"What attracts you to..." Topic

Not trying to be controversial… I'm genuinely interested in what attracts you to weird WWII, zombies, and similar genre.

For me, it's playing out the fun of movies, comics, books and fictional situations. I can use my imagination in creating new things and a game does not often revolve around arguing over historical anecdotes and source material unless a Romero zombie purist has issues with a Resident Evil fan…just kidding, I've never seen that happen.

What attracts people to any genre?

Weird War II is Hellboy territory.

There is also a case for it being a reflection of reality but with excess.

The zombie/werewolf/cybernetic drones that are portrayed in many of the Weird War II settings are an excessive reflection of the experimentation and cruelty that the Nazis carried out in real life in WWII…so it could almost be believable. Add to that Hitlers obsession with the master race, the occult and ancient religions and the Weird War II idea of magic is not too far away…

There is also the absolute line drawn in the sand as to which faction is good and which is evil. The Zombie/werewolf/cyborg/warlock fetish Nazis will always be the evil ones…

I don't game the genre and have no interest in it BUT I can understand the attraction. It is simply a case of ultimate good against ultimate evil with all sorts of tie ins to real history…that gives it enough realism to be really interesting.

Blame Wolfenstein 3D and Indiana Jones.

Historical Nazis had already descended into self parody with their deliberately intimidating skull insignia and black uniforms and the pagan proto-norse ceremony. It would be funny if they weren't actually as evil as they were. Adding the supernatural stuff just fits, as insomniac says above. And makes it all the more satisfying when you get to mow them down in droves.

And on the other side, there's so much cool stuff from the Golden Age of comics and later WWII comic ret-cons like the Invaders. The first issue of Captain America has him decking Hitler in the face. Plus, flying saucers and foo fighters were happening at that time. It's not a stretch to move the Roswell crash back a few years so America can use alien technology against supernatural nazis.

Wow, that was such an academic answer… Would make a good research paper actually. I game with Zombies because it's fun!! One of the first movies I saw with my dad was Dawn of the Dead (the original), and loved the zombie flicks after that. Gaming them was just natural….

escapism

Take that, Hitler!
picture

It's good goofy fun. I like Dashiell Hammett and Rayomond Chandler hard boiled PI stories. I like the look of the 30s and 40s buck Rogers type Space Fantasy stuff with tight space suits, fishbowl helmets and flying around in V2 rockets with fins etc.

Nothing at all.

Killing Nazis good. Killing zombies good. Killing Nazi Zombies good squared.

LLC aka Ron

In some cases, the wierd is what comes first, and the WWII after.

ROFLOL! I can't argue with anything that's been said. Just wondered. Reading your responses, I can see the attraction. It makes sense. I've played D&D and sci-fi RPGs, done some Old West games and have a passing interest in pulp. Most of my gaming has been WWII, though, along with some ancients.

"I've played D&D"

If you were playing D&D when the movie 'Wizards' came out, the idea of adding fantastic elements to WWII (or WWII elements to D&D) starts to make a bit more sense.

All of what has already been said, plus the fact that these types of games tend to be played more at a skirmish scale of action, which means more "character-full" rules and detail make more sense.

Most of the above! More fun, more imagination, less pointless pontificating.

The different pulp/weird war themes are important, but I think I like it more because of the mindset of that kind of game. It will probably be a fun, loose & friendly game. Nothing taken to seriously & all the players are there to have fun & not argue over rules & turnback colors.

The thrill of the kill

unless a Romero zombie purist has issues with a Resident Evil fan…just kidding, I've never seen that happen.

Yet.

Have a degree in History, am a huge wartime Golden Age superhero comic fan, splatter punk, fan of old school pulp, Grindhouse films, bad girls and all things base, bloody and gray in morality.

Weird WWII just seemed the way to go.
Brian

1. Fun. Hard to take seriously the spray pattern of a sawed off shotgun vs a regluar length shotgun when fighting zombies.
2. Easy to enter the genre. DOn't need manyfigures to play skirmish game.
3. Crossover. Pulpy Chinese warlord troops can be used for reasonably straight up back of beyond games or the mystery of the Jade Spitoon, Nazis can be used for WWII straight up or wierd pulpy scenarios, etc

Recent convert here. I loved Hellboy and the Castle Wolfenstein games, and when my kids introduced me to 'Nacht der Untoten' on COD5, I just had to buy me some Nazi zombies to go up against my GIs.

Cheers,
Paul.

How about killing 'teenaged, mutant, radioactive, martian, nazi, surf-zombie, were-vampwolves from the 23rd Dimension in the Earth's Core?

You do realize that the HALO 'genre' is loosely inspired by the '300' type greek/historical thingie don't you???…just like 'Magnificent 7' was western version of 'the 7 Samarai' and….then there's the remake of 'Fame' and 'Children of the Corn' and the re-release of Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D…and…

(anyone remember the ORIGINAL 300 Spartans or was it 600? from back in the 60's????)

I'm SPARTENTACLE!!!
Slishfully,
Sgt DWW-btod and if it's zombie-ish, it gets setting TWO on my plasma rifles…(say hello to my little friends!)
TZAAAAAPPPPFFFFZZZTTTT!!! *sizzle…whimper…crackle…*

Remember it? I own it!

What better way to proclaim my pride in my B.A. in History than making certain my Heroic American Rocket Troopers arrive just in time to save the Lovely Fair Maidens from the Nefarious Clutches of Herr Doktor Totenhosen and his Shambling Nazi Undead Horde.

Nothing.

There are many movies, comic books, TV shows, and figures to tempt us into the genre. Indiana Jones, Star Trek had many Nazi episodes, most of the superhero comic books and even Weird War comics and The War That Time Forgot comics. Even GI Combat, the Haunted Tank was great fun. For just a small investment my massive WWII collections can be used for a whole different genre.

Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

great heapy loads of steaming fun!

For some reason, I've always been attracted by the dark side. Maybe its because absolute good is so unbelievable.

Usually though its because they usually look cooler. But the antihero Wolverine-Mad Max archetype is best.

There are also a lot of story-lines out there to pillage. Even the cinema is keeping the genre going with films like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', 'Inglorious Basterds' and 'Dead Snow'…not to mention all the comic books that are available in the mainstream. If you can't get great stories far a game or two from what is out there, then you just can't have an imagination.

When "pulp" games were first conceived the idea was to set the games during the "pulp era" to simulate fictional situations that you would have seen in feature films, "B" movies, and "serials", or heard as radio dramas, or read in "pulp magazines" during the "pulp era", which is roughly from the 1920's until the mid 1950's when "serials", radio drama and "pulp magazines" ceased to exist. But somehow this forum expanded to include anything and everything that could be loosely classified as "action and adventure", so now there are no genre boundaries here at all. I have no interest in gaming Weird War II as there was no fiction in that genre available during the "pulp era". Same goes for the the flesh eating monsters that are now commonly called "zombies". There were no creatures like that in fiction during that era either. When you say "similar" you'd have to be more specific as fiction from the "pulp era" covers a *lot* of territory. (-:

Some interesting observations in this thread, but my reasons are completely different. As a modeler and painter first I'm mostly drawn to sculpts before any particular genre (although to be fair my interest in things like pulp magazines drew me to check out the available figure lines.)

All the Weird WWII sculpts drew my attention and reminded me of my childhood over 40 years ago pitting my plastic monster figures against my Marx Army men in huge sand fortresses. It was a lot of fun then and I'm having a lot of fun now recreating those figures in metal and drawing inspiration for my games from those days of long ago. Kind of a "full circle" sort of thing for me, if that makes any sense.

Blonde women in black leather.

The thing that attracts me to zombies, and pulp gaming in general, is the multiple factions, each with their own goals, often working at cross purposes to each other. This breaks out of the rut of the usual "meeting engagement, two sides butt heads until one gives up" games. The rules can be simple, but the art of winning under such terms can be a magnificent challenge, and a whole lot of fun.

WWII + Science-Fiction + Fantasy / Horror = …a lot of fun!

I really like playing all of the types of games above in their own right. If you enjoy all of these, when you add them together to make Weird World War 2 it is one of the best genera of games you can play and enjoy.

Its like a big scoop of all your favourite icecream flavours in a bowl.

My primary interest is in Wierd WWII, with an emphasis on technology rather than magic/occult/zombies. So Gear Krieg & Dust are more my thing.

A traditional sci-fi or fantasy genre allows for new creations to be made & added at will – but they have to fit with the feel of the other elements of the genre, or looks wrong.

Wierd WWII provides the same opportunity to add new creations, with the same restriction that the have to "fit" with the WWII aesthetic or they'll feel wrong. In wierd WWII, i can make a Tesla KV-2, or put a KV-2 turret on a walker body. wheras if I so much as make the barrel too long on the same KV-2, it's not historical.

Also, wierd world war II allows for an "open-ended" world. It's not set in stone that the conflict ends in 1945. AE-WWII for example is set in 1946, with the war still on and no timeline of how it ends after that.

if you were playing D&D when the movie 'Wizards' came out

This nailed me dead on. I love that movie! It's the only movie I know of where an Elf curses like a certain Cimmerian barbarian we all know.

>All the Weird WWII sculpts drew my attention and reminded me of my childhood over 40 years ago pitting my plastic monster figures against my Marx Army men in huge sand fortresses.<

Diehard

I did the same thing, occasionally pitting a platoon of soldiers against a herd of triceratops. My favorite was the Marx pot bellied T-Rex. Then the Miller wax dinosaurs were produced and because of the larger size and more animated and threatening pose, the Miller T-Rex became my monster of choice. Too bad the wax dinosaurs broke so easily.

I hear you Shadow, right after my MPC monsters my next favorite was nazi controlled dinosaurs.

Diehard

You're probably a little younger than me. Marx hadn't produced German soldiers yet when I was a kid. My Marx soldiers had to fight each other. Or fight against the metal "pod foot" soldiers that I got from Woolworths. Marx Tom Corbett figures make a nice scenario on a prehistoric planet too. And of course MPC ring hand "Ramar of the Jungle" hunters and natives in a dinosaur populated "lost land".

Remember the DC war comics where GI's fought dinosaurs? I had pretty much outgrown comic books by the time they were published, but I occasionally picked one up because that format was so cool. (-:

Walkers and zombies.

I like history

I like "What if?"

I like Mechs

I like Tanks

I like "almost" science

I like magic

I like Psycic skills

I like guns

I like shape shifters

I like the undead

I like super heroes

I like alien invaders

I like demonic possessions

WWW2 potentially has the lot, and so much more crazy stuff besides.

I also like that it is no way affiliated to a particular rule set and that people will use whatever the heck minis they want. My WWW2 Soviets will be a combination of Artizan and BAM, BTD and Westwind WW2 infantry, a JTFM and BAM tanks and jeeps (or my WW2 soviet army as it is better known). Along side this there will be AT43 walkers, MAK HAFS, some Warzone plastics with head and weapon swaps to make elites shock troops and various plastic D&D were bears as "nasty surprises".

I have to say that, for some reason, from all the different stuff I am collecting this is the area which fires my imagination the most.

The potential for crazy animated fun in games is nearly unlimited. At it's base the genre has a group of "heroes" pitted against some "evil." How you play depends on your bent.

Personally, I want a bit of the fantastic in the games that I play. If I can have a big monster in the game, so much the better. Mixing my taste for fantasy and WWII (as I was a WWII movie junkie in my youth) just seems like good fun. WWWII give me the option to indulge these proclivities. …And, figures/soldiers in unnecessary gas-masks is just plain fun, both painting and playing.

Within the general bounds of this genre a lot can be done: Rat Patrol and the Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (got to do this one!), a Cyborg Factory too Far, PT-109 and the Witch Doctor's Wrath, and Big Foot Joe and the Mengele Menace.

The sky, ocean, farthest reaches of the Earth, and your imagination are the limit…or lack of limit.

Synjin