Hobby games is a pretty broad field, with both upstarts like TTRPGs and trading card games as well as board and miniatures games which go back decades further. The whole field is brimming with designers taking their ideas about set, setting, and mechanics and committing them to cardboard and plastic, creating new and weird accessories or just sticking with humble dice and meeples. When you combine the recent renaissance in hobby board games (driven, like TTRPGs, by Kickstarter and the internet) with a few decades of family board games that everyone seems to have kicking around, there’s a lot of potential just sitting there.

TTRPGs are just as able to use weird, custom accessories as any board game, and in some cases all it takes is one designer with a weird idea to make something new. Where I think is the most fertile ground is the RPG mashup: taking accessories you may already have in your game cabinet and making new games with them. The hobby has figured out this works great with Jenga, and as you’ll read about in a moment, someone is trying it with the classic family (dis)favorite Monopoly. As far as other games, the sky’s the limit…but there is an extra layer of challenge involved with taking an existing game and both changing the experience while preserving the original bones.

Mashups we know

I think the best way to set the stage for talking about game mashups is by calling to mind the arguable ‘trope namer’ of the RPG mashup: Dread. Dread uses a Jenga set for its resolution mechanic, and also (though as Jenga is a simple dexterity game this is rather straightforward) maintains the rules of Jenga as part of those mechanics. Here it’s easy to see why this is a mashup; you are in effect playing Jenga while playing Dread, just using the outcomes of that Jenga game in a very different way.

There are also games which are built out of using other atypical components, bringing them in for more than simply a resolution mechanic but not implementing any “rules” per se because there aren’t necessarily any to add. Here I’m going to use an example that’s only peripherally related to RPGs, Joshua A.C. Newman’s Mobile Frame Zero. Mobile Frame Zero is a tabletop wargame which uses LEGO for building the Mobile Frames that each player fights with; this is an expansive use of the toy, but as there are no existing or official rules with which to run a LEGO wargame, it has a very different relationship to LEGO than Dread does to Jenga.

Both of these types of mashups are still being designed and released, and I’m going to discuss a couple modern game concepts I’ve seen in the wild. When it comes to co-opting game components, be they LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, or something else entirely, multiple designers have observed the power of large TCG collections. Whether these use specific cards, multiple types of cards, or just any collection of cards with some art on them, there are a number of different ideas being executed in the hobby which call for you to pull out your card binders. As far as adding onto a complete existing game, these projects are a bit rarer but in my mind more interesting when they do occur. And to me, there’s no better example of what it can look like when you add RPG elements to a board game than the Monopoly RPG.

Adding to an existing game

Monopoly RPG is the brainchild of Sam Kyker, an add-on to the classic board game Monopoly in the form of a deck of cards. Players each start with a Job that gives special abilities and advancement paths, a Secret which gives another special ability that needs to be kept hidden from the other players, and one random property just to make the game a little more interesting. As players go around the board as they would in a typical game of Monopoly they can choose to draw a Venture card instead of picking up $200 when they pass Go and these cards can provide either additional abilities or quests which of course can lead to different bonuses and even different ways to end the game. When you see how you actually play Monopoly RPG you can tell pretty quickly that this is not really a role-playing game, it is an expansion of Monopoly. The cards add differentiation and special abilities and a fair amount of additional randomness; one could say that this is adding RPG elements to the game of Monopoly much like RPG elements are added to every video game genre under the sun.

The extent to which the Monopoly RPG can appreciably change the game of Monopoly is a great example of the limitations of a true RPG board game mashup. If you are in fact retaining the complete rules of the board game you’re trying to integrate, there’s only so much you can remove before you’re not effectively using the board game as an additive part of your mashup. When you look at the example of Dread, the benefit there is that the rules of Jenga are very simple: Go around the room, pull blocks, and whoever causes the tower to fall over loses. That simplicity can have an entire role-playing game built around it without taking anything away from the Jenga experience. In the case of Monopoly you have to do much more work to take the procedure of going around the board, buying properties, and scheming against your fellow players and change it into something where you feel like you are characters in some twisted version of Atlantic City. The Monopoly RPG shows that there’s a lot of interesting potential in modifying classic board games; though it shows promise it may not stand up as the best example of a true RPG mashup when all is said and done.

If you’re not actually concerned with maintaining the mechanics of a board game there are plenty of components that you can just lift directly; when you look at trading cards especially there are so many features of the card that you can use to inform gameplay that concerning yourself with the existing rules of the trading card game isn’t even necessary. I have not one but two different examples of pulling trading cards into a role-playing game to make it that much more interesting.

Stealing existing game components

To start looking at trading card game adaptations, I thought it best to examine what is clearly a bit of a hack: I Go Infinite. I Go Infinite is a scenario in the first book of DIE RPG scenarios, Bizarre Love Triangles. In it, the characters are all competitive players of a fictional card game, Mugen Clash, and the scenario is built around coming together to sell a stash of vintage cards but instead getting sent into DIE (as one does). The twist is that the GM and the players are told to bring cards from any of their favorite card games to use during the scenario. Players can both use cards to inspire specific abilities of their Paragon as well as burn cards to create narrative changes that align with the art and mechanics of a card. The GM has a set of rules to use the cards as an oracle, changing the scenario based both on what the card depicts but also other specific properties like numbers listed on the card or color affinities that the card has. While I haven’t played I Go Infinite, the use of the cards here is perfectly aligned with DIE; each card introduces something new but also opens up an opportunity to poke at the character’s past and who they were as a competitive Mugen Clash player. And just like the entire DIE RPG does for TTRPGs broadly, I Go Infinite depends on trope knowledge to make the scenario work effectively. Players bringing in cards they actually play in other games brings that extra layer, which is more the DIE RPG being meta in another specific way than anything about the specific cards beyond the players’ identification of them.

Another game which, paradoxically, requires even less of the cards but yet does more with them is Geoffrey Golden’s All-Cards. All-Cards starts with gathering whatever trading cards you have, the more random the better. From there you build a deck of twenty cards divided into Characters, Settings, MacGuffins, Actions, and Twists. Over a baker’s dozen scenes, two players play cards to try and tell a crazy story but also earn Triumphs, which determine a winner of the game and who gets to narrate how their central character achieves their goal. It takes what is a relatively straightforward storytelling game structure and all but guarantees it to go wild by virtue of how many different and shockingly random cards can be played. After reading both the rules and the examples, I’d actually state that weird novelty trading cards are probably going to work better than straight-up trading card games…though a profoundly expensive Magic collection with all the Worlds Beyond sets could make this game incredible.

A (potentially problematic) worked example

Game mashups are fun, and let you twist rules and game materials into new experiences. A game mashup was also my first entree into RPG discourse, back when we were all on Google+ and over three years before Cannibal Halfling Gaming started. Because it’s relevant now, I am going to share it with you.

Many of you likely know the game Cards Against Humanity. While it’s waned in popularity now, from its initial launch in 2011 until at least the Pandemic it was wildly popular, a mainstay in many (mostly white) nerd spaces. In 2013, it was a simpler time and for our second ever Beach Weekend, a tradition my gaming group continues to this day, someone brought a copy of Cards Against Humanity.

Around that time, I had recently gotten my copy of Fate Core and was trying to convince everyone I knew to try it. I had brought the game along and was thinking of one-shot ideas to run with it, and the morning of the second day I had my Fate book open and spied the Cards Against Humanity box in the corner…

Fate Against Humanity is played using Fate rules (Fate Accelerated works best) and a Cards Against Humanity set with as many cards as possible. Each player draws five cards from the Cards Against Humanity deck, the cards which are the answers, not the questions. These are your five Aspects. Depending on the depravity of the GM, you can either assign cards to your High Concept and Trouble, or they’re dealt in order with High Concept first, Trouble second, and three supporting Aspects after. Once all those cards are dealt, the GM deals two cards (once again, from the answers, not the questions). One of these cards is an Impending Issue: the conflict that makes up the plot of the game. The other is a Current issue: the problem that defines the first encounter. Once everyone assigns values to their Approaches, it’s time to go. If the GM loses the plot, irrecoverably gets the giggles, or otherwise stalls before the Impending issue is resolved, go round-robin to the next person who gets a Fate point to describe how their character leaves the scene and becomes the GM. The former GM makes a character if they don’t have one already, and the new GM gets to draw a new Current Issue to throw a wrench into the works and unstall the game.

While this mashup doesn’t use the mechanics of Cards Against Humanity, it absolutely uses the content accumulated in the card sets. The basic concept also works with pretty much any ‘vote on the answer’ social/icebreaker game; you could go back to Apples to Apples (upon which Cards Against Humanity is based) or use any of the dozens of novelty variants that seemed to spawn unbidden from Kickstarter from about 2018 to 2022. We played Fate Against Humanity twice and it was hilarious both times; it also seems to only last two to three hours at absolute most before dissolving back into a puddle of entropy. Still, if you have the two abovementioned games lying around, try it: it’s a silly time and a great improv exercise.

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My personal opinion is that there should be more mashups, but I understand why it’s an exercise with limited appeal to many designers. For one, you’re immediately limiting your audience. There are few games simple enough (Jenga) or ubiquitous enough (Monopoly) that mandating having or getting the board game to play a new game isn’t a blocker for a potential buyer. I think there’s potential in, for example, writing some character creation rules to turn Ticket to Ride into a Rail Baron Braunstein, but I’d be chasing a very small, very specific market.

There’s also the issue of muddling with other company’s IP. Now, mashups are legal; even selling them shouldn’t be a problem as long as the game very clearly states it is not a standalone product. That said, big companies can often sue even if they wouldn’t win, and on the RPG side the legal precedent around stated compatibility was really only settled in the 90s. This does mean that my Rail Baron Braunstein could still see me facing a cease and desist from Days of Wonder; though they’re technically in the wrong I wouldn’t have the money, time, or mental energy to actually fight it in court. There’s also a million little ways to run afoul of copyright or trademark law; even if making a mashup game wouldn’t itself be a problem, using trademarks of existing games has to be done very carefully and must not create any confusion with the original product. This is, needless to say, a minefield. Monopoly RPG is an interesting case here, as the designer does outright use the game title ‘Monopoly’ despite it being trademarked. As I noted this is technically legal, but could still invite a cease and desist. Monopoly, however, is a special case; thanks to a trend of making custom Monopoly boards and replacing the Atlantic City streets with other locales, there are well over 3,500 versions of Monopoly in print, the vast majority of which are unauthorized. Given the game’s propensity for collecting spinoffs, it’s likely one of the safest board games out there to mashup or hack in terms of IP.

All of these concerns are only about selling a game. If you’re not worried about that, a board game mashup is a great way for any designer to think laterally about what makes an RPG, what elements RPGs share with other games, and how to take design thinking from board games and port it into an RPG context. Have any other fun RPG mashups you’ve seen, played, or designed? Sound off in the comments. Any board games that would invite RPG mechanics? I’d love to hear about that too. Go home and raid your games shelf for ideas, you may come up with the next Dread or just something to make your friends laugh. Either way, keep designing, keep hacking, and I’ll see you later for another System Hack!

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