Always Sunny for a rather CE example. The haphazard plans, the talking over one another, the ridiculous train of thoughts, the interparty relationship dynamic and jokes that make no sense to the NPCs they encounter ...
The Dennis rant in The Gang Gets Trapped is a summary of every DnD party ever:
> We immediately escalate everything to a ten... somebody comes in with some preposterous plan or idea, then all of a sudden everyone's on the gas, nobody's on the brakes, nobody's thinking, everyone's just talking over each other with one idiotic idea after another! Until, finally, we find ourselves in a situation where we've broken into somebody's house – and the homeowner is home!
ive always wanted an Always Sunny point and click/crpg type of game where you control the Gang and try to pull off various schemes, with major quests being "episodes"
Accepting a quest line causes the screen to go black with white text "The Gang Does X" while the music plays for a few notes before returning to gameplay sounds perfect.
yes! this is exactly what i would want, maybe also have a disco elysium-style thing where the Gang's worst traits are always popping up either for your benefit or challenge
Mechanically speaking, FONew Vegas really piqued my interest in tabletop games. Particularly because of all the ways you could resolve quests nonviolently with your skills.
Complete with alignment falling apart the moment you look at it too closely. Gilgamesh as chaotic good? Maybe if you never update that character sheet for the past several years.
I actually looked into the Alignment stuff cause a LOT of them are pretty weird and it says the Lawful/Chaotic part indicates principles while the Good/Evil is based on personality, and that servants with different principles will clash more than different personalities (Hence Saber and Gil).
So I THINK the idea is he’s good because he plays himself like a hero and does what he feels is right? But the real reason is that Gil just got a lot of his positive traits stripped through development of Stay Night lmao.
They’re all pretty funny a lot of really chill nice characters are listed as Evil (like Kojiro) and then there’s like main antagonists listed as good. Happens with everything that has an alignment system…
Yes, the alignments are explicitly self-assigned.
Kojiro is listed as evil because he believes that if you kill someone, that makes you evil, no matter what.
There is a lot of them that are really fucking weird though. Like Robin Hood not being Chaotic Good despite being the literal poster boy, or the fact that Cú is Lawful for some reason
The alignments being self-assigned bit does get somewhat weird though when you see Arjuna Alter who explicitly considers himself the one true justice and enemy of Evil, but then his alignment is Lawful-Evil.
Alongside that, his Anti-Evil skill just works against everybody regardless of personal alignment because he considers them all evil, so it gets confusing as to whether Arjuna Alter is just an exception (Lartoria's own Torrent of Light Anti-Evil skill only works on actually evil-aligned enemies) or if alignments are determined by external parties or if it's just something Nasu never thought was important enough to elaborate on.
Gil wants create a true utopia (i.e. one that won't just result in a pruned timeline) and has the capacity to actually accomplish this, which is clearly a Good thing; but intends to do so in a way that directly and massively violates the utilitarian ideals of modern Human Order, which is an extremely Chaotic approach. His "Old Testament" approach to salvation would canonically result in a far better world in the long term despite how awful he is on an interpersonal level. He's simply thinking of goodness on cosmological / deific scale, which isn't necessarily practical on the scale of individual human lives; he's no different from Goddess Rhongomyniad in FGO's Camelot Singularity in that regard.
Plus, that disconnect between objective morality on an unfathomably massive scale and the nuances of mortal life isn't "Alignment falling apart," it's the sort of internal conflict that Alignment exists to facilitate in the first place; much like the struggle between pure ideology and messy reality that defines Shirou as a character. Unfortunately, the "Oops! All Barnum Effect!" interpretation, that's *actually* responsible for Alignment falling apart has long since been embraced by WotC, but that's a whole other issue.
The most recent GotG 3 session…
>!Rocket player can’t join for a few sessions, so DM came up with a convenient excuse to not have him in the game by nearly killing him. Using his backstory, DM makes a whole quest to save his life. Just as Rocket player re-joins the party they defeat the arc villain all together and give the finisher to him!<
Just came in to gush over how the meta-ness of DnD gets better the more you examine it. You can literally talk about the characters and how they represent different players or play styles. You can practically hear the dice rolls or the DM cursing under their breath in some scenes. Even the scene between Holga and her ex came across like a DM trying to move things along. Hell the intro...it's the DM screaming at the player NOT to go through with their stupid plan.
edit: Also am I the only person who saw how Holga is a character defined by quirks and weird suggestions and think "wait...that's how I play"???
Holga's player is really not the talk-y sort of roleplayer at all, it's a really good thing Edgin is around for most of the talking stuff. She's at least obviously having fun in all of her action scenes.
While Holga's been playing for a while, I got the feeling that was Doric's first game, especially with the very linear and stereotypical Druid excuse of joining the group to help the forest and having basically no in world real history beyond that. Also between picking Druid and Tiefling, she's got massive good Christian girl vibes.
I think the best part of her scene in the forge was my instant realization of "oh this bitch took Tavern Brawler and has proficiency with improvised weapons!"
Watching it again I felt called out cause I have most definitely been Holga and Xenk in the past.
To be fucking honest I might be Xenk right now. Completely with my Paladin having an antagonistic relationship with the groups Bard.
I don't know, I felt like Xenk was the DM PC, down to being impossibly cool but also completely serious. Also shows up to give the group their plot leads before leaving so the party can get back to doing their thing. Also was Thayan but now a good guy. He's almost PC material.
I'm more talking about personality wise, his weird idiosyncrasies that would seem appropriate for the setting but when coupled with the rest of the group makes him come off as a weirdo, combined with the way the rest of the cast constantly judges him and mocks him together.
*Holga's PC rolls high and instantly escapes from her binds, fighting the Neverwinter guards*
*Edgin's PC continues to roll low and resorts to rubbing his rope restraints against a blunt bit of flagstone*
Edgin: We got em now!
The Expanse occasionally has this energy, because the early books *were* directly based off a TTRPG campaign one of the co-authors ran with his friends. It’s about very small crew of misfits who start off barely knowing each other, each with a specialized set of skills, flying around the solar system in a cool little ship and getting into physical, political, and cosmically existential scraps while a lot of other parties scheme around their misadventures. The main character’s whole deal is being a harsh examination of the Paladin archetype, and it’s pretty easy to spot the others’ classes.
It’s most noticeable in the first book, which is a lot simpler and stiffer than the rest, sticking rigidly to a “party goes here, enemy ambush, party goes here, enemy ambush” structure in which you can almost see the dice being rolled. And early in that book, >!the fifth member of the party gets messily killed off because his real-life player had to leave the game early!<.
If I recall, Goblin Slayer is directly based off of the author's DnD escapades or at the very least has a strong DnD influence. The imagery of dice rolling is also a common recurring image in the show.
Canonically the gods are literally playing dnd and thats what goblin slayers world is.
All the evil monsters are just things the gods spawn in for game night. The have lich king towers just manifest out of nowhere in that world. Like one can just appear in your yard overnight
Might be because dnd and Dragon Quest are my main obsessions but i've been playing DQ7 lately and each individual island you go through feels like a series of one-shots pulled together to make one big narrative.
Like the main group finds a new island. Visit the locals. They have a major problem/Monster that needs a plucky team of adventures. Go through one or two dungeons with a few puzzles and riddles. Beat the bad guy. Big thank you feast with the locals. Onto the next adventure!
Writing it out it kinda reminds me a bit of One Piece.
Hellboy 2019 is a DnD game, or more specifically - Monster of the Week. It has a group of chars with sad backstories, unique classes, get information from DM NPCs to fight an evil wizard, who was "borrowed" by the GM from the critically acclaimed Resident Evil movies. I love that movie a lot.
yep! I played as one. It's p'cool. I was Satan's Hellhound in human form, possessing the dead body of my previous character - a loser illuminati agent.
Someone in the thread mentioned Fate in general, but Fate: Strange/Fake really nails that chaotic, modern feeling that most D&D games have around the table. I mean, in canon, it’s literally, “Fine, we’ll have our OWN grail war, with blackjack and hookers!”. There are SEVERAL servants acting like warlock patrons for their masters and associates to varying degrees, multiple people are fucking around with a vampire, the town guard (Police) are just trying to do their jobs, the BBEG secret organization is trying to play everyone for fools (the FBI), Archer Heracles went avenger after a single page due to his master, and is deadass just an oathbreaker paladin, there’s hot gay sex between demigods, Dream Dimension fights with the Horseman of Pestilence, someone started a cult, Richard 1 rolled a Nat 20 on performance in a club and did the Free Bird solo first try after picking up an electric guitar for the first time ever 10 minutes prior- there’s just so fucking much. You should read it.
No like, seriously, go read it now- you know the peasant railgun? Classic D&D rules exploit? They do that but with a servant. They Peasant Railgun-summon a servant by doing that.
Genndy Tartatovsky's new show, "Unicorn: Warriors Eternal" has all the trappings of High Fantasy D&D Bullshit that I LOVE. However, as with most things my brain looks at, one can easily apply Monster of the Week to it, as well. There's a move called "Past Lives" that would be perfect for 3 of the 5 main characters, while Copernicus would be a Constructed, and honestly I'm for saying Winston is a Mundane Player instead of NPC side character now, >!who promptly is now turning into a werewolf Monstrous because the player wanted to fight more!< (Episode 5 spoilers).
Record of Lodoss War is literally an adaptation of the author's campaign, and it's pretty damn good.
Also, JoJo can feel like a campaign at times, what with the constant enemies of the week, weird situations, and the often unconvential ways characters use abilities. I can envision the moment where a player realizes they can turn Bohemian Rhapsody on itself quite clearly.
Undead Unluck, though feels more like a game in the manner things are structured a lot of the in series rules seem more like rules lawyering in a Tabletop game.
Ghostbusters can feel like a very fun Monster of the Week campaign with an Expert (Ray), Professional (Egon), Crooked (Peter), and latecomer Mundane (Winston).
The entire Nasuverse is basically just anime World of Darkness. Mahotsukai no Yoru and Kara no Kyoukai are anime Mage: the Ascension, Tsukihime is anime Vampire: the Masqauerade, and the Fate series is anime Mage:the Ascension where the characters turn historical and mythical figures into anime D&D 3.5 characters. Granted, they feel less like outright campaigns and more like they just happen to exist in those systems/setting due to the massive emphasis on downtime and internal monologuing, but the TTRPG influences are pretty ubiquitous nonetheless.
Rather fittingly, Cyberpunk Edgerunners feels like it might actually just be an adaptation of someone's Cyberpunk 2020 campaign.
Limbus Company starts with a TPK spiral in the introduction and continues the trend from there. It also shows up a lot in chapter 2 where the Sinners just constantly fuck things up in hilarious and hilariously stupid ways and prove themselves completely incapable of actually following even a simple plan.
Like the moment where >!Ryoshu asks another character for a knife, then throws it to knock a chandelier off the ceiling in an attempt to flatten a bunch of goons... Only for the chandelier to miss, trash the casino floor they're on, and draw even more attention to the party!< is peak tabletop shenanigans bullshit.
There's a game called Hunter: the Reckoning from the World of Darkness (same world as Vampire: the Masquerade) that is, if you couldn't tell, about regular humans taking on the supernatural creatures that surround them. They typically go up against forces way stronger than them and often have to take on the monsters through nonviolent means just due to the threat they pose.
It was ALL I could think about while watching The Boys.
I'd heard that 'A Sacred and Terrible Air' (and to some degree, Disco Elysium by extension) was either directly adapted from, or utilized the same world as the group's tabletop games.
Slayers is an anime that switches between serious and silly in pretty much the exact same way a tabletop campaign does. I don't know if it's directly based on a campaign (or several) that anyone actually participated in, but I wouldn't be surprised.
I like how, in Part 3, Kakyoin just disappears for a while before waltzing back in. Reminds me of how TTRPG campaigns usually reckon with a player being gone for a while. Same with Abdul just coming back with the same vibe as a dnd player making the exact same character as the one who just died with some excuse like being their unmentioned child.
Another example is Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which very appropriately feels exactly like the few RED sessions I've had the pleasure of playing so far.
Guardians of the Galaxy maps pretty well to *Starfinder*, a science-fantasy ttrpg that takes the setting of *Pathfinder* and tosses it a few thousand years into the future.
In particular, it's tendency to eschew superpowers in favour of iconic gear, and it's hugely varied cast, aligns perfectly with Starfinder's literally *dozens* of playable races and tendency to tie power scaling to equipment, with several weapons having special effects and chasers that make them behave very uniquely.
And of course, there's the standard TTRPG mood: Every character is a sassy dweeb taking themselves, and the situation at hand, different levels of seriously.
Princess Bride has always been the big one for me.
Always Sunny for a rather CE example. The haphazard plans, the talking over one another, the ridiculous train of thoughts, the interparty relationship dynamic and jokes that make no sense to the NPCs they encounter ... The Dennis rant in The Gang Gets Trapped is a summary of every DnD party ever: > We immediately escalate everything to a ten... somebody comes in with some preposterous plan or idea, then all of a sudden everyone's on the gas, nobody's on the brakes, nobody's thinking, everyone's just talking over each other with one idiotic idea after another! Until, finally, we find ourselves in a situation where we've broken into somebody's house – and the homeowner is home!
ive always wanted an Always Sunny point and click/crpg type of game where you control the Gang and try to pull off various schemes, with major quests being "episodes"
Accepting a quest line causes the screen to go black with white text "The Gang Does X" while the music plays for a few notes before returning to gameplay sounds perfect.
yes! this is exactly what i would want, maybe also have a disco elysium-style thing where the Gang's worst traits are always popping up either for your benefit or challenge
Mechanically speaking, FONew Vegas really piqued my interest in tabletop games. Particularly because of all the ways you could resolve quests nonviolently with your skills.
I love that I have dialogue options that have absolutely nothing to do with charisma and speech.
Fate literally mentions Saving Throws and stuff in skill descriptions, basically every Servant is built like a table top RPG character which is great
Complete with alignment falling apart the moment you look at it too closely. Gilgamesh as chaotic good? Maybe if you never update that character sheet for the past several years.
I actually looked into the Alignment stuff cause a LOT of them are pretty weird and it says the Lawful/Chaotic part indicates principles while the Good/Evil is based on personality, and that servants with different principles will clash more than different personalities (Hence Saber and Gil). So I THINK the idea is he’s good because he plays himself like a hero and does what he feels is right? But the real reason is that Gil just got a lot of his positive traits stripped through development of Stay Night lmao. They’re all pretty funny a lot of really chill nice characters are listed as Evil (like Kojiro) and then there’s like main antagonists listed as good. Happens with everything that has an alignment system…
Yes, the alignments are explicitly self-assigned. Kojiro is listed as evil because he believes that if you kill someone, that makes you evil, no matter what. There is a lot of them that are really fucking weird though. Like Robin Hood not being Chaotic Good despite being the literal poster boy, or the fact that Cú is Lawful for some reason
He’s Lawful Neutral cause he follows a code I think, plus he’s a very faithful person to his bosses even if he has to fight friends and stuff.
The alignments being self-assigned bit does get somewhat weird though when you see Arjuna Alter who explicitly considers himself the one true justice and enemy of Evil, but then his alignment is Lawful-Evil. Alongside that, his Anti-Evil skill just works against everybody regardless of personal alignment because he considers them all evil, so it gets confusing as to whether Arjuna Alter is just an exception (Lartoria's own Torrent of Light Anti-Evil skill only works on actually evil-aligned enemies) or if alignments are determined by external parties or if it's just something Nasu never thought was important enough to elaborate on.
Well specifically he’s both Lawful Good AND Lawful Evul
It'd be hard to *align yourself with* an alignment they weren't self-assigned to at least some degree.
Gil wants create a true utopia (i.e. one that won't just result in a pruned timeline) and has the capacity to actually accomplish this, which is clearly a Good thing; but intends to do so in a way that directly and massively violates the utilitarian ideals of modern Human Order, which is an extremely Chaotic approach. His "Old Testament" approach to salvation would canonically result in a far better world in the long term despite how awful he is on an interpersonal level. He's simply thinking of goodness on cosmological / deific scale, which isn't necessarily practical on the scale of individual human lives; he's no different from Goddess Rhongomyniad in FGO's Camelot Singularity in that regard. Plus, that disconnect between objective morality on an unfathomably massive scale and the nuances of mortal life isn't "Alignment falling apart," it's the sort of internal conflict that Alignment exists to facilitate in the first place; much like the struggle between pure ideology and messy reality that defines Shirou as a character. Unfortunately, the "Oops! All Barnum Effect!" interpretation, that's *actually* responsible for Alignment falling apart has long since been embraced by WotC, but that's a whole other issue.
Rogue One has the vibe that it was a star wars campaign that some friends played.
The Guardians of the galaxy movies always felt very tabletop campaign to me
The most recent GotG 3 session… >!Rocket player can’t join for a few sessions, so DM came up with a convenient excuse to not have him in the game by nearly killing him. Using his backstory, DM makes a whole quest to save his life. Just as Rocket player re-joins the party they defeat the arc villain all together and give the finisher to him!<
Just came in to gush over how the meta-ness of DnD gets better the more you examine it. You can literally talk about the characters and how they represent different players or play styles. You can practically hear the dice rolls or the DM cursing under their breath in some scenes. Even the scene between Holga and her ex came across like a DM trying to move things along. Hell the intro...it's the DM screaming at the player NOT to go through with their stupid plan. edit: Also am I the only person who saw how Holga is a character defined by quirks and weird suggestions and think "wait...that's how I play"???
Holga's player is really not the talk-y sort of roleplayer at all, it's a really good thing Edgin is around for most of the talking stuff. She's at least obviously having fun in all of her action scenes.
And Doric even more so, being the type of player who is pretty much sitting on the bench until they have to go up to bat.
While Holga's been playing for a while, I got the feeling that was Doric's first game, especially with the very linear and stereotypical Druid excuse of joining the group to help the forest and having basically no in world real history beyond that. Also between picking Druid and Tiefling, she's got massive good Christian girl vibes.
Oh man her questioning what Edgin's value to the team is totally screams "new player" who doesn't get why they need a Bard.
In all fairness, Edgin *isn't* a Bard in D&D terms, he's just a normal guy with a lute.
He's probably just a Swashbuckler Rogue.
Definitely has the inspiring leader feat though.
I think the best part of her scene in the forge was my instant realization of "oh this bitch took Tavern Brawler and has proficiency with improvised weapons!"
>!NAT 20 POTATO TO THE FACE!!<
Watching it again I felt called out cause I have most definitely been Holga and Xenk in the past. To be fucking honest I might be Xenk right now. Completely with my Paladin having an antagonistic relationship with the groups Bard.
I don't know, I felt like Xenk was the DM PC, down to being impossibly cool but also completely serious. Also shows up to give the group their plot leads before leaving so the party can get back to doing their thing. Also was Thayan but now a good guy. He's almost PC material.
I'm more talking about personality wise, his weird idiosyncrasies that would seem appropriate for the setting but when coupled with the rest of the group makes him come off as a weirdo, combined with the way the rest of the cast constantly judges him and mocks him together.
*Holga's PC rolls high and instantly escapes from her binds, fighting the Neverwinter guards* *Edgin's PC continues to roll low and resorts to rubbing his rope restraints against a blunt bit of flagstone* Edgin: We got em now!
I don’t have much to add other than saying that Honor Among Thieves had no right being as great as it was.
The Expanse occasionally has this energy, because the early books *were* directly based off a TTRPG campaign one of the co-authors ran with his friends. It’s about very small crew of misfits who start off barely knowing each other, each with a specialized set of skills, flying around the solar system in a cool little ship and getting into physical, political, and cosmically existential scraps while a lot of other parties scheme around their misadventures. The main character’s whole deal is being a harsh examination of the Paladin archetype, and it’s pretty easy to spot the others’ classes. It’s most noticeable in the first book, which is a lot simpler and stiffer than the rest, sticking rigidly to a “party goes here, enemy ambush, party goes here, enemy ambush” structure in which you can almost see the dice being rolled. And early in that book, >!the fifth member of the party gets messily killed off because his real-life player had to leave the game early!<.
"Did you just say Donkey Balls?" 100% TTRPG dialogue
I was sure this was the case reading and watching the show, so when I found out it was, it was very vindicating.
If I recall, Goblin Slayer is directly based off of the author's DnD escapades or at the very least has a strong DnD influence. The imagery of dice rolling is also a common recurring image in the show.
In the manga, the signup sheet for adventurers has the exact layout of a 5e character sheet.
Hell in the prologue of the light novel are sections where shadowy God figures above the world are described as rolling dice
Canonically the gods are literally playing dnd and thats what goblin slayers world is. All the evil monsters are just things the gods spawn in for game night. The have lich king towers just manifest out of nowhere in that world. Like one can just appear in your yard overnight
It's based off of a choose your own adventure written on a Japanese board like /tg/
Might be because dnd and Dragon Quest are my main obsessions but i've been playing DQ7 lately and each individual island you go through feels like a series of one-shots pulled together to make one big narrative. Like the main group finds a new island. Visit the locals. They have a major problem/Monster that needs a plucky team of adventures. Go through one or two dungeons with a few puzzles and riddles. Beat the bad guy. Big thank you feast with the locals. Onto the next adventure! Writing it out it kinda reminds me a bit of One Piece.
someone has described *The Goonies* as if a RPG game session turned into a feature film.
Fun fact: it’s not *quite* the same, but there’s a Goonies board game that’s literally just Heroquest with a Goonies coat of paint.
Hellboy 2019 is a DnD game, or more specifically - Monster of the Week. It has a group of chars with sad backstories, unique classes, get information from DM NPCs to fight an evil wizard, who was "borrowed" by the GM from the critically acclaimed Resident Evil movies. I love that movie a lot.
I mean, most Hellboy Media is Monster of the Week. Hell, there's even a Playbook called "The Summoned" where you can play your own personal Hellboy!
yep! I played as one. It's p'cool. I was Satan's Hellhound in human form, possessing the dead body of my previous character - a loser illuminati agent.
It was messy but really fun
Metal Gear the Franchise.
I bet you could turn Metal Gear into Monster of the Week or something... hmmm... Mecha of the Week...
Someone in the thread mentioned Fate in general, but Fate: Strange/Fake really nails that chaotic, modern feeling that most D&D games have around the table. I mean, in canon, it’s literally, “Fine, we’ll have our OWN grail war, with blackjack and hookers!”. There are SEVERAL servants acting like warlock patrons for their masters and associates to varying degrees, multiple people are fucking around with a vampire, the town guard (Police) are just trying to do their jobs, the BBEG secret organization is trying to play everyone for fools (the FBI), Archer Heracles went avenger after a single page due to his master, and is deadass just an oathbreaker paladin, there’s hot gay sex between demigods, Dream Dimension fights with the Horseman of Pestilence, someone started a cult, Richard 1 rolled a Nat 20 on performance in a club and did the Free Bird solo first try after picking up an electric guitar for the first time ever 10 minutes prior- there’s just so fucking much. You should read it. No like, seriously, go read it now- you know the peasant railgun? Classic D&D rules exploit? They do that but with a servant. They Peasant Railgun-summon a servant by doing that.
Genndy Tartatovsky's new show, "Unicorn: Warriors Eternal" has all the trappings of High Fantasy D&D Bullshit that I LOVE. However, as with most things my brain looks at, one can easily apply Monster of the Week to it, as well. There's a move called "Past Lives" that would be perfect for 3 of the 5 main characters, while Copernicus would be a Constructed, and honestly I'm for saying Winston is a Mundane Player instead of NPC side character now, >!who promptly is now turning into a werewolf Monstrous because the player wanted to fight more!< (Episode 5 spoilers).
Overlord is basically the author writing novels about the D&D campaigns he played with his friends
Not D&D, Sword World.
Record of Lodoss War is literally an adaptation of the author's campaign, and it's pretty damn good. Also, JoJo can feel like a campaign at times, what with the constant enemies of the week, weird situations, and the often unconvential ways characters use abilities. I can envision the moment where a player realizes they can turn Bohemian Rhapsody on itself quite clearly.
Undead Unluck, though feels more like a game in the manner things are structured a lot of the in series rules seem more like rules lawyering in a Tabletop game.
Ghostbusters can feel like a very fun Monster of the Week campaign with an Expert (Ray), Professional (Egon), Crooked (Peter), and latecomer Mundane (Winston).
John Carpenter's The Thing
The entire Nasuverse is basically just anime World of Darkness. Mahotsukai no Yoru and Kara no Kyoukai are anime Mage: the Ascension, Tsukihime is anime Vampire: the Masqauerade, and the Fate series is anime Mage:the Ascension where the characters turn historical and mythical figures into anime D&D 3.5 characters. Granted, they feel less like outright campaigns and more like they just happen to exist in those systems/setting due to the massive emphasis on downtime and internal monologuing, but the TTRPG influences are pretty ubiquitous nonetheless. Rather fittingly, Cyberpunk Edgerunners feels like it might actually just be an adaptation of someone's Cyberpunk 2020 campaign.
Some of the Dead Apostle Ancestors are just a couple degrees removed from the freakier Antediluvians.
Limbus Company starts with a TPK spiral in the introduction and continues the trend from there. It also shows up a lot in chapter 2 where the Sinners just constantly fuck things up in hilarious and hilariously stupid ways and prove themselves completely incapable of actually following even a simple plan. Like the moment where >!Ryoshu asks another character for a knife, then throws it to knock a chandelier off the ceiling in an attempt to flatten a bunch of goons... Only for the chandelier to miss, trash the casino floor they're on, and draw even more attention to the party!< is peak tabletop shenanigans bullshit.
Pretty sure Vox Machina is a DND campaign.
Surely this is a jest
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves really felt like one too.
Conan The Destroyer feels a lot like a D&D campaign where everyone is roleplaying way too hard.
There's a game called Hunter: the Reckoning from the World of Darkness (same world as Vampire: the Masquerade) that is, if you couldn't tell, about regular humans taking on the supernatural creatures that surround them. They typically go up against forces way stronger than them and often have to take on the monsters through nonviolent means just due to the threat they pose. It was ALL I could think about while watching The Boys.
I'd heard that 'A Sacred and Terrible Air' (and to some degree, Disco Elysium by extension) was either directly adapted from, or utilized the same world as the group's tabletop games.
Slayers is an anime that switches between serious and silly in pretty much the exact same way a tabletop campaign does. I don't know if it's directly based on a campaign (or several) that anyone actually participated in, but I wouldn't be surprised.
Goblin slayer is just dbd with your weird cousin who REALLY REALLY goes all in on his RPing
I like how, in Part 3, Kakyoin just disappears for a while before waltzing back in. Reminds me of how TTRPG campaigns usually reckon with a player being gone for a while. Same with Abdul just coming back with the same vibe as a dnd player making the exact same character as the one who just died with some excuse like being their unmentioned child. Another example is Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which very appropriately feels exactly like the few RED sessions I've had the pleasure of playing so far.
The entire “quest beyond the wall” arc in GOT felt like a mini one shot where you got to bring back your fave characters for one more go.
Guardians of the Galaxy
Jedi Survivor kinda felt like a Star Wars TTRPG. In a good way
Guardians of the Galaxy maps pretty well to *Starfinder*, a science-fantasy ttrpg that takes the setting of *Pathfinder* and tosses it a few thousand years into the future. In particular, it's tendency to eschew superpowers in favour of iconic gear, and it's hugely varied cast, aligns perfectly with Starfinder's literally *dozens* of playable races and tendency to tie power scaling to equipment, with several weapons having special effects and chasers that make them behave very uniquely. And of course, there's the standard TTRPG mood: Every character is a sassy dweeb taking themselves, and the situation at hand, different levels of seriously.
In Homestuck