The Meeple’s Choice Award: Board Game Shows

Small bridges & large ogres make the best starts to any adventure (credit Jesper Ejsing)

With board gaming’s rising popularity and penetration into mass market appeal, we’re starting to see the hobby represented in some way in other popular culture mediums. Geek and Sundry, a popular geek culture Youtube channel, has achieved market success with the show “Tabletop” which is hosted by one of the poster boys for the sub-culture, Will Wheaton. South Park even had a closing scene of Stan playing board games with his grand dad which prominently featured Zombicide miniatures as well box shots of Dead of Winter, Merchants and Marauders, Mice and Mystics and Lords of Waterdeep. While we have heard about the movie rights being secured for Catan, Monopoly, Candy Land & Risk in recent years, I’ve been thinking about game universes that WOULD make for interesting movies or series. While the mechanics of trading in the Mediterranean, running an efficient energy monopoly and developing agricultural success make for fantastic cardboard experiences I’d bet that the number of resignations by scriptwriters would increase if the rights for too many more Euro games were secured. So which board game universes do we think would make for amazing stories on the silver screen?

Android: Netrunner (Android Universe)

With inspiration from movies such as Hackers, Blade Runner and Johnny Mnemonic, the Android Universe has some of the richest source material to create an amazing screen adaptation. Collectible card games create a wealth of characters, instances, locations and lore through their components and the meta created by the communities that play them. Netrunner, originally created by Richard Garfield and the RPG storytelling masters at Wizards of the Coast, was the birth of the dystopian universe that resonates so much with the modern age of computing with themes of privacy, monopolies, control and artificial intelligence. The recent series success of Mr. Robot shows that the market is primed for these types of themes and with modern special effects able to showcase a world that has only existed on cards and in our imaginations, there has never been a better time for the Android universe to spread into other popular culture mediums. Imagine story arcs of discrimination about implants, stolen information of government conspiracies with all the tech you could ever dream of. Hell, there is a whole fan wikipedia of content to draw from.

In Dystopian futures, knowledge is what people live and die for. (Credit MattyJWest – Reddit)

Synopsis:
Kate McCaffrey has just been fired from her hardware development role for a data breach that she had no role in. Working for Haas Bioroid for the last 2 years has jaded her view of the relationships between Corporations and the Consumers and when they sentence her to “reassimilation” she is broken out by the “Shapers” who want her insider knowledge of the Corporation hardware. Forced into her new role, she finds herself immersed in a world she always knew she belonged to and that she could make the biggest difference in.

Descent Journeys in the Dark: (Terrinoth)

Whether you’ve played Runebound, BattleLore, Runewars or Descent: Journeys in the Dark, you’ve experienced the rich, fully imagined world of Terrinoth. This high fantasy world has everything a television series would thrive on; unique heroes with tapestry woven backstories, unique locations and a wealth of story plot devices to extrapolate on through multiple story arcs. With the Chaos army of Uthuk Y’llan advancing on the Kingdom, Immortal Dragons feasting on the local populace and the dead rising from their graves through the power of a necromancer the world has no shortage of stories needing to be told and a wealth of treasure to be uncovered by heroes. This series would need to avoid many tropes though and focus on the grittier low fantasy elements to differentiate it from others. Episodes could deal with the loss of loved ones to chaos, fantastical creatures pillaging villages and camaraderie between desperate warriors cast together through the cast of fates dice.

What crawls from the caverns are the makings of nightmares and adventure (credit: Belibr – DeviantArt)

Synopsis:
Avric Albright has seen too many wars, too many battles and far too little hope. After returning from his latest campaign, Avric opens a tavern on the Kingsroad where he aims to provide a place of solace for weary travellers. However, when a family arrives in the dead of night beating on his door chased by the blood hordes, Avric cannot simply add their screams to the nightmares he has every time he closes his eyes. So begins Avric’s journey across Terrinoth, facing his own personal demons from his past as well as trying to balance the scales of judgement for his time of reckoning. 

Kingdom Death: Monster

Unlike any other table top experience to crawl from the bowels of Kickstarter at this time, Kingdom Death Monster extended its demonic fingers to pry the soul from gamers. The Kingdom Death world holds so many unknown elements, characterised by nightmarish horror that twists our perceptions of what true fear really looks like. What could be the dawn of an evil underworld or simply a purgatory for souls looking for redemption, Kingdom Death: Monster has awed the world with its monsters that epitomize the perverted face of fear. It’s everything the civilized world wants us to repress, twisted into the faces of everything we should fear. Its a sandbox that the great creative minds of pop culture could run amok with and provide us with some truly unique television. From the birth of sin, betrayal and pure evil to the first instances of sacrifice, hope and love Kingdom Death offers us a true foundation on which to build something unique for audiences.

All praise the lords of darkness on their Thrones of Bones (credit: KingdomDeath)

Synopsis (literally the one given by the creator):
A man awakens in a world of darkness with a lantern in his hand. Waking in a place of carved stone faces, the man has no history of a previous existence nor any recollection of the people waking around him. Out of the endless darkness surrounding them the monsters began attacking forcing the people to fight for their lives in their new reality.

Twilight Imperium 3: 

Where many video gamers long for a Mass Effect series or movie, many board gamers would love to see the lore of Twilight Imperium depicted in a science fiction series. Described by many as Game of Thrones in a Scifi setting, TI3 showcases political intrigue, military battles with feuds that have lasted for generations, amazing technologies and one of the most vast universes in board gaming. Easily capable of having enough story arcs for multiple movies, great stories of betrayal and conquest could be told inside a lore that would resonate with fans of the series as well as draw in regular scifi movie goers and expose them to board gaming.

To conquer you need more than tech, armies, planets and resources. You require the guile to use them all above your enemies (credit: FFG)

Synopsis:
Mercatol Rex is the control point of the Universe, the decision point for the fate of each race, each negotiation and each commercial decision. Whoever controls Mercatol Rex holds the universe in their palm, but who are the sovereign race that will lead the universe to peace or their ultimate destruction. Focusing on the lives of aristocracy in each race, Twilight Imperium will show you the struggles of the denizens of the universe and how they aid, betray and fulfill the needs of their people.

Eldritch Horror (Insert Cthulhu Game here)

One of our personal favourites for epic & cinematic adventure horror, Eldritch Horror is all about travelling around the world to prevent the ancient evil from rising to claim dominion over earth. No entry on this list has the sheer exhaustive amount of material to draw from and while Cthulhu as already paved the way for his arrival on the screens, many of these have been failed attempts. Making use of the FFG playbook, Hollywood has all the ingredients needed to cast a spell over a new generation with unique developed characters, a wealth of lore and some of the most interesting themes fear and sanity. In the Cthulhu mythos, the power of the mind and its ability to break under immense stress is what differentiates it from the generic and would make for interesting episodes of horrific adventure. A series developing this horrific lore correctly could take characters to each corner of the world to investigate the very essence of evil from the base of the pyramids through the jungles of South America and finally to the base of the world in Antartica. It could be everything that a series like Supernatural wishes it could be.

When true evil comes to claim the earth, it will take all types of heroes to repel its demons (credit: Cynthia Shepard)

Synopsis:
Norman Withers taught Occult Theology at Arkham University. His belief in the subject matter made the teachings enthralling, which to the wrong mind may open gateways to unseen horrors that prey on the weak willed. One day, Norman saw the broken minds of his students as he walked into his class. Dead eyes combined with expressionless faces stared at him as he saw the words painted on the board in blood:

“ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”

Then the chanting began…

These are just a few of the great thematic board games that the Cardboard Quest team would love to see hit the screens. We do have a shortlist of honorable mentions that would definitely make give more options to producers, although some do resemble existing franchises a little too closely:

Pandemic
Dead of Winter
City of Remnants
Mice & Mystics
Arcadia Quest
Mage Knight
Shadows of Brimstone
Time Stories

So what board gaming flights of fancy do you dream of becoming a reality? Do you agree with some of the choices we’ve made or tell us where you think we’ve gone down a rabbit hole. Also, if you randomly work for a studio or a large game company whose games we’ve mentioned, give us a call and we’ll be happy to pitch 1000 more ideas.