@StefanAKAmonkeyEcho said Borribles
Yes, very much this. I haven’t reread them in a while because I’m a little nervous about how they’ll hold up.
I’d also say:
Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga
Lindsey Davis’ Falco series
The Jhereg books by Brust
Tanith Lee’s Tales from the Flat Earth
Monster Hunter
Global Frequency
Valkyrie Profile
Rune Factory
I know that feeling. Just re-reading the first book, for the first time in English (former was the German Hobbit Presse edition) which makes it the original text and a new one at the same time, which is cool. I still find it very good, it’s a little bit like re-visiting your hometown with sychronized nostalgia/rotting.
I’m thinking about writing an Ironsworn hack for Borribles, but this is only an idea right now. I did this for the last decades, so why stop with it now 
I’ve yet to see any game come remotely close to hitting the experience of good mid-to-hard science fiction. I think we need innovations that aren’t currently in our toolset in order to make it happen, to get around some of the hurdles. On the mid end of the spectrum:
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
And on the harder end:
House of Suns and Revelation Space by Alasdair Reynolds
High Frontier by Phil Eklund (board-game)
2312, Aurora and the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
These books would be a natural fit for a Gumshoe game, as every story is about investigating a problem and gathering information, until you have enough pieces to puzzle out what is really going on, and then figuring out how to flip that situation on its head to produce the outcome you want.
Wow-- that’s a really interesting thought. I hadn’t considered it framed in precisely that way. I wonder if something like Cryptomancer, which approaches play from the idea of mapping a problem to find a way in. I’d originally thought about Blades, but I think you’re on to something-- Blades elides the set up and investigation which is so often at the heart of those books.
Oh gosh yes to both of these!
Unfortunately I can’t find a VOD link anywhere, but there was an independent Korean film detailing the life of a Korean shaman, called Manshin: Ten Thousand Spirits. It shows the hardships of being a shaman in a war-torn and then rapidly modernizing country.
I’ve always craved a game that could handle such an experience, where becoming chosen by the gods is a curse - one is then a “hindrance” to a modern social order. That kind of spiritual sensitivity could be a powerful metaphor, I thought. TTRPG often plays with fantasy, so it could be sort of a bridge to the hostily marginalized experience.
My more niche choices are:
The Charm of Magpies series by KJ Charles, which is a Victorian urban fantasy/queer romance story. It would probably be doable in something like Urban Shadows I guess? Or even The Between with some hacking when it comes out 
The Green Creek series by TJ Klune, which is also an urban fantasy/queer romance, but this time with Werewolves. (Actually I think Bite Me! would run this really well now, with a couple of minor tweaks)
My bigger wish is something that hits those Avatar/She-Ra/Dragon Prince/Mysterious Cities of Gold children’s fantasy notes. Still not really come across anything like this. (It is sort of my design white whale too )
The Book of the New Sun series by Gene Wolfe.
The setting is really unique and evocative, characters wandering through something akin to a medieval fantasy setting, but the “magic” is the technological remnants of a dying, out of reach space empire, which are incomprehensible to the low-tech denizens of the world.
I think Monte Cook’s Numenera is pretty explicitly inspired by The Book of the New Sun, but I think it’d be cool to see a more storygame kind of take on it. The books are a weird blend of classic fantasy adventure novel and the narrator meandering around about philosophy and the alien world and all that, and I think something like a PbtA game could direct the tone more in that stop and indulge in some melancholic philosophizing, or really focus on how weird and alien the world is direction.
Oh man, I have definitely thought about this. You could totally make a “Wizard and Glass”-era game set in Mid-World, or a “Stephen King’s Multiverse” game that’s set more in the era of The Dark Tower. Your playbooks (classes, whatever) would be different in each game obviously but man I feel like there’s a lot of cool stuff to play with. Does anyone have the rights to this??
Wasn’t Jhereg one of those big stretch goals for Blades that Harper was going to do himself?
I would love an RPG where Google+ still exists.
You’re right:
UNLOCKED! ($135,000) Blades of the Jhereg : The underworld of Adrilankha is ruled by a council of five ruthless bosses, known as the Right Hand of the Jhereg. You and your crew of scoundrels have been given a tiny piece of turf and are expected to impress them with your greed and opportunism. Will you rise to power in the Organization or be strangled by your ambitious rivals?
Blades of the Jhereg is an official licensed supplement for Blades in the Dark featuring the world of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos novels ( Jhereg, Yendi, Teckla, Taltos , etc.). The playset will include the character and crew types, NPCs, factions, situations, maps, and additional rules needed to play the exploits of a Jhereg criminal enterprise in Adrinlankha. Just remember to keep an eye out for that upstart Easterner. People say he’s trouble. By John Harper (with editorial oversight from Steven Brust).
Interestingly that’s listed as “Development Pending” in the end of 2018 update.
I don’t have much to add to the conversation but I want to thank you for the video.
I want to play a game where you travel through Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, and maybe involves using a copy of the book as your map. Mostly cause I want to hang out in that one which is just plumbing, bathtubs, and mermaids
If you are interested in Italo Calvino you might want to check out:
I second the Abercrombie. I’m hoping SCUP scratches that itch.
I’d love to see the parahuman web novel Worm . Worlds in Peril could probably do it, since that would allow for the huge variation in powers and some of the grim aspects of the world.
For those that haven’t read this, it’s a huge series that covers the story arc of one teenage girl who gains her powers from being bullied at school (i.e., her trigger event), and even though she wants to be a hero, a series of events and disillusionment push her into being a villain. The sheer versatility and of powers, the brilliant possibilities from the interactions of powers, and the bizarre politics driving so many actions (merchandising of heroes, experiments on abductees in order to create a safe superpower serum for paying clients, etc.) and the consequences shown from epic battles in a city make the story riveting as you uncover each new secret about what is really going on.
SCUP?
I also would think you could run Abercrombie in a bunch of systems, outside of a couple of characters it’s all hack/slash/steal/stab-in-back.
The Sword, The Crown, The Unspeakable Power.