The Evil GM – Converting favorite Cartoons/TV Shows to your games..thoughts on the topic.

Man, sometimes you get a great idea in your mind of a cartoon or TV show and you just want to convert it over to your favorite game.
So then you sit down to do:
  • Tons of research of what you think would be cool to use in your game.
  • Maybe watch a few episodes of that cartoon.
  • Watch it again, this time taking notes.
Finally you realized you’ve done all this work and not a lot to show for it all, but you push forward.
Then suddenly you get stuck on trying to convert something or make something work in the world of roleplaying. 
This sudden stop makes you question what you’ve done before, so now you start going over what you already did. This makes you frustrated as now you are going over everything, until you get to the point you just say, “SCREW IT” and you don’t bother with the entire project. 
Sadly now it just sits where you left it as you move onto something else in life.
This is what I heard from a friend last night while I was planning out the show notes for the various podcasts I do.
The only advice I could really give on the topic, is do your research, move forward and sometimes realize NOT EVERYTHING from a TV Show or cartoon can be ported over to your favorite game. Sometimes things will need to be made up on the fly or find a rule that fits it to the best of the games ability. Sometimes, somethings will just not fit with the game at all.
I wonder how many people start projects of converting something and just leave it because of a roadblock or something like that?

2 thoughts on “The Evil GM – Converting favorite Cartoons/TV Shows to your games..thoughts on the topic.

  1. Back before I had kids, I created Mutants & Masterminds (2nd ed.) characters for every G.I. Joe character that ever had a figure produced from 82 – 88 (except the "battle force 2000 guys). Mostly I did this by adding one or two details to templates from their awesome "Agents of Freedom" supplement. I've used these to run a few adventures over the years, a couple at various Gen Con's and others just for friends. Works pretty well, but really depends on how familiar your players are with the source material.

  2. I had good luck converting the movie "The Black Plague" into a one-shot D&D adventure for the kids. Of course, the players didn't follow the plot line exactly, but the movie's story is straightforward enough such that it was easy to nudge the players back on track.

    John

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