"Originality in sci-fi miniatures games" Topic

Back in the day I really enjoyed a game called Vor: the Maelstrom. The rules were pretty good (a bit outdated now though), but it was the originality and creativity of the armies that really attracted me. I was really sad when the owning company went belly up and left their line of Vor miniatures largely unfinished. I've had a look at the current crop of sci-fi wargames that exist today and all I see are games with several varieties of humans, or science fantasy with space orcs, space elves, etc. Are there any companies out there with a sci-fi wargame that actually has some originality and creativity? Or do companies nowadays just play it safe by sticking to clones of Warhammer 40K and easy-to-make humans?

If you still wanted VOR, it's still available… as are a lot of the miniatures:

link

But I am sure you already know that and, if that is the case, the link I have provided is for all those who are not familiar with the game :) .

To me, old school sci-fi is Starguard. The figures are still in production.

No Old school is Marx spacemen

I have not played Vor so can not comment on that game. My greatest complaint about games is the lack of diversity in weapons and attitudes. A bolter does not play differently than a smoothbore musket, machine gun or needler. The only rules I know where a machine gun acted differently than other weapons was the old Avalon Hill Squad Leader board game though I could not agree with the presentation in that game either. A space orc reacts no differently than a Viking.

Wackmole9, to me rules, not figures make a game old school.

well, for reactions being different in a rules system, HELLFIRE(6mm) and HELL BY STARLIGHT (15MM ) by Jim Webster both fit that bill- their Reaction Tables were quick, simple and cold be adjusted to create truly non-human responses. Weapons not so much, as they fell into Personal Projectile, Personal Energy, Crew Served Energy, Crew Served Projectile and Artillery of various strengths, but you can adjust ranges of fire,which makes for good variety.

Having had this discussion in similar situations lately, my impression is like that of Shadowdragon, a combination of desire for maximum profit with fear of failure and being lumbered with production costs and exces stock seems to motivate the majority of companies, and the ones that do innovate more often than not become evidence supporting that decision.

Not that I've done actual research but my impression these last few years is that for large-ish companies, rules are an afterthought, sort of a rationalization or excuse for the miniature range.

Miniatures are where the $$$ is so I can't really blame companies for betting on the same horse. After all, trying new things is risky. Playing it safe/tried and true is easier. It just gets old, is all.

I find myself drawn more to 'agnostic' rule sets more and more these days. Or writing my own.

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I really enjoyed VOR, BTW. Growlers were a ton of fun.

I am writing a set of SciFi rules and am wondering about just this point (the one about weapons).

One challenge is the rules get hella complicated hella quick To take a simple example:

In our universe there are energy weapons (blasters) and projectile weapons (guns). Targets therefore wear two kinds of protection: shields (good against energy) and armor (good against guns).

I now have two defensive stats and two offensive stats for each figure. If you have 5 weapon types you need loads more stats.

OR you go with a generic "attack" factor and "defense" factor. This might work with game using a handful of figures per side, but poof there goes your profit margin on figures.

I have not yet found an elegant way to get this in to my game.

And even harder is coming up with "fighting styles" that aren't just "humans in rubber suits." You've got your basic hive mind/bug, your warrior culture (Klingon, Predator), and your human. Kinda hard to find ways to get critters that fight really different.

The Traveller universe has well developed and plausible aliens (and humans whose ancestors had been removed from Earth a very long time ago), and its ground war rules, Striker (GDW 1983), included rules for aliens.

You should be able to find Striker and Striker II somewhere, and I expect the current iteration of Traveller (T5) will produce a good ground game.

Beyond the Gates of Antares, despite being created by some former GW folks, has a pretty diverse array of factions, well beyond the traditional space elves and space orks. I can't comment on the game play though.

I have Beyond the Gates of Antares and think it may fit what you are looking for.

" My greatest complaint about games is the lack of diversity in weapons and attitudes. A bolter does not play differently than a smoothbore musket, machine gun or needler. "

Im a little baffled by that statement- In a given ruleset the various weapons will have different stats, to represent effectivness- accuracy, range, rate of fire, penetration etc. Ive never encountered a game which describes a musket as being different from a bolter and then gives them the same stats. Now to me that variation in stats is sufficient for "play differently" – but that doesnt seem to be the case for you, but I can't see how else it could play differently, an still be part of the same game.

Surely a ruleset that is to not be stupidly unweildy is going to use the same framework for all weaponary described (and simply vary the paramaters within that framework , and not require you to use a seperate set of rules for each weapon. How would that even work? Roll a dice against the firers ballistic skill for the Musket with modifiers for range, but for the bolter draw a card from a deck and you score a hit if you draw a face card? Do we then need a spinner to calculate the effect of a Needler, and a sacraficial goat to calculate the effect of the Lascannon?

I really don't understand the complaint…

Striker was pretty detailed and more along the lines of hard-core wargaming for company/larger organizations, though it would work as small as platoons. If you want something more skirmish oriented, go with Snapshot.

Oh….Snapshot.

Now THAT is Old School….

@Mike Target,

An example of how weapons should be different would be the MG in Squad Leader that I mentioned. IIRC all hexes through which the MGs line of fire passed were attacked. Most games simply give you one hex to shoot at. Throwing out ideas: a powerful weapon might ignore some terrain features, such as woods???, having an effect or like the MG I mentioned it could effect several hexes along the line of fire; a shotgun could effect a fan shaped area but woods would reduce its effectiveness. You would still have some sort of strength stat causing the heavier weapon to do more damage. Yes, this approach would complicate things but seems reasonable to me in skirmish type games.

The problem, as I see it, with lack of imagination is to add truly alien characteristics you would need to add many more stats to any force. I am thinking form memory so please forgive if I have gotten some details incorrect but please let us know in any reply.

I am a huge fan of Striker and Traveller but there is little in the game which is truly alien. There are basically the following weapons types. Close combat weapons where the firer is within reach of their target and basically has to make contact with their weapon which is still being held by them. Chemically or electrically propelled slug throwers, think guns, rail guns, etc., current day technology with incremental improvements. Energy weapons which act for all intents and purposes like slug throwers. Energy weapons which act for all intents and purposes like big longer ranged flamethrower or projectors. The one different weapon is the meson gun. It propels a stream(?) of mesons to a target area with a specific energy level. Mesons can travel through all intervening terrain but at a range set by the energy level they immediately decay and explode. Think artillery except they could be set to decay inside a structure. There are a few variations but I cannot remember them now. Point made.

As a possible starting point for more alien effects let's consider the Zhodani (sp?). Basically humans who have striven to improve or optimize their potential psionic capabilities. So only a few persons in their sphere of influence have any psionic potential at all. Everyone is tested and only those with potential are trained to use it. I don't remember the ratio but I think it is no more than 5% or so. Now you have just created a second class citizen group which is most of your population. Some percentage of those capable people are required to keep tabs on the thoughts of the bulk of the remainder. So how can the remaining capable people be used as troops? In addition to thought police large numbers of capables are employed as scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, etc. so the vastly smaller group who chose the military, even if the service is promoted as very important only so many will want to serve or be available to serve, will be held for specialist roles. I doubt every officer will be a capable. Probably one or two at company level in the field at best. And there they may still be used as thought police, even as a side line. What capabilities do they have?

Reading other's minds. In game terms at what range? How would that affect the flow of play? You might be kept looking for snipers, trying to ID officers or senior NCOs for your snipers to target. How would you use intelligence on the enemy's battle plans in a miniatures game? I do not like games which use orders so you would have to create a mechanism whereby your forces could be allowed to counter an enemy action. Now as a counter-counter action suppose the enemy kept troops who are either capable themselves, think present day electronic warfare, or plain stupid individuals just travelling around with the command staff playing video games or intensely thinking of wild improbable combat ideas in order to jam or spoof the enemy's capable troops.

Projecting your thoughts onto others, the ability to teleport themselves or others usually short distances, the ability to generate heat or cold in a target whether a trooper some equipment or the environment, or any of a number of possible actions or functions. The effects, durations, and counters would be similar to above but different outcomes. Now you would have to add characteristics to forces to deal with these capables. Say a mental strength value for either each trooper (skirmish level) or a base line for all your troops with specific values for your own capables, or modifiers for leader types, specific defensive technology.

Herein lies the other issue in that you now have to add additional characteristic(s) for all troops for every new capability other forces could field in a game.

My son has a recent game called Cry Havoc in which 3 very different alien races invade and try to conquer the home planet of a fourth race. The home race is a tough low tech one which has intimate knowledge of their planet plus some limited ability to modify their environment (although that could just be their ability to optimize combat by local knowledge). Another race is robots who can convert resources to weapons or defenses rapidly. They are shown as highly aggressive and combat obsessed. Think the Borg only more so. Another race is shown to be psionic. They use this ability to, occasionally, teleport between objectives and hide resources or objectives from other players. The last race is humans whose primary attribute is the ability to work cooperatively amongst themselves. Think combined arms where the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

There are many more ideas out there but how to put them into game terms without creating too many additional rules, or game characteristics, etc.? Quick examples;

Martian heat rays: First game turn on a single target do x damage, second consecutive turn the heat builds so do 2x damage, third turn 4x and so on as long as the target remains under attack. Other than shade or destroying the firer, moving to snow, ice fields or a large or flowing body of water may avoid or reduce cumulative damage. What would the effect of the heat ray be? Living creatures would cook long before ammunition or fuels would ignite so they could roast the enemy then collect the war materiel.

Life draining: every successful attack causes damage to the target while increasing their own strength, damage capacity, etc..

multidimensional: can pop in and out of the game going where in the interim? Less chance of hitting or doing damage while elsewhere? They probably use large quantities of energy, power or body mass to shift. Alternatively they may be able to bring in other creatures to do their combat. Think Kaiju and Pacific Rim.

Post Apocalyptic: Resources are limited. You cannot afford to loose too many troops or too much material so combat has its limits. Objectives would be resources, primarily those obtained by others, already sorted or refined, but also raw sorces obtained from old cities, factories or other locales. Areas of the combat arena are radioactive, poison laden or contaminated by bio weapons. These areas must be avoided or exposure limited still with unknown effects either during or post game.

Forces with specific doctrine, weapons, tactics: Pretty self explanatory.

Traveller and Striker has a number of alien species but most are humans in rubber suits as far as characteristics go. Different motivations, baseline characteristics and weapons names but just different humans. One of the better thought out sections was the alien environment rules but a lot of them were more suggestions.

How many truly alien cultures are there out there and how many are just variations of human ones. Look at past history or other civilizations on earth to find lots of variations in motivations, tools and environments. If you have a favorite, or hated, alien (civilization, race, weapon…) post it here and lets explore how it could be integrated into a game. Not game or rules specific but in general.

Oh wow, this is something I have been pondering since my teens…

Really, it doesn't matter if humans and aliens use similar or different technology. The important thing is what they (or we) want to do with warfare. Is it a war of annihilation? Of conquest? Of securing resources? Because just using our own modern technology will show very different approaches to all three. What about other reasons to fight? For every reason to fight, there is a separate approach of conflict within a given spectrum of technology.

So rather than wonder how to diffrentiate weapons by technology, maybe we should think "big picture" about how diffrentiated technology can be used to achieve the overall goals of the participants in our conflicts.

Nice discussion. Got me thinking about 'alien' weapons different from those above.

Thinking of the end of Indiana Jones 1 with the electrical discharge that zaps through close-packed troops. Games Workshop Epic had a Mortarian daemon that did much the same with a plague something or other.

Animation weapons that turn nearby objects into lethal things, what was that, Bedknobs and Broomsticks?

Mass Magnet Projectile that accumulates more mass the further it goes, like a snowball down a hill in cartoons.

Taint projectile that turns enemies into monsters ala Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, or like a refined version of Alien, or The Flood in the Halo computer game.

Or do companies nowadays just play it safe by sticking to clones of Warhammer 40K and easy-to-make humans?

Corvus Belli used to make rather alien looking models. They didn't sell well.

In fact, most companies sales data will back that up, non-humanoid aliens don't sell well.

Now, non-human psychology is even harder to do, as that's basically the Morale rules. And quite frankly, almost nobody gets morale right. Units are combat-ineffective at 33% casualties. Yep, 3 casualties will make an entire squad combat-ineffective.

I think Tomorrow's War is one of the few games that includes atypical psychology traits.

Daithi the Black makes a good point. To get the requested "originality and creativity", you have to start with deciding why there is an armed conflict with the aliens in the first place.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (1974) gives a good example of nearly unfathomable alien war motivations.

It may be that if you really want "a sci-fi wargame that actually has some originality and creativity", you have to make it yourself, or at least make the aliens yourself and write some house rules to use them in your game of choice.

@stephen m

Zhodani psionics mainly get used for communications and morale (telepathy) and spotting (clairvoyance). Telekinesis and teleportation are less common talents, especially at the power levels needed to, for example, teleport a commando in power armor carrying a fusion gun, but do exist.

Telepathy isn't very useful for spying because anyone fighting the Zhodani is going to use psionic shielding. (And if they can't make or buy psionic shielding, it's not going to be a very long or interesting war to game out.)

In Fifth Frontier War, the Zhodani have several brigade-sized formations composed entirely of troops with psionic abilities (the Consular Guard units), so I think that you underestimate the numbers of people with psionics in the Zhodani military and general population.

Like it or not, a table top wargame is predicated on combat between similar forces, weapon technology, tactics, doctrines and motivations.

You have the usual spice rack of tactics: horde/hive mind swarm, precision strike elites, armor heavy, mobility oriented… And you have variations on weapons: projectiles, lasers, plasma, even psionics simulate standard weapon effects. Bottom line though is humans in rubber suits – like it or not.

If an advanced civilization bent on conquest showed up, why do we think they'd deign to come down and slug it out with us? Fairness? Why not release a massive bio-weapon attack and wait in the space ship until it's done it's work? Or EMP our electrical grid and let the consequences play out? Show up on the doorstep when we're pretty much starving or dead.

Hobby games require a measure of parity and familiarity. Without them, there's no game, no contest, no fun or entertainment.

Biggest reason you don't see more originality in alien figures: lack of interest. Very few people want something TRULY alien, which is why most companies stick with venerable tropes: they sell.

For a game to be unique you'll have to have both completely weird aliens, and their motivations (as mentioned by the above posters). Motivations on Earth have ben strange at times, such as the western Native Americans "counting coup" by tagging their opponents against enemies that were actually trying to kill them… I can imagine aliens being no different. In the book "Footfall" the pachyderm-ish aliens place their foot upon an individual, telling this individual they have been defeated and now must stop fighting (or something along those lines) but can't understand why humans don't get it and keep fighting…
Strange motivations like that do not make for an exciting game for most players, it's too unfamiliar.

It's so sad that interesting alien races are so disliked in sci-fi wargaming. In fantasy you get all kinds of monsters, demons, and different races, but in sci-fi it's always "lets make six different factions. They'll all be humans, but they'll have different weapons and armor." So incredibly boring. Even just making a sci-fi version of fantasy is a cop-out, and shows again that fantasy is more interesting than sci-fi. I guess there's a reason I stick with fantasy over sci-fi when it comes to wargames.