"If I Played WWII, Why Would I Want to Play Sci-Fi?" Topic

Isn't most sci-fi skirmish pretty much the same as playing WWII skirmish? Hey, that scout grav tank acts pretty much like a Stewart. Laser artillery or 88? All infantry in squads. What's the tactical difference really?

Am I crazy for thinking that I should just flesh out my 15mm German and US forces instead of jumping into 15mm sci-fi because both are basically the same type of game? Am I the only troubled soul on TMP who has these constant dilemmas?

Sci-fi skirmish is more varied, because there are so many sci-fi game worlds.

CPBelt--

I too had philosophically pondered that the mechanisms we emulate in miniature are really nothing more than a variation on a theme. Side A attack side B. Side B defend against Side A. ad infinitum. You are right that we can assign any peroid to accomplish similar goals on the table.

BUT--I like the 4 different versions of vivaldi's four seasons concerto I own --while the same piece of music--the performaces vary.

I enjoy a good pizza. I also enjoyed the escargot in garlic butter, whipped potato topped with paprika I had for lunch today. both are food and will nourish me. But each offers flavors and textures and olafactory stimulation again that are varied.

So I concluded that variety is the spice of life. I am happy to play the same period in 3 scales. I am happy to play world war 2, star wars, and moderns all at 1:1 scale skirmish.

I am happy and thus some psychiatrist does not have my money, some purveyor of military miniatures and associated paraphanelia does. And that is fine with me.

I would say sci-fi is what you make of it. If you play a sci-fi setting that has vehicles operating in the same conventional means as they have since the 30's and your weapons mix is the similar then yes, you may as well keep playing WW2.

If, however, you comes up with weapons and vehicles that do things differently then you will have a different experience. There will still be parallels. Face it, WW2 is where most of modern warfare was really figured out.

Try adding in rules for ECM and communications issues, hi-tech camouflage, advanced weapons and remote operated vehicles. Throw in aliens with interesting rules besides "I have big claws" or "I have massive psychic powers".

What are you wanting out of sci-fi?

-Eli

One of the hardest things to get in a Sci Fi game is just that – tactical "difference." I'm writing a Sci Fi set but it is all tank vs tank with infantry clogging up the treads mostly.

On the other hand, Starship Troopers never felt like WW2 to me. So the main "warrior" has no ranged weapon, is super deadly in close combat and can tunnel underneath you. It always felt closer to colonials but is a rip roaring fun game. You could easily do it in 15mm with some nice GZG infantry squads and whatever grabs your fancy for bugs.

I can see the point… kinda… for some Sci Fi games… it's all about the set dressing…
Still, it's kind of fun to see Hamlet performed in the setting of modern day corporate skulduggery, or Romeo And Juliet as members of ethnic street gangs.

Plus… some SciFi games… like Ogre… don't have a WWII equivalent that readily pops to mind.

Titans.

Differences from WWII:

Infantry that can fly. Actually anything can fly, including buildings.

Alien races, hence wildly different psychologies.

No "reality" limit to armies, terrain etc

Which leads to really groovy terrain: lava pits, floating cities (air and sea), cliff-side villages.

No moral dilemmas about having to want the Nazis or Stalinists to win. (This is a major one for me.)

At the very least a different sort of "rivet counter" to fend off. (My eyes glaze over the instant people start to discuss the technical capabilities of weapons.)

I do feel this way somewhat about "hard" sf games. They really aren't much different in look or feel from modern equipment, so what's the difference? But you could say the same thing about Ancients versus Medievals, or 18th century versus Napoleonics, or one Arab-Israeli war versus another.

The answer is that wargaming is not just about game mechanics and tactics. A big part of what we are doing creating a visual story. And stories have settings and characters. So even if the rules are EXACTLY the same, a WWII game might feel very different from a hard SF game, just because its telling a different story.

Of course, depending on what level of technology you are using, and what types of aliens are involved, SF could have a VERY different feel from WWII. Giant mechs, meleeing bugs, teleportation, jump-packs, etc all don't have an easy WWII analog. More Gothic or space-opera type SF tends to have a substantial melee component that is absent from WWII. Depending on the complexity of the rules, aliens or robots may have very different psychology or command & control rules.

FASA's Centurion grav tank system was really interesting -- some aspects were like combined arms -- tanks and infantry supported by artillery (land or space-based -- with nukes too!!) and fighters. But when grav tanks engaged at full speed it basically felt sort of like heavily armed and armored helicopters zooming about hacking away at each other with gauss guns, lasers and missiles. Great game.

Essentially you are correct – it is all pretty much the same only the mechanics vary from rule set to rule set. I am sure that GW could come out with Warhammer WWII, the mechanics would work for a skirmish level game. The only thing to consider was really how or what you play with.

Well, I suppose you could make a similar argument for any wargaming then. I enjoy sci-fi where I really do not enjoy WWII. To me, sci-fi gives me a freedom to create scenarios without having to worry about historical accuracy and I can create my own political environment. I enjoy creating something original and not being bound by historical fact. Not much wiggle room with WWII in my opinion.

I also enjoy the sci-fi miniature ranges. I myself like 6mm scale sci-fi and when I see a miniature of a grav tank on the board I definitely am not thinking how a model of a King Tiger would do just as well.

I guess in the end it is just personal preference and if you are into one specific genre and the aesthetics of that genre.

I guess to answer your main question, IMHO it would very much depend on the rule sets you are using and if they can capture the feel of the era you are gaming in.

Sorry for the long ramble. I am on shift, and it is very slow tonight.

i guess in general you could say that tactics are tactics. However, as been mentioned above there can be a HUGE variety in the variety of armies fielded in Scifi. I recently jumped into 15mm scifi while I own 6, 25 and 28mm figs too. Each scale provides a different style game. I am having to debate the logic of owning both 25mm and 15mm Gzg figs though.

Thanks,

John

I've never really gamed WWII, but my SF ground game of choice is Ogre/GEV, which to my mind doesn't "feel" like WWII at all, or even modern warfare. Certainly, there's nothing in either setting analogous to an Ogre, and I can't think of anything that behaves equivalent to a GEV either. A helicopter, maybe… but that's not WWII.

Jump packs that last for more than 20 – 30 seconds, orbital artillery bombardments, tanks moving as fast as jets, drone vehicles, etc.

What's not to like?

Just because many rules appear to mimic WWII doesn't mean that future combat will be like that.

Increase the ranges of the weaponry, their effectiveness, and the speeds of the vehicles, and some troops, and play out games to see what the future may hold.

My guess is that units of men and vehicles with comm systems will spread out even further than current doctrine, since the effectiveness of weaponry will force that to occur, permitting smaller forces to control greater areas of terrain.

When needed, they can use their communications equipment, and speed to rapidly group together to defeat enemies, and then disperse again, before their enemies can strike back. If they do, they will only get one, or two individuals from a unit, instead of many.

Recon, communications, and the ability to move quickly where needed will further increase the force multiplier effects of todays technology.

I have to admit that we've played Nuts! using AT-43 figs without any modification to the rules.

Everyone has pretty much said it. Skirmish games are skirmish games but Sci Fi figures dontl look like WWII. The alien races can have different psychologies, different movement ability through the same terrain types and different defense modifiers in the same terrain. Weapons can be different. Terrain can be different. I use one world setting where the terrain changes randomly over a period of time. I game SF in both 28mm and 6mm. Tend to prefer the 6mm because I believe weapons ranges will be much longer and can portray this on the table. In my 6mm armies I have only two human armies and an additional 1 bipedal humanoid type. My other Eight armies are neither humanoid nor bipedal.

I agree with the fundamental point – but the devil is in the detail. Otherwise you end up with ths sort of mentality that thinks you can play Vietnam with WAB. you can, but it's not what ths system was meant for.

The recent thread on War on the Moon is an example of the differences you can achieve.

Obviously, if you have an army of space-Nazis driving around in Grav-Tigers waging war against 'Imperial American Guard' on a planet where the grass is red, the trees are blue but up is up and down is down, you may as well stick to WWII !

Pat

No limit on reality. WWII has fixed equipment and adheres to fixed settings.

"…Alien races, hence wildly different psychologies…"

"…The alien races can have different psychologies…"

Okay, As a person who loves SF for ground games almost as much as he likes Aerial battle games, what rules specifically deal with making aliens different then guys in rubber masks? My one complaint for SF has always been that most rules treat aliens as some stereotype human historical group instead of somehow actually alien in mindset/values/tactics.

What game(s) actually do this?

My observation is that we do this in our minds (some more occassionally then others) but not in the game mechanics/play.

Gracias,

Glenn

Is there a diffrence at all between ETO and the Pacific?
Sure.
So there you go. Diffrent is diffrent.

I think the core – tanks and infantry – is the same pretty much bar the occassional odd tech idea. Aircraft oft operate like modern aircraft. The difference comes with a varient on off table barrages – now you can orbital strikes to prep the assault area or deny part of the table whilst you plan to drop onto the other, which brings me to the second major difference – you get to fight beachhead battles where you drop from the sky rather than swim ashore :)

Now of course their are other Sci Fi ideas that are very different – but often do their best to bring back melee (like Dune for example).

I'd say the biggest difference is you can abstract command and control and spotters and similar and not feel you are cheating.

Warbeads aka AllOvertheSky wrote:

"what rules specifically deal with making aliens different then guys in rubber masks? My one complaint for SF has always been that most rules treat aliens as some stereotype human historical group instead of somehow actually alien in mindset/values/tactics."

I wonder to what extent this is really possible. If two totally alien cultures/species/etc. meet in conflict, it seems likely that one would wipe out the other with little trouble. Not much of a game there. Does the goal of producing a game with some semblance of balance between opponents force both sides into a similar mode of behavior?

The hive-mind mechanism (e.g., they're all unbreakable troops until the queen is whacked, after which they wander around aimlessly) is the only type of "alien" I've seen in a game that was not essentially some variety of human.

Dave

"…I wonder to what extent this is really possible. If two totally alien cultures/species/etc. meet in conflict, it seems likely that one would wipe out the other with little trouble…"

"little trouble"…I am not sure how you concluded that.

1) It's never happened (given "alien" to mean ET versus earthling) so it's speculative on all our parts (untested)

2) By that standard one could say that any space faring race would destroy any non-space faring race because of technology (again an untested premise)

3) Any similar technology groups have to develop something some edge (pilot skill for the Isrealis in the 1960's) to win or accept attrition and/or gueriila warfare (PRC defense plans in the 1950s versus soviets)

It may be we aucutomatically/unconsciously stereotype any alien design races in a game into historical human terms hence it's difficult to represent but Prophecy of War had a decent attempt at that IIRC.

Gracias,

Glenn

Ivan DBA wrote…

> I do feel this way somewhat about "hard" sf games. They really aren't much
> different in look or feel from modern equipment…wargaming is not just about
> game mechanics and tactics. A big part of what we are doing creating a visual
> story…So even if the rules are EXACTLY the same, a WWII game might feel very
> different from a hard SF game…[Game mechanics can vary in Sci-Fi].

I have to agree with Ivan. We are limited by the size of gaming tables and the ability to model fog of war. This means the mechanics of most games set after the 1940's or so, historical or Sci-Fi, play much the same.

I prefer Sci-Fi largely because I dislike simulating combat with firearms. When my army men shoot bullets, I am too close to the stench of violence.

Hi Glenn,

I have an idea that by reducing aliens to wargame stats – rendering them humanly comprehensible – we by necessity remove a goodly degree of their alien-ness.

That said, GDW did some interesting stuff with the Kafers in the 2300 universe, in that their morale and initiative increase in proportion to the perceived threat level(that includes casualties – shooting Kafers just raises their morale/unit quality).

As mentioned in another thread, in Traveller, Hivers won't enter the battle area, relying on a client race to fight for them. Hivers aren't pacifists, they just prefer 'abstract" violence, hence rather that punch you, they'd rather shoot you, and rather than shoot using LOS, they'd rather lob a missile at you from over the horizon.

When reduced to the tabletop game level, it may be that the best we can do to simulate aliens is to adapt them to the local rules, then break the rules with them – increase morale, decrease initiative, intrduce idiosyncrasy.

IIRC, GZG's alien race Savasku (sp?) usually appear as a third side and randomly roll whether they join one side or another, attack both sides, (or possbly flee?).

Possibly one way to simulate aliens is to expand on GZG's Savasku concept and introduce an element of mystery solving to an alien battlefield encounter. Assign random values to certain areas of the battlefield and whomever controls the areas with the most points wins; similar to Dirtside II only not limit selection to terrain features – an empty patch of board may be the key to the alien's objectives.

Who knew the ETs wanted the car park? They're ETs!

Regards,
Keith F.

I play them both.

Apples and oranges. Both are fruit, both with different flavors.

"2) By that standard one could say that any space faring race would destroy any non-space faring race because of technology (again an untested premise)"

Yep, pretty much. Untested it may be, but if one species is advanced enough to travel through space and the other is not, I know who my money is going to be put on to win.

Dave

Mid-game deployment/re-deployment: drop pods, teleportation, etc.

Mark Plant wrote: No moral dilemmas about having to want the Nazis or Stalinists to win. (This is a major one for me.)

Personally I have a moral problem with
being eaten by Bugs.. but whaddu I know..? :-)

[Yes, I see your point tho..]

Why do I play Sci-Fi games? The miniatures look better than WW2 ones.

IMHO: It depends on why you play WWII. If you game it because you find the history interesting, why would you not want to game your favourite military SF book?

Are all WWII rules sets the same? Why not? What would necessarily make a WWII set work for Sci Fi and vice versa? What wouldn't work substituting WWII for Sci Fi and vice versa? Last time I read WWII, I don't remember laser blasters, plasma guns, photon torpedoes (although the long lance comes close), grav vehicles, power armor or any of the other things that define Sci Fi gaming. Must be some differences somewhere in there…

On the subject of making interesting alien races, it generally comes down to the psychology, though anatomical limitations are always good.

As an example, I once created a race called the Tonk once. They were large humanoids evolved from a creature analogous to a manitee/dolphin cross. They were amphibious and pretty mellow in general. They came from a planet with a thick atmosphere and had under-developed vision but incredible hearing and smell. There was much more detail to their background.

All of these details went into coming up with their in-game abilities. Detection ranges, motivation, reactions, hth/vs ranged. It even played in the weapons I designed for them – magnetically projected explosive rounds tied into goggle-mounted targeting systems to compensate for lack of natural accuracy.

They ended up believable, realistic, and interesting. They were not based on an Earthly society, so they really didn't feel that way. The biggest influence in their development was the miniatures that I based the conversions on. I think a lot of aliens feel like Earthly cultures, because designers use that as a shortcut in design. Of course nothing says that alien cultures aren't going to have something in common with Earthly cultures.

-Eli

I have to admit that we've played Nuts! using AT-43 figs without any modification to the rules.

That's just playing WW2 with sci fi figures. You can do it but it's not the same thing.

NUTS! is not even close to 5150 the sci fi rules set. 5150 has ten different alien races that have separate rules and behave differently than each other, different technology and more.

As mentioned WW2 and SF do share some common elements.

"…Yep, pretty much. Untested it may be, but if one species is advanced enough to travel through space and the other is not, I know who my money is going to be put on to win…."

Well, no big argument there. However…

It's just possible that the cost of the probable eventual military "victory" might be unacceptable to the high tech race so they leave after a few clashes.

The Low Tech race then calls it (survival and/or "driving off the BEM") a "victory" and who can gainsay them?

The high tech race might consider it a defeat that they lost creatures (low birth rate?) they could ill afford and failed to achieve thier prime directive – flim-flam them out of all their cheese whiz with no losses.

Gracias,

Glenn

I've got some of the GZG playtest rules for the Kra'vak and the Phalons (still waiting for Bugs Don't Surf, Jon!), and while the Kra'vak basically have reversed human psychology (berserk and charge instead of break and run), the Phalons are just different. I'm going to have to go find the rules again, but I think I pulled my copy off the GZG site.

"…Yep, pretty much. Untested it may be, but if one species is advanced enough to travel through space and the other is not, I know who my money is going to be put on to win…."

Until the low tech conducts a guerrilla war picking and choosing when and where they fight.

I really see your points. It all comes down to the rules. My real problem is that I don't have a set of sci-fi rules yet. Plus I have been thinking a bit too hard sci-fi.

"…have been thinking a bit too hard sci-fi…"

Probably not. You just haven't found the rules that match what you want to do. Or at least that's what I say about certain other (un-named) genres.

Gracias,

Glenn

We all know who won WW2.

The Space Marines?