Roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons and Vampire: the Masquerade have gone on to inspire tv shows, movies, and other spin-off franchises, but just as many bestselling books, tv shows, and movies have gone on to to inspire licensed roleplaying game adaptations. The following four games are excellent examples of tabletop roleplaying adaptations – both for the quality of their content and the way they use special rules and design choices to generate player-driven stories similar to their franchises of origin.
Early fantasy roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons didn't emerge from a vacuum. Most of the designers for early RPGs were fantasy fans who incorporated themes from their favorite narratives into their games – stories like Conan the Barbarian, Tales from the Dying Earth, and Lord of the Rings. Indeed, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons were forced to replace all references to Hobbits and Ents with "Halflings" and "Treants" when the Tolkien Estate brought charges against them.
As the popularity of roleplaying games grew, tabletop RPGs became a new form of merchandising, with franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek developing their own roleplaying games for fans. There are too many adaptations to list in the confines of a single article, but the four RPG adaptations below stand out for having solidly designed rules that capture the themes and mood of the settings they stem from.
Call of Cthulhu
The seminal game of Chaosium Inc., Call of Cthulhu is to horror RPGs as D&D is to fantasy RPGs. Adapted from the Cthulhu Mythos stories of H.P. Lovecraft, the Call of Cthulhu RPG puts players in the shoes of all-too-fragile investigators during the Roaring 20s who investigate forbidden lore, battle nefarious cults, and discover the existence of shambling monsters and alien gods whose true forms drive humans mad. Madness and fear of the unknown are part and parcel to Lovecraftian horror, a theme that the Call of Cthulhu game implements by having players roll to see if they lose Sanity.
The Witcher Roleplaying Game
The Witcher franchise and its monster-hunting hero Geralt of Rivia have come a long way. Starting out as a book series by Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski, Geralt has gone on to star in the Witcher video game trilogy by CD Projekt and a Witcher Netflix show. The Witcher Roleplaying Game, developed by Talsorian Games, contains rules and character abilities that emphasize the dark, dangerous nature of the Witcher universe: reckless heroics lead to an early grave, while clever tactics and investigation will improve a player's odds of survival against the many monsters in the game.
The Star Wars Roleplaying Games
The Star Wars franchise has had three roleplaying game adaptations to date: the first, written by West End Games in 1987, was famous for its detailed sourcebooks, referenced by authors like Timothy Zahn who wrote novels for the Star Wars Expanded Universe. The second Star Wars RPG, published by Wizards of the Coast, was used as the building block for Bioware's seminal Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The third, most recent Star Wars Roleplaying game, published by Fantasy Flight Games, is built around a set of dice with special icons and comes in three specialized editions: Edge of the Empire, which focuses on smugglers and scoundrels, Age of Rebellion, which focuses on partisans of the Rebel Alliance, and Force and Destiny, which focuses on Jedi, Sith, and other wielders of the Force.
The Expanse Roleplaying Game
Before authors Ty Frank and Daniel Abraham wrote Leviathan Wakes, the first book in the Expanse sci-fi saga, they were initially hoping to create a setting for an MMORPG or tabletop roleplaying game. Almost a decade later, after the success of both their novels and the Expanse TV series, their original vision came to life when Green Ronin Publishing used their in-house AGE system to create Expanse: the Roleplaying Game. In this tabletop RPG, players can take on the role of Earthers, Martians and Belter protagonists as they engage in spaceship duels, investigate the alien Protomolecule and fight for their future in the Solar System and beyond.
There are lots of fantasy and sci-fi franchises which end up turning into tabletop RPGs, but the four listed above are some of the best available.