I have a particular test for movies. Let’s call it the Tondro Test. The Tondro Test goes like this: “Does watching this movie make me want to run or play a game in it?” Note that the Tondro Test, like the Bechdel Test, is not a test of quality. A movie can be terrible and yet make for a great RPG. Likewise, many wonderful movies would make terrible games. Let’s look at what makes an intellectual property—be it a movie, a television show, or a book—into a good setting for an RPG.
Lots to Do
A gameable IP has to have a lot going on in it. There’s the stuff the protagonists of the movie are doing, but then there’s all this other stuff going on. This other stuff might not be detailed; in fact, it almost never is, because there’s no time in a movie. But it’s strongly implied. For example: Star Trek. (We will come back to Star Trek a lot in this column because if there is a more eminently gameable setting, I do not know it.) Yes, the Enterprise is doing its thing for the camera every week, but there’s dozens, maybe hundreds of other Federation starships out there (depending on which series you’re watching) and all of them could be having adventures just as strange and exciting.
For all of the flak thrown at it, Middle-earth is also very gameable by this criteria. Yes, the Fellowship has the most important job in the Third Age, but Tolkien mentions in passing or alludes to countless other adventures that go on during the War of Ring. My favorite example is that, while Frodo is asleep recovering from the confrontation at the Fords of Bruinen, Elrond sends out elves and other inhabitants of Rivendell to find out what happened to the Ringwraiths, and they find out one of them escaped. That’s obviously an adventure for player characters, and the novel is full of shit like this. Boromir at one point casually mentioned that he survived the fall of Osgiliath with two other men. Do you know how many LOTRO players I have met whose characters were one of those two men? (A lot more than two.)
In contrast to these examples, let’s look at Dune. Now, I love the original novel. Herbert was a genius. And Modiphius has made a really interesting Dune RPG; I have most of the line on my shelf. But that novel was not written to be a game and, to illustrate that, all you have to know is that there’s a huge galaxy out there, but Arrakis is the most important planet in it, Arrakis has one city, and Paul’s story is, ultimately, the only story that matters. That’s not a bad thing for a novel. In fact, Dune is a perfect illustration of how to create a universe for a novel, because everything in the universe is structurally and thematically designed to reinforce the point of the novel. It’s Paul’s story from beginning to end. I mean, sure, player characters can run around elsewhere on Arrakis, and they can leave to explore the rest of the galaxy, but … why bother? Everything important happens on Arrakis, and everything interesting on Arrakis happens around Paul.
The Aliens universe has this problem, because even though there’s a huge galaxy out there to explore and presumably all kinds of cool shit is going on it, every story somehow comes back to the xenomorphs. The Aliens universe has one story, albeit one with a lot of permutations. That story is “Human beings are shitty to each other, oh, and by the way, don’t look up.” (No shade at the Aliens RPG which, again, I own.)
Clear Roles
Roleplaying games have classes (or clans, or cults, or whatever your game calls them) for a reason. Players like having a clear role in the story. Classes create stereotypes, and players can have a lot of fun rejecting that stereotype and playing against it. They want to play the brainy fighter, the wizard that hates to study, the elf that’s afraid of the forest, or whatever. Movies, television shows, and books that make good games have easily recognizable roles that players can slot themselves into or riff on.
There are many great examples of this, including Star Wars (Jedi, bounty hunter, smuggler). I picked on Aliens earlier, but the Aliens film actually does this pretty well, with the Lieutenant, the NCOs, the Grunts, the Corporate Stooge, the Pilots, and the Big Guns. Harry Potter is another great example, with its four Houses. But, again, the perfect example is probably Star Trek. Everyone in Star Fleet is divided into broad categories like Command, Science, and Operations, and then inside of those broad divisions you have specific jobs like Helm, Tactical, and Transporter Chief. Add in the various species in the Star Trek universe and making a new character is as simple as “Vulcan Engineer” or “Andorian Security Chief.”
Cool Stuff
A good setting benefits from having cool weapons, gizmos, and other distinctive objects. Star Wars has lightsabers, Mandalorian armor, and X-wings. Star Trek has phasers, tricorders, and com badges. Dune has stillsuits, personal shields, and ornithopters. When a player gets to add one of these things to their character’s inventory, you will hear a little squee of joy.
But it’s not enough to just have some cool things that everyone uses. There has to be a diverse array of cool things, so that players can distinguish their characters from each other based on the shit they carry and interact with. Yes, Dune has cool things, but everyone on Dune has the same three cool things. Harry Potter solves this by customizing the thing. Every wizard has a wand, a familiar, and a broom, but there are lots of different kinds of wands, familiars, and brooms, so each player can have one that’s a little different. That’s very gameable.
NPCs the Players Want to Meet
You usually don’t want your player characters to meet the protagonist of whatever setting you are adapting. Admiral Picard can show up to give the PCs a mission, sure, but your player characters are probably not going to want him around during the adventure because he does everything better than they do and he’ll just order them around the whole time. In a gameable setting, what you want are interesting characters who aren’t the protagonist; these are the characters players will want to meet and hang out with.
Again, Aliens shows itself as a bad example here. I mean, who is there in the Aliens universe? Most of the characters are dead by the end of each installment. The Aliens universe has this problem so bad that you can even see the writers trying to solve it; in a development I can only call the Soong Maneuver, it’s revealed that every Bishop-style android looks like the guy who designed them. The folks at Evil Genius have made an RPG based on the Godzilla Monsterverse, but you can immediately see the problem: all the cool NPCs the players want to meet are 1,000-foot-tall man-eating kaiju. I mean, sure, there are other people in the setting, but who cares? (I’ll make an exception for the two girls that talk to Mothra. They’re cool.)
In contrast, Middle-earth has scads of cool characters the players might meet: Elrond! Beorn! Galadriel! None of these people are going to steal the show from the player characters. They’re her to hand out quests, give out cool things, and create opportunities for the player characters to show off. Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Potterverse all have this covered, but Dune—again—is a problem. Most of the cool characters get killed off early, and the survivors are incredibly hard to find and talk to for the rest of the novel, at which point Paul becomes Emperor and … what are the player characters supposed to do in this universe anyway? (Now we’re back to the beginning, “Lots to Do,” above.)
Cool Powers
Now, most players play human characters, and the fighter is the most popular class in D&D. But many, many players—sure, a minority, but a sizable one—want to play anything except a human being, and they want cool powers. You can call them magic, cyberwear, or the Force. You can call them high elves, dhampirs, or a metamorphmagus. Whatever. The point is: there’s not only cool powers out there, but there are enough different kinds of cool powers that the players can distinguish themselves from each other through them. This is similar to cool stuff, which we talked about earlier, but it’s probably worth breaking out into its own category because player characters acquire them differently and they’re more complex, mechanically. Cool Stuff comes from shopping trips or loot, but cool powers are something you train or develop throughout your character arc and they can’t usually be taken away. They are often described with game subsystems that are the cornerstone of the entire game, and players who enjoy digging into mechanics will get into cool powers because they can explore the subsystem. These subsystems are really key to creating an RPG based on an IP and, as a designer, they’re often the most exciting part, and the part that needs the most playtesting.
A great example of this was the Control/Sense/Alter system developed for the Force in the original West End Star Wars game. That system has proven incredibly influential in the RPG space. The Dresden Files game (using the FATE system and published by Evil Hat back in the 2000s) uses a similar three-skill system for magic, for example, and I stole the idea when I created the Enchantment system for Arthur Lives. Star Trek, for all its great gameability, has a relative paucity of Cool Powers; you have a handful of psychic species like Vulcans, and it’s no coincidence that those species are very popular in the game. For players who like cool powers, there’s not many places to go in Star Trek.
We might return to this topic later, as it feels very complex to me, but I think this is a pretty good list of what to look for when you ask yourself, “Should we turn this setting into a game?”