"Would you convert the War Rocket rules?" Topic

I love simple rules sets and War Rocket seems to fit this category (I dont own them yet). What I have seen in other threads about them made me wonder if they could be converted to starship combat without the pulp flavor?

Could they be changed to make them less pupl? What would you change to meke them less pulp? For that matter what is it about them that makes them pulp fiction?

battlestar- I have 12 vipers and 12 clyon raiders to playtest these rules

And Last starfighter – but no mini for the gunstar :-(

Scale is class 1 to 4, not sure how many people are in a class 4 ship

And of course – silly me Star wars

They flavor is pulp in the sense that it's straightforward and leans far more to what's exciting than what's "realistic." It's dogfights in space with colorful forces and no morale rules.

If you want to take out the pulp flavor, what flavor do you want in it's place? I'm not sure how to answer your question without knowing that. Do you want Star Trek future utopia? Honor Harrington and Jutland in space? The gritty moral nebulousness of new Battlestar Galactica? The big ships and fleet actions of Star Wars?

In War Rocket there are no radar lock ons, missiles, broadsides, or cumulative ship damage. It's not really aimed at fleet formations. There aren't huge ships, hundreds of feet long with crews in the hundreds (the space stations, motherships and so on appear singly and don't move). If any of those is necessary to the flavor you *do* want, you're going to have to add significantly to the rules.

If you want fun, colorful dogfight rules that *work* and move quickly, War Rocket is the answer. While the Class III and Class IV ships are pretty big (3-4" in 6mm scale, so figure a crew of 20-60), they still function independently like fighters, twisting and turning to bring weapons to bear, not sailing in a line like cruisers.

So I guess it depends on what you mean by "starship combat." If you want small craft, War Rocket is probably adaptable to your flavor of preference. If you want fleet actions of capital ships, well, you could certainly adapt it, but you'd be doing some real work.

Andrew

War Rocket doesn't even pretend to have a vector system. Put a unique ID # on each models stand and on a modelless stand. This second stand would be placed at the models last location. Forget the listed speeds, a models acceleration is equal to it's class number its speed is the total of its accelerations. It still costs 1 acceleration to turn up to 60 degrees, but you can turn more then sixty degrees in a turn.

To move, measure the distance between the model flight stand and the plain flight stand then move the model an equal distance along the same line, and put the empty flight stand where the model was. Lastly, move the model up to it's entire acceleration and/or turn it. Models may only accelerate directly away from the models venturi or rocket exhaust. In other words movement has a momentum segment(moving the distance from last turns current or model position and repositioning the flight stands) and an acceleration segment(relocating the current position model).

Then too, select models you consider realistic.

Why not just pick another set of rules that models that type of movement a lot closer?

What makes War Rocket "pulpy" is:

A. the artwork and the way language of the rules

B. the point an shoot nature of combat

c. four classes of ships

d. four methods of propulsion (movement)

e. the simplicity of weaponry

It would be far easier to use an existing game like Star Fleet Battles (the SFB Cadet introductory gamette is very simple) than to "un-pulp" War Rocket.

In fact, IMHO, it's easier to simply a game that's designed to be complicated (SFB) than it is to complexify a simple game without breaking the mechanics.

Just popping in on this thread…

When we were developing War Rocket, it reminded me of watching Star Wars for the first time in '77. As one of the game's co-creators, I really love the mechanics and look of War Rocket. However, I was scoping out some plastic Star Wars pre-paints to do a Star Wars game with War Rocket rules. Since George Lucas created Star Wars as modern Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon, it makes perfect sense to me.

However, you can also play War Rocket with the beautiful, high-quality rocket miniatures from Hydra:)

Matt Beauchamp
Hydra Miniatures
hydraminiatures.com

I have to admit that when I read the rules Star Trek TOS and Star Wars did cross my mind. Both are very "pulpy" in my mind. Not mush hard sci-fi going on there, but lots of lasers & phasers shoot outs.

But if you're like me, the rules are only half the game. The rest is in the miniatures. Since I frequently use new rules as a rationale to buy new miniatures, Hydra's combination of rules with very, very nice miniatures eye candy in the rulebook and on their website panders to the pewter junkie in me.

So, while it would fairly easy to bold on some simple shield and phaser lock rolls to War Rocket, it's simpler still to order a couple of the starter fleets and start blasting away.

At least for now. Later on, I might decide to use my SFB miniatures for something other than holding down storage containers and adapt the rules. But that's a ways off as the four factions' ships are so well designed, it's going to take a while before I get tired of playing the game with those ships and as written.

I have a cautionary tale for Hydra and those who would bolt on more rules.

Once upon a time, there was a game company that published its original version of a space battles game; it was a pamphet sized pocket game. It was very popular and soon spawned two supplements, in the same format, adding some races and rules. Those were very popular as well. Then that company kept adding more and more rules and publishing ever expanding rule books and a huge amount of supplements and even a periodical; all of which contained additional rules. A simple, straight forward space combat game, became a hugely complicated encylopeadic juggernaught; a rules lawer's paradise. In fact, it became so unplayable to potential new players (and many players of the original version) it lost its support and the whole system had to be rebooted.

Please, Hydra, resist the temptation to add complexity. Player's will ask that you add their pet rules. You will find things that you want to add as well. However, before adding any rules, weigh the cost (in terms of added complexity) against the increase in fun. Think about new players and what they will have to buy/learn to play the game.

If you're talking about Awful Green Things From Outer Space just ignore the rules for donning space suits and fighting the Green Things on the outside of the ship.

But War Rocket needs a computer rating for each ship, because ships with faster CPUs can switch their tractor beams more rapidly between objects and thus use them to as counter measures to multiple missiles/mines, and with enough CPU power you should be able to adjust shield frequencies more rapidly to increase resiliency (though not capacity) to phased and EMF weapons, even though it wouldn't give any benefits against missiles, torpedoes, or plasma weapons.

(Just in case this slipped by anyone, this entire post is silly.)

Andrew

Also Dan dare, which is a pulp idea, with earth against mars, that make it still colourful….

And speaking of pulp etc, the start of the film enemy mine, nice war rocket style dogfight..

If you not seen it, try and find the film or clip, cool earth fighter and space station etc…

XRays Vision:"and even a periodical"

Oh, until this point I thought you were talking about Full Thrust. :)

I don't think he intends to add much more depth. Just to expand the scope of what's already there.

I hope so. I read the rules for the third time this morning. I'm still impressed. The person to whom I sent a copy as a gift recieved them today. Now he's going on about which fleet he's going to by.

For my part, it's not which fleet amd I going to buy; it's which fleet am I going to buy first.

Interesting, though, that people are guessing at to which set of rules I referred. That leads me to believe that complicating rules over time is a common occurance. Fortunately, though, some fundamentally simple rules have avoided falling into that tar pit and have stood the test of time.

I'm pretty sure you were talking about Star Fleet Battles, though there's alot of space battle games that have come and gone.

People want table filling fleets, every imaginable technical marvel and mode of transit stated out, and as much damage tracking as possible. Sometimes it's just better to put your own stamp on a set of rules and leave them wanting. :)

Hydra's new tagline: "This is not a democracy!" :)