Pictors Studio | 04 Nov 2014 8:25 p.m. PST |
I just finished this story by Mack Reynolds. It was pretty interesting. Apparently in his future, conflicts come about between companies, between companies and unions and between unions and each side hires up a bunch of mercenaries to fight for them. Not much different than the later idea of conflict companies in the RPG Underground. However in this the soldiers in the conflict all have to use pre-1900 technology. So they are all running around with Maxims, field artillery, cavalry and so forth in designated combat "reservations" where they fight each other and the winner gets to decide whatever the issue was between them. Has any one ever gamed this? From the book the units are all uniformed in the uniforms of the companies they fight for but that need not be the case. It would be a neat way to bring a bunch of 19th century stuff together in the same way that people game ancients. Black Powder tournaments and so on. Not something I'm interested in doing myself but it may be of interest to others out there. Plus I can cross post from the SF boards to the 19th century boards. Weird. |
x42brown | 04 Nov 2014 10:59 p.m. PST |
I thought about it way back in the 70s but at that time I could not see any suitable figures so didn't go for it and forgot about it. I do think it would work well and nowadays there are much more figures on the market. x42 Edit:- modelling the press crews with cameras would be a must, |
Pictors Studio | 05 Nov 2014 5:36 a.m. PST |
Yeah, I would think that would be a big part of the game. If you could come up with rules for how the press moved around and each player had "their" guy and the guy that did something closest to the press won in some way. So if you had a 3 player a side game your side might lose the battle but your guy, since he was in the thick of the fighting and did whatever it was (his unit rolled the most dice, inflicted the most casualties) with the press in sight, might win that part of the game. |
KTravlos | 05 Nov 2014 7:56 a.m. PST |
Here, let me give you a story for a different type of campaign to get the same-though it might be a bit off topic As industrial civilization continued developing a homogenized materialist meta-humanity, groups of dissidents continued to resist, many violently as well as grow due to alienation. However the increasing kinetic and surveillance power of the Meta-human culture made such resistance increasingly desperate. At the same time a distaste for violence and imposition by the meta-human culture created an escape clause. The meta-humans decided to relocate the dissidents in terraformed worlds in a great Expulsion. Refusal was not an option. Thus people and cultures hearkening to pre-industrial norms and societies were moved to a series of terrformed planets. A type of Prime Directive was set up by the meta-humans and all contact was broken.
There was variation between the many cultures, but slowly most of them regressed to pre-industrial social and material norms. In the 1000 years since the Great Expulsion there was variation in development. Most dissident cultures entered the stable cycle of pre-industrial agricultural civilisation (conservative and communist dissidents?), some became hunter-gatherer societies (anarchist dissidents?). Some entered a second industrial revolution and reached the space age coming into contact , cooperation and even conflict with the Meta-Human Combine, The Automated Intelligence, the Tharaskurfian Commonwealth etc . And some are just entering their second industrial civilisation. You could thus build a nice campaign based on one of the terraformed expulsion worlds, in which the previously agricultural based societies are going through a second industrial revolution. How would their military and political societies react to this? Do they have any memories of the previous industrial revolution? If so how do those affect their stuff? Ideas, ideas of course. |
Pictors Studio | 05 Nov 2014 8:05 a.m. PST |
That is more or less Warhammer 40K. |
KTravlos | 05 Nov 2014 8:46 a.m. PST |
bah, I see it more towards Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind! The anime Last Exile also. |
Saber6 | 05 Nov 2014 9:01 a.m. PST |
Basic ImagiNation stuff. Just change the Baronies for Corporate Sponsors. I remeber an Orc army in the 70's under the banner of Coca-Cola |
x42brown | 05 Nov 2014 9:19 a.m. PST |
I think it would make a good campain for a largish club. Players acting as Corporation/Union board looking for profit and separately a character try to raise his class acting for the press. With a games master operating the press. Not for me any more an old folks home club could not run this. x42 |
Darkest Star Games | 05 Nov 2014 11:31 a.m. PST |
Same could also be said for Digital Target: Grey. I really like Naussica (manga) and the Last Exile series. Did something sort of similar but with prop-planes and "non-modern" tanks after seeing The Sky Crawlers. Modern construction and design techniques on "force-antiquated" constrained requirements. It was actually pretty fun. |
The G Dog | 05 Nov 2014 3:36 p.m. PST |
I seem to recall a set of short stories in which wargamers were used to resolve litigation. Talented, skilled gamers could higher out to parties in a dispute (negotiated through a gamer's guild) and fight a random battle to determine the 'winner' in the dispute. Battles were holographic and covered the gamut of historical events. It was a fantasy job for the old school historical gamers. Anyone remember the title? |
Weasel | 06 Nov 2014 1:42 p.m. PST |
The idea sounds fun. We once toyed with the idea of Traveller but with WW2 era technology, space marines plunging from their landing craft with M1 rifles and whatnot. |