Adventure Games as inspiration for RPG campaigns

There’s an interesting post about using the classic Lucasarts adventure game “Full Throttle” into a Cyberpunk 2020 campaign over at the German CP2020 blog. If you speak German or aren’t afraid to use an online translation tool, you might risk a look.

If you ask me, that’s actually a good idea. Most computer adventure games may be a bit linear but especially the games from the “good old times” have great stories, interesting characters and often translate to RPG campaigns easily.

And if you are using some of the older games like “Police Quest” or “LOOM” as the basis for your campaign chances are high that none of your younger players knows the story. But in most cases its advisable to use the story of the computer game as an inspiration and not as a script to be followed meticulously.

The major problem translating a game like “Full Throttle” from computer game to RPG campaign is that most adventure games are focussed on one main character only. Creating a compelling campaign for a whole group requires some work by the GM but is probably much easier than building the whole campaign from scratch.

Have you ever run a campaign based on a classic adventure game like one of Sierra’s “Quest” games or one of the Lucasarts games? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!