Monday in the after meeting conversations that follow my twice-monthly writers group meetings I encountered an old role-play gaming temptation.

I was describing to a trio of writer friends how back in the day I used to run RPG that were simply feature films with players in the place of the principal characters. I do not mean inspired by the film, I ran the exact movie, usually fairly well known geek favorites, as much as possible scene by scene, and watched as the players varied or followed the plot as it had progressed through the film.

This worked because the main character was played by someone who had not seen the movie and that is where to fun laid. Watching that person navigate the good or bad plot. Often the other players would have varying degrees of familiarity with the movie and as such nudged and guided the story generally in that direct the script had taken.

I had started down this conversation rabbit hole because I was going to discuss one variation from a plot that I thought was interesting from a writing perspective but my three friends stopped me.

1) They thought the idea of the movie/RPG mash-up was fun and apparently it was something they had never encountered.

2)_None of the trio has seen the 1980 production of Flash Gordon.

You can see where this is going. I am very tempted to take these three friends and role-play gamers and run them through the entirety the 1980 Flash Gordon, after all three players and three earthlings, hurling their bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out there.

If I did this, what game system to use? Something fast and loose, not overly burdened with details, and probably t system will need drama points or such to allow for cinema’s improbabilities.

OH it is tempting.