Book Learnin' - September 3, 2001 - Brooke Bolander
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I'm the zany brainy with the drainy crainy. Don't say we didn't warn you. Hmmmph. In your absolute zeal for sci-fi novels, you forgot a few good choices. I was absolutely positive that someone would send in a Last Unicorn RPG idea, but alas, 'twas not to be. What could be better than playing as a unicorn? Of course, I have a weakness for animals, and I can't shake the idea of an animal RPG out of my head. The closest games I've ever seen to what I have in mind were Ecco and Kolibri; if an RPG could take that type of idea and put it to good use, I'd be one happy harpy. ...Oh right, books. On with the show! | "And they were no longer girls...*sniff*...they were little women." | | Hi, Odd is it may sound, I would do almost anything to see a Pride and Prejudice RPG. Admittedly, justifying even the smallest level of combat in the game would strain the setting considerably (you *might* sneak a duel in...but a duel just isn't Austen), but I think the intricate social interplay would......I'm just describing a dating game, aren't I? More realistically, I'd have to toss up between War & Peace and Fight Club. Tolstoy's work (while probably majestically unsuitable in some areas) certainly has the scope for, if nothing else, a Strategy RPG, and a sufficiently large and dynamic social structure to make NPC interaction the heart of the game. Fight Club would offer a bizarre and sophisticated tale of a struggle against society and yourself, and well, if worst came to worst, the nigh-unlimited pool of oponents for combat would at least make some sense (not to mention an opportunity to reuse the Bouncer engine - it's lonely being the world's only Bouncer fan :). Still, perhaps the real question is - would there be potential in a Vagrant Story novel? -Jye Nicolson PS: Yoko Kanno and Vib Ribbon are a truly, truly evil pair. | The idea of classic books being turned into RPGs is an interesting one...but I don't think I'd wanna touch a Jane Austen game. That's kinda like turning Little Women into an RPG; I loved that book, but as an intense gaming experience? No thank you. It also didn't work as an anime, for the obvious reasons. Then again, there are lots and lots of classics exciting enough to be translated into amazing RPGs if the right developers snatched them up. What about The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Can you imagine that story played out with Valkyrie Profile quality graphics? What about Moby Dick done in a Skies of Arcadia fashion? Or if you want to go the animal route, White Fang. I dunno how it would get pulled off - I just like the idea of making a wolf wreak havoc on small Alaskan gold mining towns. ...And if any of you make fun of me for liking Little Women, I'll go Ren Hoek on your ass. Try me. | I want a Wasp Factory RPG, does that count? | | I seriously think that one of the best novels that could be made into in a RPG is the heart-rending "The Texas-Israeli War: 1999," written in 1957 and combining action, drama and intensely deep characters to become one of the pinnacles of science fiction... HAHAHAHAHA! Sorry, I couldn't keep that up any longer. Truly, though, I'd love to see an RPG based on an Iain Banks book... "Inversions" comes to mind. Fantasy setting, political intrigue, and two main characters who have opposing viewpoints on pretty much everything. Either that, or an RPG (not an action game!) based on the Metroid franchise. With the soundtrack by Radiohead. Samus is the coolest video game heroine ever... and it would be exquisitely creepy. -Eightball, polishing up his Varia Suit | Holy freaking crap, someone else who reads the work of Iain Banks. This is a seriously good idea - I'd absolutely kill to see any given RPG grow some balls and have an ending like Against A Dark Background. Can you imagine the fevour? The absolute fits fans would have? Glorious, glorious, O my brothers. Radiohead's music is custom-made for games - Pyramid Song goes so well with certain levels in the DC version of Ecco I'm not sure they didn't plan it. Go put on "Like Spinning Plates" and play through Shrine of Controversy - whooooaaaaa. It's like Floyd and the Wizard of Oz, man! | You HAD to remind me... | | I think I have a novel I would lie, cheat, steal, and kill to be made into an RPG. The Lord of the Rings. ::pause:: ::longer pause:: Dang. They already did that. Can I amend to say I would lie, cheat, steal, and kill for LotR to be made into an RPG that was actually GOOD? Or even semi-good? Or God forbid, COMPLETE?! As in Frodo *actually* makes it to the Cracks of Doom? I think I'd die of a heart attack if I something so rare and incredible were ever to grace the gaming world. - Princess Artemis P.S. About the Bahamut legend: if I recall correctly, Bahamut is a variation on the Bible's Behemoth, and in Hebrew myth was considered a consort of sorts with Leviathan. | A lot of people wrote in about LOTR being turned into a game, and I seriously have to wonder if fate has been merciful enough to spare most of you poor wretches from the horror that was the Lord of The Rings SNES RPG. For those of you that don't already know, the first book in the series, The Fellowship of The Ring, was made into an action-RPG for the SNES by Interplay. It was, needless to say, not good. Not good at ALL. The curse of the Almighty Licensing God was upon this project, for it did suck, and suck quite hard. The graphics were bland, the gameplay god-awful (for example, you could only control one character in your party at a time; in the meanwhile the others were busy wandering off getting slaughtered by bats and snakes,) and the music...well, I've blessedly blocked it out of my mind. I never knew that the area outside Hobbiton was infested with wolves, nor did I know of the large and extensive underground caves under it's quiet surface, filled with bats and poorly animated orcs. I mean, Christ, you don't have to stick to every detail of the book, but it would be nice if the developers had even TRIED to be slightly canon. Sheeze. You know it's gonna be a long haul when the first objective is to "Find Gaffer Gamgee's Glasses," which he appears to have lost in said caves. Why in the hell was he wandering around in there anyways? Why am I trying to make sense of this monstrosity?! ...I'm okay. Really I am. | Goliath - HP :2,000 | | I think "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman would make a great game. For those who have read it, you realize how incredible London Below is, and the characters that inhabit it. For those that haven't, uhm....imagine Blade Runner mixed with...uh, Labyrinth, and with the uh....Goonies, and...guh, here's a shiny object to play with. See? Shiny! Anyways, it seems like a truly intricate world that's only been scratched on the surface, and I'd love to see someone take advantage of it. Either that, or the Bible. You could control Moses, and go try and catch animals by shooting food at them to make them sleep. And it'd be on an ark. And it'd be in 3d. Crap, I need to write this down.....wait, what? Oh. Been done? Snap. --Low Moral Fiber | Neverwhere had that classic 'group of misfits on a journey' storyline that would indeed translate perfectly into an RPG. There were a lot of things only vaguely hinted at in the book - the Shepherds in Shepherd's Bush, anyone? - that could be elaborated on, and Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar were really Rude & Reno-ish to me, in an evil sort of way. Gotta love those two, although I wouldn't want to fight them... You wouldn't believe how many people named the Bible as their top choice. While I can see the appeal of it, Bible Adventures scarred me in ways so deep that I don't believe there would be any way I'd be able to make myself play that sort of thing. The image of Noah running around with a horse, an ox, two birds, and a raccoon perched precariously on top of his head will never leave my thoughts entirely. Go to HELL, Wisdom Tree. | Fei Fong Wong IS Paul Muad'Dib, in... | | I think Dune deserves better than it's current crap line-up of games, don't you agree? But besides that, I've been a fan of the books Sabriel and Lirael by Garth Nix and I think that they are deserving of a good classic fantasy RPG. The story isn't so nearly epic as a Final Fantasy game or even most D&D games and it would fit well into a game focused around personal gain. And it would be especially good for those people who actually role-play. PS: Do I get suck-up points for being a guy and mentioning a book with a female lead? PSS: While we're on the topic: Does anyone know the title of the book that Parasite Eve is supposedly based on? ~Subtle Silence, (aka Adam) | Yeah, Dune is yet another victim of the liscense monster. The screenshots I've seen were absolutely hideous... it's a shame, really. For some reason the desert areas in Xenogears - heck a LOT of Xenogears - reminded me of Dune. I don't know if the was the sand wyrms or what, but I always thought that they had the same sort of feel. If the XG team worked on a Dune RPG, you can bet I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat - who wouldn't, for that matter? And no, you don't get suck-up points, you get Chicken Cookies. Yum yum. | Games that time forgot | | Musing on the topic at hand - books and games - I was hit by inspiration. The Portable Dorothy Parker would make the coolest game EVER. Marvel at snarky witticisms delivered at rapid-fire pace around a fully-3D, ten gajillion polygon Algonquin round table! Gasp at the fully-formed insults hurled in stereo sound! Grin dorkily at the penetrating wit and measured affectations of a 1940s group of dilletantes! Okay, that was lame. Seriously though. I was looking at my bookshelf, and I saw one book - a biography of Orson Welles. Now, his life may not be the best choice for a gaming adaptation, but wouldn't a game biography be cool as crap? It'd be really, um, non-linear obviously. And you might have to use figures who've been dead for a long time and are in public domain. But I'm sure you can see the appeal, if it's done intelligently and with a sense of adventure. Just a thought. --Adrian Langston, stop making sense... | That brings yet another interesting topic into the mix - why can't developers play with different time periods and such? An RPG set during the 1930s, with mobsters, could be very cool indeed. Or a Native American-inspired game, with the different tribes and such....yeah, that would be quite innovative. Biography-RPGs of famous people - that would certainly be...strange, wouldn't it? I'd say 'Abraham Lincoln RPG all the way, baby!' but someone's already made a game with Honest Abe, soooo... | I always wondered about those 'ethers'... | | Greetings, What I would most like to see made into a game is the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. This is one of my all-time favourites, and I think that it could make an excellent transformation to a traditional RPG. An excerpt: "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers.... also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.... But the only thing that worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge...." All of the major status items are already covered! There could be a range of special attacks and commands, all based on different chemicals. Also, the monster design would be terriffic and certainly unique. Anyway, there's my two cents. Peace, - Justin Vinall | All I can say is HELL YES. For that matter, if they ever made an RPG out of any Beat works (Burroughs and Kerouac, anyone?) I'd snatch them up in about a millisecond. | Yet another drug-induced volumne | | Brooke, Congrats on your "appointment". A woman's place is most certainly in the home... writing this intelligent column. May you have a fruitful and enjoyable time interacting with us low-lives. :) As for the assigned topic, I would definitely have to say that Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland"/"Through the Looking Glass" would make excellent fodder for a console RPG of some sort. Not only is it a vivid world with MANY characters and several built-in situations and protaganists/antagonists, it would also be very easy to expand on. Just about anything goofy or bizarre would be right at home. Not to mention that the symbolism/underlying themes of the original stories would fit right in with what RPGs are currently throwing at us. However, just like any other book-to-game translation (or any licensed game, for that matter), it wouldn't work unless it was done with the utmost care. Licensed games have a higher shit to not-shit ratio mostly due to the fact that companies think that the license alone will sell a mediocre title. - Dark Schneider P.S. American McGee's Alice would work fine too... it would make for much creepier enemies. | Good idea. Quite a few of Carrol's creations have bee turned into random monsters by game developers - the Bandersnatch, for example, is mentioned in Jabberwocky, although I don't know if he had odd wolf-like creatures in mind when he wrote that particular passage... | Taking it personally | | Hello! (Let's see if I can get this letter in early enough to be posted!) I'd like to see an RPG based on the Deathstalker novels, by Simon R. Green. Space opera on a grand scale, with more than its fair share of creepiness, ancient barely-understood technologies that somehow bestow funky unique psi powers, a society in the final grotesque stages of decay... plus the protagonist characters are nice and distinctive, reminiscent of the average crowd of RPG heroes, with plenty of insecurities and twisted background tales to mine for sub-quests. I think it would make a fairly good RPG, if handled correctly. And now for something completely different: a suggestion for a topic. Bear with me; it'll take some explaining. (Chrono Cross spoilers, fairly early on in the game, so nothing major.) I was playing Chrono Cross recently. Got to the bit of the game where Kid's been poisoned, and you have to go slaughter a Hydra to get the antidote. It didn't seem all that momentous at the time. The dwarfs fought bravely to protect it, perhaps a little desperately, and there only seemed to be one Hydra in the entire marsh. But I didn't really have any qualms about killing it (okay, maybe a few), because after all I needed to collect its Humour and get out of there so I could move the plot along. Then I spent some more time puttering around aimlessly, and ended up switching worlds a few times while desperately trying to find out how to get to the next plot point or two. Went to the dessicated Water Dragon island, met the fairies, eventually figured out how to get to the same island in the other world. And there were the dwarfs. Standing over the dead bodies of all those charming fairies I'd been talking to just minutes before in the other world. Their explanation for this hideous behaviour? Something to the order of, "You humans taught us that this is the way of the world. You took over the marsh, our former home, and butchered the lone Hydra living there (as well as far too many of our friends and brothers), so now we're slaughtering these poor defenseless little fairies so we can have someplace to live." (I can't remember the exact words they used. Close enough.) I sat there, staring at the screen in shock. Then I proceeded to systematically hunt down and kill every dwarf I could find, as fast and efficiently as possible, all the while feeling profoundly disturbed by both this plot development and my reaction to it. For a few minutes, it wasn't just a game; it was *personal*. I wanted to smack down those dwarfs for *daring* to hurt the fairies, all the while feeling a little (okay, more than a little) sick with guilt, with the knowledge that I was the one who'd really caused all this death and suffering. Just to advance the plot. It surprised me. Before this event, I'd mainly been caught up in configuring element trays and attempting to level up (my favourite pastime), always somewhat detached from the characters, from the plot points and event triggers needed to progress through the game. But for those few minutes.... What I'd like to know is, has this sort of thing happened to other people? A sudden emotional reaction, to whichever character or plot element or situation, that forces you to get involved in a game much more deeply than you'd ever expected? Sorry about the length of this letter; I got reeeally carried away. But it really affected me, if only for a few minutes of gameplay. -mej | You know, the funny thing is I had the exact same reaction to that scene as you described. I have NEVER been so mad while playing a game; I called the dwarves several choice words and proceeded to pick a fight with any of the little buggers I could find. It was just such a....I don't know, human thing to do. Bastards. Although I wonder - if the faeries had slaughtered the dwarves, would we feel the same? I think it would depend on their attitude. Those dwarves had a "it's not our fault, it's everyone else's fault" attitude that grated on the nerves. That and the fact they were throughly enjoying killing a bunch of innocent faeries. Ugh. Closing Comments: Well, you saw the letter - have you ever had an incident where you were overwhelmed with emotion while playing a game, to the point where you were really, REALLY mad, sad, whatever? Oh, and please don't mention Aeris's death; that's a pretty obvious choice, I'd think. Any OTHER time than that, my little droogs. -Brooke Bolander, who would really like to play an RPG as Hannibal Lecter. |
