Would Metroid work as a tabletop RPG? as a second ask, does anyone happen to have the old official one translated to English?
>>98155644Stay in video games buddy.
>>98155644The Zebes Invasion Order is translated and implemented as a web game on Metroid Database. It's not an RPG, it's a gamebook like those Sonic ones that get posted every so often. They involve dice rolls, but are otherwise akin to the Choose Your Own Adventure books.>https://metroiddatabase.com/wp-content/uploads/Metroid/Twinetroid/Twinetroid.htmlMetroid could work as an RPG, by treating it as a (pulpy) sci-fi dungeon crawl, with a focus on megadungeons if you want to stick close to the games. Either way, you'd probably end up needing to do a lot of homebrewing regardless of what system you pick, and take some liberties with the setting so that more people have Power Suits or similar equipment.
>>98155644Maybe as a "SOLO TTRPG."The whole point of Metroid is being alone but capable in a remote world/space station/etc. Because if it's a group it's just Traveller/Mothership/Stars without Number/etc.
>>98155644>object of the game is to explore an alien world, gaining powers and abilities along the way to aid in combat and exploration, to overthrow a larger evil and save the world/preserve the peaceIt's a stretch, but I think it could be done.Obviously the active platforming and combat would have to be given mechanics more suitable for tabletop games, but it'd be pretty easy, I think.
How much do we know about the setting, apart from the bits Samas jumps around blowing up?
>>98160420The scan visor data from Metroid Prime games includes a large amount of worldbuilding details, but we've never really gotten a big picture on how things work on a macro-level. Metroid games normally aren't narrative-driven (the few times they've tried it's generally failed), so there's not much of a story given beyond "Space Pirates are fucking shit up, go stop them", and all the scan visor stuff in the Prime Games is diagetic so they're not going to explain things people in the setting wouldn't need explained, like how the Galactic Federation is structured and how much of the galaxy do they actually control.
>>98160436https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metroid_media#Printed_mediaLooks like the comics and manga would have to be the main source for background material.What system would work? I don't think Traveller or Space Frontiers would support this kind of play, probably have to build something with Palladium, GURPS or D20 splatbooks for space, body horror and probably some cape or posthuman stuff for Samas' powers.
>>98160420How much do we need to know, if you just want to run the game as a scifi megadungeon?Even the games themselves never seemed to me like they bothered much with that.
Isn't there an Alien RPG?
>>98163987Yeah, but it's fine tuned to duplicate Alien franchise's tropes, like the Panic rule to duplicate the Idiot Ball that all crews carry.It does not have rules for turning into a ball, or parkouring through vertical mazes while raping jellyfish with your arm gun. I mean, that's Samas' life, I don't know how normal people live in that universe, how they work or do crime or wage war. Maybe you turn into a fucking ball to go to work.
>>98155644not unless you want the federation and NOBODY wants the federation.
>>98164835>I don't know how normal people live in that universe, how they work or do crime or wage war. Maybe you turn into a fucking ball to go to work.Samus is unironically THE Mary Sue of her entire universe and the snow-flakiest of special snow flakes.She's a human genetically modified with a super advanced (formerly completely extinct) ancient civilization's DNA, who is also in possession of an (almost) one-of-a-kind power armor which literally turns her into an energy being while she wears it. Not to mention she canonically now is also a completely new and unique form of Metroid herself, giving her practical immortality so long as she can siphon some life force from organic beings, if she didn't already have it from her Chozo modified DNA+power armor combo.Nobody else in the universe functions like she does and she canonically has to be nerfed by various deus ex machina all the time just for anything to actually stand a chance of challenging her.IMO, Samus' games are almost impossible to turn into a TTRPG, maybe a solo one, if you really stretch it.
>>98169645I mean, there's two ways to go with this. The honest way would explore the sci-fi universe she's in, which involves some type of space opera setting with good and bad guys. This stuff is barely touched on in the games though, so while there's plenty of ground for people to do stuff, it's quite clearly not Metroid. The less honest but much more desirable path is, Samus and the Good Guy Federation Republic Whatever have created a small elite squad based on Samus, and Samus fell in a wormhole and won't be solving this latest caper. In this case, you are all either bounty hunters or more plausibly some kind of special forces and that at least gets you as close as a TTRPG could really get. Basically you make your TTRPG the same way that DC Universe Online made all the PCs into metahumans.
>>98169669>The honest way would explore the sci-fi universe she's in, which involves some type of space opera setting with good and bad guysDepending on how much you can stomach it, there are several manga adaptations that essentially try to give Samus Aran’s world some degree of depth by having her team up or intact with more ordinary civilians or Federation grunts, as well as showing her pre-bounty hunter days. And Hunters at least gave hints of other good or at least morally neutral bounty hunters besides Samus running about as well as other evil bounty hunters. And from what I see, the Galactic Federation seems to be like a combo of Blade Runner and the prequel Star Wars films, a melting pot federation of humans and aliens trading and policing the galaxy that has its good elements and its corrupt elements, with the good guys going around putting out galactic fires and the corrupt guys usually fixated on trying to appropriate ancient chozo technology to create bio weapons and super soldiers to solidify their control over the galaxy. Until the release some kind of setting bible, you could probably use a generic sci-fi ruleset to make what you want, since you’ll probably be going to frontier planets like in the games where there’s less civilization or it’s stuff per to the brim with guys like space pirates anyways.
>>98155644Some sort of solitaire adventure would be the way to go. While I enjoyed Federation Force, as >>98169573 points out the vast majority do not seem to be looking for co-op in the world of Metroid.
>>98169573Federation is warranted for more extra lives and actual narrative.
Just thought I'd mention that, in the upcoming Neon Odyssey rule books, the 5e Ranger class becomes the Tracer class, and one of its subclasses is the Powertech.The Powertech's whole deal is creating a suit of enhanced armor, like Samus has.Of course, that's more about the mechanics of being a bounty hunter in high tech armor than about the world of the Metroid games, but I thought it was worth mentioning.I'd also mention, though, that it would have been great if it had been its own rules system, instead of tied to 5E and its classes (and thus a compromise), but I get that doing that would mean much more work, a longer wait, and a much bigger buy-in cost, whereas tying it to 5E means they can focus less on creating a system from scratch and more on adding lots of subclasses and all of the supplementary rules that deal with "space stuff."Anyway, that class is in the Playtest Docs, for those interested...https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Uabl-y2w136DwXNCCFxZmOpD61b097xqAnd, for anyone not interested... ignore me.
>>98155644I made my own but haven't had the chance to playtest it yet.
>>98155644>Would a game with literally one (1) character anyone gives a shit about work as an RPGHahaNoFuck off
You'd have to sketch out some basic necessary groundwork, like a star map and list of planets, how space travel works, and what factions and species there are. We know less about civilian Metroid than, say, even Warhammer 40K or Battletech.If you want to run it as an RPG, the practical way to go would be to divide up everything Samas does among a team and run a horizontal version of Metroid environments.We know she's the protagonist of the series, but there must be other effective military, law enforcement, emergency and mercenary units around, that we could draw upon for classes, or civilisation would collapse as soon as she moves on to another system.
>>98171124>one of its subclasses is the PowertechWhy would you use Ranger as the basis for a Samus-like character? What is there to transfer from one to the other? Genuinely curious>>98172651>>98155752I'm fascinated by the people in these kinds of threads who seem completely unable to extrapolate from a work of fiction what the rest of the world around it might look like, or how it could be inhabited.It's like saying, “Lovecraft's work can't be the basis for a TTRPG because they're written fiction, and written fiction can't be played.”When you think of an apple, what do you see?
>>98175141refusal to engage with the premise of the thread isn't necessarily coming from a place of non-creativity, though it's likely. I think it's far more likely the "ugh it's a VIDEO GAME not a TABLE TOP GAME UGH" argument is generally made by people who want to gatekeep what is allowed to be discussed, and refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a tabletop setting is one way to disallow that discussion.Long story short, ignorance is a weapon in the hand of a petty enough shithead.
>>98172651>ignoring all the other bounty hunters and the federation
>>98175195I mean, if they're THAT contrarian and argumentative that they can't allow discussion of properties outside what's been adapted, and/or neurodivergent enough that they honestly can't imagine it happening, I honestly think that either would preclude them ever being able to roleplay, either through toxic personality or low-functioning autism and inability to visualise or process hypotheticals or abstracts.So they're either nogames and a complete shit-tourist to /tg/, come here to shit on everything they see, or they're one of those miserable outliers of our hobby who can't get a group to accept them because they argue and sperg out and shit themselves.
I don't think it works as a RPG because the games have never been RPGs. It certainly doesn't work if you're playing as Samus because she's a one woman Exterminatus. You don't send her to a planet unless you want everything on that planet, and likely the planet itself, destroyed.
Have the players play as Federation Grunts or as Space pirates if you want a more villainous path.Can do a bunch of ship boarding actions as the pirates seeing as most of their goals boil down to steal shit and conquer territory. For Federation Grunts have them combat space pirate activity, Samus is only one woman so she cannot be everywhere at once.Not sure what system is best for this sort of idea as I've only done DnD and Pathfinder for ttrpgs. But a Metroid wargame could be fun
>>98174354> We know she's the protagonist of the series, but there must be other effective military, law enforcement, emergency and mercenary units around, that we could draw upon for classesThankfully we do have at least that, since we know the Galactic Federation has its own military, and there’s been numerous rival bounty hunters that were introduced that give the profession a veneer of being bigger than just Samus Aran.
>>98155644Just run your Metroid campaign instead of waiting for the official RPG. It's less embarrassing than finally getting an official Transformers & GI Joe & My Little Pony RPG and realizing nobody actually wants to play that.
>>98155644No, the setting entirely revolves around Samus and if you remove her from the equation you are left with absolutely nothing
>>98175141The third post is a jackass and probably what >>98175195 is describing, but the second one is a legitimate point besides the dismissive attitude.Despite certain people sperging against worldbuilding, RPG's cater themselves to settings that are fleshed out so that parties are varied and players have a range of things to explore and interact with. Metroid is a series about playing as a one-woman killing machine, you're on your own, isolated from the rest of the universe, barely meeting other sentient life. So of course most of what we know is about Samus herself and what makes her special. Maybe I'm not big enough into Metroid to get creative with it, I know there's the Chozo but they're all dead and Samus is unique because of her connection to it. It'd be easier to do a Star Fox game since those games involve a whole crew and we get a slightly better view of what goes on without them aka furry space opera.On the topic of Chaosium, the Stormbringer games are based on the Elric books, and iirc the games kinda make all the playable characters into mini Elrics, always doomed to Chaos and losing their minds and magic swords. I don't know if it ruin the setting if you make all the PC's as special as Samus herself, with fucked up alien DNA and special power armor. And I'm not sure if it's an apt comparison since the Elric universe has multiple Eternal Champions like him.Anyways, the obvious first step is to pick some military sci-fi setting's system and start from there, since that's I know the federation is a big deal in her universe and she's a vet.
I think something like Prime Hunters could work as a board game (only because I was convinced by the Binding of Isaac and Dark Souls board games that translating action video games to turn based board/card games is actually fun and viable). But a TTRPG? Not directly. A game set in the world would obviously work. Going from planet to planet and exploring dungeons and fighting off space pirates and bounty hunters too. but the moment to moment gameplay of metroid probably wouldn't translate too well. Jumping around and collecting upgrades and shooting every wall hoping for a hidden path kinda stuff.games where there's one protagonist that eventually can do everything also need to be pulled apart. Doesn't matter if it's classes or whatever but the Witcher TTRPG taught me that having an obvious main character choice is retarded so no player should be able to eventually get to Samus' power level or it should be reserved for the very late game.
>>98178314>>98178247>Samus is uniqueOh hey would you look at that https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Bounty_HuntersAnd beyond that, I really fail to see the obstacle there.Samus is a one-woman army? Fine!TTRPGs typically involve a group of players, so you only need each of them to be a fraction of the power of Samus.And it doesn't seem hard to me to come up with a handful of different specialties for the players to choose from. Either separate some of the abilities of Samus and build a character around it (heavy weapon specialist, laser weapon specialist, obstacle-crossing-gadgeteer...), or come up with new ones which fit the overall vibe (drone controller, stealth specialist, biobeast...).Build the gameplay loop around a scifi megadungeon, where environmental obstacles have an important place and, boom, you are gold.If someone had asked how to make a Super Mario TTRPG then, alright, that would have been a real challenge. But Metroid? Pffff cakewalk.
>>98178314>but the moment to moment gameplay of metroid probably wouldn't translate too well. Jumping around and collecting upgrades and shooting every wall hoping for a hidden path kinda stuff.That's why my approach to making the system was to look to Prime's exploration. It's always been less about random shooting and the Scan Visor exists to check the composition of minerals, as well as... y'know, skill checks. "Hm that wall looks odd I'm going to see if I know what it's made of, ah it's made of Bendezium, we'll need Power Bombs to get through this" type of shit. All the people ITT going like WOW NOTHING HAPPENS WITHOUT SAMUS clearly have at best played Super Metroid, maybe Fusion and Zero Mission, and didn't even bother playing the Prime games. Like >>98178577 pointed out, Bounty Hunting is a profession in the metroid universe, we have multiple examples of other ones right up to the latest game, Prime 4, to say nothing of Federation soldiers cooperating with them (again, Prime 4 does this!).In fact, that other anon basically listed a lot of what my system does. Not only is your amount of power-up slots limited by your Power Suit Type (as it's been established that power suits exist in Metroid outside of the chozo ones, they're just the rarest and most powerful aka used by Samus and that fucking bird that I hate from Dread whose name escapes me atm), and what Power-ups you can equip are also limited by the Suit Type, usually with some sort of advantageous tradeoff for losing access to certain items. As such, nobody can do everything. You're going to naturally see people with different suit models (and tech access based on Perks which you can snag at chargen or via their species, as some tech is locked to certain tech types, i.e. the Morph Ball is exclusively Chozo tech as it is in the games per logs in the prime games) naturally fall into niches even though the system's more open-ended.
>>98160690Fuzion with the alien supplement ontop of mekton power suits would do the job quite well
>>98178577I got nothing to add other than I agree
>>98155644>does anyone happen to have the old official one translated to English?It wasn't an RPG, it was a choose your own adventure gamebook, and I think those are still /tg/ related. I'm not sure if it was translated, but DYK Gaming did a video explaining it.
>>98180047I think it came with a map too. I don't think it was one of those CYOA game books where you play with dice.It was released really early into Metroid's existence so you get that classic kind of 80's early franchise art when a lot of things haven't been formally established yet.
>>98180060anyways have a bonus 80's chibi early samus
>>98175195>I think it's far more likely the "ugh it's a VIDEO GAME not a TABLE TOP GAME UGH" argument is generally made by people who want to gatekeep what is allowed to be discusseThese kinds of threads are quite old and stale. The conclusion, more often than not, is that the things you want from the game may not be easily emulated at the table. Simple as. If OP just wants to talk about the Metroid games and lore, then pretending to want to talk about TTRPGs is just going to loop back around to the typical >it depends answers. We could take the broad strokes of the Metroid setting and run a game in that loose framework, but we're not going to be able to recreate Samus metroidvania'ing through a massive map full of strategically placed powerups, gadgets, and progression-unlocking items.So, would Metroid work as a TTRPG? No. Could you take the setting and play a game that is loosely set in a Metroid-like or Metroid inspired setting? Of course, but that's a retarded question that anyone with a modicum of understanding about about TTRPGs would understand is a non-issue. So what's left to discuss? What valuable conversation are we being denied when people plainly acknowledge that this is a pointless topic?
>>98180067
>>98180047>>98180060golly, I love this old manga style
>>98180067It's a good thought exercise thoughever imo desu, and you're gonna have to discuss shit out before you settle on what system to use for your homebrew and how much work you'll have to do
>>98180060>>98180065SovlToo bad the later backstory manga was absolute dogshit
>>98155644Metroid is woke trash
>>98180529And why is that?
>>98180550Woman MCYuck!
>>98180047It was translated several years ago, see here >>98155964
Who writes this stuffhttps://1d6chan.miraheze.org/wiki/Samus_Aran
>>98180060Yes, there were maps in the gamebook, and random dice pictures printed on the right page so you could flipbook a dice result if you didn't have a d6 handy. The fighting every square was tedious, and there weren't any events besides fighting. Mediocre gamebook beyond the weird Sumi Arisaka art.
>>98175141They are just sticks in the mud, they see someone having fun and seek to end it. They're ironically TTRPG villains.
>>98178247>It'd be easier to do a Star Fox game since those games involve a whole crewI think the opposite is true, because characters do not make good RPG, lore does, and we have more lore of Metroid than Starfox. We know about tons of different species, artifacts, dimensional worlds, all of it.
>>98180067>If OP just wants to talk about the Metroid games and lore, then pretending to want to talk about TTRPGsI literally want to talk about the Metroid RPG that was made Japan exclusive, and attempt to extrapolate more of that sort of thing. You're out of your element like the other anon said.
