Cult Of Games XLBS: Is Sci-Fi Wargaming Boring?
November 15, 2020 by warzan
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Happy Sunday! This was a great topic. A couple of points I’ll throw into the mix;
I’ve never seen a game system succeed in the long term with less than 4 factions. It’s why Terminator, Aliens, Starship Troopers and the like failed.
Sci-fi warfare makes very little sense. Space warfare would be very similar to WWII in the pacific. Fleet warfare is what matters. In fact it’s the only thing that matters.
Fleets can bypass planets or if there is no opposing fleet you simply pound an enemy army into dust. The armies needed to conquer a planet would be relatively small unlike in 40K.
Why the Imperium wouldn’t just kill every humanoid on a planet when reconquering it then recolonise it with the trillions of humans from other planets makes no sense at all.
The weird thing is that it would be under these conditions that Space Marines make perfect sense. Small elite units specialised at boarding enemy vessels and neutralising enemy leadership and core systems (like space ports, power generation and communications).
It’s also why Star Trek only works as a fleet battle game or away team size rpg (eg. Star Fleet Battles went for years and Star Trek Attack Wing went well until the dreaded 2nd edition) but has no large scale planetary combat games.
As to Warren’s point about Sci Fi being boring, It is largely full of tropes and sterotypes.
In the Sci Fi genre there are a few constant tropes. The first is the Super Soldier. Sooner or later it appears under the guise that future warfare requires them. Space Marines, Jem Hadar (Star Trek), Sadukar (Dune), the Kull (Stargate), Death Troopers (Star Wars), etc.
The second trope is stargates/wormholes. The vast distances of space require some instantaneous travel by heroes and villains alike. They’re in 40K, Star Gate, Star Trek, Star Wars, Dune, etc.
Finally there’s the archetypical races; Warrior culture, Logic driven, evil mirror of the logic race, race that enslaves human, etc.
happy sunday
Was there ever a time in 40k where you could say Marines are the Goodies, Chaos are the Baddies, etc? Surely its always been these guys are the Baddies, and these other guys are the Badder Baddies? If anything hasn’t the recent fluff progression made the Imperium more into the Goodies than they were previously?
Unless I’m mistaken, 1st ed 40k was somewhat asymmetric when it first started; when it started I believe it did best when there was a Gamesmaster overseeing things because of al the wild stuff that could happen and did best when you played a scenario rather than rocking up with a set number of points worth of minis and playing something generic conditionwise.
Regarding Gerry’s comment about all the gizmos in Marine armour compared to the bare bones equipment of a Guardsman not being taken into account, I think its a product of the degree of abstraction/streamlining in the rules. The rules writers probably dont think its worth writing a couple of pages of rules for Marines that wont always come up in every/most games and when they do you have to wade through them to find the relevant part. Compare that to something like inquisitor, which is down on a very personal level and thus the rules are more intricate and cover more potential eventualities. That game also fits Warren’s asymmetric idea as Marines are very powerful in it and unless I’m mistaken players of Inquisitor tend to only use Marines sparingly due to how powerful they can be.
And yet StarWars Legion has rules for hostile environments and gear …
40k never focussed on that aspect beyond the casual mention of death worlds.
As such it is weird that Spacemarines with all their built-in tech don’t get to take advantage of night/darkness against a foe that doesn’t have such gadgets.
Same applies to the Eldar.
And here’s another thing that 40k fails to model : the simple fact that Eldari are in decline.
They can’t fight battles the way the Imperial guard / Orks / Hivefleet do.
The only way the rules have modelled this is by making units costs more points and give them better stats.
At the same time there’s endless ‘special’ rules for every single unit, which is ridiculous and also fails to explain why none of them are related to any of the mechanical/biological advantages of the spacemarine.
As I’m fond of saying: in the grim darkness of the far future everyone’s a dick.
Justin’s opening sentence resolved the argument for me, in that it’s a matter of current interests. But I do prefer a middle ground to a good argument ?
Warren seems to be a man of cyclical interests. I say this because I am too. I get hugely invested in one thing, only to wake up one day and to have it turn to ash in my mouth. The reason the hobby has saved me from myself is that I can cycle around a wide range of subjects WITHIN the hobby without ever having to leave the hobby. I accept this as a positive for my own well-being rather than a negative, and accept there will be unfinished projects and unopened boxes. They are there, ready to be cycled back onto if I get the notion. Prior to finding the hobby I would have to cycle BETWEEN hobbies which was incredibly expensive and frustrating. Same with jobs, I have to work in a company big enough for me to move around within it to save me from having to leave every year through boredom. I had a terrible time with this trait until I read a couple of books that helped me to understand this personality type, accept it, and plan around it.
So @warzan of you wanted to get into a sci fi world (and no-one says you have to until you REALLY want to) I think you need to look at something you’ve never looked at before. By definition, the worlds you know won’t be as appealing as a new one.
But if I was you I would just enjoy historical until something else pulls you away from it, and accept that maybe that is inevitable, and not give yourself a hard time when it happens?
That said, sci-fi is an odd beast. I love sci fi, and a lot of that is because there are different worlds to explore. It is theoretically unshackled but the reality is that if reality is entirely reimagined then it won’t grab the attention of the masses who want it to feel at least a bit familiar to be accessible. Fantasy is quite happy to pull on the tropes to achieve that familiarity. Sci-fi writers are almost compelled to hide their influences in order to create something new, but those influences need to be there under the surface to make it familiar enough to be popular. It’s a tough ask to create good sci fi. Generic sci fi would be a failure of sci fi writing (rightly or wrongly). And given that game designers have that same conflict issue in game creation in general, I think it doubles down on that issue meaning that great sci fi games are quite rare in reality!
Creating your own is a great idea!
“Sci-fi writers are almost compelled to hide their influences in order to create something new, but those influences need to be there under the surface to make it familiar enough to be popular.”
Well said and, oh, so very true.
.
You’re making a great point here. ; )
@warzan Have a look at Stangrunt 2 it has some interesting mechanics in it
https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/rules.html
@brennon have a look at Kyromek
https://www.shop.scotiagrendel.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_3
Sci-Fi is certainly an over-exploited genre like Fantasy. Both allow modellers and game designers a free pass when it comes to having to stick to some semblance of reality. Many end up being poor derivatives of Star Wars or Tolkein universes, and I guess that’s usually where the issues stem from – a lack of fluff/background that holds up. Most new KS tend to be nice models looking for a home/ruleset.
Every now and then someone creates a world and aesthetic that is then presented well in a game form that is interesting – Infinity, the DxC games or Core Space for example stand out for me, also Shadow Deep in fantasy.
Happy Sunday btw!!
@warzan: If, as Justin suggests, you aren’t up to full-fat ruleset Infinity, do remember that there is now Code One, and Defiance is imminent to scratch the sci-fi dungeon crawling itch. That’ll make 5 games in the Infinity universe, often with interchangeable models.
Hopefully Stargrave the sci fi version of frostgrave coming early next year will be the gap filler of a generic Sci fi system people are looking for
Also is there anything you can do about the streaming of the xlbs show as it’s took me 40 minutes to watch 18 minutes of the show, due to buffering and stopping, and that’s with trying all available formats, although 240 & 360 aren’t there to choose from this week which is odd
Just renewed my subscription and this is a problem most weeks
Happy Sunday CoGs.
For me,” generic sci-fi ” never grabs my attention as much as a ” generic fantasy ” setting does.I turned my back on 40k sci-fi back in late 6th ed because of the rules rather than feeling bored with it,i could not face what they had done to ” my game ” with the need for multiple books and a very bloated rules system.
I do think that certain IP’s lend themselves to a skirmish ( or fleet based ) game over a bigger setting.Star Trek,Aliens,BSG,Starship Troopers,Dune,the Terminator universe are the bigger / more well known ones that come to mind.Apart from Star Trek ( maybe Dune ? ) they do suffer from only having two sides in the game and interest in the game wanes because of it.
@dignity,@lloyd has an ideal Heroforge mini for you to print.
Happy Sunday!
In the background Emperor Palpatine cackles “Warren’s journey to the Dark Side is complete!”
Happy Sunday all
I’m not sure sci-fi is boring in as much it’s the scale of the game. Most Sci-fi games are 28mm single figure/warband type games, and thus due to the mechanics of such a game most of them just seem to merge into each other (perhaps making everything seem a bit bland). It’s interesting to see how the possible ideas to get back into sci-fi games were all about not playing games in that scale of operation (ie fleet action etc).
Basically most wargames once you get into WW2 play like each other. So WW2, Moderns, Sci-Fi all have AFVs, AT units, Artillery etc. So apart from some minor differences due to the era the games will play in a similar manner with similar tactics.
Prior to this we have Black Powder/Horse and musket and no matter what period within this era you pick, again the games mostly play in a similar manner (you just pick the period where you like the uniforms the most).
Then you have Ancients, and this is where fantasy merges in with the games tactics. Of course the major effect here is again the scale of the game (28mm single figures, or perhaps 6mm massed bases with 20 figures on it) which dictates “how” the game is played.
So I’d say the argument here is less “Sci-Fi is boring” more perhaps “28mm skirmish level gaming is boring” due to the fact the scale of the game (and the size of the battlefield) dictate how we play the game more than any setting (be it historical or Sci fi/fantasy
I think a problem with a lot of games is trying to
A. Trying to cram to many figures on the table
B. Using too small a table. If a game suggests a 3×3 use a 4×4 or a 5×5 and get a it of maneuvering happening
I like several sci-fi games for the way is plays or appeals to me visually but when you start reading the fluff and you know your history a bit it is just some rehash of it or a logical progression the way the world could be going which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as you like it.
I have left 40k behind me for many years now as it feels more that they adjust or make fluff to get sales and in the meantime making your models redundant or useless or introduce new things so you would buy new models.
41:15 – any sci-fi games we can think of off the top of our heads that take asymmetric….?
(me, screaming): Spacec Hulk isn’t symmetrical, Space Hulk is still very popular. It’s the 40k world playing out the “industrial” type sci-fi Ben says he prefers so much.
It feels very much like this discussion centred on @warzan Warran mistaking a dislike of forced “balance” in games with a dislike for sci-fi. Just about every argument he made against sci-fi games in the opening ramble, I fully agreed with – for fantasy games!
Can you name any Scifi Wargames?
Space Hulk is a good example but it is a boardgame and out of production. 🙂 – So wasn’t really on the top of my head in this one. But as a basis for a homebrew system, it’s certainly a good start.
And no my issue is with a lot in Scifi, not just balance. Lore and games not matching etc – It’s a tricky set of issues to get across 🙂
I get the feeling it comes down to how far you can suspend your belief. I prefer sci-fi over fantasy because I can understand how a lot of the “lore” could be feasibly possible (like Ben, I prefer the “industrial” believable sci-fi lore rather than the grey aliens with psychic powers lore). Maybe it’s because of my technology-based background? I can’t get into fantasy because it’s just make believe and magic! For me, fantasy games are “boring” because I just can’t connect with the rules that make up the world; anything goes when you can have magic – “industrial sci-fi” is limited by what would be feasibly possible – so I can understand the “world rules” more easily.
I’m not really sure what “wargame” means any more (and, tbh, the classic 8×4′ wargame – in any genre – leaves me cold; classic 8×4′ “wargames” are, for me, boring; great to make terrain for, beautiful to look at, but to actually *play*…. yawn).
Is Kill Team a wargame?
I enjoyed playing that, it was (relatively) quick, and far from boring. But then, I’m not immersed in the 40k lore and I don’t play Justin-style “play to take advantage of the way the rules are written” alpha-strikes.
Though I did play it more like a tabletop RPG: I took an interest in the individual characters, played the game as an abstract story-telling device, more than from a “I win if I score more points than you” point of view.
Necromunda can be good fun to play and the breaking up of lines of sight make for quite a tactical challenge.
Surely most game rulesets can be re-skinned to suit almost any genre? (though rules for Cyberpunk/netrunning are unique to that particular genre). So is the issue “sci-fi is boring”, “the rulesets of today’s sci-fi-based games are boring” or “wargames are boring”? 😉
(I just remembered, 7TVs inch-high sci-fi is great fun).
I think it’s my knowledge of technology that leaves me struggling with Sci-Fi – (Completely the opposite of you lol)
I see sci-fi ‘tech’ and battles etc that just makes no sense whatsoever. Take the boat in recent Mandalorian – when your entire civilization has wise spread antigrav – why on earth would you have a boat? – its there to be cool, and I can’t help but see it’s just there to be cool lol
The comments have been a treasure trove for me – I’m picking through them to see if I can navigate a way out of feeling so jaded by Sci Fi lol
Yay the XLBS.
40K may have dull gameplay and overstuffed lore keeping codex sales going, but there’s more to sci-fi out there and GWs corporate box-shifting approach to gameplay isn’t a great example of the hobby overall these days. You could say the same for games derived from a film or TV franchise- they rarely produce deep gameplay as they tend to bank on name recognition to make their money.
Generic sci-fi? Rogue Stars comes to mind- my space pirates band going up against someone’s robot uprising band isn’t a hard concept to buy into. Or Zone Raiders with its anime scrap-hunter aesthetic. Cyberpunk is massive right now and you can run any number of skirmish games in some variant of that space- even down to the Firefly approach of Core Space which is a great little game.
Mecha/anime are generic enough to make sense to most players with loads of room to explore or get into a specific background. Stargrave looks like the Frostgrave ‘bring what you want’ equivalent which looks generic but with a defined background within which to tell interesting stories.
Infinity has a deep background which manages to combine recognisable faction aesthetics (space-Russian werewolves, anime cyberpunks, power-armoured communists, etc) with an unusual lore that takes in lots of sci-fi tropes and makes its own unique thing. Dropzone had a great background which perfectly set the conflict up and gave the missions some weight and the game played really well.
I have to say I miss the old BoW shows where these more interesting areas of gaming were covered. It just seems to be increasingly 40K and historical.
Que the Michel Jackson song?
@avernos makes a great point about night fighting in 40k and how it affects Astartes and Imperial Guard the same way, because once upon a time it very specifically did. Anyone remember back in the days of Rogue Trader & 2nd Ed? Space Marines had a bit of kit described as “Auto Senses” built into their points cost that- 9 times out of ten – had no impact on game play, but once you started throwing in dawn assaults, night fighting missions, or anything involving smoke & gas effects, now where regular troops find themselves handicapped the post-human supersoldiers have a distinct advantage. And the Space Wolves gained a bump on top of that with their enhanced senses.
Sadly touches like that were discarded in the shift from 2nd to 3rd Edition 40k where the rules were massively streamlined. They have dabbled with bringing those touches back – the original Kill Team articles and rules skirted with bringing them back but they’ve nver really stuck. A shame as you’d think they would add some extra flavour to the likes of Kill Team….
I stopped myself listing all the things that made units (and armies for that matter) different from one another and interesting in earlier editions of WH40K that have been removed or effectively removed from the gameplay in later editions. It’s a long long list.
It’s official Warren is looseing it?
Warren IS space Napoleon.
The thing about 40K you read story’s about a marines running around killing cultists like a combine through a wheat field then you play the game an they are going down like fly’s.
Just nuke then from orbit @warzan ?
Its the only way to be sure lol 😉
Yup for sure.
Happy Sunday all.
Do we think that the problem with Sci-fi is about the lack of diversity in the armies and models. In sci fi we have the whole universe to play with and we basically only get bipeds or insects.
We could have anything. Lets have a species of giant worms on the battlefield, a battlefield filled with angry sentient birds who fight entirely differently. An army of trees? An army of parasites that just hang about on one giant unit that needs protected.
Why is it everyone in the universe has given the exact same type of technology too? Why always guns why not like Gerry said, with mad telekensis or biowarfare. There are so many mental ideas we could do with Scifi could we try something different rather than just doing 40k/starship troopers (And I like both of those)
That’s battle damage on the sword isn’t it Ben ?
i’d suggest if you want to actually play scifi, play conquest as spires?
Sci-fi is just a skin for a game, much like fantasy or even some historical. The engine underneath just has a different shell thrown over it. I’ve played 40k with bolt action, its a better game for it btw.
I think most scifi wargames are more limited by being wargames than by being scifi. Its hard to imagine wars requiring clashing armies with guns in the future. It is much more likely to involve cyber warfare, bioweapons, orbital bombardment, or even more elaborate methods to defeat your enemies (think Bill and Ted: “when I win, I will go back in time and ensure I have the counter to the attach you just made”). Unfortunately at that point you have a conflict that would work in a board game or RPG, but not as a table top wargame.
It is also worth mentioning that Star Trek works very well for a fleet game. A Call To Arms: Star Fleet is particularly good. In the Star Trek universe a single warship can subjugate a single planet if there is no other ship to counter it and hand weapons can vaporise even an armoured opponent, so large scale soldier engagements make little sense.
happy sunday ?
good subject this sunday, it distracted me more than usual during the hobby.
SF is usually these times more like WW2 and the great war I think this affects us in our games and how we think about SF.
if you look further into the past, SF is seen more as horror.
but there are many other stories out there that can inspire us to play SF games.
Of course they are usually small-scale games.
i would like to see more adventure and discovery in sf games.
I find uneven games.
most entertaining and fun to play (and win when your opponent doesn’t see it coming with your little uneven army).
I’m kerjeus what Stargrave
2021 by Joseph A Mccullough, will bring to the table.
??? ?
This was a good debatebut I think some of the arguments were not fully thought through:
1) Theres no ‘generic’ sci-fi. Was a stetement by Warren. Well I would contend theres no ‘generic’ historical. Star wars vs Star Trek vs 40k is no different to Civil War vs Napeleonic vs Ancients.
2) ‘You know who Dwarfs, Elves and Orcs are’. Is this any different to Super soldiers vs Gribbly Alien vs Techno menace
3) Warren said he finds modern Sci-fi too complex and cant followthe story. The level of background vs Documented history still pales in to comparison. You are taking the level of detail that you are willing to get in to in any gaming.
Personally I enjoy Sci-fi because you can make it what you want and do not have to be ‘historically’ accurate but also I feel uncomfortable playing a game based on a real battle where people died.
00:00 Without seeing anything but the thumbnails: HERETICS! HEATHENS! *grabs coffee, pitchfork and torch*
03:15 “scifi is boring” …. *twitchy eyes*
03:40 Oh you’re talking about 40.000… that’s just badly written fantasy at this point…
04:00 STOP THE PRESS! Do I dare to watch more of this?
06:00 On the subject of generic: nobody stops you from doing generic stuff in any given universe. You kind of want to have the emphasis on science? Go to a sector in the ST Universe where there is no federation. You want “mystical powers” in your SciFi game? Set it in a remote part of the SW Universe. It’s all up to you.
10:30 It feels odd because SciFi has always been a “you can’t mix them” kind of fandom. Fantasy not so much. “Oh, System X has that weird creature, I want that in my game too!”. Maybe that’s because Fantasy has a broader stand in RPGs?
13:45 SciFi may be subject to change but what keeps you from playing Star Trek only with TOS? Or Star Wars only with Episodes IV – VI?
18:20 I must intervene here @avernos Yes the empire is still there but the republic has “reformed” (even if they get nuked within the first new movie). The Resistance takes the role of the rebels but the movie completely fails to explain why the winners of RotJ are still outcasts of some kind. And I think that is what leads to a big gap in making the story feel complete.
20:20 Have to agree with Justin there: if you strip it back enough it always come down to “A fights B”
24:50 Space wizz0rds… how would a Jedi version of Rincewind look like… I wonder…
26:10 Industrial and gritty… Cyberpunk, Shadowrun and Bladerunner? 😉
30:35 The trouble with going beyond “people shooting each other” (either guns or bows and arrows) is going to be “how to you make the mechanic work”.
34:10 He said nothing…. yet we all want to know… TELL US!
34:50 Start your own generic scifi with Black Jack, Hookers and Booze! XD
40:00 asymmetric gameplay is great for story gameplay but the “financial successful” games focus on competitive games and those need to be balanced.
44:30 Mordheim, Necromunda and GORKAMORKA!
44:45 Character driven scifi…. I like the idea. Problem is: that will probably sell bad if it’s in an IP based universe like Star Wars because “everybody wants to be Darth Vader” etc.
48:18 Bolt ACK ACK ACK action XD You made my day @brennon *g*
50:00 SciFi game that I want…. to be honest, I’m quite happy right now. Also, come to think of it: Battletech would lend itself great to a narrative campaign with character development. They did it very well for the PC version.
57:00 Oh gods… my coffee is empty. Can I make it through to the end?
57:00 Oh yes, totally not-Grotrek and not-Felix XD
60:00 I feel you Ben… we are really spoiled for choice at the moment XD
1:04:00 CoG radio…. haven’t heard that in a while 😉
1:06:00 Did we already have a @avernos Can with water? If not, we now need one!
1:08:30 Hah! Called it! XD
1:09:30 BOLDEN GUTTONS!
1:14:00 I’ve seen those Afghans before 😉
1:16:00 My thoughts: we are spoiled with choice. I can’t even start to think on what I’d want… but then again, thinking is currently a hard task to do…
That’s it. Happy Sunday!
Rincewind! JEDI RINCEWIND!
I agree with the finishing point about asymmetric games possibly being more interesting. Too many games catering to tournament play end up with balanced sides duking it out and less narrative missions allowing for heroic last stands or wildly different victory conditions which historical battles lean towards.
A sci-fi campaign with a defined map and limited resources could offer loads of narrative battles where mismatched opponents try to hold a position long enough to allow reinforcements in, or one side has a large tech advantage so the other throws more troops at them, or fights in terrain that favours their strengths. Much more interesting than equal point armies flinging lasers at each other to cap some points or get most kills.
Great project winner’s loved the ending with the shellshocked Justin.
Well for the most interesting sci-fi universe that I have played in recently is the Traveller universe as a RPG background it is really interesting and there is lots to explore.
Happy Sunday!
This is really wide reaching topic to pick – and one with so many viewpoints. I dropped 40K years ago because of my issues with the level of power creep (which seemed to be escalating) and the meta gaming that became so prevalent. The latter is partly my fault, since I play within a tournament-focussed local gaming group, therefore gaming is as much about winning as it is fun. The meta creep just meant my army never stayed within the boundaries I wanted to play in.
I have since tried numerous other sci-fi games (Dropfleet, X-Wing, Dropzone, Core Space, Star Wars Armada, Deadzone) but none of these really held me for more than few games – it’s cost me a fortune trying all these out! However, there are two “tabletop” sci-fi games I do enjoy Adeptus Titanicus and Star Wars: Legion.
AT is a game I fear I will drop – because, lets face it, there will be power creep and meta armies. But Legion, I think it’s just because I love seeing lots, and lots, and lots of Stormtroopers – they look so darn cool on the table!
Legion as a game is fun, but I would like to play it with a more narrative approach. And this seems to be the way I’m drifting with all me games. I want some sort of story. I think this is why I love Kingdom Death, I love the Alien RPG, DnD (to a lesser extent) and even the Walking Dead (All out War). These games are as much about the story as the balance.
It’s even made me wonder if I should go back and play Warhammer40K Inquisitor. But I am moving away from tabletop games, and more toward RPGs (or games based around an RPG element).
But ultimately, everyone will have a different view – and that’s why there is so much choice. And that can only be a good thing for the hobby, right?
It is a mad, mad world… but at the same time, I do have to agree with Justin on this one and a lot of the comments below about how it is really just your interests at the time that trigger your hobby. So if you LOVE Star Wars or Marvel Superheroes… it is a golden age of gaming (how long were we waiting for a widely available Star Wars game that wasn’t just X-wing)… but that said, if you WANT to GAME WITHIN THE GAPS (Warren’s 3rd favorite thing other than getting John to paint his stuff and making Justin uncomfortable with penis jokes) then you certainly can find those niches within bigger games… or find one of the many, many model agnostic sci-fi games that are out there (Shout out to Star Breach)… and adapt or write your own story.
That said, the biggest complaint that many people have about those agnostic games is the LACK of a known universe and lore that seems to be an impediment to others… so once again, you can’t please everyone all the time and one of the hardest things in this hobby (IMHO as a very much butterfly gamer that wants to try all the games) is finding like-minded people to play with.
So for Justin, 40K is perfect right now… rich history, evolving army lists, plenty of opponents. But for Warren, it is too constraining with a story that doesn’t make sense and a lack of evolution. And those are both fine… but not if Warren and Justin want to game together.
This issue also carries over repeatedly into the “what kind of game do we want” and the social contract discussions… Even if Warren wants to jump into 40K… does he want a tournament style 2000 pt game? a combat patrol? a narrative game? does it even matter that he’s playing 40K or does he just want to stand at a table at 3 in the morning with a beer (or tea) in one hand, biscuit in the other, and be rolling some dice with a mate?
I constantly am battling (even pre-Covid) the balance of playing a game with a friend, playing a good game, and painting and building up forces ideally to play that good game with a friend… and often I can’t get all 3 of those things to align…
I might be able to get a game in, but maybe it’s not with the ideal opponent… or maybe I can play with a buddy, but we aren’t on the same page as far as games to play.. or maybe I’ve got the game, got the opponent, but now I have to buy, build, paint, and learn my army!!!! So again, not only can I not please all the people; more than half the time, I can’t even seem to get my own balance and happiness right!!!!
So, what I try to do (and it is a work in project) is just to enjoy whatever aspect I’m experiencing at the moment… am I getting a game in? GREAT! Am I gaming with good friends? EVEN BETTER! Am I just working on models and not gaming much at all? Well, that’s also GREAT as eventually I’ll get to game.. right? Lol… So, long story short, I think it is good to ask questions and have these discussions but more often than not, the answer is that as long as you are enjoying YOUR hobby it doesn’t matter what YOUR hobby is at the moment. – Josh
“That said, the biggest complaint that many people have about those agnostic games is the LACK of a known universe and lore that seems to be an impediment to others…”
If I had a quarter for every post I’ve seen asking for a map and world lore for Rangers of Shadow Deep… The same goes for posts asking how Frostgrave, Frostgrave: Archipelago, and Rangers are all linked. I’m fully expecting people to start posting asking how the Frostgrave world fits into Stargrave. Any game with a “fill it in yourself” setting gets that bombardment.
I think sci-fi works best on a small scale. The majority of WH40k fiction works at this level. Yes big battles exist (the fall of Cadia being an excellent exacmple) but for me they’re a lot less interesting than, say a squad of marines infiltrating … something. I think the interest in mass battles relies a lot on the fog of war. This fog clears in sci-fi (and moderns) and playing larger engagements becomes a bit more dull. As tech gets better, sit bacj and shoot becomes the best tactic.
I’m reminded of a demo game of Team Yankee on this very site. The Israeli player moved (I think) just one tank the entire game. It’s probably entirely valid tactically but maybe not so much fun to wargame.
Good topic, fellas. Food for thought.
What part of history do you find interesting and would like to wargame in…?
That doesn’t really work if you replace history with any fictional genre – fantasy or science fiction. Because the only areas of fantasy and science fiction that actually exist are those that have already been written, in both cases the question ends up being “which fantasy/sci fi IP would you like to wargame in” – which is a bit of a bobbins question and not a very good discussion point. Or it becomes “what sort of new features would you like to see in a fantasy/sci fi wargame” which is also a bit bland.
However @warzan made a very pertinent point about sci fi that is also equally true of Fantasy. Science Fiction is often just a reskin of history, as is Fantasy. Look at what are aguably the two greatest franchises from the respective genres – Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, certainly the most financially successful. Lord of the Rings is essentially based on Dark Age and Early medieval Britain and to a lesser extent Europe and Middle East – that was Tolkien’s intention when he started writing it. For Star Wars, it’s based very strongly on WWII (the entire attack on the Death Star scene is a homage to the Dambusters and The Battle of Britain). I think generally speaking, unless you are specifically recreating historical battles, the one of the main reasons, if not the primary reason, for choosing any period in history, or science fiction/fantasy setting, is pretty much the aesthetic. Why choose Romans over medieval knights, after all when you boil it down, it’s men wearing metal trying to chop each other up? Because you like the look of Romans and really want to paint some and see them set up on a tabletop. Ultimately games are just a mathematical probability engine dressed up in a pretty skin to hide the maths – you choose the skin that you like the look of the most.
So perhaps a better question might be, what parts of history would you most like to see a fantasy or sci fi setting inspired by
Or
Why are most great fantasy and sci fi settings so strongly inspired by history?
It’s not that sci fi or fantasy are inherently boring compared to our own history, it’s more that it’s very hard to talk about either genre without using something in the real world as an anchor
PS: Star Trek Attack Wing, the Star Trek reskin of X-Wing, was actually really, really good fun and had a few nice subtle changes over X-Wing
The lack of asymmetry in sci-fi (and non-sci-fi) games is a reason why i find some games unappealing. One of the reasons W40K became less interesting to me is because it became apparent that those things that were unique and appealing in the narrative about certain units and factions and armies were not being translated into gameplay, at least not for the most part, and that in so far as they were being translated into gameplay those things were being done away with, in one way or another, in later editions of the game until there was effectively little (quantitative, let alone qualitative) difference between one army and another, or even most units and most other units. Just about the only difference that’s left that i can see is tank or infantry. (Even if there were no other reason for not doing so i’m not sure Games Workshop would create a game like Space Hulk today simply because it’s ‘unfair’ that Genestealers don’t have guns and Terminators aren’t good at hand to hand combat.)
I’m not sure that this problem is unique to sci-fi games, but i think that it is perhaps made worse, or at least more obvious by the dissonance between both what the player can imagine as being possible and still realistic for that setting and what is presented in the narrative of the setting and setting itself to make it sci-fi, versus the translation of that into gameplay. For example, in a typical ye olde mediaeval game, fantasy or not, there could be some dissonance between how far the players know (or think they know) arrows can fly in reality and how far they actually fly, at scale, on the gaming table. This difference, for many players, even many players that are particularly concerned with re-creation and simulation, is not large or significant enough that it can’t be solved by some combination of reducing the scale(s) in one way or another and/or letting it slide. Compare that to a modern setting where players might have, or think there should be, snippers. The problem is the same as that of the distance of a flying arrow in most respects except how far that distant is in the minds of the players in reality for the snipper’s bullet, but even that one difference means that the amount that can be done to address this with changes in scale(s) is much less and much more obvious. More to the point, if the same kind of solutions that are applied to flying arrows are applied to snipper bullets then the game stops being a modern game (in that respect at least) and becomes a ye olde mediaeval game. Compare that to a game set in a future in which supposedly people can destroy planets, teleport from one place to another, read someone else’s mind, and so on; and the problem of scale alone can quickly become ridiculously dissonant, quite apart from all the other less easy to define problems. I don’t think these problems are unsolvable (even at 1:56, depending on what sort of solutions players would be happy with), but in order to solve them a lot more thought needs to be put into both the narrative and setting, and at the same time the gameplay and how the narrative and setting translate into gameplay.
(It occurs to me that one of the interesting things about chess is that whilst both sides have exactly the same ‘armies’ the units all play very differently and a side only needs to lose one or two ‘units’ for an asymmetry to be created.)
@warzan is the problem that the Sci fi games that have put you are not in fact Sci-fi but Space Opera?
Perhaps it is because you are trying to stay in above Genres, as opposed to letting you imagination go wild, Kevin and myself definitely game in the Gaps, Halo Spartans vs Dale’s, Mars Attacks vs Dust Germans or Americans , one we want to do but, have the models but not Played Martian War of the World’s Tripods vs Battlemechs ( I have a vision of Ckan Elementals tearing off the hood to get at the squishy bits , I’ve done Pulp Stargate with Daniel Jackson Grandad ‘Coleraine Jackson’ His Majesties Rocket Corps , and the Short Range Pudding Group , vs Nazis and Jaffa fighting over Desert Temple, either the Real Mummy Egyptian Gods taking a hand.
Use the stuff you have built over the years and mix it up….its not like you don’t know how to think outside the box.
So, after taking four and a half hours to watch 56 minutes of the show, I’ve given up on this week’s episode
Please sort this out guys, no option for 240 & 360 streaming and auto not any better
Why is it different to the Weekender? Renewed my subscription last week and this is the worst it’s ever been to try and watch
Check out Stargrave in Aug 2021. That is going to be based on the Frostgrave/Rangers of Shadow Deep engine. It sounds like it will have a Firefly/Rogue Trader/laserburn vibe to it. You play as a captain of a small crew evading the pirate fleets that have taken over after vast wars. He always knows the right amount to focus on world building, ie much is specific, interesting and unique and how much is left open for you to fill in the blanks with your mini collection.
Great show guys. Warzan. You should do a Konflict 47 campaign. Historical meets sci-fi and pulp horror in a historical Setting. #lockdownliesureleague for the win!!!!! ?
Gerry, could you please consider using the advance wind rules. Unless Ronnie has included a NO clause I would like to see if the wind has a massive advantage for the little people .?
HAPPY SUNDAY…..well my thoughts on the sci-if to be honest i just love some of the models from the ranges and just use them in my home world invasion game. So earth gets invaded, by what ever aliens /models i like….Necrons / tau models and the old space marines are just normal soldiers but with advance kit of the time and just mash rules using bolt action/ grim dark…and play like campaign skirmish battles..well i like it..
How about different planets having internal struggles world wars as such. Some people feel it should be like 40k, I feel there are sci fi rules which have never been explored or talked about on OnTableTop. There are several other scales which feature rule book systems where different races and humans are fighting on one planet in a civil war or a world war. You could use Flames of War World War 3 with different looking tanks and vehicle for a sci fi battle. The Americans and British being the good guys while a dominating race are the Soviets or even make up a sci fi flames of war if you want to stay mainstream.
Its all a sense of how far you are willing to take your hobby. There are loads of scenarios which can take your games to the next level.
The whole discussion made me think that Battletech checks most of the boxes they were talking about. A lot of offical and unoffical scenarios are very asymetrical. Its not just lines of soldiers with guns in power armor. You can run games from interstellar campaigns to stealing cattle on a backwater planet. The lore very much effects game mechanics and vice versus. They even have logical reasons why they just don’t nuke eveything from orbit anymore.
For me Sci-Fi has always been an odd beast, I didn’t start playing 40K until 5th Edition and by 7th was pretty bored with it. Yet, I played Warhammer Fantasy from 1st Edition and didn’t stop playing until 7th edition. I now prefer to play either 1st or 3rd edition Warhammer. If I return to 40K it’ll probably be 1st edition, as it has a batshit crazy feel to it and sounds like it’ll be more fun to play.
Sci-Fi never really appealed to me as a mass battle game, I much preferred playing RPG or skirmish based games with the genre. I also prefer Cyberpunk style backgrounds as well because they’re closer to a more realistic setting for me personally. Recently I’ve gravitated to the new Osprey game Reality’s Edge as it has a RPG/Skirmish flavor set in a Cyberpunk world. I picked up a copy of the rules and so far I’ve been quite impressed with the game and setting.
“Is scifi boring?” Yes, it can be, unless it adds something to the game that you couldn’t have in another genre.
Ive not played 40k for many years and find the idea of it a bit meh! now. I always preferred Epic 40k/Space marine back in the day and i think it was because of the scale. You could have the giant titans stomping around the battlefield rather than it just being a game of dudes shooting other dudes. The new Adeptus Titanicus fails at this too, cos it doesnt have anything smaller than knights, so ignoring the models it might as well just be dudes shooting other dudes. You need the contrast of really big vs small for it to work, and at 28mm there’s a limit to how big you can go.
Its the same with spaceships, you need the fighters/bombers/boarding craft to be important enough to give the sense of scale to your capital ships. Also need to factor in how space combat would actually work. Otherwise its just a reskinned naval game.
That said, there’s no reason not to enjoy a game that doesn’t have a uniqueness because of its genre. Clearing a compound of modern insurgents could be just as much fun as corridor fighting through an alien spaceship or delving into a cavern of orcs. When you boil it down, they could be the same game. Nothing wrong with dudes just shooting other dudes, if its a fun game.
sorry not the rest of posts, but why hasn’t marvel crisis protocol not been classed as sci fi?
how about a game themed on the boys? how to get the mechanics would be interesting.
was there a table top game based on X-com?
Fantasy is boring too.
Somehow society is always stuck in medieval era, despite having magic that replicates technology from more modern eras (especially in the high magic settings). The fact that spells/rituals like resurrection are available at all rarely has an impact on the setting, which is weird as that makes death less of a threat and would certainly allow the elite to live forever …
Warhammer kind of ‘fixed’ that by moving more towards late medieval / early gunpowder, but even they never moved on.
Combat is always the same massed ranks combat from the medieval era as well.
Mixing genres in fantasy doesn’t work either. You can’t add Conan the Barbarian in The Hobbit (or hobbits from LoTR in Conan’s setting).
Medieval society + magic = fantasy
Any modern society + lasers = science fiction
Neither of which are interesting, until you add something unique.
Whether that’s “Wizards in space” for Star Wars, the Grim Dark in 40k
Or a background that is as complex and ridiculously convoluted as Forgotten Realms for Fantasy.
It is weird that the fluff in 40k has zero effect on the tabletop. And I’d argue that is why the introduction of the Primaris was so flawed. It was the first time the background had an in-game effect.
The Eldar race in decline ? We can still field an army of Harlequins … which is odd to say the least as these are supposed to be very rare within the Eldar faction.
If there was a faction that needed to fight assymetrical wars it’s the Eldar.
Even the spacemarines are only supposed to be a 1000 man strong, whereas the Imperial Guard and Orks can field infinite numbers by comparison.
And yes … warfare for ‘science fiction’ doesn’t appear to go beyond standard WW 2 tactics either.
Like fantasy no one appears to think of the effects of technology on the battlefield, which is weird because when you look at actual history and the evolution of warfare things did change and continue to change.
@warzan your comment at 12:00 about Primaris was absolutely spot on, that as well as Cities of Sigmar is why I stopped playing GW, I read the novels but the introduction of Primaris Marines was a completely financial decision and NOT a gaming decision IMHO they did that to milk a cow that was starting to slow down her production, it is so overly bloated with all of the different army building mechanics, and points vs power, the fact that to play as Deathwatch for example you need to buy a minimum of 3 books for one army all wrong, and it puts people off.
Justin’s comments at 25:00 about having a good jump off point were accurate, but if he’s meaning to apply that to GW then he’s absolutely and totally wrong, GW has NO good entry or jump off points at all for either 40K or AoS, just sticking with the Space Marines example, you’ve got Viking Werewolves, High Gothic Vampires, Roman Legions, Greek Mythology, CyberPunk, Ghengis Khan and more besides, how the everliving hell is anyone supposed to find a good entry point into all of that mess and thats just one SUB-faction of a larger faction, then tie it into the larger meta of the game and it becomes wildly overloaded, then you overlay a rules system which is bloated and finickity, an army building mechanic that takes a degree in applied BS to understand, the price of the miniatures & the book system, how is anyone realistically supposed to get into that game as young teenager?
with regards to your comments about ‘Generic Sci-Fi’ of course there are, perhaps not in wargaming but there are generic conventions for Sci-Fi just as there are for Fantasy, if I asked all of you to draw a Cyborg or an Alien you would all be able to do so without having to know anything specific about it, I think the biggest problem Sci-Fi has that it’s very difficult now to not to tie into one of the big Brands like 40K or Star Wars or Star Trek.
Maybe painting one genre with too broad a brush.
Cadia falls. Death Star blows up. Remember the Alamo. Frodo finds the ring. France invades Britain. Conan takes the throne. Trojan horse is rolled in through the gates. Pearl Harbor bombed.
They’re all stories (some real, some fiction) and they frame the games we play out on the tabletop. Some stories are better than others. Some adaptations of those stories to games are better than others.
As another counterpoint, I love Infinity the game. I love it and I have only a loose understanding of what role PanOceania plays in the universe in relation to Tohaa. It’s scifi, but also believable. The technology makes sense at the scale of the game that’s played. That far in the future, subterfuge and skirmish will play a big role in conflicts because all-out war will be done at such a distance. And, its fun because the mechanics, the scenery, the models’ abilities make it fast, strategic and exciting.
It seems to me that Warren’s main gripe is scope of backstory in sci-fi. He does not want to invest time into learning every world and becomes increasingly turned off the more detailed those worlds become.
Or at least, are perceived to be. The way Dropzone was discussed implied that the game has become too complex to keep up with. Only it really hasn’t. The game is still set in a war between just 5 factions. The timeline has moved on just a few years since it started with the only big change bring the invasion of earth and a counter attack on the UCM colonies by the Scourge. There is a big book of fiction detailing that campaign but I just told you the main arc if it.
Perhaps the issue is that Sci-fi is typically character driven whereas fantasy games put more focus into rank and file and nameless hordes. Star Wars Legion is defined by the iconic characters and their command cards directing the army. 40k is Primarchs, individual Chapter identities, Genestealer cults and Ork tribes with their lore based special rules and so on.
Historicals don’t dwell on putting Romel or Patton on the table or how they shape your army. You don’t need to know all about a certain person to see why they bring those rules to the game.
Core Space… is my solution to anything sci fi .. such a flexible system. I would like to check out Gates of Antares.
Warren hasn’t encountered Tex Talks about Battletech, cause Battletech is ever expanding, it one setting that I return to over all other universes
Also their is no general Fantasy setting, there are stereotype and architypes, that can be implanted into any setting. You Says Elves, You’re simply using a reference as a place holder, in every setting an Elf can be completely due to culture of that race.
Also what happens in the fluff, Okay I call bullshit, In Battletech I can field a 3039 (Fourth Succession War) vs a BattleMech from 3075 (Jihad) and it fair. According to Warren the 3039 BattleMech shouldn’t meet the one from Jihad. But it doesn’t work that way, cause the fluff says they could.
2) Warren has to tell people it okay to scrap armies that people have been building for years
My fantasy sci-fi experience echoes the main point of this week’s show. My RPG group finds it much easier to relate to the tropes of medieval fantasy than generic sci-fi (playing Traveller which is about as generic as possible in scifi game terms). Why is this? I think it is because we all have different visions of what a sci-fi future looks like and feels like and a GM really has to work in exposition to explain their vision around how their universe works and how it feels, and it just doesn’t match what each players has in THEIR heads. However looking at Fantasy we all know the fixed points of cultural reference in mediaeval style fantasy. The GM just doesn’t have to work as hard to overcome the individual visions in his player’s heads because they are largely aligned to begin with.
BTW oddly my worst experience of fantasy are those where the GM has injected sci-fi into the game. I just hate it.
wow, thx
Warren’s topic is a great example for how a personal sentiment always has to be a general problem, right? That’s what is sad about the internet and how topics are often approached there from a very self-centered point of view.