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Four SF Book Series Adapted Into Roleplaying Games
Four SF Book Series Adapted Into Roleplaying Games
Published on August 28, 2025
I enjoy a wide range of Japanese speculative fiction. Japanese publishers have a penchant for multimedia releases: a popular property might have a light novel series, manga, anime, a film or two, some games (video or otherwise), perhaps an opera by a world-famous all-woman cast. Western publishers don’t seem quite as adept at exploring the full range of tie-in products.
However, for historical reasons, there is a tie-in product for Western SFF whose appearance, while not ensured, is not surprising. This would be roleplaying games. This is because a fair number of SFF authors and their fans are roleplayers.
Here are four sterling examples.
Larry Niven’s Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure Beneath the Great Arch by John Hewitt & Sherman Kahn
(Based on Larry Niven’s Known Space) Chaosium was no stranger to promoting tie-in products, but they pulled out all the stops for the Ringworld RPG. Living as we do in golden age of production values1, it’s hard to convey how much the Ringworld box set stood out in the context of mid-1980s roleplaying games, from the Ralph McQuarrie cover to the Lisa Free interior illustrations. As well, Hewitt and Kahn delivered four phenomenally dense, if slender, rulebooks, managing in two cases to cram in more pages of material than there were pages in the rulebook2.
While the intended focus was the Ringworld, there was enough material on Known Space in general that rumour had it that writers for the Man-Kzin Wars series were encouraged to use the Ringworld RPG as a series bible. Therefore, it’s too bad that Chaosium had the rights sold out from under them shortly after publishing the game, driving the Ringworld: Roleplaying Adventure out of print3.
Hardwired: The Sourcebook by Walter Jon Williams, Mike Pondsmith, and Pati Nagle
(Based on Walter Jon Williams’ Hardwired) Living as we do in a nigh-utopia, it’s hard to convey the economic and political anxieties that inspired authors like Williams, Gibson, Ford, and others to independently arrive at a vision of a world divided between cut-throat oligarchs. No surprise that there were cyberpunk games. Williams was himself a veteran roleplaying game designer4. Also no surprise that Williams adapted his cyberpunk novel Hardwired into a sourcebook for Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk roleplaying game.
The sourcebook might not have had the production budget of Ringworld, but it was a solid product, with the advantage that the author of the work being adapted had a direct hand in the design. Furthermore, Hardwired enjoys the considerable advantage over the Ringworld TTRPG that it’s still in print.
GURPS Wild Cards by John J. Miller
(Based on George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards) GURPS Wild Cards is perhaps the least surprising TTRPG tie-in product on this list. Martin’s Wild Cards shared-world series had its roots in Martin and friends’ Superworld TTRPG campaign. Scurrilous rumour claims that Martin and company invested so much time in their Superworld game that it imperiled their incomes. Thus, monetizing their hobby by turning into an astonishingly durable shared-world project was a logical step, as was a TTRPG tie-in sourcebook.
As the title suggests, GURPS Wild Cards appeared as one of Steve Jackson Games’ many, many, so very many GURPS sourcebooks. GURPS game mechanics are an appropriate choice for the comparatively squishy superhumans featured in the Wild Card books. Still, it is a bit surprising that the Wild Cards sourcebook wasn’t a Superworld sourcebook, given the roots of the setting5.
The Laundry Roleplaying Game by David F Chapman, Calum Collins, Christopher Colston, Alister Davison, Michael Duxbury, Warren Frey, Gareth Hanrahan, and Elaine Lithgow, et al.
(Based on Charles Stross’ Laundry Files) Charles Stross has been involved in roleplaying games for almost as long as they’ve existed6. Therefore, it was almost inevitable that his Laundry Files novels, a Yes Minister-esque take on Cosmic Horror in a British context, would have its own roleplaying game. A game in which players can learn Things Humanity Was Not Meant to Know, and more importantly, how to file the appropriate forms.
As Cubicle 7’s upcoming Laundry RPG is upcoming—fourth quarter 2025, if we’re all still here—and as the pre-order PDFs only just landed in my inbox, I have not had a chance to peruse it in detail. Still, it looks intriguing. I’ll write more when the stars are right. Or as the case may be for the player characters, very, very wrong.
No doubt there are many examples I’ve overlooked7 and no doubt you will eagerly remind me of them in comments. However, there’s one absence that baffles me: John M. Ford wrote science fiction and fantasy, and he wrote well-regarded RPG products. It seems only logical that someone, somewhere, would have adapted one of Ford’s own works8 into a roleplaying game… but titles do not come to mind. Surely, I am forgetting something obvious?[end-mark]
- Unlike early 21st century RPG offerings, layouts aren’t slightly askew, the cover art isn’t by a guy the writer’s cousin knows, bindings generally speaking neither draw blood nor fall apart prior to first reading, and sometimes there’s even an index.
︎ - And they still had enough material they couldn’t fit in the four core books that a Companion volume showed up in short order. ︎
- Don’t despair! Used copies of the Ringworld RPG can still be had… as long as you don’t mind spending three or four hundred dollars. ︎
- Having designed the Privateers and Gentlemen roleplaying game, based on his Privateers & Gentlemen historical novel series. ︎
- Later on, a different company offered its own Wild Cards TTRPG adaptation (also by Miller). It too wasn’t for Superworld. It was for Green Ronin’s Mutants & Masterminds. ︎
- Stross’ githzerai and the slaadi appeared on the pages of White Dwarf Magazine, before White Dwarf narrowed focus to Games Workshop products. ︎
- In fact, I could have chosen four entirely different games for each of the four authors: Privateers and Gentlemen for Williams, Dream Park for Niven, Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire for Martin, and the other, out of print Laundry RPG for Stross. ︎
- I am not counting Ford’s work-for-hire supplements or I would have mentioned his The Klingons: A Sourcebook and Character Generation Supplement. Or The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues. Or Starquest. Ford wrote lots of fine RPG material, but none of it was based on his fiction. ︎
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Sky’s investigation into the activities of David Dunbar reportedly began in Ireland during November 2024. Investigators had become aware of a social media account selling so-called ‘dodgy boxes’ and with assistance from an anonymous tip provided by the Federation Against Copyright Theft, Sky was able to connect the dots.
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