or at least was in production.

Anyway, the premise was that a set of AD&D rulebooks (never named as such, just "three tomes of power") had fallen through a space/time rip onto a world in it's medieval historical period and had been found and partially deciphered and it was decided that the books were the word of God and the society of the world henceforth developed along RPG lines - the whole game was essentially double-immersion.  You were playing a person who was basically LARPing all the time, except they thought it was perfectly natural to do it.

Agh!  I know I heard of this!

In 28 years, I've never seen that one.

Rings a bell, pretty sure I have discussed the concept in relation to someone wanting to run something along those lines.

Bell ringing for me, too.

Sounds a bit like an episode of Star Trek where they found a planet run by 1920's Chicago style gangsters, after some gangster novel was left behind and found on the planet years earlier by the locals and treated as if it was a "holy bible".

Quote from: ggroy;333493Sounds a bit like an episode of Star Trek where they found a planet run by 1920's Chicago style gangsters, after some gangster novel was left and found on the planet years earlier by the locals.

"A Piece of the Action", yes, but someone was actually planning on putting out a fantasy RPG like that.  Except not gangster style Chicago.

Could that be the one for Theatrix that had cigarettes being smuggled in from the real world?

It's FRUP, by James Wallis, Gar Hanrahan and Jonny Nexus. It hasn't yet seen the light of day, but I've certainly heard of it getting play at conventions in the UK (in playtest form, I assume). I think Magnum Opus Press were due to publish it.

Cheers
Malcolm

Quote from: David Johansen;333508Could that be the one for Theatrix that had cigarettes being smuggled in from the real world?

Sounds like.

Ironwood.

Thing is, Ironwood, as a setting, is pretty cool... but the source comic is adult only (and frequntly and graphically sexually explicit), and therefore the art in the RPG is pretty risque. Some people in the setting have been to or are from earth; the year is current, and the protagonist of the comics prefers Marlboroughs, imported from earth.

Plenty of magitech, too.

Quote from: Malcolm Craig;333525It's FRUP, by James Wallis, Gar Hanrahan and Jonny Nexus.

Yup, that's the one. Its release was originally planned by Hogshead before that company unfortunately went belly-up, but for the last few years Wallis has still expressed an interest in getting the game published in the future. It's not really the comedy game that you might expect from the premise, from what I recall, but instead played straight.

It's definitely FRUP.

I was in London something like 15 years ago, and got to sit in on a session with James Wallis as GM. Andrew Rilstone was one of the players. We played it a bit sillier than I think the writer originally intended, though it's hard to tell what the intended tone was.

It's very meta... you play a character with a character sheet that might not accurately reflect their real-world abilities, like a big strong dumb guy whose character stats indicate he's a mage, so he has to go around pretending to be weak and much smarter than he is. I can't remember if magic actually worked (I think it did, to some unpredictable extent), but it wasn't particularly useful.

I still have a set of FRUP postcards from their Gen Con exhibit.

I knew Hogshead was involved somehow, but the wayback machine wasn't being too helpful (doesn't archive subpages much at all, so clicking through old links wasn't happening).

However, googling "frup rpg" got me the info, and it is exactly what I was thinking of.  Thanks all!

Of course, I am not sure it would work so well today. The game was explicitely anti-AD&D in its outlook (as was James Wallis, who disliked D&D in all forms and incarnations), and where is AD&D now? Parodies don't age well.

Quote from: Melan;333577The game was explicitely anti-AD&D in its outlook (as was James Wallis, who disliked D&D in all forms and incarnations), and where is AD&D now? Parodies don't age well.

Then it has to be rewritten as a 4e parody? At least the basic premise and the title would still work, three books making the sound of "FRUP!" when they hit the earth.

Quote from: Melan;333577The game was explicitely anti-AD&D in its outlook (as was James Wallis, who disliked D&D in all forms and incarnations).

The hell I did. AD&D was my introduction to RPGs. In 1986 I broke the world record for playing AD&D non-stop. "Disliked D&D in all forms and incarnations"? You couldn't be more wrong.