With some films I find the fun is trying to pick a game that would best fit gaming the film. The Raid isn’t one of those films. With the raid the question I find myself asking is how many games can it be fitted into as a scenario?
At the most obvious level it’s a fit for any game based on the martial arts or action genre. It could easily fit into Feng Shui, D20 Modern, Hero (with the Ultimate Martial Artist), GURPS (with GURPS Martial Arts) or Hong Kong Action Theatre just about as it is depending on how crunchy you like your gaming.
Moving slightly further afield it’s not hard to see it as:
- A post apocalyptic take in Twilight 2000.
- A BPN that goes bad (don’t they always) in SLA Industries with a dodgy corporate fixer behind the scenes.
- A raid on a warlord holed up in a tower block in Twilight 2000.
- A tower full of zombies in All Flesh Must Be Eaten, It came from the Late, Late, Late Show, or Dark Conspiracy.
- A bad place to have been sent in Conspiracy X.
- How many cultists can you fit in a tower block in Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu or Delta Green?
It wouldn’t take a lot of work to make it fit into D&D or other fantasy games. The Raid’s tower block is pretty much a thirty level dungeon that goes up into the sky rather than down into the ground. Its particularly dangerous because the dungeon’s big bad has put a bounty on the PCs heads and all the dungeons residents want to collect. If the PCs try to hole up to recover spells and heal without covering their tracks wandering monsters should cause them real problems.
It can be fitted into a super hero game so long as the PCs didn’t have the power to raze the surrounding area to the ground. This could be a Mutant City Blues’ group’s worst day on the job.
Whatever the setting and system the main challenge for the GM would be balancing the lethality of the NPCs so as to not overwhelm the PCs. To retain something of the film the action would need to be kept pretty dynamic. Corridors filled with packs of bad guys could turn into a dull dice rolling exercise in hit point attrition. Players should be rewarded for inventiveness and interesting descriptions. One thing to avoid is the characters holing up between fights to recover their health. This is a setting where the wandering monsters are out, about and the PCs are their ticket to a rent free life.
Super hero, SF and fantasy games may present some problems especially with containing the characters to the tower like spider climbing outside the building, feather falling from the windows or flying away. These can be eliminated – just as the film stops the police escaping down the fire escape by making the ‘neighbours’ lethal enough to keep everyone inside and away from the windows. Some powers like teleporting in or out might need to be blocked by the mysterious structural properties of the building.
I’m sure there are lots of other RPGs The Raid could be borrowed from for an adventure which would you choose?