"Best SF Setting That Nobody Games?" Topic

What science-fiction novel or movie provides an ideal setting for wargaming, but nobody is gaming it?

The "John Carter: Warlord of Mars" setting.

Captain Kirk vs. the Moon-Princesses.

The Amtrak Wars by Patrick Tilley always struck me as an ideal setting.

S M Stirling wrote a series based on the life of Bellisarius, I think it's called The General ( cavalry who are riding dogs!).

William Forstchen's Lost Regiment series would be doable with humans in 10mm and the Bantag hordes in 15mm.

And honorable mention must go to the Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen series although people do game it. There's even a ruleset sadly out of print from FGU "Down Styphon!".

The "John Carter: Warlord of Mars" setting.

Sorry, doesn't qualify:
link

Need to qualify nobody –

Lotr – lots and lots of players

Conan – some, but not a huge number

ERB based world's – virtually no-one

I do find both Conan and ERB surprising and there are so many possibilities

What it needs is a really good supporter – Oz is quite popular now, because there are rules and figures

Space Vikings by H Beam Piper

"The Expanse" as far as I know has not game system

could be wrong

"Dune" has never really been realized, tho Rebel Minis makes some figures that resonate with the SciFi Channel miniseries. Their primary downside is no blade armed figures.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi

"Nobody" is as vague and meaningless as "underrated". 🤷

I remember at least 3 different ranges of John Carter on Mars minis, and as many sets of rules. At least. Why would they exist if "nobody" plays them?

If one wants to claim that "nobody I know" plays that era, I guess it qualifies.
But I'll wager that anything nominated has someone playing it.
My own nomination would be Ring World. And I would expect it to be shot down.

How about post-apocalyptic stories like:
Earth Abides
A Canticle for Leibowitz
I am Legend
I nominate them, because I can't imagine anyone playing or gaming them. 😄 Prove me wrong.

How about The Man in the High Castle?
Oh, wait. Someone in Denver probably plays it. 🤷

I would wager a Buffalo Nickel that anything nominated has someone playing it. And probably there exists a suitable range of figures. Maybe not designed specifically for it, but suitable.

Captain Kirk vs. the Moon-Princesses.

Or the green slave women of Orion?
I suspect that there some IP and copyright issues there.
Are there any specific miniatures for Star Trek? I'm sure Tango01 can supply recommendations for the dancing slave women…. 🙄

Cities in Flight, by James Blish. I'm particularly fond of the series because Scranton is a city that has gone rogue and turned Pirate.

The 1632 series, about a West Virginia town zapped into the 30 Years War is perfect for anyone who has always wanted to take on a pike block with a pickup truck mounted machine gun.
Has anyone tried that?
I'm particularly impressed with the idea of an RPG game dealing with trying to reconcile various Lutheran sects.
Not to mention United Mine Workers politics.

Does anyone game "The Handmaid's Tale"? 🙄

It would be pretty easy – Gilead seems to rock terrorist chic, whilst the usa is current equipment

The battle of Boston from the penultimate episode would work – with the handmaids as covert commando squads

Anyone with Belisarian Byzantine and Gothic armies could game Lest Darkness Fall, by L Sprague deCamp. The fun in a campaign woukd be to see what innovations Martinus Paduei could introduce á la A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. There's another idea that could be done by anyone who has armies in whatever era you want to plunk King Arthur.

Ditto Pavane, by Keith Roberts.
Any "alternate universe' story would make an interesting game. Particularly if a time travel introduced… innovations.

I've seen John Carter figures on ebay for years, tho infrequently. They weren't even all that expensive.

They were, however, never more than a trickle. It'd take years to assemble enuf to try to do anything.

Thundarr the Barbarian

Land of the Lost

Flash Gordon

The armies of the Autarch and his enemies, from "The Book of the New Sun" by Gene Wolfe.

The Destroyermen Series: WW2 Navy (Two 4-stacker destroyers and a submarine) are sucked into a space-time vortex that drops them into an alternate Earth with intelligent carnivorous dinosaurs fighting intelligent human-sized lemurs… but it also drops off a massive experimental Japanese battleship commanded by a certifiable nutjob. The Navy sides with the lemurs, the Japs with the man-eating dinos, and the war continues.

Naval combat, land combat, aerial combat… it's got it all. Tailor made for a game, but as far as I can tell, nobody's done one.

Carter is definitely gamed. Parroom Station minis have long been available, with a bit of hiatus, back again via Ral Partha Legacy:
link

Quite a variety of Flash Gordon/Buck Rodgers retro sci-fi available.

Tusk does dino hunting across a wide spectrum of cross-time hunters, so easily covering Land of the Lost, if not specifically by brand name.

There is a well supported Conan minis game by Monolith, but it is more of a small party versus GM type game than a traditional minis game. The figs are amazing and there are plenty of them. I did both kickstarters for it and have enough to game for years now.

I'd love to see a Flash Gordon set of rules, and Thundarr would definitely intrigue me as I was definitely a fan.

Babylon 5 warrants a new run, as do many book series. Destrouermen was a fantastic series and interesting for gaming.

Still waiting on a good Robotech miniatures game after a few bad attempts that were dreadful.

The Kree-Skrull War.

There are figures for it scattered in the general Marvel Heroclix collections, but I've only seen them used in generic super-hero battles, not massed for the specific war.

Including the pile that I amassed and have not seen the table yet…

"It'd take years to assemble enuf to try to do anything."

But I don't need to, Exeter: I already have the figures. For that matter, two ranges at least are in current production.

I think pretty much all the ground combat and/or skirmish stuff can be done with existing figures and rules. Whether anyone does a particular book or video would be harder to find out in many instances. Ship to ship stuff might be trickier.

I never heard tell of anyone gaming Doc Smith's "Lensman" books. I think existing rules could probably handle it on an RPG/skirmish level. Ship to ship combat I'm not so sure. And you'd probably want special rules for "inertialess" boarding actions.

Hmmpf. Ought to have written "fleet action" rather than "ship to ship." david Drake's RCN novels might also prove challenging for spaceship gamers, and I haven't heard of them being gamed.

Which doesn't mean they aren't of course.

GOBS could probably handle Lensman fleet scale combat. That's the scale it's intended for, and the system is generic enough that whatever terms Doc Smith used for his weapons systems could be translated to the weapon types available in GOBS.

Another great gaming setting would be The Hungry Cities Chronicles. (The Mortal Engines film was based on this— it had the right look and the setting down fantastically, but failed to pull off the rest.) In any case there's just something inherently gamable about massive, mobile cities on ginormous tank treads moving about a post-post-post apocalyptic blasted landscape swallowing each other up for resources— "Municipal Darwinism." Absolutely over the top.

Lord Kalvan is basically the 30 Years War. It's a sci-fi series of books, with virtually no sci-fi elements.

John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice and Brotherband series certainly supply some good scenarios.

And Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn and Skyward books do as well.

The Peshawar Lancers, by S M Stirling is another post apocalyptic story that takes place after "the Fall". A comet. That's all you need for an apocalypse, right?

Do you have any Sword and the Flame NW Frontier armies? How about Russians, Afghans, etc. You're good to go. As I recall, it also has airships, bits of magic, descendants of the heroic Harry Flashman, and the foul villain Count Ignatieff.

It reminds me a bit of "Declare!" by Tim Powers. It features Djinns, Kim Philby, and your usual Cold War stuff.

The Company War, C.J. Cherryh. I don't think that anyone has done a miniatures game. There was a board game in the early 1980s.

Chain of Command, Frank Chadwick. The war in this universe (there are other books) can probably be played with some tweaking of Traveller materials.

Honor Harrington series, David Weber. I guess people are playing Saganami Island Tactical Simulator for this setting.

Visionaries, animated TV show (1987) & comic. Great concept.

STARCOM is another one.

Different poll question, Bill: What is the ideal setting for wargaming? Even if you limited it to SF, I doubt you could get the people playing skirmish/RPG with handfuls of 28mm figures would agree with the people maneuvering fleets of starships.

I tried to work out broad periods of miniature wargaming once, the idea being that you needed different rules for Midway and Trafalgar, and three or four command levels from squad skirmish to Leipzig. As I recall, you really needed about 40 different "rules engines" to cover everything.

Oh man, I SOOOOooooo wanted to play out Cherryh's space battles, with starships dropping into high sublight as they enter systems, and the info lag from sensors making finding targets difficult. The plotting seemed very cat-and-mouse.

20th, have I been reduced to "virtually no one?" Just because "The Rescue (or Kidnapping) of Princess Trivia of Argon" didn't muster enough players at The Weekend…

For that matter, I've played in a Barsoomian game at The Host, not that many conventions ago. And I just put away an archeologists vs Green Martians game. I don't know what as "ideal SF setting" would be--I don't think Bill does, either--but Barsoom has a lot of skirmish/RPG potential, several ranges of figures and a number of rules.

OFM, about the Orion Women--
1) Tango only does naked women with claws, fangs or other sharp pointy bits. I never found them sexy myself.
2) But a scantily-clad Terran female and some green speed paint solves the problem nicely. I can't think why anyone would involve himself in the whole "intellectual property" thing for that one.

I'm only asking for a human belly dancer. I can supply the green wash. 😄
I believe Yvonne Craig was the original.

There are some rather frightening fan cosplay pictures out there, but I'm not about to track them down. 😱

I always thought Poul Andersen's Technic Civilization milieu would be a good fit for skirmish or rpg. The space battles may be gameable too.

Etsy, OFM. For this sort of thing Etsy is your friend.

You know, if we set aside "ideal" and how many people are "nobody" I can give you a pretty good and well-known SF setting I've never known to be gamed, and for which I know no figure line--though the necessary figures could be found--

Andre Norton's "Witch World." Native forces are at the sword, axe, bow and dart pistol level but may or may not be assisted by "witches" who play more as psionics and by local weres. Intruders are at a roughly 1945 tech level. They aren't quite Waffen SS escaping the end of WWII, but clearly Norton was thinking along those lines. Good tech, but no replacement tanks in the pipeline, and you can only imagine the spare parts situation. I wouldn't recommend a mass battle, but it has lots of skirmish/RPG potential and about a dozen books to draw scenarios from.

Hmm. Plenty of females in robes around, and I'd only need one or two. Maybe 50 or fewer late-medieval fighters and some handguns out of the bits box. A few animals for the shape-shifters. Maybe a couple of dozen men with rifles or SMGs, uniformed in cloth and wearing helmets, and I could raid some SF line for a single AFV. Yeah. Might not get the costuming exact, but no problem at all getting the right types. Any recommendations for rules?

Oberlindes Sol LIC wrote:

The Company War, C.J. Cherryh. I don't think that anyone has done a miniatures game. There was a board game in the early 1980s.

This was my first thought too. I don't think I ever saw the Mayfair game before, but I could see a couple different minis games working really well in this.

Any recommendations for rules?

I've found that GASLIGHT has mechanisms that produce games as universal as TSATF. I simply consider Magic to be equivalent to Science.

In college, I was a fan of the GOR series. A war between the divided native, the overseers and gorilla invaders offers good scenarios.

I imagine very few are gaming
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Starblazers (I know there is a ship battles game of this)

The Lensman series

For years I've been contemplating a game based on H. Beam Piper's "Federation" setting. Anti-grav vehicles, cannons, and missiles. No energy weapons. Some of the anti-grav vehicles strike me as sort of dirigible-like.

ScottWashburn, there's a grand battle with Antigrav in Piper's "Time Crime" with all those as well. Including one-man Grav Cavlary as well.

I guess I'll vote for the Dorsai series. I've never heard of anyone gaming it, or dedicated rules / figs for it.

There's plenty of – general – military action, especially in Tactics of Misake. However, the purpose of the books isn't to develop a military setting like "Hammers Slammers", he has other objectives in mind.

that being said…I am planning on gaming some of my favorite scenes from it!

Pia Zadora has a couple of good entries for pulp style gaming:

Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964).
I've seen lots of Christmas themed games get posted over the years, but never this sci-fi classic!