So... What Next

[ffutures]

Trying to think of the next Dianaverse title.

Basically, it needs to be in the form of

[famous (preferably dead) person] (The / of / etc.) [something] [something] (optional [something])

And sound like the title of a well-known TV series or film, preferably one that shows a shaky grasp of historical accuracy.

E.g.

Diana: Warrior Princess
Elvis: The Legendary Tours

The examples I had in the original game that I don't think I'll be using for one reason or another:

Parton: Lust For Glory - (Military setting) - alive

Richard of Sherwood - (Nixon as Robin Hood) - boring

Toni the Vampire Slayer - (Toni Blair etc.) - alive, boring.

Gandhi's Angels - (detective series) - still a possibility, but detective games are difficult to write.

So - any suggestions?

[small print] Sorry, but for legal reasons I need to say up front that I'm not paying anything for suggestions - the best you can expect is a free copy of the PDF if I write the thing and a credit somewhere in the introduction [/small print]

Comments

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

My first thought was "Robin Cook: Prince of Thieves" but that would be unfair to one of the few honest men in recent politics and also likely to be as boring as Toni the Vampire Slayer.

Sunday night at work tends to be pretty dead from midnight to about 6 am and I'll kill some time by thinking of other ideas.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

I got nothing. My mind got stuck on "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and from there to "Kojak: The Night Stalker", but of course Kojak is a character not a person and so no use. The only other things I came up with were "The Queen Mummy Returns", but that's just stupid, and "Grace Kelly's Heroes".

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I have been half thinking for a little while now of creating some sort of Hunter S Thompson inspired game.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I did actually write a HST parody once:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/odyssey/od2.htm

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Heh, marvellous.

Incidentally, and somewhat randomly, were the sombrero wearing mexican Daleks in a paranoia adventure, once upon many moons ago, your creation?

[elfbiter.livejournal.com]

They were.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

Erm, OK, these might be very lame and I might think of better ones tomorrow...

The Malcolm X Files - Black rights activist and discoverer of the Sex Pistols investigates weird happenings.

Roy Rogers in the 25th Century - Space cowboy and his robotic horse Tweaker are flung in to Earths future.

Theresa from the Crypt - A wrinkled nun narrates horror stories (I've been trying to think of a Mother Theresa character twist for your stuff for ages!)

Waynes World - John Wayne and his lifelong friend Adolph have zany slacker fun (I spent a while trying to think of someone for Garth [I decided Darth probably wouldn't pass muster] and then gave up.)

Groucho: Band of Brothers - Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Margaret Dumont troop across Europe to fight the nazis.

OK, may be some food for thought there (although likely only the kind that ends in a nice glass of Andrews!) Now it's in my head I'll see if I can think of any good ones.

Oh, all free for complete ridicule and fragmenting into much better ideas, naturally.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

Freddie: The Maltese Falcon - Freddie Mercury and his sidekick Elizabeth the Queen Mother are caped crusaders fighting crime in Sloughpolis.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Some interesting ideas there, not sure any of them quite work for me but I'll think on it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've already used Mother Theresa - she's Diana's martial arts guru in D:WP, also the evil Thatcher's sister.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

That figures, mentally I'd had here as a kind of merging of Mother Theresa and Yoda.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Kissinger: Doctor Who? Adventures in timetravelling diplomacy.

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Or even Doc Kissinger: Man of Bronze

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Ok, that one sounds like it could be fun. Certainly one to think about. I hadn't thought of a superhero game.

[ggreig]

Che Guevara: American Guerilla in the Phillipines

Che and his valiant allies (such as the brave General Asterix de Gaulle) are fighting back against the threat of Red General Macarthy, who has vowed that he will return. Events such as the Cuban cigar crisis (cigar-shaped alien technology flown from area 51 by Che's oil-tycoon ally, Fidel Castrol, attempt to poison Macarthy's water supply) keep the tension high.

[ggreig]

Other characters could include The King of Siam, who rules from the Forbidden City of Katmandu, and his evil twin Chairman Miaow. Groucho Marx (less than original, but it's an old favourite), John Lenin (though I suspect some variation on that must have been used already), and "Uncle Giuseppe" Stalin, head of the Mafia.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I can't say that this quite works for me, but you're certainly getting the idea. John Lenin is one of Elvis's sidekicks in "Elvis: The Legendary Tours", the other is 'Senator' Joe McCartney.

[adrian-middle.livejournal.com]

I think you'll start struggling with iconic dead characters you haven't already used. The biggies are probably Marilyn and JFK, who really need to go together.

Something along the lines of Team America: World Police might work, addressing superheroes but also plugging the supermarionation roleplaying void. I'm thinking "Jimmy Dean and the Stormcats": A cross between Grease and Thurderbirds. But watch out, their mechanic is called Rock.

Or maybe you could take your Hunter S Thompson idea and blend it seamlessly into something focused on Jim Morrison, thrown in with something Russ Meyeresque around the California porn industry. It might make it harder to pin a name at the centre (Lono in the Realm of the Lizard King, maybe?). Personally I'd just call it Mondo Gonzo.

Either that or you could do something Star Warsy based around Margaret Thatcher as the evil Empress of a clone army (maybe she could be using clone voters) - great opportunity to bring in Raelians, GM technology and the Blackjackets - leather-clad Norman Tebbit lookalikes patrolling the streets in the wake of political revolution. Very Spitting Image...

Handbag Wars: The Thatcher Strikes Back? Revenge of the Thatcher? Return of the Thatcher? Of course, she's not dead.

[w00hoo.livejournal.com]

I was definitely thinking from the 'dead icon' starting point. I'm guessing, while it hasn't been said, that it has to be globally recognisable (or failing that something Americans may recognise).

I think a big chunk of the problem is there aren't enough iconic dead people that I can think of (most that I come up with aren't dead yet!)and the ones I do are already taken, or aren't sufficiently global.

so,

Winston Churchill
Andy Warhol
Stalin
Kruschev
JFK (as mentioned)
Marilyn Monroe (as mentioned)
Charles de Gaulle
Schulz
Charlie Chaplin
Buster Keaton
Stan Laurel
Oliver Hardy
Harry Houdini
Babe Ruth
Henry Ford
John Ford
Ernest Hemmingway
Orson Welles
Marlon Brando
Randolph Hearst
Nat King Cole
Louis Armstrong
Bing Crosby
Bob Hope
Frank Sinatra

Hmm, OK, a fair number there. Then of course there's the fact that there aren't that many long 'global' TV show names to mangle,

From that list-
Brando the Vampire Slayer
or for that matter
Bing the Vampire Slayer
might both have potential I guess...

[adrian-middle.livejournal.com]

Dare Marcus go for "Jesus the Vampire Slayer?" Sort of a disciples-as-ratpack come to Earth to remove the temptations that prevent manking ascending on Judgement Day? Sort of John Carpenter's Vampires meets Dogma. I guess if you made him appear in Mexico (thus dragging in Dusk 'til Dawn/el Mariachi/Chupacabra) you can argue Jesus is a pretty common name and the similarity is entirely coincidental.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Someone already made the film - Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311361/)

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Darth Tebbit... the mind boggles...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

There was a Kim Newman parody of Bulldog Drummond in the old Temps shared world anthology which had evil trade union anarchists led by the mutant "Scraggle" (Scargill) plotting to destroy London. I see no problems with Darth Tebbit.

[suewilson.livejournal.com]

From my Gentleman_john (cos I've got the keyboard atm)

The Dons of Cambridge - organised crime in a sleepy british town "You Dont mess with the dean" - With the "Matric" freedom fighter trying to rescue students from thier grasp "You can not be told what the Matric is - you must pass it for your self."

"Waiting for Xerox" The play writer Sam Beckett gets inspiration by leaping into other people bodies, accompanied by Paul "Call me all" Simon

The Boy from Brazil - Pele escapes from a nazi camp and goes on to hunt down Hitler using the ancient art of Futbar (may be he can encounter the band of Marx brothers onn the way.)

A scifi one featuring Ronnie Raygun - pilot of the future! The Teflon cowboy brings justice to the space ways.

Toho Toho Toho - giant monsters controlled by pluck children, who speak out of synch, fighting on the side of Japan durring the second world war - "Gojira I choose you!"

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Ronnie Raygun and Toho Toho Toho sound like possibilities, but I'm not sure that they have long-term playability.

[jilltanith.livejournal.com]

For iconic figure in an area not already used . . . how about Bruce Lee, Martial Artist?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Except that for my purposes - a game about our world as it might be seen in a TV series that got history badly garbled - it might be Christopher Lee, martial artist, his brother Bruce the celebrated actor, etc.

But I already have quite a lot of martial arts jokes in the original game and the supplement - we have the martial art Sudoku, Mother Theresa as a yoda-like martial arts teacher, the famous marital artist and musician Jean Claude Van Halen, etc. etc.

[captboulanger.livejournal.com]

Rob in Hood: Prints of Thieves - in which Robert Kennedy appears as a crime scene investigator specializing in fingerprint analysis and ballistics.

[captboulanger.livejournal.com]

Almost forgot - while displaying a passion for collecting and wearing hooded sweatshirts from obscure universities and sports teams. For example the University of Alaska - Fairbanks or the former Seattle Pilots baseball team.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Too obscure for this Brit, I'm afraid.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Groan!

[nelc.livejournal.com]

How about these?

Neil Armstrong Custer's Last Stand (against Siouxie and the Banshees)

Louis Armstrong's Mission to the Moon (on which he famously reported, "It's a wonderful world (beep)")