How do l turn my D&D campaign into a 80s flick?

play shadowrun

youtu.be/IkRl84KdHcU

In the distant future of 1992... War has returned to the galaxy!

A keytar wielding wizard sends them into a different plane: Neo Miami
It's like tron, but more human. Neon blades and shit.

Do what SMT IV did.

>Have time travelers, heavily inspired by 80s cheese, come to the world with a terrible warning about a cyborg empire coming from the future to take over the fantastical world.

>It's a "millennials pretend to know 80's movies and think Kung Fury is good" thread

@OP, if you want to make your campaign an 80's flick, highly recommend that you watch the following:

>Highlander
>Krull (if you want to throw in some scifi)
>Excalibur
>Conan the Barbarian (technically not a flick)
>Dark Crystal
>Legend
>The Black Cauldron
>Wizards (if you want to throw in some scifi)
>Heavy Metal (especially recommend this)

>posts Gloryhammer

>Forgetting Tron

> Dark Crystal

My muppet of African descent.

NEON KNIGHTS

>DUDE NEON LMAO

why not actually look at 80s media?

This. Namefaggotry aside, user is correct. 80s fantasy was different from 80s sci-fi/cyberpunk. 80s fantasy was all about burly dudes in loin cloths, large ham villains, sinister magic, and low key magic like controlling animals or grunting and having a door fight (Conan 2s wizard duel)

Throwing He-Man at that list, its a terrible movie but skeletor is fucking glorious in it, he's like Raul Julia as M. Bison levels of good

youtu.be/VxRw5_3OFgc

bump

>Guns, guns, everywhere
>Explosions
>Machine guns
>Rocket launchers
>Helicopters
>Bad guys must be German/Russian
>Good guys must be a loose cannon on his first/last day
>shoulder pads, big hair, high waist panties, garish makeup, synth music, mullets, moustaches,
>nukes, cold war, drugs

> How do l turn my D&D campaign into a 80s flick?
Like this.
youtube.com/watch?v=er416Ad3R1g

You just need a good soundtrack.

youtube.com/watch?v=MV_3Dpw-BRY

That triangle looks familiar...
youtube.com/watch?v=kXZDtTyafV4

youtube.com/watch?v=l8Ra6TsdEts

Hawk the SLayer will guide you my friend.

My favorite album of 2015. Gottdamn, I love you user.

You kill yourself because it's the wrong system

This.

>Have time travelers, heavily inspired by 80s cheese
Are they two radical dudes, arriving in a phone booth?

Make sessions one-shot episodes, one being only vaguely related to the next. Story is never as important as cool factor.
Explosions, expensive suits, babes, flair, mullets, sweet rides, explosions, tight bodysuits, explosions, leg warmers, aviator glasses, explosions, slick bad guys, punchlines.
At the end of a session, any loose ends are disregarded. Everyone gathers together for a last cheap joke, laughter fades to black. To be continued.

>be me
>be born in the spring of 1980
>be experiencing all the glory of 80s culture through the wide eyes of a child
>get to 1990s
>boy the eighties were weird, huh
>but also kind of cool
>but not new and futuristic like the nineties is
>advance through time to YEAR THIS ONE
>people who weren't alive in the eighties are romanticizing the eighties

Shit's weird yo. I mean, there were plenty of people who dressed like wannabe 1960s hippies in my high school, but we never thought that the culture of the 1960s was superior to the culture of the 1990s.

Relevant?
youtube.com/watch?v=kZu5iDTtNg0

Adding Labyrinth and Willow to that list

Can't talk about retrosynth without bringing up the Master.

youtube.com/watch?v=392by2UoOX4

Yeah I've always wondered where the glorification of 80s culture came from. Not that I mind, since I fell in love with it halfway through high school from all the horror movies I watched. God I love gated reverb on drums.

I hate retarded 00s kids who don't consume any 80s media except modern spoofs and memes

Better than some of the other memers ITT but still way off.

This is fucking terrible.

It's becasue of the movies. By the late 90s, Hollywood was really starting to go downhill, and people started getting really nostalgic for older movies. The late 90s/early 00s is also when the cyberpunk genre had a small resurgence. It was a fun time to be a teenager, which is why I think a lot of people who were born in the late 80s and early 90s hold "the 80s" in such high regard, since a lot of the things they loved from their childhood came out of the 80s. Looking back, it's a colorful and over-the-top time in contrast to the dull super serious, PC drudgery of today.

So basically people look back on the 80s as a time where things were fun and wasn't ashamed of it?

What a horrible fucking short film.

There were no set ups to jokes, just endless "lel randum 80's".

This guy gets it

80's stuff was actually pretty subdued compared to the 'homage' shit that comes out today. Yeah, the heroes would kick ass and stuff but it still managed to ground itself within the world of the film.

No, people (born in the 80's) look back on it because they can't see stuff coming out today as fun. 80's recycle is popular because of people that didn't grow up in the 80's wanting to have it as well. I can almost guarantee the fans of it could not sit through Lethal Weapon or two episodes of Miami Vice.

I think so yea. Like pointed out, the media of the time was all about being as awesome and over the top as possible. People didn't care how unrealistic, racist or low brow a lot of the stuff was, it was fun and that's all that mattered. People knew how to have fun without being super critical about everything and were not a bunch of fucking crybabies like they are today either.

Everyone likes lethal weapon.

If you actually go back and watch these movies you will see these rocket launchers, helicopters, unrealistic action sequences were usually reserved for the climactic confrontation and were shown to be odd or rare within the movie.

People completely ignore this in every fucking 80's thread. A lot of 80's action movies were centered around masculine drama and the boiling rage and burning passion a man of action can feel, not punching heads into liquid on the back of a jet over a vaporwave sunset.

Exaggeration of the 80s is something you can see in retrosynth albums today.

Exactly, I was never saying that the guns and explosions were the focus of films, but the plots in general were incredibly shallow. And that's not a bad thing. The stories were simple, easy to understand, and fun. Actors had to actually act and you had a lot more characterization becasue "muh angst" and CGI were not viable fall backs yet.

Now we get what amounts to animated movies trying to pretend they are live action as if being animated is a mark of shame when going full animation could have salvaged their premise

A lot of the glorification of 80s culture isn't from people who were alive in the 80s, quite the opposite I think. Their reasons for glorifying the 80s are not the same reasons why people from the 80s may have enjoyed the decade. Saying "well I was alive in the 80s and it's not like you think it was" means nothing to someone born in the mid 90s who is looking back and likes what he sees a lot more then what's already around him.

If you mean how the west has abandoned traditional animation entirely, I think the blame can be placed at large corporations like Disney who aren't content with a modest profit, when they want huge returns. But yeah it's a shame that attempts to break animation out of the children's ghetto failed, since there's so much you can do when you don't have to worry about needing to be constrained by technical limitations.

Have your players be a bunch of kids, give them a magical cute little unicorn, insert a GMPC that railroads them hard, and the end of the session, make sure everybody understood the lesson of the day.

>You are adventurers bent on preventing the fall of the world
>but it has already happened
>Chrome knights wander the land pledged to the Prism Wizard who holds power across the whole land
>Elves harness the dust of falling stars to form beam weapons strong enough to pierce the flesh of traitors
>Days are covered in a purple hued sky with a thin atmosphere, so that the nearby celestial bodies can be seen
>Dragons travel between the astral bodies with ease still pledged to no master but themselves
>Orc tribes wander singing the High Songs of Before, garbed in leather bringing hope to the souls still fighting against the Prism Wizard

Or just
you know
Do this:
>1d4chan.org/wiki/Setting:Hail_and_Kill

You guys really are morons if you think the 80s were all about fun. If anything, the 90s were about forced fun with endless self-referential quips and winks.

Seriously, go watch Escape from New York and The Terminator.

Oh and when they finally make peace with the dragons to overthrow the Prism King this plays in the background.
youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6rChjsWgs

I was talking about movies that are basically CG spectacles that actors are pasted into after the fact to pretend the movie is live action

Holy shit the setting you described is awesome.

This is good too.

this

Because if Sci-Fi then you could just play Cyberpunk 2020.
... If both then old school Gamma World.

You need some of that good old black/white morality, since moral grey-zones weren't even invented at the time at least if you wamma believe most fantasy flicks and cartoons from the time
In addition to that i would advise you to keep a small cast of side characters whose role in the story can be easily identified by their archetypes/clichés. Preferably with a big load of ham and cheese. This goes both for appearances as well as mannerisms, speech patterns etc.

If you want to make it really good ask your players to acommodate those roles as well with their characters by creating essentially stereotypes (aka "the hero", "his companion amd eventual love interest", "the clever and cunning, but cowardly companion, who will either betray the hero or sacrifice himself in a final act of bravery", "the wiseman/wizard", "that annoying child and whose shit idea was it anyway to cast a goddamn child actor for fucks sake, nobody likes child actors", "the rival that puts aside his differences and joins the cause" .... )

Oh thanks bro. It's completely unrelated to my homebrew setting but I'm totally going to incorporate it now. Frazetta meets Dark Souls.

Players can't get stat advances and perks without a montage. Have to provide a theme and explain what they do.
Critical hits must be followed by a oneliner.
A sufficiently good or fitting oneliner prior to rolls provides a bonus to the related roll or XP bonus.
Having you back against an AoE effect gives you a +2 save against it.
Provide at least one war in the past (or possibly the future) that PCs can be hardened veterans of.
At least one league of gladiatorial blood sport.
Abduct at least one child or loveinterest of a PC.
Basil Poledouris
Encourage the rogue to start a criminal empire and then attempt to take it from him.
Have at least one civilization in ruins amidst a toxic, desert wasteland, crawling with psychopathic raiders and murderous constructs.
At least one major city with rampant crime that needs to be saved by a group of hard ass mavericks.
Encourage martial classes.
I don't care if it is medieval fantasy Europe, there's gonna be East Asian diaspora teaching people Kung Fu and Karate.
Also, the head of the townwatch is gonna be an old bald black man who constantly yells at the PCs and the top of his lungs.

youtube.com/watch?v=MwPb7g_BlXQ
youtube.com/watch?v=9D-QD_HIfjA
youtube.com/watch?v=wIffOq8AuSw
youtube.com/watch?v=d4CCg4dYe0A
youtube.com/watch?v=3jYcW1nEsGk
youtube.com/watch?v=1_xgecR0ifo
youtube.com/watch?v=8pjo8uw-RQg
youtube.com/watch?v=tl92wiSMHXk
youtube.com/watch?v=eUSI44zHthg
youtube.com/watch?v=Kbdpdr4u2fU
youtube.com/watch?v=nRGJDb-30C8
youtube.com/watch?v=yK0P1Bk8Cx4
youtube.com/watch?v=_24YWy71RXo
youtube.com/watch?v=dQ4XHW5Q4gU
youtube.com/watch?v=jSqw9Yn_RMQ
youtube.com/watch?v=68I3j2luW64
youtube.com/watch?v=V4kWpi2HnPU
youtube.com/watch?v=_UmOY6ek_Y4
youtube.com/watch?v=rcThFswcLB0

>Looking back, it's a colorful and over-the-top time in contrast to the dull super serious, PC drudgery of today.
As a 90s kid, this is the kicker. Everything now feels gray and shitty compared to the over-the-top radical factor of the 80s and 90s, and I can just pick and choose the best parts of two decades vs digging through all the crap of today.

Also, Big Trouble in Little China remains my favorite movie of all time. Above everything else, it's actually /fun/ and I rarely feel that with movies nowadays.

OP I will post a good bit of 80s Media for you to consume if you wish, please ignore all the "neon highlight computer zone" retards who only watch spoofs and parodies

>Movies
Highlander
RoboCop
Escape from New York
Excalibur
Conan the Barbarian
Mad Max 1, 2, and 3 if you want to spice it up
Tron
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Wayne's World
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Blade Runner
The Thing
The Terminator
Labyrinth
Rocky I, II, III, and IV
Cobra
Mel Brooks Movies(Space Balls, Blazing Saddles, Robin Hood Men in tights, etc.)
The Naked Gun
(More suggested in the thread.)
>TV Shows
Miami Vice
The A-Team
Magnum P.I.
Knight Rider
V
Max Headroom
Pee Wee's Playhouse
>Anime
SPT Layzner
Zeta Gundam
Gundam 0083 Stardust Memory
Metal Armor Dragonar
Dirty Pair
Space Adventure Cobra
Armored Trooper VOTOMS(Mellowlink if you need something shorter)
Patlabor
MOSPEDA
SDF Macross
Giant Gorg
Mazinkaiser and Shin Mazinger Z Technically
Nazca
Saint Seiya if you're ok with that
Fist of the North Star
Jojo is fine as long as you don't get memey with it

That's all I can think of at the top of my head.

>Kung Fury comes out
>post on Veeky Forums that I didn't really like it because it was so far removed from the source material that it wasn't a parody but just a collection of fart noises with neon shit glued on top
>universal reaction is"lol this guy hates fun have fun it's fun you don't get it it's a parody," no exceptions

I'm glad at least somebody has noticed.

I love you.

We are kindred souls.

>telling people Veeky Forums
>not just saying it was /v/
Noone on Veeky Forums actually thought that movie was for anyone but mentally challenged kids that have ADHD did they?

I agree with you.

Trailer had all the best bits, everything else was just shit.

This guy begs to differ.

A lot of people are easily amused by humorless jokes.

Literally just go into a Veeky Forums storytime thread and see what these losers find funny/entertaining.

Kung Fury was better than the 80's as I remember them. But then, it was on the wrong side of Berlin Wall.

Neon colors and cheesy one-liners everywhere.

I loved the mustache scene. There's something secretly brilliant about the German/Swedish mess they have going, and I bet 99% of viewers completely missed it.

Especially do a Dane who understand both languages somewhat.

cite a major 80's action movie that was saturated neon like most of the thread thinks happened.

Kung Fury is fucking garbage. It would be fun if it had a plot or jokes or motivation.

>losers

>Be elven 500 year old elementary school teacher barbarian
>Party dwarf, Drunks McDrunkdrunk, smashes my relic cat ruby with his warhammer
>SUDDENLY HALF ORC WRESTLER

Sorry, manchildren with no taste.

I stopped watching after the opening (about ten minutes?) so it's possible I missed something good, but I'm pretty sure my overall reaction was ok.

Even this thread is full of people operating at a penguin of doom level.

>you will never play in this campaign
>you will never play one of the Space Knights of Crail riding alongside Angus McFife XIII
>Your character will never FLY HIGH THROUGH APOCALYPSE SKIES
It hurts to live

Tron is slow and not really that interesting compared to some of the other 80s must watches.

Maybe that's just my nostalgia for cheesy action movies talking. I'd take Robocop over Tron any day.

>People completely ignore this in every fucking 80's thread. A lot of 80's action movies were centered around masculine drama and the boiling rage and burning passion a man of action can feel, not punching heads into liquid on the back of a jet over a vaporwave sunset.

That is, however, completely fucking awesome.

Yeah, I posted in a thread the day the "full" movie came out, and quite a few posters really ripped into me for voicing dislike.

Setting based off airbrushed chrome Trapper Keeper artwork when?

I was working on a setting similar to this. So far factions I've created include the Pegasus Knights of Astroglam who are constantly riding throughout the galaxy from their space-fortress seeking an entity known as the Astral Unicorn, and the Kingdom of the Astral Vampires who created dark magic to turn stars into red giants whose light neither harms them nor supports life. (They're currently working on a way to advance this magic so they can trigger supernovas to destroy their enemies.)

Not really. There's no investment if the character is regularly accomplishing impossible feats (for the setting).

I bet you find the Torgue guy from Borderlands 2 funny you fucking mouth breather.

youtube.com/watch?v=--fa49j6bps

stylistically, I love it, that saturated neo-retro neon look is actually quite pleasing -- really, it's like someone looked at 80s advertising and cover art and shit and decided that's what it was all about, and it'd be a really cool aesthetic for a campaign
Kung Fury totally doesn't really understand what it's trying to imitate though.

anyone trying to really emulate 80s action in any way (like OP) needs to literally sit down and study Die Hard, which is probably the textbook on how to do this thing right
fantastic pacing, excellent characterization (it's marvelous by action movie standards and it's more than decent in general), and the action really ramps up, but does so in a measured way until it comes to a boil with the rooftop bang, it's a marvelous movie that gets the feeling of the late 80s straight

I can't imagine someone not sitting through Lethal Weapon and enjoying it. Fuck, just thinking about that idea is giving me a headache.

damnit, now I need to go watch it again, it's been a while

man, I dunno if I should be worried or excited about the idea of 90s-retro getting in vogue
worried, because it'll be vapid shit with an over-exaggerated 90s aesthetic
but excited because god damnit, I love the idea of seeing shit with an over-exaggerated 90s aesthetic

How do you think exaggerated retro 2010s will look like?
After all it's all gonna come back, right?

>All the art is hyper-minimalist
>Every single character is a transgender racequeer ursexual narwhalkin

I'd add They Live in the movies and BAOH in anime, but good list 9.5/10.

I did like the song. Even though it kind of suffered from the same problem as the movie, it was a little bit more subdued about it.

I think a lot more GMs should try imitating 80s fantasy movies, rather than trying to recreate Lord of the Rings of Game of Thrones or whatever. The plot and tone of a lot of the movies is very similar to the average RPG campaign. Like, Hawk the Slayer is about a party composed of very different characters being gathered to defend a monastery from villains. That's sounds like something you'd see in a low level DnD campaign.
Now, Tolkien of course did the whole "part of heroes on a quest to do something" thing, but the thing is, that most RPGs don't have anywhere near the depth of Tolkien's work, using the same elements and tropes but more as backdrop enabling the PCs to delve into dungeons and kill orcs. 80s fantasy movies fit that kind of stuff better than epic fantasy literature.

Also, I just find cheesy 80s fantasy movies fun. They're pretty interesting in that while a lot of the classic fantasy tropes were around back then, a lot of them weren't quite as well established so you get a lot of weirdness along with the standard stuff.

Panzer World Galient is a good sci-fi/fantasy mix that is relevant to 80's fantasy that I would add to that mix.

>but excited because god damnit, I love the idea of seeing shit with an over-exaggerated 90s aesthetic

>Ctrl + f
>Car chase
>No results
>COME ON Veeky Forums YOU KNOW THIS

Make your campaign a platform to sell toys.

Add Big Trouble in Little China (modern low fantasy), The Neverending Story, and Flash Gordon (scifi, but it has a really colorful setting, and Max von Sydow kills every scene he's in. Also featuring Timothy Dalton's glorious mustache) to the list.

>People not being able to sit through Lethal Weapon

We're getting too old for this shit, user.

First, watch Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars. If you watch no other 80s movies make it these and liberally rip them off.

Second, there was little big budget fantasy in the 80s. Don't go balls-out with your ideas. Think low budget. Focus on your high concepts. Simpler is better.

Third, be sincere. Don't meme. Don't be self-referential. Don't break the fourth wall. No post-modernism.

Fourth, don't worry too much about the setting. Don't overthink your setting either. A world resembling our own from some time in the past is sufficient.

> leaving out that sweet, sweet Queen OST

> only in RPGs could you maybe one day fly into battle with Brian Blessed moments before Brian May kicks in with the guitar

I can't tell what's going on here, but I like it

I can't for the life of me imagine why'd I'd forget about that. Consider me properly chagrined.

> conan the barbarian is not a flick

what the fuck are you talking about

This guy knows what's up.
I'd add that you can throw in some of that late 80's, whatever-will-scare-the-shit-out-of-kids stuff like Neverending Story, Return to Oz, Time Bandits and Labyrinth. Some weird for the sake of a good story is good.