Military RPGs - What have you got?

[Dyson Logos]

Adapted from my blog:

5 Military RPGs I cut my teeth on

Since the beginning of the RPG industry, the military was home to a lot of gamers for whatever reason. In turn this meant that a lot of the early RPGs that moved out of the Dungeons & Dragons mold were of a military bent. For the duration of the month, with a few exceptions, I’m going to focus on characters for military RPGs, and my Monday lists will have a military RPG theme to them.

Military gaming has a distinct appeal in that the whole game is typically mission-based – as the Game Master you don’t have to provide a real “reason” or “hook” for the PCs to get involved – instead you just give them orders or a mission briefing and send them on their way. The other appeal to the mass market is from players looking for something more “realistic” than classic D&D. And some of the military games went out of their way to be heavy modern combat simulations, with combat systems so complex that playability and fun often became the first victims to this hunt for realism.

And of course, military RPGs let the gun fetishists run free.

Here are the top five military RPGs I played “back in the day”

Twilight:2000

T2K was my introduction to milsim games (until then, I got my firearms fix through Top Secret).Through three editions now, this is the game of world war III soldiers surviving behind enemy lines after the war was for all intents and purposes over. The world half-destroyed through a limited nuclear exchange, the characters start the game as members of a US led coalition stuck deep inside Poland when it was wiped out by a Soviet tank army that was supposed to be located on the Soviet / China front, not in the heart of the Western Front.

Revised Recon

One of the few (only?) Palladium books to not use the Palladium house system, Recon was also the first entry on the market I was aware of that focused specifically on the Vietnam War. As a Canadian, I learned most of what I knew about the Vietnam war through this game. Unlike the rest of the Palladium offerings, the lethality of this game was much higher than most other RPGs on the market, with explosives being particularly nasty (anyone within a certain range was instantly killed, no save as they say).

Merc

I seem to have a nearly complete set of Fantasy Games Unlimited products, and MERC was one of the ones I only actually played significantly later than when I bought it. Merc is interesting on two fronts. 1. it puts a lot of emphasis on character “voice” – the ability to be heard, understood and obeyed on the battlefield. This is a vital stat in game when team members are supressed or otherwise unable to go through with what is needed. 2. It introduced a hit location system where you used a body template and a clear hit template that went over it and then moved the hit template around based on the to hit die roll to determine what body part was struck. This came back out in the more recent Aces & Eights western RPG and even made an appearance as the vehicle combat rules in the late first edition of Rogue Trader / Warhammer 40k. However, like a lot of games from it’s era, Merc feels quite bare-bones overall.

Phoenix Command

I don’t know what possessed anyone to write a game this incredibly complex. Seriously, you got shot in location XXX (roll d1000), which in turn has you check the armor rating of your wrist watch, and then the hit table indicates what internal organs are hit by the attack in what order… Even worse, I have no clue what possessed myself, Jim and Marcus to play this for a whole summer. We used every single optional rules booklet and weapon, every enhanced hit location and combat effects chart, and pulled out adventures from Recon and Delta Force (a milsim game that we never played, but that I still own for whatever reason).

Robotech

After an abortive attempt at a Mechwarrior game, we pulled out the Robotech RPG by Palladium in 1987. Several of us had watched one or more of the Robotech TV series and the game gave us the best of both worlds – military characters in alien environments, and giant transforming robots to run amok in! The first campaign we played was a classic Veritech Fighter game like the original Macross TV series. The second one was far more rewarding though – after thouroughly learning the system we started over with level one destroid pilots holding the fort in out at Mars base. We only actually were in our giant fighting robots about every second session, and then only for the big fight scenes – most of the game involved dealing with micronized Zentraedi spies, politics, and rebuilding the RDF presence on Mars with limited hardware.

What were your favourite adventures into milsim gaming? What games clicked for you and which ones didn’t? Was it mechanics or setting that played the trick?

[RandomCitizenX]

Gonna add the Weird War series from Pinnacle. The newest version uses the Savage world rules and focus's on an alternate WWII where the supernatural was heavily involved. There is also Tour of Darkness which is another nam based game which also ties into the weird wars setting.

[scourger]

Tour of Darkness has been my favorite military RPG. It is a Weird Wars setting for the Savage Worlds game. The plot point campaign is mysticism in Viet Nam. I used some of it, but my campaign really diverted off into some different directions. It was really fun for the time we played it (about 6 months). Everyone had a frame of reference from all the Viet Nam movies we watched--mostly in the 80s. One guy's dad was a helicopter pilot in Viet Nam, so it held his interest especially. Another player chose a New Zealander for his (replacement) character and did a lot of online research into kiwi slang and sayings. And, we kept a cooperative campaign log over email that I collected, printed and gave to each of the players. It was really nice to have such a high level of particiapation all around. Plus, Savage Worlds is such a great rules system that it is very accessible.

I'm trying to follow it up with Necropolis, another Savage Worlds Weird Wars setting. This one is set in the future on another world where a neo-crusades knightly humanity battles the undead for the future. It is cool, but we play it infrequently (annually or semi-annually). It has a great campaign flowchart in which the series of missions in the campaign is directly affected by the heroes' choices. I like it quite a bit. I also tried to get the players more invested by allowing their characters to move forward through time from Tour of Darkness to Necropolis--very fun as it could happen in sci-fi.

I am looking forward to Weird War Two for similar reasons. Pinncale tried it as a d20 release, but I never got into it past the first book. It is supposed to be (re-)released soon as a Savage Worlds game setting. I am sure it will be great. I picked up GURPS WWII to read when it was on sale as a sort of primer, but it just doesn't do it for me. Similarly, I liked the V for Victory! mini game from the Polyhedron side of Dungeon 97; but it is another d20-based game. I really couldn't find the time or inclination for us to play it, but it is a great little game (I did buy 2 copies just in case).

[Jack7]

I agree with the comments of your original post for the most part and most all of my buddies, including gaming ones, had some type of military experience. Before military RPGs however we were playing wargames and even things like Ogre (one of my favorite fantasy tank combat games, based upon the BOLO).

Later on we moved to military based RPGs, though we never abandoned D&D. (I always saw a huge, practical tactical advantage to learning things like cooperative mission objectives, operating in survival mode in dangerous environments far from resupply and reinforcement, etc from playing D&D, not to mention the outright tactical lessons that can be learned through ambushes, small teams encounters, and so forth and so on.

In time I, or we, converted various other games like Star Fleet Battles into RPGs or partial RPG/partial wargame hybrids. I even took games like Axis and Allies and introduced an RPG element involving individual officers.

I was never entirely satisfied (or even close to satisfied with some) with any of the mass market military RPGs, or as you would say milsims either, and that especially included paramilitary-espionage RPGs (though some, like Spycraft, were pretty good), and crime based RPGs. (My buddies and I saw the natural overlap between law enforcement, International Criminal Cartels, smuggling operations, etc, and guerilla warfare, financing networks, and terrorist organizations coming a long time before 9/11, so I/we was already thinking about how agencies and the military might need to work cooperatively, and I think that is distinctly missing from most military based RPGs. I do not think we need to fight wars like they are criminal actions and prosecutions, but I've known for a long time that far better direct cooperation and overlap is needed between law enforcement and the military and think that should be reflected in military and espionage/Intel based games. - As two very simple instances just look at the natural overlap of both civilian and military efforts to gather Intel on cyber-warfare and on weapon smuggling operations.)

So because of those things I created my own military based RPG which is also an espionage and crime based RPG (the crime part mainly targeting pirating operations, weapon's smuggling, and International Criminal Cartels). I call it Hammerstroke, the name of the combination Special Forces and inter-Agency Operational Team that the game revolves around. So I like as much realism as possible in those types of games. Though Hammerstroke is far less the shoot-em up large scale, gun-fight engagement game than it is an Intel Op, Special Forces, clandestine mission oriented game. So I guess you would say it is far more like the modern military than older large scale war-gaming efforts. These are some of the kinds of missions and scenarios I set-up for that game.

As far as my D&D setting is concerned that takes place circa 800 AD in the Byzantine Empire and so that is very germane, historically speaking, to modern day events in Iran, the Middle East, etc. So even as far as D&D is concerned there is a certain Special Forces element in my fantasy setting (I think a realistic portrayal of Special Forces operations is also definitely missing from most military based RPGs) in the way the human team of the Basilegate operates.

Anyways military based RPGs have not taken the place of D&D for me but milrpgs and wargames have definitely deeply influenced my RPG habits and settings to one extent or another, all through my gaming history. By the way I like the idea behind this thread. It's a fine idea to explore which I have a personal interest in. I enjoy and appreciate it.

Your blog was pretty good too.
I'll revisit that again.

[Ariosto]

I picked up Phoenix Command, but never actually tried to use it (or the Living Steel rules set, although I found the scenario interesting). Merc personally disgusted me, which had nothing to do with the mechanics that I recall.

Commando was a World War Two game mechanically similar to Traveller. My reaction was basically that war, treated at all realistically, is far from an "adventure".

Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes was a development of "tunnels & Thompsons" experiments with Tunnels & Trolls, pretty nifty if one happens to be on the T&T wavelength.

Twilight 2000 was pretty excellent; I've never owned it, but have enjoyed some play. War against the alien Kafer featured in the interstellar sequel 2300 AD (initially, and confusingly, titled Traveller 2300).

Kevin Siembieda's Mechanoids trilogy (the first Palladium RPG, if memory serves) was notable both for the SF war theme and for its presentation in a "plot-line" campaign format.

Simon Washbourne has produced at least a sketch of a game about British partisans in a hypothetical WW2 invasion and occupation by Germany.

[Fallen Seraph]

While not entirely a military game, lots of good military campaigns can be run in Cthulhutech. From piloting Engels and Mecha, to be front-line soldiers. The fluff in the books is quite excellent at getting across how messed up facing some of the enemies they do would be and just plain scary.