Rock, Paper, Shotgun

RPS Asks: What Book Should Be A Game?

By Jim Rossignol on July 22nd, 2011 at 3:24 pm.


I’m reading KW Jeter’s Infernal Devices at the moment, and it’s got me longing for a new alt-history RPG overflowing with Steampunk detail, monstrous conspiracy, disturbing automata, weird lechery, and nightmare clockwork contraptions. It won’t happen, of course, because life is unfair, but sometimes we have to look at 19th-century-styled etching and say: This, people, should be brought to life.

So come on folks. Book-to-Game suggestions, and go wild and unrealistic. We probably do need a Fear & Loathing simulator…

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382 Comments »

  1. Heliosicle says:

    Mortal Engines, cities eating each other.

    • Berzee says:

      Woot! Thanks for reminding me of the name of this series :) I have been wanting to tell my wife about it but all I could say was “umm, something with london eating things”

    • sinister agent says:

      You swine. That’s exactly the first thought I had, too. Great books, and just imagine that open world – acres of wasteland to fly over, with huge, roving settlements to land on and explore. You could do anything with it, but an open-world RPG set there, handled properly, would make me happy for many time units.

      Or a roving city-management thing, with you choosing a type (scavenger, minor predator, ultra predator, maybe ambhibious, etc) and playing as mayor, directing its course, sending out scouts and diggers, playing politics between the guilds, trading with shifty aviators, managing resources and crew… so much potential.

    • westyfield says:

      Yep. A different book called Infernal Devices (the third in the Mortal Engines series).
      Traction Cities eating each other, airships floating around from port to port, stalkers, er, stalking – the whole series is perfect for an open-world RPG.

    • Tei says:

      Woot… there has to be a lot of novels about cities on rails… like The Inverted World

    • Skusey says:

      I was about to say this, I’ve no idea how it would work, but hopefully somebody clever can make it happen.

    • RedNick says:

      Was going to say Mortal Engines too.
      @tei, they’re not on tracks in ME.
      EDIT: and apparently Peter Jackson will be directing a film of it…

    • sinister agent says:

      I read that too, about the film, and hoped for the best… then I read that it will be shot in 3D, so will likely be gimmicky crap with dreadful cinematography. Bah.

    • Gonefornow says:

      I read first three of those books a way back and I remember, faintly, thinking about how cool a game based on a moving steampunkish city would be.
      So. Yes! Somebody make it happen!

    • westyfield says:

      You should definitely read the fourth, A Darkling Plain. It’s as good as the first, whereas the middle two were not as great. It’s also the only book ever to make me cry, which gives it the John Walker Seal of Literary Excellence.

    • Conor says:

      I agree, A Darkling Plain was pretty magnificent, and the end in particular was brilliantly and touchingly done. I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not I shed a manly tear.

    • Tams80 says:

      That was my first thought too! Probably due to the article picture and the use of the ‘steampunk’.

      Cities eating each other, airships, wasteland etc. So much goodness!

    • Davie says:

      Exactly this. It appears that was the Infernal Devices everyone else thought of. Cripes, that would be an awesome game.

    • c-Row says:

      Read some reviews on Amazon and they sound interesting. How much of a children’s book is it? Will my inner child be able to enjoy them?

    • Davie says:

      @ C-Row: It’s a children’s book in the manner that Lord of the Flies is a children’s book, i.e. not really at all, but gets filed in the Young Adult Fiction at the library.

      It is excellent, though, beyond all doubt. Extremely imaginative. Brilliantly written. Read all of them.

    • deacon says:

      Not sure too many other people have read this but I would ejaculate for a game based on Perdido Street Station in China Mieville’s City New Crobozun. The author was a professor of world mythologies and the character designs reflect that. It would be a massive already premapped out and amazing grungy steampunk city complete with unique characters/species, endless varieties of bad guys mob bosses using the concept of “remades” introduced in the book (people who are intentionally deformed or deformed as a punishment for crimes with everything up to sword arms) if anyone else has read perdido street station or any other china mieville novels set in New Crobozun I think they would agree

  2. TheTourist314 says:

    I suppose it probably goes without saying, but it’d be interesting to see strongly story-driven Ender’s Game experience.

  3. OJSlaughter says:

    James Clavell’s Asian Saga!!!!

    They are good books, specifically Taipan should be made into a game :)

  4. jezcentral says:

    Neal Asher’s Polity books and China Mieville’s New Crobuzon books..

    • Orija says:

      God, yes to China Mieville’s works. Even The City and the City would make a nice LA Noire-esque game.

    • Easydog says:

      I would love to see a Bas-lag set game :) I would love to see something set in China Mievilles worlds.

    • Ghost of Grey Cap says:

      Bas-Lag would be mindblowing. Mieville’s politics might be difficult to market in a AAA game though :(

    • Zephro says:

      Bas-lag would be a good setting but I doubt any of the actual stories would fit.

      Also i went to one of the talks at the British Library exhibition on Sci-Fi books, China Mieville has a VERY low opinion of video games.

    • I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says:

      Agreed, as I said in previous comment, Bas-Lag would seem to make a great setting for an RPG.

    • Jake says:

      The City and The City would also make for a very confusing Sim City type game.

    • Tom4J says:

      You could make an amazing 2 Player Cop-op Game based off City and the City where the two players need to work together to achieve thier goal but within the restrictions of the borders and rules enforced. would really drive home the message of the book too. Maybe something like Ibb and Obb.

      Tom j

  5. Orija says:

    Perdido Street Station, The Kraken both are by China Mieville

    A Song of Ice and Fire action rpg (DwD wasn’t as good as I wished it to be, btw)

    That graphic novel about orcs who use dried penises as currency

  6. DainIronfoot says:

    I think I’ll get the inevitable Culture suggestion out of the way :P Never mind that I can’t really see many formats that universe could work in (Adventure game? Heh)

    Patrick O’Brien – or at least a game that captures the essence of that period and that life as well as he does.

    Space Captain Smith would work very well..

    • Kelron says:

      The Culture and the wider galaxy could work for a grand strategy game, given that there’s supposed to be numerous other civilisations on a similar level of technology. It would be a tough job to do it justice and make more than a standard 4x game with a Culture theme, though. It would have to be much more about inter-species relations and intrigue than traditional build-fight-conquer mechanics.

    • Zephro says:

      The culture would be good if it was a giant sandbox full of different species/cultures. Then you just do espionage to prod/push them in different directions of development. Rather than a 4X game.

      It would be like being Special Circumstances.

    • a cynic writes... says:

      If we’re looking at the Culture let’s just have Azad from Player of Games.

    • Malibu Stacey says:

      I’ve toyed (a lot) with the concept of making a computer version of the game of Azad from the Player of Games. Unfortunately Iain Banks is one of my few favourite Scottish authors I’ve yet to track down in person so I haven’t been able to hassle him with regards to the expanded concept of the game (the book is devious in the way it gives you enough snippets to get the atmosphere of the game but keeps back a lot of the actual mechanics).

      If any of you have read Surface Detail, it does the opposite of this (video games infiltrate books).

    • DainIronfoot says:

      Interestingly:
      In Player of games, all the scenes describing Azad had me sceaming ”they’re playing Sid Meiers Civilisation!!!” I later read that you played Civ, was the resemblance intentional?

      No; hadn’t even heard of the game at the time, though I later became an addict and am in remission (from Civ 3 – can’t be doing with the later, less abstract versions). I was stunned when I heard it had once been a board game. I invented something similar (thought vastly inferior) myself when I was a kid, called Super Risk (guess where that found its inspiration).

    • Bureaucromancer says:

      Something that captures the essence of O’Brien does sound awesome, although I wonder if it would really end up being all that different from a more serious take on Pirates!

      As far as that era goes though, how about an RPG interpretation of Cornwell’s Sharpe series? Maybe in a format reminiscent of Mount and Blade?

    • Daiv says:

      A strategy game in which the AI is roughly four million times as intelligent as you?

    • DainIronfoot says:

      Something that captures the essence of O’Brien does sound awesome, although I wonder if it would really end up being all that different from a more serious take on Pirates!”

      I’d say, take the sailing from the POTC/Sea Dogs RPGs, with their manual cannon aiming from the deck, pretty good sailing physics, storms and other cool stuff (If I was making it, I’d like to get really realistic with the sailing mechanics, but that’d probably be a no-no), Mount and Blade style boarding combat, with stuff like offhand pistols, dodges and things, something of a Sims style crew management system where you have to manage your officers and crews.. deal with bad officers and things like that. Sandboxy gameplay where you can cruise about as you like, taking prizes, landing and burning forts, setting up cannons in odd places, occasional diplomatic missions..

      You get the idea. That’s my dream game by the way :P

      “As far as that era goes though, how about an RPG interpretation of Cornwell’s Sharpe series? Maybe in a format reminiscent of Mount and Blade?”

      This too. I was working on a mod for M&B that was pretty much this..

    • Tacroy says:

      The Culture could never make for a 4X game, they’re missing most of the Xs. They’re not really expanding in any significant sense, they’re not exploiting resources (except for other civilizations, politically and for their own good obvs), and they’re not very much into the whole “exterminate” idea. Exploring is about all that’s left, except the vast majority of the civilization is only interested in the sort of exploring that happens at the weekly Orbital Orgy.

      Though what would work would be something like Solar 2, except instead of a planet you’re a Mind and you have to upgrade yourself up from some puny whatever class ship to something better by doing favors for other Minds (sure we’ll set you up with a GSV, I’ll put in an order for you – the queue’s moving pretty quickly, so you should have yours in a couple of centuries. Oh you want it sooner? Well maybe we can work something out…)

      Of course, I’m sure that would end up being something like Transcendence except less linear, so there you go.

  7. herschel says:

    The Holy Bible. Well…

  8. Ghost of Grey Cap says:

    Jeff Vandermeer’s Finch. A hardboiled detective story set in a fictional pseudo 1920s city occupied by alien monstrocities composed of fungus.

    • JackShandy says:

      Really? I just finished City of Saints and Madmen, involving a secretive underground race of mushroom-dwellers, which once made everyone in the city disappear. Do all his books have weird fungus paranoia?

    • StickyNavels says:

      Part of the same trilogy. :)

    • Ghost of Grey Cap says:

      City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an Afterword, are indeed a sort of series (continuity is pretty loose). The other stuff by him I’ve read (a novel and some short stories) share a lot of the same themes. Jeff is simply fascinated by strange alien things underground.

    • Quizboy says:

      I was just coming in here to suggest Finch, or at least a game set in occupation-era Ambergris (or a roguelike where you play as a series of naive Ambergrisians For The Original Inhabitants Society members in Duncan Shriek’s days, trying to get further into the underground and dying horribly each time, but leaving notes for your similarly unprepared successor). But you already have. Bravo you!

      I’m going to add, then, a suggestion for Vandermeer’s The Situation. Quite how to design a game where you play as a low-grade office worker in a nightmarish, incomprehensible biotechnology corporation and battle the twin threats of your increasing workplace isolation and your best friend’s gradual transformation into a bear, I don’t know. That can be somebody else’s problem. I just know I’d buy it.

  9. Eraysor says:

    I would like to be the Gunslinger from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. Please.

    • Sweedums says:

      mmmmm yes please.

      while we are on stephen king, The Shining? all sorts of creepy psychological stuff you could do with that.

    • FataMorganaPseudonym says:

      I would rather be a Gunslinger in a game based on the world of the Dark Tower series, rather than the Gunslinger in a straight rehash of the books in game form.

  10. Mr Fossy says:

    ‘Diaspora’ by Greg Egan. Cyber-beings with bizarre, personal avatars, occupying/creating/shaping bizarre, personal landscapes; factional politics between the different polises. Some sort of MMO exploration game, perhaps. Good stuff.

  11. Dana says:

    Lies of Locke Lamora would make great point and click adventure game.

    • GeneralERA says:

      Those Lynch books are amazing, but I don’t think point and click adventure at all. (That may just be because I can’t stand point and click adventure games, but…)

      Dialogue driven RPG with gameplay focused on thievery and such with Locke Lamora and fighting with Jean. That would be epic.

    • Easydog says:

      You could make it a kind of Mirrors Edge set in Venice

  12. Dawngreeter says:

    Troubleshooting Oracle Performance!

    I crack myself up.

  13. jboy_2009 says:

    A rogue-like based on Carmac McCarthy’s The Road.

    • Jim Rossignol says:

      If someone isn’t making a game based on The Road, I will eat hats.

    • Savage Henry says:

      I was thinking along the lines of a total conversion mod for Fallout or STALKER of The Road, but the bleakness. Sheesh!

    • LennyLeonardo says:

      Surely you meant to type “road-like”?

    • GenBanks says:

      Was the first thing I thought of too :)

    • Enzo says:

      Well, there already is a post-apocalyptic roguelike called Caves of Qud. It’s in the beta phase, but I heard a lot of good things about it. Except it’s more like Fallout and Mad Max than The Road.

    • JB says:

      The Road was my suggestion too, I’m glad I read the other comments first =)

    • Nallen says:

      I thought Stalker was based on The Road.

      But then I’ve only seen the film and played the games.

    • LennyLeonardo says:

      Stalker was based on the novel Roadside Picnic. That’s a spin-off of The Road, where the boy and his dad stop for lunch in a lay-by, before an anomaly turns their legs into concrete.
      Did I get that wrong?

    • TheLemon says:

      Stalker the game is based on Stalker the movie which is very loosely based on Roadside Picnic. The Road has absolutely no relation to any of that. Roadside Picnic came out in Seventies and The Road came out a couple years ago.

    • Kaira- says:

      I thought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was based on the book and not the movie, seeing how the movie is quite… philosophic? Atmospheric? Quiet? Something like that.

    • DrGonzo says:

      The world and the story isn’t very much like the film at all. But the visuals are quite similar as is the atmoshpere. In fact a few of the shots from the film of burnt out cars and apcs etc have almost identical looking scenes in the first Stalker game, the tunnels also come to mind.

      It’s very, very loosely based on it. But it is based on it.

      I would imagine that The Road would have been influenced by Roadside Picnic at least somewhat.

  14. Cable says:

    Jane Eyre, or perhaps not a direct copy but a period drama in that sort of form with lots of choice and conversation and interesting people. I think that would be cool.

    • Kieron Gillen says:

      DON’T READ JANE EYRE!!!!!

      //loscampesinos off

      KG

    • YourMessageHere says:

      I’d like this. A Jane Austen-like game of manners and social climbing, with only minimal fighting elements – a dueling system, perhaps. A morality system that seperately charts manipulation and honesty. A Frocks And Conversation game, basically.

  15. LennyLeonardo says:

    I would like to play a proper investigaty adventure game (like LA Noire but without the shooty bits and car chases) based on a Raymond Chandler novel, possibly the Big Sleep. There are far too few Chandler adaptaions about these days.

    If not, an adventure game based on Slaughterhouse 5. Actually, yeah, that.

    • Inglourious Badger says:

      I was going to say Slaughterhouse 5 but then my brain melted trying to workout how that would work. Day of the Tentacle style adventure game is a good shout

  16. N'Al says:

    Mills & Boon

  17. Berzee says:

    * Howl’s Moving Castle (the book, not the excruciatingly depressing movie), Dark Lord of Derkholm, any of those classic Diana Wynne Jones books really
    * OH MAN, definitely Meghan Whalen Turner’s “Thief” series
    * The Man Who Was Thursday
    * The Whole Bible

    • Berzee says:

      “The Napoleon of Notting Hill” would be basically perfect for a game, by the way — it would translate directly into a game about fighting things, unlike most of these very fine but esoteric suggestions.

      I would summarize the book here but I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say — it’s like medieval and/or early Ren-o-sonse combat through the streets of 1984 London…where most of the soldiers are greengrocers and politicians and the like.

  18. Rii says:

    Moby Dick.

    Believe it or not, this occurred to me before I recalled Penny Arcade’s take on the matter.

  19. ResonanceCascade says:

    At the Mountains of Madness. I only say this because it almost WAS a video game, before the Call of Cthulhu devs tanked.

  20. aircool says:

    Calvin & Hobbes.

  21. yhancik says:

    Brave New World, as a sim.

    • JackShandy says:

      What, you have to make sure everyone has sex constantly while administering Soma?

    • mouton says:

      A kind of utopia/dystopia simulator would be great – with a lot of varied options, be it police state or happy junkie sex thing. Alpha Centauri did picture it a bit, but it would be great if it was more of a sim without global war.

  22. bowl of snakes says:

    Help a Bear is Eating Me by Mykle Hansen

  23. Jockie says:

    JG Ballards High Rise, brutal 1st person survival horror/beat-em up in a luxury skyscraper gone mad as the human psyche fails to adapt to the pressures of hyper-modern life. Think you can already see influences of this book in some games, things like Brink, Bioshock etc, where utopias quickly fall to ruin and rebellion.

  24. Defiant Badger says:

    RedWall I’d say, considering all the things Matthias has to do before the final encounter with Cluny it would make a rather splendid action RPG.

  25. SeedGeorge says:

    Snow Crash, by Neil Stephenson.
    Do a film as well, oh please.

    • PanzerVaughn says:

      This.

      Cyberpunk swordfighting, with motorbike rides through Minecraftian digital scapes, and fastpaced highpowered adrenaline-and-techno-fueled pizza delivery side missions.

    • Quine says:

      ++

      With chunky retro sword-fighting and destructible boats and Reason.

    • ShadyGuy says:

      Aww, I just suggested this and thought I was being original. :P

    • Neurodancer says:

      After 25 years of gaming and a year reading RPS, I finally caved and created an account simply to +1 the suggestion of Snow Crash.

    • Pundabaya says:

      A Deus Ex-y guns and conversation game set a few years after the events of Snow Crash, following on with another conspiracy that Hiro Protagonist has to solve, while also tying up a few loose ends. And a more refined version of Reason. Reason is the closest anyone’s come to ‘enuff dakka’.. And a mission involving the Rat Things(on your side of course). This would be a perfect game.

  26. Derpington Hurrrrrrr says:

    China Miéville’s Bas-Lag series. As an RPG of course.

  27. Tretiak says:

    Sven Hassel novels!
    If he wrote them…

  28. Zephro says:

    Something set in the Sprawl, or something like Neuromancer. I doubt any of the actual stories would transfer well but basically the archetype of cyberpunk.

    Fingers crossed for Deus Ex I guess.

  29. tanith says:

    No books should be games.
    Books are books and games are games. Some people should stop being uncreative and if that’s not possible – well, maybe they have the wrong job.

    • Barts says:

      I see some copy-paste material here:

      No books should be movies.
      Books are books and movies are movies. Some people should stop being uncreative and if that’s not possible – well, maybe they have the wrong job.

    • Berzee says:

      No wars should be games.
      Wars are wars and games are games . Some people should stop being uncreative and if that’s not possible – well, maybe they have the wrong job.

    • ResonanceCascade says:

      No donkeys should be monkeys.

      Quit messing with my head!

  30. Noctre says:

    The Odyssey.

    • sinister agent says:

      There was a game about that on the Spectrum, as I recall.

      I never got anywhere with it.

    • Harkkum says:

      Why not just go with Joyce’s take on the matter and spend 100 hours walking in Ireland whilst pondering what on earth is the purpose of all this until you figure out that indeed, your wife has been cheating on you all this time!

  31. JackShandy says:

    Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides. Sure, Monkey Island was Ok, but I’d like to see it done seriously, with explorating the carribean and ships and guns and voodoo and hidden treasure and things.

  32. Puttyngton says:

    The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a point & click adventure game!

  33. Batolemaeus says:

    Wolfgang Hohlbein games.
    Two to three games a year.
    All with the same plot with minor variations.

  34. Krixodus says:

    A point and click adventure game á la “Monkey Island” based on the “Spellsinger” Saga by Alan Dean Foster.

  35. Ginger Yellow says:

    Ubik would make a pretty awesome adventure game, and it has a Bioshock style twist which could work pretty well. Apparently it was made into a game, but as a squad based shooter/Syndicate style thing.

  36. Kelron says:

    I just read Alastair Reynold’s Terminal World, and while I don’t think the book was great it would still make a nice setup for an exploration/survival FPS.

    The world is divided into zones of differing technology levels, from zones that are stuck with 18th century level technology to areas with AIs and other futuristic tech. if you took advanced technology like a laser gun into a low tech zone it would stop functioning within hours and would not work again if you took it back to a high tech zone, short of melting it down and using the raw materials to remake it. Humans also need drugs or extensive genetic modification to survive outside of the zones they were born in and adapted to.

  37. SeanybabeS says:

    I would say anything by Matthew Reilly, the Jack West Jr series would play out alot like Drakes Fortune i.e. Action-Adventure. Shane Schofield series would play closer to a Manshoot I expect, would still love to see it though.

  38. Loveschach says:

    The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

    Might make a good MMO, I think.

  39. Stupoider says:

    Perdido Street Station would make a great monster hunting game, especially trying to shoot behind yourself while looking at the mirrors on your screen. Steampunk/science fiction/horror/fantasy/weeeeird.

    • Quine says:

      I can see the Bioshock mob doing something like this.

    • Calabi says:

      I’d go for that, didnt like the plot, but the world and some of the ideas were interesting.

    • Createx says:

      I would definitely love this. It has to be an RPG, and the most interesting thing would be to play as a Remade, which would push it in the way of a stealth game it is set in New Crobuzon (which is the only choice, really).
      And no overthrowing the militia, that would just ruin it.
      Make a smaller, character-driven plot.

    • Stupoider says:

      Aye, I was thinking something like a Zeno Clash RPG in a sandbox (when I say sandbox I mean in the Mafia sense, you can go anywhere but primarily it should be the next mission/objective).

      I like the idea of primarily using your fists or whatever you can get your hands on with little focus on carrying ammo. So you might just grab a Rivebow you knocked out of someone’s hands, fire it, then chuck it aside to go after the next weapon you can get your hands on.

    • Createx says:

      Hmmm, not sure if a brawling sim fits into New Crobuzon. Especially if it is Open World. It would just seem wrong to run around beating people up and the Militia not doing anything. There is a reason why the resistance always fails and crime bosses have certain agreements with the Militia.

  40. Zogtee says:

    Clockwork Orange, innit?

    Primarily based on the book, though, with all the ideas about our future language intact, and only to a lesser extent the film. It would do well as an open world RPG with your gang buddies in your party, weapons, rival gangs, etc. Rockstar, are you listening?

    Some of Iain M. Banks less popular books, like “Against a dark background” (*so* much stuff to work with in that one) and “Feersum Endjinn” would be fantastic.

    Also, I think it’s borderline criminal that no one has even attempted to turn the the works of Michael Moorcock (Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, etc) and Gene Wolfe (The Book of the New Sun) into RPG’s.

    “Blood and souls, Arioch! Drink deep, Stormbringer! Arggh!”

    Aah, the joys of being a fantasy geek… Seriously, though, it’s sad to see lightweight nonsense like Resident Evil get games and movies, when there is such a wealth of material out there to work with.

    • YourMessageHere says:

      Absofuckinglutely Against A Dark Background. This book is one of my all-time favourites, and probably the book I most want to be made into a film – but I’ll settle for a game instead. I want to play a game with neon-pink Solipsists in combat ACVs!

  41. chabuhi says:

    Tad Williams’ Otherland series maybe? I always thought that would be a fun open-world adventure/rpg – especially if you could give players the tools to construct their own piece of the universe. So, kinda like Snowcrash, too, I guess.

    Oh, wait – Second Life … never mind.

  42. Tatourmi says:

    I’d love to see Bernard Werbert take on football in the “tree of possibles” (Guess that is the right translation) be transcriped into a game.

    Also:
    -Grapes of wrath: The struggling family simulator.
    -Asimov’s Robot psychogy secret cases: Death of the three laws.
    -Candide, as a not so lovely 2D platformer.
    -The Odissey: Episode one, Troy at war.
    -Moby Dick, the great hunt.

    And mandatory: The kamasutra. But I guess it has been done before.

  43. K. says:

    Dan Simmons: Hyperion Cantos
    Ken MacLeod: Star Fraction

    …because I want more philosophy, socialism and anarchy in my games.

    • Wang Tang says:

      A game based on Hyperion would actually make sense as a series of episodes. But I can’t see the genre this game should be. Adventure? No-Guns-and-Conversation?

  44. Spider Jerusalem says:

    I would love an RPG where one plays as Corwin of Amber.

    Let me manipulate shadow!

  45. LennyLeonardo says:

    Instead of a Fear and Loathing simulator, what about a Hunter S Thompson simulator?
    You’re dumped in the woods behind Jack Nicholson’s house with a submachinegun, a fresh elk’s heart and a navy issue foghorn and you have to terrorise his family before the drugs wear off.

  46. MiniTrue says:

    I’d kill for a game based on either “Crime and Punishment” or “The Idiot”, both by Dostoevsky. In the same vein, a game based on Kafka’s “The Trial” or “The Castle” would also be fascinating.

    As you can see, I like my dystopias. I would thus suggest a game based in the universe of “1984″, but you know and I know that the universe would be raped and some kind of trite “happy ending” would be glued on.

    • Spider Jerusalem says:

      I’d prefer a game based on “We,” “1984′s” much more compelling predecessor.

    • inertia says:

      An adaptation of War of the Worlds, of course! But actually set in the late-Victorian (or was it early-Georgian?) England of the book. Now that would be awesome. Maybe you could have a team of survivors and a team of tripods, and the tripods had to capture the survivors before they all got a terrible cold and suddenly died in a big ol’ deus ex machina. Like team tig, or something.

    • westyfield says:

      Fucking yes. We would make an excellent game. An entire city made of glass, with The Wall and the wilderness beyond. Not sure how the story could work but the environment would be amazing.
      Edit: @Inertia – I think WotW was late Victorian. And there was an RTS based on Jeff Wayne’s Musical War of the Worlds. Really.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wayne%27s_The_War_of_the_Worlds

    • hereyoutry says:

      I’m pretty sure Suda51 announced he was making a game based on The Castle around 2009? Haven’t heard anything since though, which isn’t reaffirming…

    • Harkkum says:

      I fail to see what is dystopian on Dostojevsky? Not that I would oppose either book as a game I am not entirely sure what e.g. Crime and Punishment would have over all those other psychological [choose genre]s. I just don’t see good novels being necessarily good games. Although I love my Imre Kertesz and V.S. Naipaul as much as the next guy I am not entirely sure traumas of communism and holocaust or bushes and trees on the English countryside make a good game.

      If I’d had to choose something from the Russian/Soviet literature to be made into a game I’d definitely go for the Master and Margarita. A game where you can play as Satan and send your fellow players to that remote corner of the earth just for the sake of it would be extremely satisfying if not too fair a gaming experience. Or maybe Satan would be your antagonist whilst you try to navigate the streets of Moscow. One mistake and you’re in Siberia. Game Over.

      Also, if classics are to be referred to I’d love to see also Heart of Darkness as a game. It could be a River Raid re-make with a plot! Or an eugenics lab game where you have to collect all the different head shapes from those darn primitives in the jungle whilst maintaining your sanity in true rogue-like fashion.

  47. CMaster says:

    Dune.

    As an MMO.

    Not literally following the plot, but Arrakis with all its factions and monsters and the like would make a great action/stealth MMO.

  48. I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says:

    American Psycho, developed by Nicolau Chaud. You play in first-person and your every action is followed by snippets of internal monologue. That would be hideous.

  49. GenBanks says:

    Tatyana Tolstaya – The Slynx… incredibly weird world would be cool in a game.

    Robinson Crusoe… I envision a realistic rendering of minecraft-style gameplay (harvesting wood or whatever, making stuff etc), focused on exploration and crafting on a detailed free form island.

    Venedikt Erofeev – Moscow to the end of the Line… hours of gameplay wandering around Soviet Moscow deliriously drunk

  50. Alaric says:

    Akunin’s Erast Fandorin series.

  51. Reiver says:

    The Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson.

    Not following the plot that goes a little too religious and batshit in the last book but there’s an excellent system of magic where a person “burns” metals inside of them to activate superhuman abilities. It would make for a cross between infamous and the void with some RPG elements.
    The description of the cities always reminded me of the artisitic style of the Thief games. As a result i ended up picturing most of the book with Thief 2 graphics (although on a grander scale).

    • GeneralERA says:

      I came here to say just this. Mistborn would make an amazing game; allomancy is practically designed to be put into a game.

    • MacBeth says:

      Reading #2 of these at the moment – and agreed, allomancy is tailor-made for a game…

    • Serenegoose says:

      Mistborn game is a thing that looks likely to be happening, judging by some of Brandon’s relatively recent tweets.

    • ulyssesswword says:

      I think that a game set in the Warbreaker universe could be a lot more interesting than Mistborn. Bright colours instead of more black, grey and brown. Built in progression mechanic in the amount of Breaths you have (as well as magic cost) instead of (mostly) fixed attributes.

      On second thought, Mistborn would make a good action game, Warbreaker a good RPG.

  52. G-Sys says:

    Something set in the universe of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War (and sequels) would make for a solid action game, I think.

    • henben says:

      Old Man’s War is really a Starship Troopers ripoff/homage, and it’s not like space marines is an underexplored theme in games.

      I would actually like to see a game simulating the jetpack-enabled suits in Starship Troopers (the novel, that is). I know Tribes had nice jetpack combat, but in ST the suits seem to be able to jump miles, and throw around tactical nukes.

      Imagine something like a flight sim crossed with Operation Flashpoint/Arma, where the craft you’re ‘flying’ is a high-powered but fragile exoskeleton. You have a few tactical nukes which can level a building, but like in a flight sim, once they’re gone, you can’t find more in a handy supply dump. When you take damage, instead of waiting for your shield to recharge, you have to compensate for a damaged thruster, or dump your reactor core and make your way to the extraction point on foot. Instead of a linear level, you have a huge map with primary and secondary targets, and an opposing force which will concentrate on your targets if you don’t keep up the element of surprise.

  53. Barts says:

    Polish series of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher.. oh, wait, that’s already done. So maybe now it could be time for his other work, “The viper” or “Narrenturm”.

    Russian books by Arkadij and Boris Strugacki, like “Picnic on the side of the road”.. no, wait, there’s Stalker. We could still use “It’s hard to be a god” or “My friend from hell”, or “Monday starts on Saturday” (a little similar to Pratchett), for that matter.

    Also maybe another Russian author’s books, Siergiey Lukianienko, say, maybe “Nightwatch”… oh, we already have that one (although a shitty game it was, really, doesn’t do book justice). But there’s the “Cold shores” dylogy and quite a choice of space operas.

    Hmm, perhaps yet another Russian author, Dmitr Gluhovsky and his “Metro” series.. damn, we have that one, too.

    So maybe a Polish author Jacek Dukaj, famous for incrredibly well-designed worlds? Rrright, the closest we have come to a game based on his prose was that “Cathedral” animation.

    Hey, got another one – Kiryl Bulychev aka Igor Mozeyko, some great books there, unfortunately never translated to English as far as I know. “City on top/on the mountain”, my favourite. “The savages”, “Great Guslar and surroundings”, quite a lot of good story-telling material there.

    Other Polish and virtually unknown authors are Jacek Piekara and his inquisitorial series and Jaroslaw Grzedowicz with his “Lord of the ice garden” series. Damn, I almost pity the Anglosaxon readers who won’t ever get to know these stories. But I am glad that many good Slavic authors get published, it is uplifting.

    PS. Apologies to all the Russians if my Russian names transcriptions suck.

    • LennyLeonardo says:

      Just thought I’d point out that Hard to Be a God was made into a game a few years ago. Pretty average RPG as I recall.

  54. sasayan says:

    Watership Down as some sort of bizarre city management / stealth hybrid.

    or

    An adventure game based on the Dirk Gently series. (Do two books count as a series?)

  55. Kaira- says:

    The Death Gate Cycle. Again, but it’s okay, I’d love to see some clever use of magic.

  56. Alexander Norris says:

    The Malazan Book of the Fallen, duh.

    e; also Snow Crash and When Gravity Fails and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and the Culture novels and Perdido Street Station but really just an open world game set in New Crobuzon.

    • Jake says:

      Yeah I was going to say the Malazan books. Maybe some huge sprawling MMO or a Total War style game full of Tenescowri, K’Chain Che’Malle and Mortal Swords.

    • h4plo says:

      This was to be my suggestion too. The sheer breadth of cultures and personalities found would lend itself very well to a sandbox-style MMO, but man .. a Total War game is a really fantastic idea too.

      Can I play Quick Ben please?

    • shitflap says:

      I’m glad I didn’t have to be the first one to suggest it.
      A Total War style game would be awesome!
      I was obviously thinking MMO as well..

  57. dodgymadman says:

    Jack Vance’s Lyonesse trilogy, or Dying Earth Series, or perhaps a book from The Gaean Reach collection. So much room for imagination as well as true-to-Vance emulation.

    • Arglebargle says:

      Vance is a good suggestion. He had countless throwaway paragraphs in his books that would have been lesser authors’ complete novels.

  58. Paool says:

    Game based on the Forgotten Realms series.

    Make for a nifty Diablo style dungeon crawler.

  59. Hensler says:

    They’re total fluff, but I’d like to play a game from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files. I imagine it would be something like the upcoming Secret World.

    • orranis says:

      Sleuthing whilst being a wizard sounds grand. Perhaps throw in a bit of the Nightside series by Simon Green to add a bit more noir?

  60. Icarus says:

    Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn/Ravenor trilogies, as Mass Effect style Guns n’ Conversation games.

    And the Gaunt’s Ghosts series as a Battlefield-esque FPS.

    • Daiv says:

      “FOR TANITH AND THE EMPER-” *scrunch* *thump*

    • eldwl says:

      I think a G&C as a W40K Inquisitor has massive potential – you could choose your ordos to choose our basic skill sets (or even modify the plot accordingly) and then your behaviour in the game could have sliding towards herecy (or not). The very thought has me all excited. Or maybe that’s just the beer.

  61. luminosity says:

    Neverwhere by Gaiman, would make a great adventure or RPG setting.

    • Ghost of Grey Cap says:

      OH GOD YES!

    • marach says:

      You’re not thinking big enough you could use Neverwhere as an MMO base allowing travel between the various cities below… The bears in moscow… the new york gators… A floating market as a trade hub that changes its in game location everyday/week…

  62. Freud says:

    One of Tom Clancy’s books.

  63. Savage Henry says:

    A proper Lovecraft MMO. If only for the reason that it would provide a good reason for why the bosses respawn all the time.

    Also, (not strictly books, but) a Heavy Rain-style ‘interactive adverture’ based on Phonogram, that made use of the music stash on your hard-drive. I hear that the author wrote a couple of PC game reviews once.

  64. Coastie716 says:

    Well if steampunk is the theme then I’ll go with an oldie but goodie, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling from 1990 – a bunch of sci-fi awards, fun to read and easy to visualize.

  65. soulblur says:

    I was thinking Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes. Early 90s YA novel, I think. First part is about a group of teenagers scrounging to set up a home/base in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic city. I actually liked that part best. But it’s also about trying to survive in an alien world, when all you have are some basic tools. So, sort of like Dwarf Fortress, I guess. But much more minimal.

    I mean, even a game Robinson Crusoe would be pretty fun. Actually, that would be great fun. Survive on a desert island until a ship rescues you. Build houses, domesticate animals and start a farm. Protect yourself from pirates and hostile islanders. Explore shipwrecks.

    Fun. Sort of new Lara Croft, but with less action and more building.

  66. Ian says:

    I was going to say Wheel of Time before I checked and saw that Obsidian are apparently working on something. So woot, sort of.

    Dark Tower? I could picture some sort of action/adventure set in that universe. Will likely get one when/if the films get made I suppose.

    If done like the book and not the film I could imagine an awesome game of The Running Man. In fact, the more I think about that the better it sounds…

  67. Zarx says:

    A Witcher 2 style RPG based on the Old Kingdom (AKA Abhorsen series) series could be killer it has signs, swords and BELLS!. I think Dune has plenty of materiel to be mined for games in a multitude of genres, it has been so long since the last one. More Discworld wouldn’t be a bad thing ether

  68. LennyLeonardo says:

    Oh yeah, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell would make a pretty good RPG. The whole ‘return of magic during the Napoleonic wars’ setting is really unique and Strange’s rise to power has an RPG-y sort of progression to it. Thing is, like a lot of these suggestions, it just wouldn’t be the same world if the author herself wasn’t involved in scriptwriting.

    • roryok says:

      Nah, I don’t think a game could do that book justice.

    • Inglourious Badger says:

      Bah! I just said this before checking if anyone else did. Apologies. I think you could make a game in that universe, as long as you didn’t actually play as Johnathan Strange. If you were one his proteges and worked through a similar rise to power in a slightly later setting…that could work

  69. orranis says:

    Hmm… Too many good options, how to pick the best?

    Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
    The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov
    All of the Martian short stories by Ray Bradbury
    The Blackcollar Series by Timothy Zahn
    Fortress in the Eye of Time series by C.J. Cherryh

    –Delightful RPG potential with Neverwhere, especially if you can only play an London Above person who accidentally stumbled into London Below.
    –Foundation would be a kicking shoot-em-up and strategy mash-up?
    –The Martian short story stuff would be a horrific mind-twisting game where you could never know what was real and who was going to kill you in a foreign land (hint: everything will kill you).
    –The Blackcollar has excellent stealth based gameplay potential while retaining the prospective for amazing combat.
    –I don’t know how the Fortress in the Eye of Time could be pulled off, but it had better be done well. I’m thinking kind of like Oblivion, but far far better and of course with terrifying consequences should you do the wrong things.

  70. disobedientlib says:

    Snow Crash as a blended skateboard-strategy-tower defense game! Or even Crytonomicon as a hacker-puzzler-action-fps WWII and modern day mashup…

  71. Tei says:

    A action RPG like “Mass Effect” with the character and universe of Honor Harrington

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse

    • greydt says:

      Heck yes, although I’d go for a Honorverse strategy game with a strong tactical component, or a ship combat simulation.

  72. mickygor says:

    The Night’s Dawn by Peter F. Hamilton needs some game representation. Failing that, I’d settle for Century Rain by Alistair Reynolds.

  73. lokimotive says:

    Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren, or at least something set in its Bellona. Despite the books reputation as being an impenetrable, pretentious slog, Delany does a great job of creating a compellingly insular post apocalyptic city (or something) and imbuing all of the players in the book with motivations and faults. It could be an excellent setting for something.

    Or perhaps a tremendously experimental (Tale of Tales?) take on Robbe-Grillet’s Project for a Revolution in New York.

    • RickyButler says:

      Dhalgren? Naahhhhh, I’d much rather cast my vote for a point-’n'-click adaptation of Hogg.

      In all serious, a lot of games would make great P’n'C games.

      Imagine:
      -The Illuminatus! Trilogy
      -Easy Travel to Other Planets
      -Absalom, Absalom! or As I Lay Dying could probably be done…decently…by Tale of Tales, but I guess there’s not really much of a point and it could never substitute the actual Faulkner reading experience.
      -Portnoy’s Complaint

      The Illuminatus! Trilogy would actually make a real good’un.

    • lokimotive says:

      Yeah, you’d probably lose a lot of the essential Delanyness of Dhalgren if you shied away from the explicity sexuality. Gaming could benefit from a truly controversial work like Hogg, though. Something to enrage even staunch defenders of video games’ artistic merits while energizing defenders of intellectual curiosity (you know, something more complex than Manhunt or Grand Theft Auto).

      Maybe a Lord Horror game….

  74. Atalanta says:

    I would say The Great Gatsby, but it’s been done.

  75. westyfield says:

    Something set in the world of Richard K Morgan’s Altered Carbon series would be good. Gritty semi-cyberpunk, semi-biopunk detective novels, in a world where a person’s consciousness can be stored on a chip and put into a new body. So they can switch bodies, or they can have a rack of spare bodies and essentially never die (unless the chip is destroyed). Plus there’s hot sex, which I hear is a requirement for an RPG these days.

    • TheLemon says:

      I was just about to suggest that series. It would be a very interesting world to explore.

    • fearghaill says:

      I was looking for someone to suggest this, and was going to myself if no one had. The body swapping mechanic itself would be brilliant, both as an “extra lives” mechanic, and a form of character progression/customization – make enough money and buy yourself a new/better body, with specially programmed combat reflexes. Also, FTL travel between mission hubs, just get beamed into a new body elsewhere. You could even be double crossed by yourself, or at least a copy of your personality forked of months/years ago.

  76. Jade Raven says:

    Ever since reading Tailchaser’s Song I have wanted to play a game from the perspective of a cat. Not to concerned about story, just a good simulation of a cat’s life in first-person with third-person for jumping around and the like.

  77. jellydonut says:

    NEAL STEPHENSON’S The Diamond Age or Snow Crash.

    If not, an EVE-like MMO for George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. (A Game of Thrones etc)

  78. Trelow says:

    Don Quixote done by Tim Schafer.

  79. ShadyGuy says:

    Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash. It’d be cool to run around as a hacker/pizza delivery guy with a samurai sword. Plus there aren’t enough cyberpunk games.

  80. fitzroy_doll says:

    Something set in the Revelation Space universe by Alastair Reynolds.

    Jump in your ship, arrive at your destination 75 years later!

  81. Shuck says:

    “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco. I have no idea what form it would take, but I’ve always been hankering for a game equivalent of that book. No doubt it would involve a lot of reading.

    • dhex says:

      that would be kinda neat.

      my entry: the collector by john fowles. play as both the antagonist and his victim. and it’d be an ugly mirror for the audience to boot.

    • Gabbo says:

      I came to post Foucault’s Pendulum as well. I can only see it working if the game is a third person/point and click adventure because it’s all about solving puzzles, putting clues together and traveling to different locales.

      I don’t know if the satire element would carry over as well to the game, since the tropes aren’t all the same, but I would love to see someone attempt it.

  82. Raiyan 1.0 says:

    Something Warren Ellis. Roaming the multiverse as Elijah Snow and keeping the world strange.

  83. Jake says:

    Maybe Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World would work as a dreamlike adventure game. I’d play the fuck out of it anyway.

    • Createx says:

      As much as I´d love this, I fail to see how any game could decently represent this book. You´d have to focus on the mind-part of the story because the “real world” doesn´t hold much interesting stuff for a game.
      And that would mean leaving half of the book out.

    • Jake says:

      There are the INKlings and you could have a beer or cook.

  84. crazydane says:

    Not sure how best to pull it off, but if you could somehow turn Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe into an open world (oblivion style) RPG that could be really cool. Easy to monetise as well because each book could be a dlc or something like that.

    • LuNatic says:

      Yes, an Elder Scrolls style game based in and around the city of Ankh-Morpork. Wake up at the start of the game on a chair in Lord Vetenaris office. Get given a work for me or die ultimatum like in Going Postal. Join the University or the Watch or any of the guilds to get training in special areas. Buy a horse and ride out to Quirm, Sto Lat, Sto Helit and Pseudopolis. Have a pointless side quest about raising swamp dragons. Eat C.M.O.T. Dibblers genuine-pork-parts-in-a-bun. Throw up violently. Talk with Captain Carrot. Get chased by Seargent Angua. Get shouted at by Sam Vimes.

    • Inglourious Badger says:

      Yes! Yes yes yes! A Discworld RPG or MMO would be perfect, good shout

  85. longbeast says:

    I’ve signed up for a fresh and shiny new account just to be able to say: SimDinotopia

    It would be a risky one to propose to an actual game studio, since there’s always going to be the temptation to turn it into a greco-roman styled jurassic park instead of an actual peaceful utopia… but I can still dream.

  86. VelvetFistIronGlove says:

    Roadside Picnic.

    The Stalker games are great, but there’s a lot more that could be done with that story, that would not need to revolve so much around guns.

    • Similar says:

      Having just read “Metro 2033″ and “Roadside Picnic” the past two days, I kind of want a Stalker game set in the world of Metro 2033. Ditch all the Chosen One stuff and just be a no-one-in-particular stalker making a living by going to the surface, being hired as a mercenary, maybe get a bit involved in some of the going ons of the plot from Metro (say, take part in rescuing Atyom from being hanged by the neo-fascists or something), but mainly just choosing what you want to do and having the whole metro system to do it in, with factions and traders, legends and myths and everything.

  87. DeadPanda says:

    I think we need a game based on Naked Lunch, it could have an “asphyxiation adapter” for the Wii-mote, or even better require the Kinect.

    Failing that, anyone else think recreating the works of Shakespeare in a modern point-and-click engine would be a genuinely good idea?

  88. Bret says:

    I see nobody mentioned Armor, by John Steakley, which is interesting.

    It’s a well done bug war, which is kinda gaming’s bread and butter. Better, it’s about a lone unkillable protagonist rather than a diverse fighting force, better suited to how games tend to work.

    Been reading a bit of Gibson lately, but Neuromancer was an adventure game already, and let’s avoid that particular avenue. Less said, soonest mended and that.

    Ah!

    Chesterton’s Napoleon of Notting Hill! Real time urban combat in alternate past London. Raise armies, steal coaches, and more. It’d be grand.

    • Daiv says:

      I thought I was the only person on the planet who had ever read Armor. Hell yeah. Being the Engine is the best description I have ever found of what it feels like to be “in the zone” when playing games, or as we say in our gaming circle, “it flows”.

  89. Anthile says:

    MMOFPS based on Paradise Lost.

  90. TillEulenspiegel says:

    Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar books. Mix in the AD&D2 adaptations if you want, but there’s plenty of material just in the original stories.

    It’d make the best urban sandbox RPG ever, in a gritty, quirky fantasy city.

  91. henben says:

    Ken McLeod’s Newton’s Wake would make an ideal background for an RPG/FPS: a space opera setting with hidden interstellar gates, mysterious post-Singularity artefacts which can ‘upgrade’ you, giant statues of Marx in the oceans of newly terraformed planets, armoured “search engines” fighting newly-awakened hostile AIs, three philosophically opposed factions… Not to mention backup/resurrection justified in the fiction.

    It’s almost as if it was written as a “gamey” universe.

    That’s the major problem with most beloved fictional universes – tacking the unrealistic conventions of games onto them would seem really jarring. In most games, the player character is or can become much more powerful than everybody else in the world, and experiences personal growth at super speed. I remember showing some friends the amazing opening speech of Bioshock. They were impressed – and then soon I was rooting through bins for ammunition and the spell was broken.

    Imagine a faithful adaptation of pretty much any Le Carre story – there would be a single action sequence, and at the end you would be betrayed by your boss and die.

    On the other hand, trying to come up with new mechanics to fit the feel of an established universe can make for original games: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners Of The Earth was flawed but had some excellent ideas. Mainly that a lot of sequences just involved running away and not even looking at the monsters – I guess Amnesia is carrying on that tradition.

    I guess Lord of the Rings gets a pass on this because we’re so used to the combination of RPG conventions and high fantasy settings.

    Here are some suggestions which would work mechanically:

    Dianetics the RPG – fight suppressive persons, raid psychiatric wards, recruit celebrities and suppress critics; level up all the way to Clear status before taking on Xenu himself

    Charles Stross’ Laundry series – low-key hacker/spy types fight Cthulhoid entities (Deus Ex with spells instead of cybernetics)

    And some which would need new mechanics invented:

    Naked Lunch by William Burroughs – some kind of dream logic point ‘n’ click?
    Declare or Last Call by Tim Powers – magic systems driven by symbolism and dream logic rather than area of effect and cooldowns (hard to do, but amazing if they could pull it off)

  92. sergio.schuler says:

    1984 or Brave New World, should be an adventure.

    Animal Farm was done, it is called Angry Birds, no?

  93. Earl Grey says:

    My only while thought while reading Dean Koontz’s ‘The Taking’, was that it could easily be translated into some survival horror type game.

    Though personally I would love to see something based or set in Tad Williams ‘The War of the Flowers’. The fairy city with the different families and factions, I believe would make a fantastic setting to explore and immerse your self in.

  94. Tom4J says:

    How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu – Where the game is not actually installed but instead an idea that you can travel through time, space and the multiverse.

    … also it would have hats

    … theoretical ones.

    Tom j

  95. aLMachtunG says:

    The Yiddish Policemen’s Union in old Broken Sword style! ;)

  96. JB says:

    How about an RPG based on Philip José Farmer’s Dayworld? I haven’t read it for years, but managing the seven effectively-separate lives could be interesting. Maybe.

  97. Ayam says:

    Consider Phlebas with its epic set-pieces, or Temple of Terror (fighting fantasy book 14 if I remember correctly)

  98. Duke of Chutney says:

    anything which thematically doesnt fall into the following categories

    WW2
    Vietnam/Modern conflicts
    The Lord of the Rings/ DnD
    Starwars/Fantasy SF
    Zombie apocalypse

    about 90% games share the same narrow focus

    I would like to see more games pinching plot hooks from Philip K Dick books.

    Id like to see more HARD sci fi space opera books converted into action games e.g. Chasm City or The Prefect by Alastair Reynolds

    or Neuromancer by William Gibson

    or an RPG based on one of the Chinese classics such as the Water Margin, but with out lots of western steriotypes of chinese characters

  99. Evil Otto says:

    Jim Rossignol’s My Gaming Life. A game about a man about games.

  100. Ultra Superior says:

    EISENHORN by Dan Abnett of course.

  101. Owain_Glyndwr says:

    The Book of the Long Sun, by Gene Wolfe.
    Set millions of years in the future, where the Sun is dying and our past has become just a myth, you would play a free roam action rpg, playing Severian as either a sociopath or a Redeemer figure. You hold special items that just might be relics of Jesus Christ. Battles are a mix of swordplay, artillery, dogfight and laser duel. There is only one ending but about 2000 different interpretations.

    • Arglebargle says:

      Gene Wolfe uses the language better than most any American SF/F writer around. No, take away that SF/F bit. Great stuff! Though I think the series set in the slowly decaying generation ships would make a bit better game world. And lead to some cool graphics.
      I was boggled when I finally realized that everything that Severian experiances in the Books of the New Sun happens in just one summer.

    • colinmarc says:

      I was thinking this, or The Wizard Knight, but the problem is the reason they are great is the unreliable narrator. You make it a game, and all the sudden nothing is ambiguous.

  102. Johnnymac4242 says:

    Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, but with changing characters, so that you can be the mentally handicapped brother in law with a bomb and the wife after her brother dies.

    The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper would be able to keep people entertained much more easily, though. Stealth + Action+ Shooting People With A Bow And Arrow = Hours Of Family Fun.

  103. jbrader says:

    Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day, The Iliad, just about anything by Lovecraft.

  104. Gar says:

    Forget books, we need a Dino Riders game!

    http://arrrr.com/dinoriders/dinowar-1.jpg

  105. westyfield says:

    Wow, seeing a lot of love for Alastair Reynolds in this thread. His books are great, but sadly I can’t remember much of the setting in them. The city is in a big dome, isn’t it? And they’re terraforming the planet? Not sure how it would work as a game, but y’all should read Revelation Space.

  106. roryok says:

    Roadside Picnic

    wait wait…

  107. Stuart Walton says:

    Frank Herbert’s ConSentiency stuff is ripe. An adventure centred around BuSab would be brilliant.

  108. MacBeth says:

    Phew, read all the way through and no-one had proposed my idea: Tales of the Ketty Jay series by Chris Wooding – airship combat with support aircraft, piracy, demonology, golems, conspiracies… was thinking how much fun it would be to play while I was reading it…

  109. julianbenson says:

    Caleb Williams – the first part of the book is a murder mystery, the middle is about breaking out of prison, and then the third is about fleeing the authorities all over 18th century England. Whole time I was reading I was thinking it could have a great game adaptation.

  110. Malefact says:

    Just been reading Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn trilogy, and I’m of the opinion that a Bethesda-esque free roaming Inquisitor-em-up with paranoid conspiracies, mind controlling psykers and lovecraftian horror would be absolutely amazing. Think: LA Noire meets Fallout meets Nurgle.

  111. Limey says:

    The Joy of Sex.

    Oh wait, we already have The Witcher.

  112. Raiyan 1.0 says:

    Enid Blyton’s Br’er Rabbit!

    Face it, you’ll love it.

  113. JesseNorton says:

    I don’t know how, but I always wanted to roam around the house from House of Leaves.

  114. Abundant_Suede says:

    Surprised to see no mention of the Rothfuss Kingkiller Chronicles yet (Name of the Wind, Wise Man’s Fear.)

    I’d actually really like to see an RPG take place at that University, and revolve around a robust freeform artificer/crafting system, and his interesting sympathy magic system. Something sort of like Magika, where you create magical effects by drawing powers from different object combinations. Meanwhile, you have to count every precious coin, and somehow support yourself by selling your crafted magical wares, doing odd jobs, and performing your bardic skills.

    For the first half of the game at least. The second half of the game would be dedicated to sexual conquest of any female character that wandered across your path.

    • fearghaill says:

      An RPG based on the Rothfuss books would be utterly lacking in challenge, as the protagonist would be start with perfect stats and be a high level wizard with all skills maxed out by the end of the tutorial.
      By which I mean Kvothe is one of the most egregious Mary Sue characters I’ve seen in ages.

    • Lars Westergren says:

      Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. I enjoyed the first book, but halfway through the second I started thinking

      “Hang on, everything always goes his way. World class musician, genius, gets to train in the academy of science and wizardry, has rare innate primordial “naming” magic, then trains with a clan of ninjas, learns supernatural seduction skills from faerie queen… things are going to have to start going rapidly against him in the next book, because without any challenge where is the drama?”

      It’s like the Penny Arcade strip with Beauty and the Beast remake. “Oh no, he has a superbuff body, cool tattoos and bad-ass scars. How can she *ever* bring herself to love this Dark Prince?”

    • Abundant_Suede says:

      In as much as the relative infallibility of the main character in a first person narrative is always something of an issue ( we rarely get to entertain any doubts as to whether the character will “make it”, or whether they’ll pull it out in the end ), I think you might be missing the point of Kvothe being an unreliable narrator.

      He’s chiefly concerned with fabricating his own legend, which we see him do throughout his recollections. Outside of the first person flashbacks, the disparity between the man in his stories and the man he actually is, becomes apparent. And we already know his story ends in tragedy.

      That’s really besides the point, though. I’m not particularity interested in playing Kvothe, so much as playing in that world, with its specific magic system and particular brand of artificing. I just really enjoy the passages detailing the devices he makes, and the precious coins he is able to scrape together with them. I likewise enjoy the scientific approach to that world’s magic, and would enjoy seeing a fresh system like that in an rpg.

  115. Symitri says:

    House of Leaves. It’d be incredibly hard to pull off, if not impossible altogether, but if it was, it’d give Amnesia more than a run for it’s money.

  116. RebelMoogle says:

    I hope it hasn’t been suggested but I feel “Otherland” would be awesome. Every different ‘otherland’ could be made an episode or something.

    Or just make the real Otherland, that would work as well. Complete with the conspiracies and the murder.

  117. noom says:

    Skimmed through every suggestion so far, and not one person (unless I missed it) has suggested anything by Michael Moorcock? Shameful.

    As there’s already a lot of sci-fi and fantasy shizzle suggested here, I’m going to mix things up a bit and go for Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. RPG/survivalyness set on a Tasmanian penal colony of utter insanity in the 19th century. A marvellously twisted book.

  118. Wooly Wugga Wugga says:

    It’s low hanging fruit but Stephen Erikson’s Deadhouse Gates.

    You are a commander of an army that has to escourt a refugee train through a hostile continent trying to defend it from hit and run attacks, dealing with political infighting.

    It’s one giant RTS map and normal day night cycles. No 25 missions or levels, etc. Your goal – head West and survive. Randomly generated on this giant continent are little side quests – go meet a hamlet of friendlies, escourt them to the refugee column, search for an artifact that can make your life easier, go rescue a noble lord who has been kidnapped at night because you need his support to get rations for your troops from the civilians in the refugee column, go raid granaries to get food for the column. Food is a resource which needs to be rationed/scavenged. You need to set patrols along the length of the column and race to flashpoints personally where you are needed. You have generals who you put in charge of patrols with RPG stats. The numbers of the civilians will be whittled down by fighting, starvation and disease but you will find more stragglers along the way. There is no winning and no losing (unless everyone dies). Your goal is to get as many survivors to friendly territory as possible and if you make it to ascend. *SPOILERS*

    It’s optional that everyone dies at the end like in the book.

    *End spoilers*

    I have dreams about this game. I’ve started writing design documents. I want this game.

    • kud13 says:

      focusing merely on the Chain of Dogs is a bit too specific.

      personally, I want a Malazan: total war game. because I want to control the Awl and show that idiot Redmask what it’s like to WIN

    • Jake says:

      As long as I can be the Pannion Domin and throw starving Tenescowri at you. The Tenescowri are the most horrific concept I have ever come across.

  119. Pathetic Phallacy says:

    Some are almost impossible to turn into a game, while others are downright easy. I would like to see the attempt, nevertheless.

    1) Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground
    2) Miller’s Tropic of Cancer
    3) DuPrau’s City of Ember
    4) McCarthy’s The Road
    5) Homer’s The Odyssey or Joyce’s Ulysses

  120. DarkDobe says:

    Something based off of Man in the High Castle – or really any of those alt-history novels, please.

  121. sigma83 says:

    The Hunger Games. Would be a third person RPG/’action game based on actual player skill’ where you create your character to participate in the various parts of the Games, from the personality-heavy pre-game interviews and popularity contests to the actual combat portion of the arena.

    Spending more points in combat will mean that you are not well-loved and the fickle crowd may reward your opponents instead with tributes and gifts… unless of course you’re spectacular.

    The pre-game training center would be a wonderful tutorial thing as well as allow you to grind up points in lesser skills.

  122. Diziet Sma says:

    Would any of the games in Iain Bank’s Complicity or The Player of Games count?

  123. VelvetFistIronGlove says:

    I always wanted a game based on Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. I guess The Savage Empire was heavily inspired by it.

  124. Fameros says:

    Hamlet as a stealth game. The prince is sneaking on people the whole drama through.
    (Preferably developed by Ion Storm.)

  125. MuscleHorse says:

    Give me an rpg set in the castle of Gormenghast.

  126. Fameros says:

    Hamlet as a stealth game. The prince was sneaking on people all the time.
    Preferably developed by Ion Storm.

  127. Lambchops says:

    The guys who did that fighting rabbit malarkey (Lugaru or whatever it was called) should totally make a Redwall game, if only to satisfy my nostalgia.

  128. AttackOfTheThumbs says:

    Moon Crash Trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer
    Life As We Knew It.
    The Dead and the Gone.
    This World We Live In.

    It would be a different kind of survival game. I don’t think you should take the characters from the book, but instead pit you as a random in few locations playing out different scenarios of survival (or near instant death).

  129. Splynter says:

    The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. It is just ripe for any adaptation, if only because more people should be made aware of it.

  130. Pattom says:

    American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Can’t think of a better book that would capture the spirit of the “road games” feature Jim wrote up last year (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/05/31/where-are-the-road-games/). The only potential problem I can see is that the way magic works is a little too… obscure, I guess, to make a reliable mechanic without some work.

    World War Z, by Max Brooks. Zombie games are never going out of style, and the framing story makes a good excuse to keep things varied by bouncing between survivors across the world. It doesn’t hurt that it’s the darkest take on a zombie apocalypse I’ve seen.

    The Amateur, by Robert Littell. For those who haven’t read, it’s about a CIA analyst who blackmails his employers into sending him behind the Iron Curtain to find the terrorists who killed his girlfriend. Very tense, very exciting. I could see someone pulling off some sandbox stealth gameplay with this, like Assassin’s Creed, setting up ambushes for the killers while escaping secret police.

    Red Harvest, by Dashiell Hammett. Even better for sandbox gameplay, since the whole plot is about a private investigator who manipulates every criminal gang in a city into killing each other off. I could even see this going in a more adventure game direction: stealth is less important because everyone knows who you are, but you can interrogate townspeople for dirt on each gang that will force them into open conflict.

  131. Rockettgirl says:

    The Saga of the Exiles by Julian May – its a perfect set up for a game world

  132. Heinrich says:

    Something set in the Dresden Files or Codex Alera universes could work well for an RPG. Ooh, no, better idea: Discworld.

  133. ninjapirate says:

    The Little Prince.

  134. noom says:

    Edit: removed double post due to reply thread failings earlier

  135. Strangineer says:

    On The Road.

    A nationwide 1940′s GTA/Mafia MMO game without missions or a point, and hardly any money at all. The challenge is to not get caught by railway cops, or arrested for loitering, stealing cars, also driving drunk and smoking pot.

  136. massive man - solid gold suit says:

    Something set on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom – an RPS, an MMO, I don’t care; it would be so fun to pit armies of green men against the reds, or to go adventuring against mobs of great white apes.

    Or something set in the world of “Tales of the Otori” by Lian Hearn.

  137. djbriandamage says:

    As a kid I quite enjoyed the Ancient Art of War game, based on Sun Tzu’s manuals.
    http://www.mobygames.com/game/ancient-art-of-war

  138. Wooly Wugga Wugga says:

    Let’s try this again since WordPress ate my original post :

    It’s low haning fruit but Deahouse Gates by Stephen Erikson.

    You are a general who has to get a huge refugee train across a hostile continent. It’s an RPG but instead of missions you have one giant map with day/night cycle and you just have to go West to friendly territory and the refugee train trudges on with or without you but can be directed loosely. You have food as a resource which you have to ration between your troops and the civilians. You have to plan patrols along the length of the refugee column, deal with ambush and hit and run attacks as well as pitched battles. Random side quests occur : opportunities to raid granaries to get food, opportunities to retrieve artifacts that can help you, maybe a nobleman gets kidnapped and you have to go rescue him to get his support. You need to recue groups of soldiers and civilians and bring them back to the column. You have generals with RPG stats which you can put in charge of patrols but you might have to race up and down the column dealing with particularly bad threats and commanding units yourself.

    There is no winning or losing. All along civilians and soldiers are dying from battle, hunger and disease and you’re picking up more along the way. You’re just trying to get as many people to safety as possible.

  139. Lars Westergren says:

    The Yellow Pages, A-F.

    Failing that, I would like to see something like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, or Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha. I yearn to once in my life play a game that is about advancing not by killing people, but by trying to become a better person through conversation or introspection.
    I’m sure they would be bestsellers!

    On a more realistic note, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a fascinating book, it is about a post-oil world ravaged by global warming and bio-engineered crop diseases created by multinational agricultural biotechnology corporations trying to create captive markets for their products. As a result these “calorie” companies are the equivalent of Neuromancer’s technology zaibatsus, their agents scour the world for disease resistant plants that can be refined and patented. The whole world has taken several steps back on Maslow’s hierachy of needs, and the “calorie” is the basic unit of the new economy. This could convievably works as an adventure, strategy or RPG, and which could actually be about interesting issues… not more trite space opera about shooting space orcs *cough Bioware*.

    Also Mary Gentle’s Rats and Gargoyle’s is a urban fantasy set in a giant city featuring Renaissance culture, 17th-19th centure magic and occultism (Rosencreuzians, Freemasonry, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn etc), an enslaved humanity ruled by an aristocracy of giant rats and inscrutable gods who rule sections of the city. Very dense in ideas, like China Mieville’s works but written long before him (1990). Fantasy RPG created by Obsidian, with a budget like Mass Effect. Yeeeeesss….

  140. treat says:

    Brave New World. Taste the bitter irony.

  141. massive man - solid gold suit says:

    Something set on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom – an RPS or MMO, I don’t care; it would be so much fun to pit armies of green men against red, or to go adventuring against mobs of great white apes.

    Or something set in the world of the Tales of the Otori series by Lian Hearn.

  142. wodin says:

    Berlin Noir trilogy by P Ker….great noir book following a PI in Germany pre,during and after the war…

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Violets-Criminal-Requiem-Penguin-Mystery/dp/0140231706/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311358784&sr=1-1

  143. Fumarole says:

    Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

    Plot summary from Wikipedia:

    The story details a cometary impact on Earth, an end to civilization, and the battle for the future. It encompasses the discovery of the comet, the LA social scene, and a cast of diverse characters whom fate seems to smile upon and allow to survive the massive cataclysm and the resulting tsunamis, plagues, famines and battles amongst scavengers and cannibals.

    Made into an open world survival game this could rival the likes of Stalker as you try to first survive, then rebuild society from the ashes. Having the first section of the game take place before the comet strike could make for some interesting gameplay.

  144. Nick says:

    The Deadlands rulebook.

  145. Shazbut says:

    Ice-Pick Lodge should make Gravity’s Rainbow.

    Not that I’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow.

  146. Bahumat says:

    The Battle of Yonkers, from World War Z.

    Now, now, I know what you want to say, but factor this in. A single-player campaign as just a single soldier. Hours long, events in the game barely affected by your personal success or failure; a twelve-hour long setpiece where you hold to a basic position or zone, defend it, and watch the battle unfold.

    A multi-player campaign would offer servers of the same, with people jumping in to join various roles within the game.

    The catch, of course, is that much like survival mode in Left 4 Dead, you can’t ever *win*. Just find out how long you can hold out.

  147. Petethegoat says:

    Nevil Shute’s On the Beach.
    It would basically be like GTA set in 1963 where it’d be realistic that no one cares about your awful, awful driving.

  148. ghazbanbodarr says:

    Moby Dick.

  149. Kittim says:

    Gahh, so many to choose from.

    John Connelly – Charlie Parker series.

    Alastair Reynolds – Pushing Ice. Create a viable habitat on the back of a moon / alien space ship as it hurtles through the void at 99.1% of C.

    Robert Rankin – The Brentford Trilogy (in eight parts). Swap between playing Omally or Pooley as they struggle to save Brentford (again).

    Vernor Vinge – A Fire Upon the Deep – Loved the idea that there were physical limits on technology and intelligence depending on how close you were to the galactic core. Could make for an interesting Mass Effect or Elite style game.

  150. Real Horrorshow says:

    Das Kapital.

  151. Kittim says:

    Sigh,
    RPS ate my post :(

    A Fire Upon the Deep by Virmor Vinge. The idea of technology and sapience lowering the nearer to galactic centre you are could make for an interesting game dynamic. Your pimped out super technology ship won’t work properly unless you downgrade it.

  152. Amun says:

    The Thomas Covenant (white gold wielder) books…. the opening scene is the protagonist raping the innocent underage girl who heals him of leprosy.

  153. Stompywitch says:

    Seeing the brilliant Captain Jack in Lego PotC, I really, really want a Lego Fear and Loathing.

    If the standard swap is “booze -> tea”, you’d need to replace all the other substances in the book with biscuits (And as RPS have proven, there are many types of biscuit!).

  154. jaheira says:

    Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee

    A Total War style strat game where the player has to colonise westward as fast as possible, while slaughtering every native in his way. Bonus points for every treaty broken.

  155. Bart Stewart says:

    In no particular order (except for the glorious final suggestion):

    Bob Asprin’s “Myth” series. It’s about time for another game as funny as Giant: Citizen Kabuto.

    Philip Jose Farmer’s “Riverworld” series. How much fun would it be as a player to interact with (and as a game designer to simulate!) thousands of famous characters from human history?

    Seconded on Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” series.

    Poul Anderson’s “Flandry” series — help try to stave off the galactic Long Night.

    Steven Brust’s “Taltos” series. Intelligent fantasy-adventure — yes, please.

    Be a Mantis Team member working for the Eternal Emperor as in the “Sten” series by Allan Cole and Chris Bunch. Do want.

    E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros might be adaptable. There’s certainly more than enough action and adventure.

    Here’s a challenge: would a game version of Mervyn Peake’s world of “Gormenghast” even be conceivable?

    A game loosely based on Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (with semi-realistic relativistic time effects) could be amazing.

    Lyndon Hardy’s Master of the Five Magics is almost tailor-made for a game with its technically-defined versions of magic.

    Anyone for Harry Harrison’s “Stainless Steel Rat” or “Bill, the Galactic Hero” as games?

    It’s hard to imagine anyone having the deft touch necessary to realize Fritz Leiber’s “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” books as an equally good game, but what an astonishing game that could be. (Though I understand Leiber himself helped create a boardgame based on Lankhmar published by TSR.)

    Julian May’s “Galctic Milieu”/”Saga of Pliocene” novels, with their “operant” mental powers, could make for some fun gameplay.

    Oh, and what about Michael Moorcock’s Elric/Hawkmoon/Corum novels? “Souls… souls for my Lord Arioch!” (The Jerry Cornelius books would be even more amazing as a game, but good luck with that.)

    Anyone who thinks Andre Norton just wrote kids’ books has never read the “Witch World” series. (I’d love to see CD Projekt take this on.)

    “The Ship” was something like a version of Bob Sheckley’s “Hunter/Victim” novels, but there’s probably more that could be done with this concept. (Chris Hecker’s Spy Party isn’t really going in the same direction.)

    For good old-fashioned space opera, what about E.E. “Doc” Smith’s “Lensman” series?

    I can’t imagine how it might be implemented as a game — maybe something like “social exploration”? — but it would be amazing to see a good game based on Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia.

    And finally, when, oh, when is someone going to realize the sweet, sweet gaming goodness that is already baked into Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “John Carter of Mars” novels? Amazing leaping powers, whirling swordplay, radium pistols, vicious beasts, flying ships, heroic rescues, dastardly villians, dying Martian cities, eight-legged thoats, strange technologies, four-freakin’-armed green Tharks… how has someone not already made this game? (Space: 1889 was nice, but not a serious contender.) Disney/Pixar’s Andrew Stanton is directing a movie version due out in March of 2012 — why in the world is Warren Spector at Disney’s Junction Point Studios not working on a AAA game set in this world? OR IS HE?

  156. Inglourious Badger says:

    Hmm, Roadside Picnic sounds like a good idea for a game….Oh, wait.

    In all seriousness J.G.Ballard’s A Drowned World felt like a perfect setting for a game. Maybe too obvious really, there’s plenty of post-apocalypse RPG/FPSes out there, but I thought the the water aspect could add something really cool. I picture a cross between Fallout 3/New Vegas, Minecraft and Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker (the vastly underated Gamecube member of the series).

    My favourite book, The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, has plenty of gamey aspects but it would need tosick to the story to have the same impact, so would probably be too linear to really work as a game. I’m amazed noone’s made a film version of it though, you’d barely need to rewrite it for screen it’s so visceral.

    Johnathan Strange and Mr.Norrell could be a cracking game aswell. The ability to jump between the 2 worlds: 18th Century England and the fairae infested underworld could be an interesting mechanic. I picture an X-COM style split of game mechanics, with a ‘base buliding’ element in London where you expand and improve your home, magical abilities and political ties, and then a ‘mission’ segment where you go off and use your powers to aid the war effort against Napoleon, or save imprisoned friends from the fairy’s hallucinatory underworld.

    Hmm, I will definately be off thinking about this for days to come, excellent topic of RPS conversation!

    • westyfield says:

      Mmm, I’d love a film of The Stars My Destination. It’d be terrible as a game, because Gully’s character is so crucial to the story, and the universe it’s set in isn’t that interesting (aside from the ‘science’ asteroid), but a film. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed.

  157. Bluerps says:

    Glen Cook’s Black Company books

    Turn based Strategy/Tactics game. You manage a mercenary-army which constantly has to alternate between fighting wars for their employer, and then fighting a war against the employer, after the inevitable betrayal. Gameplay changes between “subtle infiltration” and “open warfare”, depending on the Company having 10 or 10.000 members.

    Also, much more crazy idea:
    Olaf Stapledon’s Star Maker

    Some kind of complex sandbox game. You’re an omnipotent god, and you are creating universes in the hope that one of them evolves into a companion for yourself.

  158. Lars Westergren says:

    Seems wordpress is a bit buggy here. I wrote a pretty long post. First it was gone, then it was here for a short while, and now it is gone again. Not for good I hope?

  159. Caleb367 says:

    Dunno if someone already brought this up, but i vote for KW Jeter’s Farewell Horizontal. Which is a somewhat steampunk-y novel on the outside of an impossibly huge tower. Everything happens on the vertical – you travel by “cable-bikes” hanging for dear life every inch, you sleep on harnesses, and if you’re not dumb you kick your enemies off the wall and watch them plummet miles below. Also there are massive outlaw gangs with cybernetically enhanced assassins and a good lot of uncertainty about people actually living inside the tower. I can already see a Fallout 3 mod on that…

  160. Kernkraftritter says:

    It’s not really in a book or even books in the closest sense, but I’d probably sell at least four limbs for a game that let’s me dabble into European mythologies. Some kind of “The Morrigan VS Tiwaz (aka Týr)” with, let’s say, Baba Yaga and a Wolpertinger as supporting characters. I know AoM kinda fills this spot, but that’s a RTS with a gimmick, and not a game about the myths and legends of Europe, not a game about those tales.

    Failing that, I’d settle for anything vaguely Discworld-related.

  161. Minorthreat89 says:

    The Shadows of the Apt series by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Has a very large steampunk element to it (read: Airships, ornithopters and primitive tanks), with a dying breed of magic, Empire building/clashes, diplomacy, spies and secret services. The humans are divided into racial groups who share certain characteristics with insects – for example wasp kinden (who shoot energy bolts from they’re hands) , mantis kinden (who are unrivaled fighters yet cannot understand or operate any machinery, even a simple doorknob). These go hand in hand with gigantic versions of the creatures – for example a dragonfly the size of a plane. There is sooo much that could be done about this series in game form.

  162. Tams80 says:

    Well, other than Mortal Engines, as already mentioned, I liked to see a game based on Conn Iggulden’s Genghis series.

    I would also say Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series, but I don’t know if a game could be made that really would give it justice and if there is a form of gameplay suitable for it (yes, I know there are already some games out there based on it. I’m referring to a more ‘modern’ game).

  163. Eukatheude says:

    Infinite Jest, for no particular reason other than being able to mention it here

  164. Jason Moyer says:

    I think the Dirk Gently series would have made fantastic adventure games if the author were still around to create puzzles/scenarios for them.

  165. deadstoned says:

    LORD OF THE FLIES! Lets eat fatty!

  166. gummybearsliveonthemoon says:

    A Telltale style episodic adventure game based on the Julius Knipl underground-ish graphic novels.

    Or “Gun With Occasional Music”.

  167. Duoae says:

    If anyone’s ever read Trudi Canavan’s books or Ian Irvine… Those universes would be excellent in a game with the combat system of Dark Messiah (well, okay, maybe improved a little :) )

  168. Arglebargle says:

    What an Interesting Idea Collection ™!

    I’d like to see Schismatrix by Bruce Sterling, or rather the entire Mechanist vs Shaper series, done up as an MMO or RPG. Multiple methods of enhancement with huge transhuman vistas. Though it’d require some interesting mechanics, as most of the milieu is intrigue and politics.

    A game based on hisshort piece ‘The Swarm’ could be quite interesting. You’d be mostly alone inside a giant insect-like hive, trying to take greater and greater control over the functions of the hive itself.

  169. bonjovi says:

    The Count of Monte Cristo

  170. bildo says:

    Golden Compass. I think there may have been a game, but it was based off the movie. The book (and the rest of the ‘His Dark Materials’ series) was impeccable. Could def. be brought into the gaming realm.

  171. Mendrake says:

    Old Man’s War.
    Dont follow the story in the book, make your charechter a generic recruit or something.
    If you have not read this book, its by John Scalzi and its freakin awesome.

  172. wiper says:

    No idea if it’s been mentioned before (if only it was easy to search the comments threads), but Knut Hamsun’s Hunger would make for a fun game.

    LAUGH as you struggle to survive on the breadline
    GASP as you indulge in an awkward, uncomfortable romance
    THRILL as you begin to disturb everyone around you with your erratic behaviour
    CRY as you slowly descend into madness

    Blockbuster material, I feel.

  173. Dave Mongoose says:

    Some Lovecraft would be good. I know we have ‘Call of Cthulhu’, but there’s more to Lovecraft than the Cthulhu mythos. An MMO set in the 1920s with that undercurrent of ancient and hidden doom… Except that was what Secret World was going to be before they moved it to the present day, wasn’t it? :(

  174. starclaws says:

    Dragonlance world should be an hour long TV show series… Then maybe a game series.

  175. kud13 says:

    Malazan MMO is in the works..kinda-sorta. it’s a fan project so far.

    personally, I want CDP to buy the rights to Nik Perumov’s “Chronicles of the Rift” (aka, “Keeper of the Swords”) cycle and make a witcher-like RPG based on the setting.

  176. ArchMorlock says:

    A Clockwork Orange, who doesn’t love a bit of the old ultra-violence?

  177. golden_worm says:

    Wittgenstein´s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I’m thinking turn based stategy is probably not contemporary enough so I´ll have to go with a FPS with RPG elements, micro payments and Day one DLC.

  178. joeymcjoeysalot says:

    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would make a great action rpg but more squad based, a la Dragon Age: Origins. MMMMMmmmmmm. yeah, great, beautifully dark, steam punk.

  179. dadioflex says:

    K W Jeter’s debut was brilliant but I never read any of his other work. He was part of that whole PKD coterie of authors that included Tim Powers. Jeeze, Tim Powers. I only read one of his books as well, until finishing On Stranger Tides about a fortnight ago.

    Books to games? I’m sceptical. They are very different media, and what you’re asking is what characters would you like to be included in a game you play.

    Peadar Ó Guilín wrote a book called “The Inferior” which is, literally, a dog eat dog account of competing tribes of creatures, including some humans, who are involved in a constant war for resources – and those resources include the other tribes.

    The first book in a proposed trilogy, it’s one note bleak but terribly compelling. I thought it was terrific but it never seemed to grasp the public imagination the way “The Hunger Games” did and can be picked up for peanuts in hardback on amazon.co.uk. Oh, it’s “young adult” but fairly grisly. Go read that and tell me there isn’t a game in there somewhere.

  180. Dave L. says:

    Jonathan Lethem’s ‘Gun With Occasional Music’ (or at the very least something set in that world) done as an L.A. Noire style interrogate-’em-up. Sentient talking animals and babyheads and broads, all while either fighting or indulging your massive drug habit.

    Kat Richardson’s ‘Greywalker’ series, guns and conversation with pseudo time manipulation elements (the protagonist of the books has an ability that lets her essentially dive through a location’s memories, but it’s limited because there are…things…lurking in the between spaces). Also there are witches and vampires and zombies and ancient trickster gods.

    Larry Niven’s ‘The Magic Goes Away’ universe as an open world RPG. It’s Earth, but magic is real, but a non-renewable resource, and the world has reached its Peak Magic crisis. Various factions to interact with, some searching for new sources of magic, others trying to stop them because it’s too dangerous (i.e. the first story involves a group of magicians trying to bring down the moon, since it’s a vast untapped magic reserve. I think you can see the problems inherent in that plan).

  181. The Dark One says:

    Two books by David Brin come to mind:

    Heart of the Comet, (with Gregory Benford), set on Halley’s Comet. Imagine the atmosphere of uncertainty and dread from Metro 2033, but in space! You’ve got a hostile environment, paranoia and distrust between different factions of human (some starting to mutate after exposure to lifeforms seemingly native to the comet). Issues of genetic engineering, cloning and artificial intelligence!

    >b>Kiln People, in a near-future world where people can create disposable clay duplicates of themselves for tasks too mundane, too dangerous or too specialized for their ‘rig’ to handle. The book follows the day in the life of several dittos created by a private investigator as they try to stay alive long enough to inload their memories and guarantee continuity with their maker.The world seems like a perfect fit gaming.

  182. hamster says:

    Let the Great World Spin

    Nah just joking.

  183. Krayy says:

    Watership Down:
    Gather your Rabbit army and flee from the posionous gasses and Bulldozers. Fight foxes, badgers and other miscreant creatures whilst trying to find and establish a new home. Blow away the Rabid Rabbits who try to invade your burrow. Massacre the Mixamatosis(sp) infected Lagomorphs who carry the deadly disease to your homes.

    Bunnies with guns!!!

  184. YourMessageHere says:

    Since no-one’s mentioned it yet, David Eddings’ Elenium trilogy. I usually steer clear of fantasy games in favour of fantasy in lit form, but games from books…I can see that working out just fine. Particularly with Eddings – he’s not what I’d call award-winning material, but he’s so easy to read and basically fun. The relationships between well-drawn characters are the thing that shines brightest from these books, much more so than the more famous Belgariad, which is bigger but simpler, with much less complete characters.

    The whole thing seems ripe for a squad-based RPG game, with combat expanding in scope as your party grows and different abilities and tactics become possible.

  185. Marzipan says:

    don’t know if the gentlemen were mentioned, but the works of b.s. johnson & boris vian are the first coming to mind, apart from that for the more traditional stuff there’s ursula le guin. the strugatzky brothers have a lot of great material for games of all kinds.
    i’d really like to see a game based on (i’m kinda working on it). and now thai i think about it i wish me games based on robert holdstocks ‘where time winds blow’ and somethings by mickey spillane.

  186. scut says:

    Wow, 8 pages of comments and I just caught this post with my morning coffee!

    How about non-fiction crossovers? Something that teaches the player about concepts. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond would make an excellent spin on the civilization genre, because it rather elegantly shows how non-linear the path of history is.

  187. ropable says:

    Boneshaker, by Cherie Priest. Steampunk cyborgs, sky-pirates and gunplay, backdropping a coming-of-age/redemption story. With zombies!

    Pure fun, in any genre.

  188. iWHUT says:

    Neverwhere or American Gods. These are awesome. Thinking a linear RPG with puzzle solving. :P

  189. Ninja Dodo says:

    Haven’t had a chance to read all of the previous comments yet, but:
    Sandman (Neil Gaiman) – Not sure how this would work, but it’s an interesting universe.
    Roma sub Rosa (Steven Saylor) – Detective game set in ancient Roman times
    The Swedish Arn series (Jan Guillou) – Somewhere between Mount & Blade and Total War, set in southern Sweden with maybe a flashback to the Crusade bits.

  190. amorpheous says:

    I’m a huge fan of Raymond E. Feist’s saga’s on the world of Midkemia and Kelewan. Although there have been games based on his novels already (see: Betrayal at Krondor and Return to Krondor), I haven’t played any of them (I wouldn’t enjoy them without the eye candy of modern games, pixel-whore that I am :-/ ).

    I’d love to see a modern RPG set on either of these worlds. Oh, and also if anyone were to do this, it should be Bethesda.

  191. Solskin says:

    HORUS HERESY

    PLEASE!

  192. Ninja Dodo says:

    (wordpress ate my comment, so again)

    Roma sub Rosa (Steven Saylor) – Detective game set in ancient Roman times.

    Sandman (Neil Gaiman) – Not sure how this would work, but it’s an interesting universe.

    The Swedish Arn series (Jan Guillou)- Somewhere between Mount & Blade and Total War, set in southern Sweden with maybe a flashback to the Crusade bits.

  193. Ninja Dodo says:

    Looks like my last comment disappeared as well. It shows up in the “Respond to our gibber” tab but not in the thread. I give up.

  194. deacon says:

    Not sure too many other people have read this but I would ejaculate for a game based on Perdido Street Station in China Mieville’s City New Crobozun. The author was a professor of world mythologies and the character designs reflect that. It would be a massive already premapped out and amazing grungy steampunk city complete with unique characters/species, endless varieties of bad guys mob bosses using the concept of “remades” introduced in the book (people who are intentionally deformed or deformed as a punishment for crimes with everything up to sword arms) if anyone else has read perdido street station or any other china mieville novels set in New Crobozun I think they would agree

  195. HeavyStorm says:

    I keep track of the books I read, and after looking at the list, I don’t think there’s any that haven’t been tried and would be worth it. I’d recommend redoing Neuromancer as an RPG, but there’s already the System Shock and Deus Ex series which, pretty much, covers it.

    That said, if I may change the game a little bit (yeah, change the rules if you’re loosing…), first I’d say that a game about RPG World Of Darkness (all White Wolf books) would be interesting, more so if it was an MMO. Of course, people would be able to play Vampires, Werewolves and Mages, and in order to make it more difficult to play with one or another, you’d have to cap a vampire to play a werewolf, and cap a werewolf to play a mage. Something like it, I don’t know.

    Finally, I was watching the Supernatural series the other day and got thinking, if you strip it of the stupid hunting that have nothing to do with the story, it could be a good shooting game very story driven. Of course, no book here, but just an idea.

  196. Deadly Habit says:

    House of Leaves, though that would be a bit tough
    any Lovecraft stories into games would always be welcome though

  197. cptgone says:

    Gravity’s Rainbow!

    anyone who read it will feel compelled to pre-order!

  198. Hobbes says:

    ‘GB84′. You could just use the Total War engine.

  199. hungrytales says:

    A proper Song of Ice and Fire game is long overdue. I know there’s some cheese-smelling RTS game in progress, but what should really happen (a dream scenario) is Paradox embarking on Westeros version of Crusader Kings or at the very least some heavily battle-oriented, Total War-like strategy-tactics mix-up. Some people already made some successful mods based on both premises, but seemingly that didn’t prevent everybody in the frakking gaming industry to not get the frakking clue. With all the HBO induced hype it’s not gonna be a better moment really.

    MMO? Old school single player RPG? Whatever. Just roll out something proper already.

  200. sovietmisaki says:

    a Hybrid Grand Strategy/ Men of War style game based on the 1632 series! kinda like the total war series though you would have more direct control of the units, going all the way down to TPS mode with specialized units, and you would have Michael Stearns and his crew to command the USE to victory on the campaign map

  201. hungrytales says:

    (the bot keeps telling me I’ve already said that and he’s probably right, but f… where? Can’t find it here anywhere, that’s for sure. Seems drinking and posting does not indeed get along well)

    A proper Song of Ice and Fire game is long overdue. I know there’s some cheese-smelling RTS game in progress, but what should really happen (a dream scenario) is Paradox embarking on Westeros version of Crusader Kings or at the very least some heavily battle-oriented, Total War-like strategy-tactics mix-up. Some people already made some successful mods based on both premises, but seemingly that didn’t prevent everybody in the frakking gaming industry to not get the frakking clue. With all the HBO induced hype it’s not gonna be a better moment really.

    MMO? Old school single player RPG? Whatever. Just roll out something proper already.

  202. JohnnyMaverik says:

    Darren Shan’s Demonata series.

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