The Big Red Couch RPG Podcast

Once access to the Earth was taken out of the picture by orbital debris, the travelling workers known as Space Hobos became a vital part of the community, who help to solve problems & keep things running out there.

Space transport is cheap enough, and space survival technology ubiquitous enough, that hitching a ride on a string of cargo containers going somewhere useful is a viable, if unauthorised & illegal, way to get around if you don’t have the money.
It also means that you’re in a place that nobody expects someone to be, and that can cause problems if folks are up to things they don’t want people to see.

Once you’ve shifted some asteroids into regular orbits, moving around the system becomes a whole lot easier; Assuming you can match vector, or course.

A fantasy setting of little worldlets, each just big enough for a single field or Hobbit burrow, floating serenely in an endless sky.

Vast cargo ships ply the spaceways. Too big for anything other than full automation, they don’t seem to react when people climb aboard for free transport, or even make their homes there. It’s not clear whether they don’t notice, or they just don’t care.

Norovirus

Coal Trimmer

Hooverville
Herbert Hoover

The Expanse (novels)
The Expanse (tv)

Game of Thrones (tv)

Raised By Wolves (tv)
Ridley Scott

T-Pose
Dark Souls

International Brotherhood Welfare Association
The Hobo Code
The Littlest Hobo
The Incredible Hulk

Dogs In The Vinyard
Flatpack: Fix the Future

Alias Smith & Jones
Pale Rider

Flash Gordon

Taken

The Love Boat

Among Us

Traveller 2300

Space Opera
Science Fantasy
Transhumanism

Hobomancer

Alien
Aliens

Isaac Asimov

Planetes
Kessler Syndrome

Railroad Bull
( covered as part of a longer article on Railroad police ~ T. Jones )

Aldrin Cycler
Skyhook

Lensman Series, by E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith

Project Pluto

Hobbit

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple
The Little Prince

Yes (band)

The Integral Trees, by Larry Niven

Spelljammer
Starfinder

Starship Titanic

Goldenwing Cycle, by Alfred Coppel
Moonheart & Spiritwalk, by Charles de Lint

Counting to Infinity ( rpg.net thread from 2006 )

Girls Last Tour
Kids Last Tour

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

Torg
West End Games

Episode One Hundred And Forty Seven – From Me To You; A Free Gift Of Soul Dust

On stage at a club, interrupted by the occasional solo, the band recount the tale of their experience with the supernatural.

For safety’s sake, nanotech is very tightly limited in scope, and will shut down if it goes out of bounds; So the container of unconstrained nanobots you’re holding is something that everyone wants, and that could be a problem.

An insidious Alien conspiracy plots to blow up the Sun, because it’s the only way to make our TV transmissions stop.

Sentient food items mount a daring rescue mission for a comrade who’s due to be cooked before their time.

The Queen is easily enough of a bad-ass to defeat intruders & rescue the court all by herself. The tricky part is getting enough of her adventuring gear together quickly enough that she can do it with style, instead of losing her temper and tearing the attackers apart with hands and teeth.

Soul Dust (WoW Inventory Item)
Phoenix Down

The Witcher (game)

Soul Music

Tom Waits

Inspectres
Zombie Cinema
Fiasco

Heilung (experimental folk music)

Laibach

Poutine (game)
Apocalypse World
Deadlands
Torg Eternity

Jazz
Neofolk
Folk Metal
EDM

Questlandia
Zombie World
Blades in the Dark
iHunt

Nanobot

Gold Mining
Arsenic
Cyanide

The One Ring
The Lord of the Rings

Cobalt 60

Office Space

WYSWYG
Three Laws of Robotics

Kids on Bikes

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Episode 144: Your Vile Human Secretions
Episode 145: The Case of the Accidental Battered Sausage

Fate Accelerated Edition

Tim Curry
Clue (movie)
Fish Police

Abstract Dungeon RPG

Voyager Golden Record

Castle Falkenstein
Atomic Robo
Our Last Best Hope

VeggieTales

Corn Dog

Episode 146: T’is A Pity She’s The Queen

Frozen
Frozen II

Queen Elizabeth II

Covington Cross

A member of a high-level adventuring party becomes Royalty, and discovers that it’s made their life terrible.

The Kingdom is in deep trouble, the newly-crowned King & Queen are still teenagers, and the King is, at best, totally useless.
In the early hours after a long drinking session, a member of the Guard remarks that Queen would be a much better ruler, and a terrible plan forms.

When there’s a conspiracy against the King, but the King simply won’t believe it, it’s up to the Queen & her Guard to counter the threat to the Realm.

When the Queen takes an interest in the entirely fake Pagent of the Dead, and commissions a Command Performace to contact her beloved late husband, the very real supernatural entities running the show have a fine line to walk between exposure as frauds, and exposure as undead.

Mac has an awesome idea for how to do the ‘multiple iterations of the same team in the same time period’ time-travel game.

Episode One Hundred And Thirteen – Never Go Full-Force On An Éclair, Son
Episode One Hundred And Twelve – Volcano Day

The A Team
Hogan’s Heroes

Die Hard

Teenagers From Outer Space

Onward
The Three Musketeers

Castle Falkenstein
The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power

The Cincinnati Privy Disaster of 1904
The Great Molasses Flood

For The Queen

Blades In The Dark

Anglican Church

Queen Victoria
Prince Albert

House of Hanover
House of Tudor

Brave

Fiasco

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! / The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Shaun The Sheep

Ravenloft

Gumshoe
Warhammer 40k

Best Served Cold / A Sweary Murder She Wrote – A Celebrity Chef solves murders while attempting to drag failing restaurants back from the brink.

The indentured staff of a Dark Kitchen try to call for help via the only means available; Inexplicable items in the orders they send out.

Technicians trying to fix a fully-automated Fish & Chip shop find themselves in the middle of a drug distribution operation.

By pure fluke, your massive order from the auto-takeout perfectly matched a shipment of contraband. Now you’ve got an enormous bag of something illegal, the bad guys have a catering-size order of deep-fried food, and things are about to get very exciting.

Produce Noir – In the grimy spray-misted aisles of The Big Shopping Cart, lit by flickering flourescents, sentient food items investigate a murder.

Battered Sausage
Corn Dog
Tempura

VeggieTales

Gordon Ramsay
Heston Blumenthal

Murder, She Wrote
Miss Marple
Jonathan Creek
Criminal Minds
Hercule Poirot

Independence Day

Who Is Killing The Great Chefs Of Europe?

Dark Kitchen (might be paywalled in some areas)
Dark Kitchen (site may be flaky)
( Interestingly, and appropriately, there aren’t a huge number of articles out there on Dark Kitchens – Those that are seem to tend towards the ‘Deliveroo Puff-Piece’ end of the scale ~ T. Jones )

Dark Matter
Dark Energy
Dark Web

Shock: Social Science Fiction
Misspent Youth

‘Hide a spoon in your underwear’, charities tell women fearing forced marriage

Shadowrun

The Wire
Omar

Brazil (movie)

Rosemary & Thyme (gardener detectives)

Gravity Falls

The Adventure Of The Speckled Band

MacGuffin

Midsomer Murders
The Brokenwood Mysteries

Automat

Markov Chain

Guy Ritchie

Fiasco

Mad Max 2

Film Noir

Episode Eighty One – Banana Warriors of Dimension X

Pink Slime

QAGS
Inspectres

Michael Bay

God Of Cookery
Forbidden City Cop
Shaolin Soccer

Stephen Chow

Isekai Shokudō / Restaurant to Another World
Food Wars! / Shokugeki no Soma
Rāmen Daisuki Koizumi-san / Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles

Taishō Yakyū Musume / Taishō Baseball Girls

“But Secreted By What?” – How do you make Humans the terrifying monsters, make the game human-playable, and have there be any point in doing so?

Refined and elegant alien races aren’t actually interested in our culture; They’re just getting unimaginable highs off of our sweat.

Superheroes based on the ancient Hippocratic(?) humours battle to protect the Earth.

Humanity has been locked away at their own behest, and for their own protection. Everyone knows that.
Nobody, including the robotic systems keeping yo in, can remember why.

Swan
Why the Queen Owns All the Swans in England

DOC ( NZ Department Of Conservation )
Swanndri
Gumboot

Object Model Diagram

Aliens

Biofilm

Terry Pratchett
Rick and Morty

Humans are Space Orks (tumblr)

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
Prog Rock

The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells
The Massacre of Mankind, by Stephen Baxter

E.T.
Urotsukidōji

David Brin
The Uplift War

Torchwood – Children Of Earth

Celestial Matters, by Richard Garfinkle

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Chlorine Triflouride

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Prototype
Infamous

Logan’s Run
Stargate: SG-1 – The Gamekeeper

The Shortest Story

Passengers
Oblivion

Webring

Battered Sausage
Scotland

The so-called Department of Malevolent Immediacy are those people who turn up right when you’re about to make a life-changing mistake, asking whether, maybe, they can help you to choose a different path.
They’re here to help you to be a better person.
Question is; Are they right, and are they lying?

A game system where the big important things you do refine the character down to who they really are, at the expense of who they could have been.

The adventures of a racing crew keeping their team in the championship with increasing ill-will towards the driver, who’s … kind of a jackass.

Diverticulitis

Maps Without New Zealand (reddit)

Blades in the Dark

Pathfinder
Starfinder
Dungeons & Dragons

Fate of Cthulhu

Grand Union Canal

Timewatch

Minority Report
Conspiracy Theory

Dayworld Series, by Philip José Farmer

Storyteller System (White Wolf’s Game System)
Apocalypse World
Ten Candles
Psi*Run

Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple

Spiral Series, by Michael Scott Rohan

I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, by Harlan Ellison

Chaosium BRP System
Call of Cthulhu

Bell Curve

Ravenloft Module

Speed Racer
Michael Schumacher

The Cannonball Run
Wacky Races
The Italian Job

Metalocalypse
The Good Place
Sapphire & Steel

Giant autonomous trucks make their way through the increasingly-abandoned areas outside of the cities.
There’s some fantastic cargo onboard if you’re good enough to take it. Of course, there may also be security onboard.

The Cities are wonderful, the Countryside is a hard desperate struggle, but if you can gain enough favour you can make the jump from Country to City.
Except that’s a lie, and folks are starting to figure that out.
The problem with having a downtrodden underclass is convincing them to stay that way.

Iceberg racing down the slopes of an enormous volcano on a low-gravity world, modifying your berg as the race progresses.
Getting to the bottom first gets you the win, but the other teams will have a few tricks to pull, and there’s also the issue of stopping

Life behind the scenes in a high-tech racing crew.

Episode Thirty – Apollo Rising
Episode Forty-Four – Gravity Princess

The Brady Bunch

Battle Royale (movie)

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

octaNe (game)
Car Wars

Judge Dredd

The Wolverine (movie)

Firefly
Westworld
Land Of The Dead
Elysium

Episode Seventy Seven – This Island Universe

Olympus Mons

Antlion

Le Mans
America’s Cup
Nascar
Formula One

Zombie World
Flamme Rouge

Episode One Hundred And Forty One – “Here, have a protein squirrel”

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
Speed Racer

Dick Dastardly

Doc Savage

Timewatch

Paris-Dakar Rally

Animaniacs

Genetically Modified Adorable Food Mascots Trow Off The Shackles Of Their Behaviour Chips And Plot A Bid For Freedom!

Ben tries to make Hiking interesting with the Power of Gaming!

People try to understand, and ideally survive, in utterly unfamiliar environments

Marmalade

New Zealand Lockdown Levels

Neil Gaiman
Amanda Palmer

Google Walking Directions To Singapore

Captain Tom

Episode One Hundred And Three – Are You Henry David Thoreau?
Alleged Bonus Episode – In Which We Attempted To Make Characters For “My Little Pony: Roleplaying Is Magic”

Paranoia

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

The Terminator
Logan’s Run
Chicken Run
Prison Break

We3
Mrs. Frisby & The Rats of NIMH
Watership Down

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Muir Woods (Muir Woods National Monument)

QAGS

San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

Alvin & The Chipmunks

Questlandia

Scroggin – Yes, it’s a real word.

Mt. Taranaki on Google Maps

Aggretsuko (anime)

Hull Zero Three, by Greg Bear

Fallout 76
Fallout Franchise
GURPS

Investigators look into ‘We Can Give You Superpowers’ claims, trying to protect people from the scams, the dangerous scams, the snake-oil salesmen, and the 100% lethal scams.
And the occasional ones which are so much worse than just being fatal.

Having super-powered employees is a status symbol, and having super powers, even if they’re not very useful, is fast becoming a necessity if you want a job.

Metahumans Anonymous: Reluctant Superheroes trying to deal with being expected to use their unwanted superpowers.

Congratulations; You have a totally random superpower!
Now go out there and Make A Difference!!

Howard Hughes

Tales of the Black Freighter

Ant Man and The Wasp

Lionel Hutz

Disney+
Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Lyle Lanly

Sweeny Todd

Cerberus The Aardvark
Captain Cockroach / Moon Roach
Dave Sim

Blades In The Dark
GURPS

Autogyro

Masks
Fate Worlds Volume One: Worlds On Fire
Paranoia

My Hero Academia
Sky High
Detective Pikachu

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

Blood Type Personality Theory

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Underground
Teenagers From Outer Space
Gamma World

Misfits
No Heroics

The Dream Team
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

Inspectres
Leverage: The Roleplaying Game

Strikeforce: Morituri
The Fantastic Four

Professor Bernard Quatermass

Villains & Vigilantes
Truth & Justice
TSR Marvel Superheroes
Superhero 2044

Mystery Men
Alphas

Q: What does this obscure clue mean? What can it possibly be pointing to?
A: Whatever the PCs decide, because they’re the experts.

Society has fallen apart, and the world has changed.
Or Has It?
What if the world is fine, but your perception of it is wrong?

Wildly Anachronistic High-Action AlchemyPunk in the Holy Land!
Adventures in the Misunderstood Present!

NZ Closes Borders

The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett

National Treasure
Indiana Jones (franchise)
The Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown

Call Of Cthulhu

Atomic Robo – The Roleplaying Game

Six String Samurai

Roman Catholic Church

The Western Schism
Martin V
Antipope Benedict XIII
Antipope Benedict XIV
Antipope Clement VIII
Antipope John XXIII
Gregory XII

Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta

Ultima Ratio Regum

Warhammer 40k

Tribute of the Maltese Falcon

Avignon
Avignon Papacy

Knights Hospitallier

West Marches Style Game
Microscope
Kingdom

Monty Python

Haliwell’s Movie Guide

Autons
Doctor Who
The Avengers ( British TV Series )

Left 4 Dead

Pontypool
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

Psychosis RPG

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

Dog Moon, by Robert Hunter

The Grateful Dead

Red Dwarf – Back To Reality (Despair Squid Episode)

Avenue 5

Hellsing
Dracula
Van Helsing

Castle Falkenstein
Hong Kong Action Theatre ( This is a review; Best thing I could find which showed why Craig suggested it ~ T. Jones )

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
Castlevania

Blade Runner
Brazil (Movie)

Diana: Warrior Princess!
Marcus Rowland