4 Franchises That Would Make Excellent RPGs Like The Witcher or Skyrim

Both The Witcher and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim represent strong western RPGs known for extensive and detailed open worlds, with a variety of characters, locations, and stories for players to fall in love with. Other games have tried to match the appeal of these titles, using highly meticulous world building to craft special experiences through higher immersive quality. With that in mind, some IPs or series would fit a framework like The Witcher‘s or Skyrim‘s beautifully, with an already well-known richness that makes fans excited to find a role within a beloved universe.

There have been many games that use a familiar franchise to help build its RPG framework, such as MMOs like DC Universe Online does with DC Comics. From South Park: The Stick of Truth to Dune: Awakening, some games are simply enhanced by having worlds players recognize before they even boot up the title itself. That being said, there are some IPs that feel built especially for the role-playing game genre, having the potential to fit frameworks like Final Fantasy, The Witcher, Skyrim, or other classic series by adopting their formulas in celebrated spaces.

4. Avatar: The Last Airbender

The Avatar: The Last Airbender series almost seems tailor made for an RPG, given how its diverse martial arts and elemental bending is organized in the original animated show. Players have long pictured being able to play as their own custom Avatar character, who has to learn to master all four elements of air, fire, water, and earth to combat some great threat. At the same time, an RPG in this world could have players make characters from any of the four nations living in balance, from the expansive Earth Kingdom to the secluded Water Tribes from the North or South Poles.

Being able to bend elements in an RPG setting, where you progress by learning better and better martial arts techniques, holds a lot of promise. However, the series has only produced a couple of tie-in games over the years, mainly with players embodying already existing characters. For example, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game released in 2026 has players control known characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Avatar: The Legend of Korra, with detailed move lists for 1v1 battles. While that game was met with high praise, it doesn’t scratch the itch of living within the universes either Avatar series sets up.

With Avatar: Seven Havens creating yet another unique world of elemental bending, perhaps there is no better time than to create a game where players can fulfill a role in the IPs unique universe. Whether it’s the steampunk future of Legend of Korra, the dystopian landscapes of Seven Havens, or the classic Last Airbender setting, players would be eager to bend elements and restore balance to any of those worlds. A real-time action or turn-based RPG could help expand the lore of these worlds too, in the same way that the Knights of the Old Republic games did for Star Wars.

3. Solomon Kane

Originally from writer Robert E. Howard, Solomon Kane is a character that exists within Marvel Comics as a 16th to 17th century English Puritan adventurer and monster hunter, who fights supernatural threats with a zealous fervor to eradicate evil. This character would be perfect for players to control in an RPG set in a gritty 16th century, where dark mysticism would give rise to folk horror threats they’d have to face. This game could be similar to The Witcher in a variety of ways, as Solomon Kane shares many traits with Geralt, albeit with a very different tone.

Solomon Kane’s mastery of swords and guns would put him against manic cults, ancient monsters, and the realism of historical events that took place during the time period he lived in. What could result from this is a mixture between games like The Witcher and Red Dead Redemption 2, with a blend of exploration across areas like old-world Europe, Africa, or the “New World” of early North America. The blending of fighting off supernatural magics and real, human evils at the same time might make for an interesting RPG, where you slowly become better at rooting out threats no on else can face.

2. X-Men

The world of Marvel’s X-Men has been used throughout plenty of video games, but surprisingly, not for a traditional RPG that lets you immerse yourself into the mutant side of comics. Games like Marvel’s Wolverine have offered glimpses into alternate worlds for specific characters, but usually in an action-adventure framework rather than a detailed role-playing experience outside of tabletop. Other games like Marvel vs Capcom have made X-Men playable, but again, not provided a way to make your own mutant. The closest game that’s done so is Marvel’s Midnight Suns, a strategy game with a custom character that happens to have X-Men alongside other prominent Marvel characters.

Fans of the X-Men have pointed out that making your own mutant character who grows up in the X-Mansion alongside other would-be heroes could be an excellent premise for an RPG. The ability to create, customize, and progressively develop your own mutant powers alongside a “class” of mutant friends is practically the exact plot of some X-Men comics. The X-Men: Mutant Academy games slightly touch on this concept, but never go fully into character building in the same way games like The Witcher or Skyrim do. Imagine the full breadth of customization and personalization those games provide, but with a superheroic lens of Marvel’s prominent hero group.

There are tons of adventures your character could go on, and lessons they could learn from established X-Men like Jean Grey, Cyclops, Professor X, Beast, or Wolverine. The potential for interactions with popular characters with a personal hero of your own are almost endless, even if you want to fight alongside Magneto instead of the X-Men. This type of game could mimic something like DC Universe Online, having a whole world of mutants ready to interact with each other to form an online community through an RPG’s foundation.

1. Percy Jackson & The Olympians

Another IP that would function quite well as an RPG is the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, a set of novels that has inspired live action movies and TV shows over the years. This franchise revolves around characters being the offspring of Greek gods and goddesses, eventually including the Roman versions of those deities as well. These children are pursued by monsters no one else can see, and are therefore brought to camps where they can be kept safe and learn how to fight those threats as heroes. For an RPG, it’s easy to imagine a player’s custom character choosing their heritage, thus influencing the abilities and powers they use throughout a new story.

Whether your character is a son of the forbidden big three like Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades, or a child of other figures like Hermes, Ares, Aphrodite, or Athena, the way demigods of different legacies have unique skills is what could shape an RPG in this universe. The blend of classical mythology in modern settings is what makes the Percy Jackson & The Olympians books so interesting, as well as the camps and the culture within them. The relationships between characters is also a strong point of the series, so forming bonds with different groups of people may be a part of an RPG worth developing.

This type of game could function similarly to Baldur’s Gate 3 or The Witcher, where decisions during quests leave a big impact on the overall story. Meeting gods and slaying monsters could go hand in hand with forming parties of characters you like with the custom one doing the role-playing. Not many franchises have the existing baseline for an excellent RPG, but Percy Jackson & The Olympians is one of the few series that already seems to do so through without any extra effort.

What is your favorite franchise you’d like to see be turned into an RPG? Let us know in the comments below!

Crimson Desert Has Finally Proven We Have No Idea What RPG Really Means