Steve Blease | 19 Sep 2012 7:26 a.m. PST |
I've been (slowly) working on a VSF (GSF?) game based around an invasion of Mars by Napoleon's Grande Armée in 1812 and am now starting to go public with it here: napoleononmars.blogspot.co.uk Think Napoleon in Egypt with a bit of Wellesley in India meets Barsoom
|
bogdanwaz | 19 Sep 2012 7:38 a.m. PST |
I love the concept. Is this going to be a published rule set? |
Frederick | 19 Sep 2012 8:01 a.m. PST |
That is a great idea! Look forward to your future posts |
Steve Blease | 19 Sep 2012 8:22 a.m. PST |
|
drummer | 19 Sep 2012 9:54 a.m. PST |
|
John the Greater | 19 Sep 2012 11:33 a.m. PST |
And the French thought the Russian winter was cold! |
HussarL | 19 Sep 2012 11:49 a.m. PST |
Very creative for a change! |
Dances With Words | 19 Sep 2012 12:23 p.m. PST |
so when he's finally defeated, we'll call it 'Waterloost?' |
abdul666lw | 19 Sep 2012 12:31 p.m. PST |
Excellent (even if as a tricorne addict I'd prefer Munchausen on Mars / Space 1745 link -and I have the feeling that Lace Wars players would be, on the average, for receptive to such obscene departure from historical reality): best wishes! Not irrelevant: - a skyship with crew in Napoleonic shakos YouTube link - a French comics 'Empire'
In 1815 Napoleon and Wellington fight for the control of India; with steamtanks, dirigibles, a Babbage engine
Good ideas but awful drawing! |
Glengarry5 | 19 Sep 2012 1:00 p.m. PST |
Hey, the drawings not so bad! |
abdul666lw | 19 Sep 2012 2:39 p.m. PST |
For the machines, indeed; but you can recognize a character from an image to the next only by the clothes. |
79thPA | 19 Sep 2012 7:30 p.m. PST |
|
abdul666lw | 22 Sep 2012 12:52 p.m. PST |
For 18th – early 19th C. Martian sepoys, Alternative Armies 'Napoleonic' Elves are humanoid enough to pass for Barsoom-type perfectly humanoid Martians (*almost* perfectly, but the intimate differences due to their Monotreme nature en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme are not visible in 28mm) -Bronze Age / Tin Man / Raging Heroes- but with features compatible with (not?)S1889 Parroom Station (Brigade Games) 'less humanoid' ones. For the British side, the Dark Elf Light Infantry link in quasi-Tarleton helmet is most appropriate
while for the French the Elves of Armorica Carabiniers link look quite fitting
|
abdul666lw | 05 Oct 2012 4:04 a.m. PST |
Do 'great mind think alike', or is pre-Victorian SF becoming fashionable? After the Wessex Games project AB One Games propose 'Napoleon and the armies of Mars': TMP link
According to the supplements / quasi-'advertising flyers' on free download, the emphasis on huge warwalkers can give a 'Napoleonic Battletech' feel to the game. Totally different from '1812 – Napoleon on Mars' aiming at playing a 'Wellington in India' type of campaign in a 'Sword & Planet' setting. Now I wonder why the two projects are set in Napoleonic times. Personal preference of the designers? Or because Napoleonic wargaming is so popular, promising a wide audience? In this case I fear the wrong 'population' was targeted. According to my personal experience in clubs and to the tone on discussion groups and forums, 'Napoleonics' are on the average totally allergic to the slightest departure from 'historical accuracy'. One of the first reactions on TMP was a scream of outrage immediately already supporting my 'impression'. Mid-18th C. gamers on the other hand proved to be a less bigot, more open-minded, more tolerant to 'imagination' bunch. '1745 – Maurice de Saxe on Mars' link would enjoy a less hostile / more friendly reception than '1812 – Napoleon on Mars' -and there were more, and larger, Anglo-French conflicts in India during the SYW than by Napoleonic times. As for 'Napoleon and the Armies of Mars' the problem is totally different: while '1812 -NoM' respected 'period' warfare and wargaming, just setting them in a more 'exotic' environment, 'NatAoM' is 'steampunk with soldiers in shakos'. |
Edwulf | 05 Oct 2012 4:55 a.m. PST |
Doesn't phase me. The premise could be fun. I suppose it would depend on if the Martians are on a roughly equal footing with the French. If its just British vs French.. On mars I'd not be interested. Probably wouldn't buy it
I'd try it though if some one brought a set down to the club. |
commanderroj | 05 Oct 2012 5:32 a.m. PST |
Redcoats on Mars aside, whatever happened to Aquanef? I'd buy into Barsoom meets anything, as long as it was 15mm (i just cant cope with 25+mm) and the figures had the character on the recent Copplestone Barbarians project. I'm not too keen on the walkers, i'd rather see troops on martian mounts, Howdahs (a bit like microworld games dinoriders) and Barsoomian flyers. |
abdul666lw | 05 Oct 2012 10:22 p.m. PST |
Indeed the general idea, pre-Victorian SF, looks more appealing than the precise setting, where a player can dispense with infantry, cavalry and artillery and field a force exclusively composed with battlemechs. |
abdul666lw | 06 Oct 2012 5:57 a.m. PST |
Actually -and not to detract or disparage the efforts of people drawing attention to this ignored subgenre- but 'Flintlocks on *Barsoom*' don't require a special 'commercial' set of rules. Initial bragging about the performances of radium rifles notwithstanding, Barsoom is a 'Sword & Planet' setting for swashbuckling adventures of the 3 Musketeers – Brigadier Gérard type. Thus to play Napoleon (or Munchausen in Catherine 's service, or Montcalm and Wolfe
) on Barsoom, any set of rules (of the 'scale' corresponding to personal tastes and possibilities, from skirmishes to mega-battles) allowing to play the F&IW or the Carnatic Wars link is adequate. Using a common type of troop or weapon as the reference for a 'rule of 3' computation it's not that hard to 'import' from a set of rules into another (eg. elephants and rockets into a F&IW set, Byzantine fire siphons in H&M rules
). Flyers look more 'deterring', but detailed aerial warfare is a game in itself, e.g. the (spectacular) 'Cloudships of Mars' link YouTube link But n a basically 'land' game, even on Barsoom, flyers should not be more important than canoes and longboats in an 'amphibious' game. I'm not a fan of 'hypergeneric' sets of the HOTT type, but the 'Fantasy extras' of the Old WRG Ancients 6th edition had very simple rules for flyers: a single flying height with standardized effect on shooting ranges, optionally a single movement rate, always 'uphill', otherwise treat as extra-fast light cavalry, elephant or warwagon
(the sails are mechanically silly, but the model is beautiful) The Barsoomian lower gravity can be ignored -it is implied enough in the silhouette of a few minis
|
arthur1815 | 06 Oct 2012 1:09 p.m. PST |
Obviously the Barsoomians are a silcone-based life-form
|
McLaddie | 06 Oct 2012 7:53 p.m. PST |
Did you write silicon based life form? That's not a misspelling, is it? She'd definitely be deadly facing a french battalion and with that high-impact construction, it's better than Kevlar. Victorian Brits on Mars, Napoleonic Rabbits and Elves
It's been done
. I'd like to see a table top game based on the Napoleonic alternate history "Temeraire" Series, which starts with His Majesty's Dragoon. Far more intriguing. |
abdul666lw | 06 Oct 2012 10:26 p.m. PST |
I know of the "Temeraire" series but did not read the books: is this illustration faithful?
Then several tenets are beyond my capacity of 'willing suspension of disbelief'. I'm ready to accept that such large creatures can fly and even carry a rider. But their anatomy is more than problematic: where are the powerful flight muscles and the huge breastbone to attach them? How does the skeleton of the front limbs fits, being across these muscles? A 'wyvern'
anatomical design would be far more credible. Not to mention that traditional dragons, being vertebrates with 3 pairs of limbs just like angels, demons, succubi and centaurs, don't come from Earth but from Barsoom
But my main point of worry is the apparent lack of 'butterfly effect': in a world with giant fire-breathing flying creatures, warships simply would not -*could* not- look like 'real' ones of our early 19th C.: rather like galeasses metal-protected from above like the Korean 'Turtle' galley:
|
Battlescale | 07 Oct 2012 3:09 a.m. PST |
Errr, I think I'll stick to reality thanks. 'We have the technology to get to Mars but we still use muskets'
I rest my case. |
abdul666lw | 07 Oct 2012 4:24 a.m. PST |
A newly discovered and applied type of energy (for instance) does not immediately impact on very different types of technology. The Leyden jar dates from 1745, Galvani, Mesmer, Franklin, Volta
worked on electricity in the (late) 18th C.; the 1st attempts of electrical telegraphy date from the 18th C., the first practical lines from 1837. Yet electricity is used in Gatling guns only since the M61 Vulcan (1952). Unwanted 'butterfly effects' can be prevented with 'safety rails' ("butterfly nets") in the background fluff. Since I wish to keep H&M (Lace Wars, precisely) warfare (and thus wargaming) unaltered on (most of Earth) I'm very cautious when adding SF elements to prevent them from 'spreading': TMP link In the case of 'Napoleon and the Armies of Mars' TMP link Bonaparte discovered a 'stargate' to Mars under the Great Pyramid: no immediate spin-offs on weapon technology. |
McLaddie | 07 Oct 2012 8:50 a.m. PST |
abdul666lw Yep, startgates to Mars are far easier to swallow when considering one's tenets of belief
;-7 Actually, the picture you posted really doesn't relate well to the "Temeraire" books in details. And the actual technologies of the period aren't changed
It is just that dragons have been added. And only some of the dragons breathed fire. Ships continued to be the same, only with 'carrier-like' ships for the dragons. There weren't that many of them in the books
say 100-300 per nation of all sizes and traits. |
Battlescale | 08 Oct 2012 6:17 a.m. PST |
Hello?
Hello?
. Has everyone gone completely mad? |
Trajanus | 08 Oct 2012 1:47 p.m. PST |
|
abdul666lw | 09 Oct 2012 6:27 a.m. PST |
Be reassured, most "Napoleonics" are still hysterically historical: TMP link |
abdul666lw | 10 Oct 2012 11:38 a.m. PST |
Another sacrilegious departure from historical accuracy:
link |