Here's the game: pick a TV show unlikely to be an RPG (so no sci-fi,  no fantasy, but legal, historical drama, family drama, cop shows, sitcoms, etc. are allowed).  What system would you run it with, with what changes, and why?

Seinfeld: I rework some of the skills and abilities from Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space and throw in a bunch of event and complication tables. Something about the way the game is built around existing characters in a show seems like it would work for this. Kramer would have a different number of story points from Jerry for example.

Black Adder: I would use my own system. The reason is I've thought about doing it for ages and the only thing keeping me from working on it is licensing. But I've been bouncing ideas in my head and think I know how I would tweak the system.

I disagree with cop shows being a legal choice for this thread, as they are pretty easy to 'game'.

In fact, Mini Six already has a neat little writeup for using its rules to run a 70s cop show game:

http://www.antipaladingames.com/p/mini-six.html

I always thought The Lost Room + Unknown Armies  was a good fit. The Occupant seems very avatarish to me.

"It's always Sunny in Philadelphia"

Use a modified version of of Teenagers from Outer Space...

Replace "Relationship with Parents" with "Relationship with Society" It still determines your starting "Allowance" but also is used when interacting with "Normal" people who are not as Depraved as your "Gang" (So example, the Mcpoyles are considered their own "Gang" and this doesn't apply to them, but when you go to the Bank to take out a loan to fund your home made "Lethal Weapon 7" it's used)

Replace "Bonk" with "Sanity"...Physical harm can reduce Sanity but it rarely happens. Instead you lose Sanity points when your plans are foiled, others emotionally abuse you, or the consequences of your actions catch up with you. Losing all of your Sanity causes your character to flip out and engage in some extreme reaction, and takes them out of play for the scene afterward...but then they bounce back to their full Sanity after the Cathartic melt down and release...

 Throw out the Alien Powers, but keep the human ones.

Community with AD&D, duh.

Has anyone here ever read or played SPI's  Dallas: The Television Role-Playing Game from 1980? I find it fascinating that the very first licensed RPG wasn't Barsoom, or Middle Earth, Conan, or Star Wars, but a TV soap opera.

Sons of Anarchy using Green Ronin's "A Song of Ice and Fire".

Sons of Anarchy is a re-telling of Hamlet, where everyone dies at the end!

Game of Thrones, is Shakesperian where everyone dies at the end!

These two can go together like Peanut Butter and Chocolate!

Instead of rolling up your House, you're rolling up your Gang as a collection of PC's... It should be easy enough to re-interpret the House roll aspects. An "ancient" gang would mean they originated after World War I, where a recent gang might have been formed from Veterans of the war on Terror!

In a SOIF players also spend points to decide where their characters line up in the House Hierarchy. From being the first born son set to Inherit, to other children within...or taking up a title of Master of Arms for the House, To the House Maester, to a simple house Retainer..

This becomes easily translated to positions within the Gang. Are you the inheritor like Jax? The Power behind the throne like Gemma? The Master of Arms like Tig, The Club's Accountant (Maester) Like Bobby Elvis, a retainer like Chucky or Unser? Or the young Prince's lover Tara?

Just as in Game of Thrones, women in real life criminal organizations have a strange relation. Many women may appear to be "Property" like Cherry, but in reality they might be the ones actually controlling everything like Gemma/Cersei!

ASOIF has a robust and detailed social combat system which relies on Intimidation, Persuasion and Seduction as ways of influencing others and getting them to do what you want... As Game of Thrones is filled with politics.... Just like Sons of Anarchy as inter-gang politics become huge, as well as politics which involve other gangs as well!

And ASOIF encourages every player character to have some great dark secret which can bring about their downfall, just like Sons of Anarchy!

When combat finally does happen, it's a deadly system where Fate Points can be spent in order to save one's life...or where the less Social characters get to finally show off!

CSI: Miami, with the Miami supplement for Millennium's End and A Dirty World for a system, no other changes.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;845400I disagree with cop shows being a legal choice for this thread, as they are pretty easy to 'game'.

In fact, Mini Six already has a neat little writeup for using its rules to run a 70s cop show game:

http://www.antipaladingames.com/p/mini-six.html

Cop shows should in theory be easy to game but no one does them.  Also, I think "cops" is an easier genre to game than "tv police crime drama".

Quote from: RPGPundit;845691Cop shows should in theory be easy to game but no one does them.  Also, I think "cops" is an easier genre to game than "tv police crime drama".

I suppose it depends on what one means by cop show. If we're talking late night procedural drama, in my experience they are difficult because law is complicated and they demand a bit more fidelity to the legal system than something like Die Hard or Rush Hour. It can also be a challenge to GM anything that is modern detective where the players have access to resources like crime labs, forensics, etc. It is a lot of fun if you put the work in before hand but I think a lot of GMs are at a bit of a loss when they first approach it.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;845708It can also be a challenge to GM anything that is modern detective where the players have access to resources like crime labs, forensics, etc. It is a lot of fun if you put the work in before hand but I think a lot of GMs are at a bit of a loss when they first approach it.

The big thing here is to take a page from reality. In RL Forensics is nowhere near as accurate as tv portrays it...not to mention most cities actually don't have the resources to do every kind of test...so have to send them to other cities for specific tests....also results take weeks to months to get, not hours and days...

Quote from: Orphan81;845709The big thing here is to take a page from reality. In RL Forensics is nowhere near as accurate as tv portrays it...not to mention most cities actually don't have the resources to do every kind of test...so have to send them to other cities for specific tests....also results take weeks to months to get, not hours and days...

The realism is what makes the genre so challenging for GMs. When I was doing Terror Network campaigns with FBI characters I used the FBI forensics handbook, which was very useful but it is all very different from how most GMs are accustomed to managing those sorts of details. Also, at least in the case of the FBI, the agents themselves are not usually gathering forensic evidence, they have forensic teams they can bring in to handle that stuff. The more I learned about how the FBI operated, the easier it got. But as a person with zero background in law and enforcement, it was enormously difficult initially despite watching these kinds of shows my whole life (because the shows spoon feed you the legal stuff, you don't need to know it to enjoy them).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;845711(because the shows spoon feed you the legal stuff, you don't need to know it to enjoy them).

Could you elaborate on this? Because my first (probably stupid) reaction was, "Well can't the GM and the campaign assumptions spoon feed the legal stuff to the players in a similar way, so that they don't need to know it to enjoy the game?"

I mean, heraldry, selling treasure and alchemy were all complicated affairs in real life, but we gloss through and around them all the time in tabletop RPGs.

The Dangerous Journeys mini-campaign I ran around 92 was set in the town of Landfjord, based on Roseanne's Lanford, Illinois, complete with analogous NPCs (or is that Non-HPs? I forget Mythus' silly renamings) and locations from that show.

I'd use Cypher System now, simply because "DJ Conner, level 2, level 4 to avoid pummeling, level 1 when stealing a car" works for me.