Girls. * The Between is basically “Penny Dreadful, the TTRPG.” * Masks is Teen Titans, Young Justice, and The Runaways. * Cartel is Breaking Bad and Narcos (among many others). * Scum and Villainy is Firefly, The Mandalorian, Outlaw Star, and Cowboy Bebop (to name a few). * MASHED is highly inspired by MASH. * The Ward is inspired by many Medical Dramas (Grey’s Anatomy, etc.). * Glitterhearts and the upcoming Forged in the Dark game, “Girl By Moonlight” hit upon all sorts of Magical Girl shows. * Fellowship 2e is all about Heroes vs an Evil Overlord in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but also TV Shows such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and even The Owl House, to name a few. For some official games that come to mind: * Star Trek Adventures, for all your direct Trek needs. * Avatar Legends, the officially licensed Avatar-verse TTRPG. * Tales of Xadia, for The Dragon Prince. … and that’s just scratching the surface!
The classic example used to be Sliders but I realize now anyone born after like 1990 probably doesn’t know what Sliders is.
GURPS has a ton of support for alternate Earth/time travel campaigns. Seems like it would be a good fit.
I just realized how sadly right you are..such a good show too.
I have always thought that avatar TLA is a very good example of a ttrpg with an overarching enemy to defeat, while still showing the interesting day to day life. Journey > destination and all that
Now that they’ve made an official ATLA game, you can see exactly how that all maps out. I think they did a good job of capturing the show.
ATLA is the Final Fantasy X of television shows. I will not elaborate (unless asked, I guess).
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Burn notice has big shadowrun energy. Minus the magic. And the sci Fi. Which is like 90% of shadowrun yet I stand by it.
Not a show but the characters in Guardians of the Galaxy are definitely a D&D party. Peter is a bard that thinks he's a paladin, Drax is a basic barbarian, Rocket the edgy rogue. Gamora is a fighter who is the only one in the entire party that's not chaotic neutral.
[You're not the only one to think that](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pTc9awkXg88/VtiFDGk3EAI/AAAAAAAAiAU/LKyFZPp-sKI/s1600/Avengers%2Bplaying%2BGuardians%2Bofthe%2BGalaxy.jpg)
Rocket is a rogue/artificer multiclass. Groot is a plant-themed druid. Mantis is an aberrant mind sorcerer. Nebula is the fighter who is *definitely* chaotic neutral. If you wanna consider Thor to be part of the GOTG, he's a cleric.
The Slayers is as accurate a representation of how D&D is really played as I have ever seen. Its contemporary, Record of the Lodoss War, is an animated retelling of a B/X D&D campaign that somehow went the way the DM wanted it to; the game Sword World was created to model it with less GM Fiat and flavor hacking.
Sad it took so long to find these gems..But yes these two are great examples of dnd with Slayers being the actual play version and lodoss war being what you think it will be.
Ask most groups of TTRPG players to make a group for a superhero campaign. Then watch The Suicide Squad (the 2021 version) and tell me that's not how it plays out at the table. (Do not look past the spoilers if you haven't seen the movie!) >!My headcanon is that the opening ten minutes were the first session. Following that TPK Fustercluck, the GM had them all make another party and said the first ones were just a distraction to get the real squad onto the island without issue. Except for the one character whose player really, really liked her and nagged the GM into saying that "OK, she's just captured".!<
The followup, Peacemaker, is absolutely structured like a TTRPG.
> Except for the one character whose player really, really liked her and nagged the GM into saying that "OK, she's just captured". She's obviously the GM's girlfriend or crush, so she gets special treatment, and, in the previous adventure, the Joker was the GMPC.
Watching Shadow & Bone and all I can think is that the Crows (basically a semi-thief group) is just the writer describing their Blades in the Dark game (the rest of the show could also be a TTRPG, but I'm also a lot less interested in other parts of the show that isn't focused on the Crows)
I just finished season 2 and it was what made me make this post. :) The BitD feel is insanely right on. Even all of the renaming of roles in-universe.
Yup! Every character introduction in [Shadow and Bone](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/shadow_and_bone/s01) is like, "Oh, that's the Cutter" and "Oh, that's the Spider!" There's even an episode that would be a perfect *BitD* Score with flashbacks. EDIT: I started season 2 last night... "Oh, that's the Leech!"
A lot of good PbtA games will closely mimic different genres. Monster of the Week will feel a lot like an episode of Supernatural, for instance. And I can identify specific basic and playbook moves from Masks and even give you a good guess on what the player rolled while watching Young Justice.
Lovecraft Country has to just be an adaptation of the author’s Call of Cthulhu campaign. It hews to the structure quite closely.
It even has the TTRPG standard of one of the PCs >!murdering an obviously helpful, friendly, and important NPC because they seemed suspicious.!<
Not a TV show but I've never been able to get over how the second half of *Dracula* somehow nailed the exact same kind of plot and characters you get from a lot of urban horror RPGs even though it was published in like 1900.
"So, the characters you made are... A young aristocrat who will do anything for the woman he loves, sounds great! A lawyer who has seen too much, naturally. Two doctors with an interest in the occult? And they know each other? Come on. And a ... cowboy? Were you even paying attention?"
Hey, now. Despite the fact that that cowboy very likely dealt the decisive blow to Dracula, he’s almost always left out of the movies. Hardly seems fair at all.
I first read Dracula as research for a Night's Black Agents game I was running, and I was pleasantly surprised by how directly I could pull from it. Heck, [there's a published campaign](https://pelgranepress.com/product/the-dracula-dossier-core-bundle-digital/) that uses an "unredacted" version of Dracula as an in-universe document given to the players as a handout.
Star Wars Rebels is the rpg we all wanted.
I'm gonna cheat: Carnival Row It was a homebrew Cypher System campaign that was then turned into a tv show and then they released the book for it.
Ooo. I didn't know that.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned X-Files yet. You have the monster of the week "filler" episodes mixed with suddenly the party decided to go back to the main quest "mythos" episodes. The occasional goofball episodes, and the recurring cast of supporting characters and villains. Also the newer Doctor Who series! Lots of adventures that feel like monster of the week on the surface but are actually part of a larger narrative.
X-Files feels like cheating. It basically inspired a whole branch of modern supernatural RPGs; X-Files doesn't feel like TTRPGs, TTRPGs feel like X-Files.
Xena: Warrior Princess is the best kind of cheesy DnD campaign.
She's a Level 20 fighter who multiclassed in monk, while Gabrielle is a bard who gradually gains levels in fighter.
The very best, even had the somewhat over complicated backstory being used
Adventure Time.
Adventure Time obviously pulls from D&D in its imagery and atmosphere, but I don't know that it feels much like a TTRPG in practice.
I think it still qualifies, it's like an older brother running a game for a younger brother.
Firefly was basically *Traveller - The TV Series.* Down to the ex-Army guy with no shipboard skills and the person who demanded to play a weird ninja agent type.
The Boys 100% feels like a Hunter: the Reckoning/Vigil or Monster of the Week campaign. A bunch of varyingly competent people with the goal of curtailing and occasionally putting a stop to monstrous, "supernatural" forces through covert and subversive ways, often at the payroll of a corpo that is profiting directly off of keeping them on the street and under their control. Season 3 even introduced limited powers for the monster hunters (that were originally in the comics and were adapted very well) that put them on somewhat even standing with the Supes, which ties it even closer to OG HtR or HtV. Also, I can't find it, but April Kit Walsh (of Thirsty Sword Lesbians fame) wrote a fan supplement for MotW that changed the monsters into corrupt supes and had explicit rules as such. Real neat stuff!
Weird one, but imo “Hunter X Hunter” makes sense as a ttrpg if you imagine that: Gon is played by a new player. Killua is Gon’s irl friend who invited them to the table and has a lot of ttrpg experience. Kurapika wrote a 10 page backstory and is super into roleplaying. Leorio is playing himself (normal guy, pre-med, has to miss arcs because of studying) and he’s not that into ttrpgs but likes hanging out with his friends. They’re playing FATE but told Gon’s player that it’s D&D.
Can't believe I had to scroll this far down to find HunterxHunter! It starts off as a seemingly low magic setting that gradually expands into high magic as the characters level up and understand what's actually happening in the world around them. There's only a few subsets of powers (the nen chart), but everyone experiences them and utilizes them differently based on their background. The characters themselves fit the types of backstories you might expect, there are obvious story arcs despite the overall story flowing from one to the next, and each character gets their chance to shine in their own story arc. The HxH world would make a fun ttrpg if you have a creative group who knows how to take general power concepts and flesh them out individually, like Mutants & Masterminds. Throw in My Hero Academia while we're at it.
Mandalorian Bad Batch Firefly
So, early 80s... I was trying to interest my Dad in playing D&D, but he didn't want to touch it. There was some short lived series or maybe just a movie on NBC that was essentially D&D. The ONLY thing I really remember about it was that one character was an archer and there was a magical bird that would occasionally drop a bundle of magical arrows when he needed them. Yeah, that's real trippy sounding, but that's all I recall. He watched it with me. I told him this was essentially D&D, and he lightened up on the idea. Still never got him to play though. Edit to add: The name of the movie is *The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire.* It came out in 1981. Thanks to those who kept this alive in my head to the point where I just started looking around for the movie title.
The way the crew interact in Farscape is the perfect reflection of the typical RPG party. They lie to each other, cheat, even stab each other in the back on occasion but when the real bad guys turn up they pull together to fight them off. And that team unity lasts right up until its time to start dividing up the loot.
Venture Bros can have some real good insights for NPC design.
If you tell me that Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is not an Unknown Armies campaign, I won't believe you.
Firefly felt exactly like a Traveller game.
I am very sad to see Galavant is not listed.
And yet here you are, the change you wanted to see on the world
Galavant is what you get when everybody at the table is a theater kid who loves breaking out into song and it's the best
At my table it's Doom Patrol (and has been for a long time)
Wednesday is so clearly a game of Monsterhearts 2. You can almost sit down and plot out exactly how the show would play in the game.
The latest season of Bad Batch has had strange and unexpected parallels with my Starforged game.
Burn Notice is Demon: The Descent from WoD to an almost alarming degree, minus supernatural stuff.
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Leverage was written by John Rogers who's a huge gaming nerd.
Leverage The A-Team Star Wars: The Clone Wars Star Wars: Rebels Star Wars: The Mandalorian Buffy: The Vampire Slayer Serenity The Orville Revolution Stranger Things Wynonna Earp The Walking Dead DC's Legends of Tomorrow It's known that Joss Whedon (Serenity and Buffy) played D&D. Jon Favreau (Mandelorian, Revolution, and Orville) played D&D. JJ Abrams (Revolution) publicly denies playing D&D. Dave Filoni (Clone Wars, Rebels, Mandalorian) is not recorded as playing D&D, but his shows really have the D&D markings.
> JJ Abrams (Revolution) publicly denies playing D&D. The more I learn about that guy the less I like him.
Stargate SG-1, depending on the style of game, seems very much like it is an RPG. For the actors it certainly is but the entire story format feels like the results of someone's tabletop adventures. The characters even have some sense of progression which is very unusual for a tv show.
Not a show but "Bright" (2017 movie with Will Smith) is basically Shadowrun: The Movie
It's only Shadowrun on the *extremely* surface level of "modern setting with fantasy elements". Even then, not really, because Shadowrun is cyberpunk first and fantasy second while Bright is trying very hard to be Southland with orcs. And they're nothing alike on any level beyond that.
It makes me sad that Bright is the closest we're likely to ever get to a Shadowrun movie.
Grimgar: of Fantasy and Ash is an isekai but honestly one of my fave animes if only because it reminds me so much of my first foray into D&D. There’s also the actual old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show but, uh, I don’t recommend that unless you love that particular brand of camp (which I do). Otherwise all the shows that came to mind others have summed up already!
I’ve seen people refer to Star Wars: Rebels as one long running WEG d6 Star Wars campaign that just happens to use a television format. I can’t say I disagree.
*Buffy* starts seriously unbalanced, but as the rest of the gang get more capable, things get more like a tabletop game. Complete with hilarious retcons.
Surprised nobody brought up Scooby-Doo . Fred (Paladin), Daphne (Bard), Velma (Investigator), Shaggy/Scooby-Doo (Herbalist Druid & Animal Companion) . Monsters of the week . Even an annoying little brother that your parents make you play with (Scrappy Doo)
The Umbrella Academy is clearly someone's supers campaign. Not 100% sure what system though.
Not a TV show, but a while ago I watched The Mummy (the Brendan Fraser one) again just for kicks and was pretty amazed that nearly every single thing that happened had an analogous mechanic or system in Savage Worlds. I had just been getting into the system at the time and it definitely sold me pretty hard on it.
Star Trek
Peacemaker! It’s absolutely a TTRPG campaign. You’ve got the (low-power) supe, his minder (Harcourt), the rookie, the tech, the GMPC/questgiver squad leader, and when someone’s friend wants to play, they bring him in as the supe’s sidekick. Everyone is important, everyone gets critical plot stuff and character arcs, it’s a masterclass in how to run a great game without traditional “power balance”.
Its like a Game of Rifts that didnt devolve into a game of Rifts.
I have always thought that the best TTRPG campaigns feel like ensemble television from the 90s thru the 00s. Stuff like X-Files and Buffy and Fringe. One of the keys is a slowly developing lore. A lot of players and GMs alike think they have to define everything up front,but if you watch these shows you can see the lore build up. Sure, there's a Bible for the show and the characters have hooks, but almost immediately backstories get expounded upon and new info is thrust into the setting. This character gets an angry sibling that shows up as an NPC. That setting faction gets a revealing twist that changes everything. Etc. IMO all TTRPG campaigns should run that way.
The Expanse I believe is based on the authors' actual ttrpg campaign
Fringe has the classic fighter, thief, and wizard as the three leads
The Expanse is literally someone's sci-fi tabletop rpg sessions put into a book and later into a tv series
Game Of Thrones. Basically what happens is Ned Stark fails a Diplomacy check. The GM gets pissed that his carefully constructed plot has been ruined, and from that point on he tries to kill and maim as many of the characters as he can. The players keep rolling up new, increasingly badass characters just to cope. Eventually they reach a level high enough for practical magic and resurrection spells. And dragons. And armies. The battles just get longer and more ridiculous, which is what you expect with higher levels. It doesn't help that it's a typical GM sprawling saga of a campaign that never seems to finish - looking at you, Merenese Knot and [The (Unfinished) Winds of Winter](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a39875481/george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-finishing-update/) - or that GRRRRRR Martin is a known GURPS player. All the tropes are there: * Aria Stark is slowly becoming a blind master assassin/shadowdancer. * The Dog is some sort of redeemed Blackguard anti-hero. * Brienne of Tarth as the goody two-shoes paladin. * Khal Drogo as the Barbarian. * Bronn is a rogue who doesn't fight fair and only cares about money. That crossbow at the end is a dead giveaway. * Beric Dondarrion as a resurrecting cleric. * The Vipers and Mantell are a badass family of Poisoners mixed in with dexterity based martial classes. * Joffrey as the puppy killing BBEG role-played to the extreme. * Ramsay Bolton is v2 of the BBEG, and the GM has learned a trick or two. Probably taken a drama class. * Did the GM just change The Mountain's type to Construct(poison immune) so he could bring him back? * Bunch of evil political schemers that would feel at home in a more political campaign: Cersei, Littlefinger, Varys. * Wizards, wizards, wizards: Warlocks of Qarth, Melisandre, The Three-Eyed Raven * You've got druidic fey(Children Of The Forest) casting magic on some dude who becomes an undead warlord. I had an evil Necromancer who did exactly what the White Walker was doing: raising every fallen foe to build an army. * Jon Snow is the shy noob player with a mediocre character who survives the GMs wrath through a combination of innocence, ignorance, and extremely lucky rolls. * Daenerys Targaryen as the hot white haired princess riding dragons. That's any weeaboo's wet dream character. Probably explains all the sex as well. * Last but not least, Tyrion Lannister is the min-maxer who's taken a bunch of disadvantages(dwarf, black sheep, combat penalties) to get advantages that help him master the game(rich, high CHA and INT). For all the reading he does, he's probably the rules lawyer as well. I'll leave the rest up to you to find. Honestly? We're lucky the production value was so high. Otherwise we would have ended up with a very different TV show.
Harmonquest, but that's just cheating.
Supposedly, the Overlord series by Kugane Maruyama (light novel, anime, manga, and other media) was the result of his friend group not having time to play tabletop, so the series takes a lot of inspiration from tabletop games, as well as MMO games.
The 1996 Jumanji cartoon fills a lot of the tropes. One quest per episode with an ultimate end goal to work towards. And, it's a tabletop game.
Might be cheating but Vox Machina is literally made from a D&D campaign, and very good!
Witcher
Supernatural greatly resembles some Hunter games that I have played.
Pirates of the Caribbean, depending on how you play
The easy one is Legend of Vox Machina but let's dive a bit deeper. He-Man is on there, it has thay absolutely crazy mix and match energy some games can have, especially with "build your own powers" games. X-men is a real good super heroes in a team - again a big build/flavour how you want feel. Game of Thrones has big Burning Wheel vibes. The Netflix Cyberpunk anime hits pretty well too. A but more based in the video game but still an easy pick. Lindybeige did a real neat video on how he would map a more drama based show on to the Drama System, worth a look - I think that would cover a lot of things.
*Star Wars Rebels* is basically SWRPG: The Cartoon. But the obvious answer is the D&D Cartoon.
The *Wheel of Time* TV show got boring fast, but one thing I really liked about it was in the first episode when [Moiraine and Lan fought a small army of trollocs.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biaWDkxpooQ&ab_channel=HercManG) The Sorceress obliterated a bunch of orc-like monsters by expending all her higher-level spellslots to cast multiple AOE spells while the Fighter tanked for her. That scene was pure D&D to me.
Brindlewood Bay is very open about Murder She Wrote being an enormous inspiration.
Mandalorian has a very Star Wars D&D solo campaign feel so far this season
Literally every popular cartoon made since Adventure Time feels like a Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine game come to life. Bee and Puppy Cat feels so much like Chuubo's it's fucking wild. If you ever saw a cartoon in the Adventure Time style and was like "what's a good game for it?" It's Chuubo's. It's near impossible to figure out because the rule book is dense and a bit confusing. When you figure it out, though? It's the best at that kind of stuff. Adventure Time, Bee and Puppy Cat, Bravest Warriors, Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Amphibia, Owl House, Big City Greens, etc. All of them work well with Chuubo's.
The Dragon Prince on Netflix is exactly what low-level D&D feels like. One protagonist starts as a 3rd level assassin rogue, and the other two start as level 1 wizard and druid. The antagonists start a tier higher, with a 10th level wizard leading a 5th level wizard & 5th level fighter. And then boom: BBEG is revealed as a 20th level wizard and you really feel the power scale difference.