Recently, I’ve been reading Discount Dan’s Backroom Bargains, after having finished the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
The idea of converting a LitRPG series into a playable system has come up before, and I think there are a couple that are coming to crowdfunding, but I’m not sure of any that are currently in publication.
Discount Dan takes place in a variant of the backrooms, where memetic items take on strange properties, similar to the universe of Control. Items of Power allow people to fight against the surreal nightmare that they find themselves in.
Offhand, that reminds me of the Laundry Files, Delta Green, and the Triangle Agency.
It’s been years since I’ve played the Laundry Files, and that particular horror story of an experience did a bit to sour me to the whole system. I don’t think I’ve ever played Delta Green, though I have read it. Triangle Agency, I’ve played a couple of times and really liked it.
So, using Delta Green or something more combat oriented to handle the combat and danger, and the Triangle Agency to handle Items of Power, has some potential, especially since for the most part, the systems don’t overlap.
I’m sure there are some systems that would work better, but those are the ones that came to mind first. Monster of the Week perhaps could be used to build it, but the combat in the Powered by the Apocalypse engine has never felt all that great to me.
Though the d6 based systems are mathematically more satisfying to me than the d20 based systems, or the d100 based systems. Triangle Agency’s dice system is something else also. While technically a d4 system, it has some odd twists.
To make a game like this work, it seems like you’d want mechanics to handle the mundane and another set of mechanics to handle the surreal, so mashing together two distinct systems makes sense.
I’m not sure if I’d be able to find players for this, but the idea was somewhat inspiring.
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