The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy is a show chock full of total gamegeek fodder and it happens to be one of the best cartoons to come along in years. I suppose you could even set the adventure at Toadblatt's Summer School of Sorcery, the Harry Potter takeoff in the show, to riff off the dueling academies in the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon.
I think the whole concept could be made to work, but I don't really think I'm going to pursue it. I've really grown to like con games where I can hand out character sheets and we start playing immediately. The thought of going over the basic deal of Pokéthulhu and then going over the basic deal of Billy & Mandy and only then playing kinda fills me with dread. I'd much rather hand out utterly inexplicable Encounter Critical charsheets, announce "you're all playing mutant robot hookers exploring a dungeon underneath the Face on Mars" and then start slinging dice. Some games get me into that groove and others do not. (Ridiculously, I think running an entire Billy & Mandy-themed campaign of Pokéthulhu would be more fun than struggling with the learning curve of a one shot.)
I also like con games where characters are rolled up one the spot. That works great for games where you mostly throw some stat dice and look up silly charts. I've gone that route for my OD&D and Basic/Expert con games in recent years. For games with point buys, long skill lists, or heavy math formulae this method doesn't work so well.
Hmmm, I think this whole post could be summed up as "I like stupid games. No, no! Even stupider than that!" No big surprise there. Usually when I try to run something smart and sophisiticated it blows up in my face. But honestly and unabashedly dumb games work for me with much greater frequency.
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You're not missing half the jokes, I promise. Roughly 75% of the game is just direct Mythos parody; there are as many references to the Mythos as I could cram in. Roughly 20% of the jokes are references to things neither Cthulhu nor Pokemon. Only the remaining sliver is Pokemon stuff; I let John Kovalic handle the vibe with the illustrations, basically, and trusted that fans would insert their own. This turned out to be an entirely reliable thing to trust.
ReplyDeleteMy Pokemon research boiled down entirely to the following:
(A) I watched two episodes. One of them made me cry, so I guess that was kind of good.
(B) I picked apart the WotC Pokemon RPG they'd published as a game for parents to play with kids. Cool little game, really, a nice try at an odd target market.
(C) I interviewed six children (at the kid's section at Border's) on the things they liked most about Pokemon. Their answers, in addition to being delightful, actually shaped the entire game, but not in any way that would be "gettable" as jokes, just in terms of focus. I literally built the game entirely around the elements the kids told me about, and a few lines in the game's text are twisted from the words of the wee bairns.
(D) I interviewed two librarians who worked regularly with kids and who I saw shelving some Pokemon-themed storybooks. Their responses were of no value, but they were very friendly and patient with my questions, so I like to mention them anyway :)
Very brilliant notion re Grim Adventures, btw. But honestly, I think the main reason not to run Pokethulhu at a convention is that while it's a groovy little game (if I do say so), its appeal depended on a craze that has, mercifully, faded considerably. I still dust it off now and then when friends demand, but it does require dusting :)
(And while nobody ever believes me [or at least, to my disappointment, nobody ever notices], the entire thrust of the game design [and the source of much of that mystery 20%] is deliberate and conscious parody of my experiences with licensed design when working on Last Unicorn Games' Star Trek line)
ReplyDelete[...] let John Kovalic handle the vibe with the illustrations, basically, and trusted that fans would insert their own.
ReplyDeleteThis is the same method by which most "anime" RPGs become "anime," btw: Trusting the fans to take a cue from the art, and dropping in a faint surface-sprinkling of references.
Cruel but true! :)
Have you seen the d20 E6 rules? They sound like something you would like.
ReplyDeletehttp://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=352719
Wow!
ReplyDeleteSpambots for masochistic D&D 3.5 mods?
They are serious with their RQ- D&D-paradigm-clash civil-war re-enactment...
s.john:
ReplyDeleteYou are several layers of awesome. I might just have to buy this game.
Hey Jeff!
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to do Pokéthulhu ala tGAoBaM, don't forget the episode where Billy got a job working for Cthulhu ending with confronting the beast on the golf course.
Have fun with it!
Fang Langford
Sett - the current (3rd) edition is free o' charge at the Cumberland site.
ReplyDeleteThe 2nd Edition still lurks in the corners of many a game shop, though, and is fun.