Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => VSF Adventures => Topic started by: gloriousbattle on June 15, 2010, 11:39:53 PM
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Lots of possibilities here:
Mild fantasy: Like Haggard or maybe Burroughs Tarzan?
Heavy Fantasy: Like some of the more modern fantasy steampunk (Castle Falkenstein), or Burroughs Mars?
Mild SF: Stuff that coulda been, even if it wasn't, like steam tanks.
Heavy SF: Stuff that couldn'ta been, like tripods and ether fliers.
Mild Horror: Like Jack the Ripper or the false-fantasy stuff of some Sherlock Holmes, like the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Heavy Horror: Like Lovecraft and his pals.
Feel free to add in other suggestions.
For me? Bring it all on. Captain Nemo should be fighting Deep Ones, Imperial German steam tanks should be fighting Martian tripods, and Rasputin, Crowley, and other nuttfy people should be casting world destroying spells that the PCs only barely manage to avert, while Mahars and their Saggoth armies are preparing to invade the surface from Pellucidar... :o
Yes, some day I will get help.
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I agree 100%. The more what if the better I like it!
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All of the above, man. All of the above. I have a Free Norwegian State on Mars, allied with Green Martians and Red Martians out of John Carter, with bizarre mechanicals and some mystical goomgah.
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I'm fairly mild. I prefer to capture the feel of a Boy's Own Adventure on the North West Frontier.
But I have built a steam tank to fight off Sterling Moose's clockwork scorpion riding Cossacks.
James
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I little of everything above. except maybe the heavy horror. Plus a little dinosaur hunting on lost continants. Or maybe some Chinese mystical and ancient tecnology stuff too.
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Yeah i'm pretty much all of it, throw caution to the wind and lets have some fun :D
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Tends to be Heavy SF from that list, but yeah, any and all is welcome.
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Tends to be Heavy SF from that list, but yeah, any and all is welcome.
Same for me, the main reason being all that loverly steam-tech that's crying out to be built :D
cheers
James
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On reflection I suppose I sometimes swing to the heavy fantasy/SF. Chairfaces Venusian parrotmen are in the group and I wouldn't bat an eye if someone showed up with an aether flyer I guess.
No horror though. I prefer battles over RPGs and legions of Lovecraftian monsters would rather unbalance a game. Or even one Lovecraft monster for that matter.
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On reflection I suppose I sometimes swing to the heavy fantasy/SF. Chairfaces Venusian parrotmen are in the group and I wouldn't bat an eye if someone showed up with an aether flyer I guess.
Well the Parrotmen are pretty cool.... ;)
horror though. I prefer battles over RPGs and legions of Lovecraftian monsters would rather unbalance a game. Or even one Lovecraft monster for that matter.
I agree, although I wouldn't rule out a Cthulu game with a Victorian flair
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Space: 1889 for me, which is a mix of the list above. Lots of mild fantasy, and a mix of mild & heavy sci-fi. The British army is on Mars (pretty heavy sci-fi), but except for a single landship is basically historical (mild sci-fi). Even the gunboats aren't that far removed from the historical waterborne versions, with the (admittedly major) exception that they can fly.
So, basically, I like my VSF very grounded in history, with just enough fantasy/sci-fi bits to make it different.
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Anything from heavy fantasy to heavy SF. Normally more towards taking conquest to other planets or fictional worlds dreamt up during the VIctorian era or before. :)
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Anything from heavy fantasy to heavy SF. Normally more towards taking conquest to other planets or fictional worlds dreamt up during the VIctorian era or before. :)
I'll agree with that, but add to it.
For some reason, many people seem to want the solar system to be an extension of colonial Asia/India/Africa, with hordes of local low tech types being cut down by Remingtons and Maxim guns.
But I see no reason for that. Arguably the novel that has affected the genre more than any other is War of the Worlds, and in that one the aliens actually overpower the earthmen's technology.
I did this one once, which was fun: The War of the Worlds took place as stated, but when the aliens died from disease and it was over, Tesla, Edison, Graham Bell, Marconi, etc., started reverse-engineering the Martian tech. Meanwhile, the Martians developed antibiotics.
The result was War of the Worlds II, in which the two sides were much more closely matched, and in which the earth nations took the battle to the stars. Here they found that the "Martians" were actually Jovians (the invasion was launched from their forward base on Mars), and that they ruled a solar empire of more primitive races from other worlds. Now all of these peoples were fighting for dominance.
Great fun!
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Now go read Edison's conquest of Mars.
That's my inspiration. ;)
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I did this one once, which was fun: The War of the Worlds took place as stated, but when the aliens died from disease and it was over, Tesla, Edison, Graham Bell, Marconi, etc., started reverse-engineering the Martian tech. Meanwhile, the Martians developed antibiotics.
The result was War of the Worlds II, in which the two sides were much more closely matched, and in which the earth nations took the battle to the stars. Here they found that the "Martians" were actually Jovians (the invasion was launched from their forward base on Mars), and that they ruled a solar empire of more primitive races from other worlds. Now all of these peoples were fighting for dominance.
Great fun!
Oooh. That does sound fun. I like the Sanctuary feel of historical personalities banding together in a vaguely SF setting. Except in Victorian times. I've just confused myself.
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I agree with all the above. This is VSF and anything and everything has its place somewhere in the universe.
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VSF for me is big mix all the styles you mention.
But i had a great time playing a rpg campaing directly inspired in a great book from Philip Jose Farmer, The other log of Phileas Fogg. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/philip-jose-farmer/other-log-of-phileas-fogg.htm
The main idea of the campaing was everything looks like a 100% historically accurate Victorian game but on the background of that "reality" all it's a huge VSF conspiration. Everything looks like "normal" but VSF stuff exist and keeps hidden from people knowledge by secrets societies, steamlords and governements.
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VSF for me is big mix all the styles you mention.
But i had a great time playing a rpg campaing directly inspired in a great book from Philip Jose Farmer, The other log of Phileas Fogg. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/philip-jose-farmer/other-log-of-phileas-fogg.htm
The main idea of the campaing was everything looks like a 100% historically accurate Victorian game but on the background of that "reality" all it's a huge VSF conspiration. Everything looks like "normal" but VSF stuff exist and keeps hidden from people knowledge by secrets societies, steamlords and governements.
I have that novel, and must finally get around to reading it!
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For myself, I think "my" VSF-code would read:
F2/S7/H0/R8
- Fantasy: 2 out of 10. "Mysteries of the East" and "Unknown Tales of Mars" sort of thing.
- SciFi: 7 out of 10. Ether, yes. Lightning cannons, yes. Freeze rays, hell yes. But also Martini-Henry rifles and Maxim guns too.
- Horror: 0 out of 10. Not in VSF -I prefer my horror modern and apocalyptic, thanks.
- Reality: 8 out of 10. The question of whether Bismark would regard extra-terrestrial colonies as he did African and Asian ones is an interesting one. With Edison making the best etherships in the world, will this advance the cause of American naval modernisation so an earlier president thean Teddy Roosevelt launches the Great White (Aerial) Fleet? And, as much as "Bad Germans" is part of the modern gamer zeitgeist, the British in the 1880s were more concerned about France as their Next Big Rival, so a lot of published stuff is, well, weird...
Hanging out with professional military historians tends to do this sort of thing... We spent an entire evening running "what-if" from the suggestion that the swamps of Venus produced an elixir effective at halting the spread of cancer - leading to a much longer reign by Kaiser Frederick of Germany, with all the carry-on changes that might have brought...
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I remember in University finding a reprint of an old SF novel called "The Great War of 189_", it was a 19th century version of those 1980s books detailing how WW3 was going to unfold.
But it had Great Britain coming in on the side of Germany!
The German rivalry came with the dreadnought race and that whole business in South Africa.
James
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I think it's 1898, they're meant to be very good. I would love to read it.