VSF vs. "Sword and Planet"

[Dr. The Viking]

I guess I'm guilty of playing Warhammer 1879 then.

In fact most games I play are Warhammer apparently. If the definition of Warhammer is anything with more than 20 figs on each side..... I thought it was WarGAMING, but I've been misled. 

I like to mix it all up though. Have a little skirmish deciding who get's an added bonus next BATTLE.

[Plynkes]

Now that's your definition, not mine. At most a misunderstanding of mine. It's large numbers of Heath Robinson tanks and warmachines lining up against each other in set-piece battles that puts me in mind of Warhammer (or for that matter, Warmachine), and gets a little too far from what I enjoy about VSF for my taste. The size of the encounter has little to do with it.


You're just trying to get me to bite again, aren't you? It's not going to work. I pledge to be Mr. Positive on the VSF front from now on. Each to his own, I say. 

[Svennn]

VSF for me is just spiced up Colonials. The few times I have actually played all the mechanicals have added colour and the unknown. It must be said though that I find this better with an ignorance of the rules used so situations have to be tackled as they arise and not by loopholes or game mechanics.

I can see the difficulty of having sword weilding characters but oddly this is something that does not crop up with lightsabres in Star Wars? ? ?  If you make characters immune, hollywood style, to missile fire it is counter productive as no-one will then shoot at characters.

[former user]

I think this is only Starwars - style
after all, jedi knights would be half that imposing if they sneaked around in Ninja costumes instead of walking through a hail of fire

think of all those pirate movies where a small groups penetrates the defences of a heavily armed and guarded fortress and then starts swordfighting inside
Zorro also is not known for taking out platoons of infantry in full daylight - he sneaks around in darkness and when caught in daylight, tries to escape

[OSHIROmodels]

I can see the difficulty of having sword weilding characters but oddly this is something that does not crop up with lightsabres in Star Wars? ? ?

We all know George Lucas couldn't come up with a decent idea for a film and had to copy decent ideas (and which git told him he could direct!)

I'm going to echo the sentiments that have been mentioned before, as in - VSF is an 'arms-race wargame' (from skirmish to mass battle) which means the technology more of a presence over the usual ranks of troops (and screaming natives), whereas the S+P take is more Conan-meets-Flash Gorden stylie and is character driven with the emphsis is on story and situation.

I think anyway 

cheers

James

[warrenpeace]

Star Wars is something I would lump in with "Sword and Planet" genre Pulp.  It does have frightful high tech rapid fire weapons, and yet, when characters aren't engaging in a Wild West gunfight, they seem to insist on dueling with their light sabers as if they were Samarai or swashbucklers of the 16th and 17th Centuries.  And there is also romance, or at least love triangles.

VSF does remind me of WW1.  The works of Verne and Wells anticipated weapons that made their large scale debut in WW1.  There were submarines, airships, airplanes, poison gas, flamethrowers, rapid fire weapons of many sorts, etc.  While I have great appreciation for both WW1 and WW2 as gaming periods, I just think it's a shame to take nearly an hour to put lot of great looking figures on the table only to remove most of them in two or three turns due to intense firepower.

One of the things that made the 17th Century a great swashbuckling era was the unreliability of gunfire.  In that century a misfire rate of 50% was common.  Even the introduction of flintlock weapons near the end of the century only reduced the misfire rate to about 33%.  One thing that might help produce more swordplay, as was pointed out a few posts before, is to introduce less reliability to the firepower.  Plenty of possible explanations for this on other planets, I suppose...

[Dewbakuk]

VSF does remind me of WW1.

I totally understand this I do, however I massively disagree. There are two important differences in my opinion, the first is reliability, the VSF rules have you rolling to see if your steam equipment has broken down each turn etc. The second is uniforms, WW1 uniforms are usually drab and utilitarian, as opposed to the vibrant colours and whimsy of VSF. While uniforms may not affect game play, they make a huge visual difference which to my eye ( ) is just as important.

I just think it's a shame to take nearly an hour to put lot of great looking figures on the table only to remove most of them in two or three turns due to intense firepower.

I'm not sure what rules you've seen being used but in our games it takes the combined firepower of several units or machine guns to be sure of killing a unit, let alone a chunk of the army. I won't comment on how long it takes to set up though.... 

[warrenpeace]

Dewbakuk, the tanks and airships and airplanes of WW1 were not very reliable either!  And early in WW1 the French at least still had bright uniforms.  Other than that, I agree that most nation's uniforms before the mid-1880's were more colorful.  I like that too.

I played Valor Steel and Flesh.  Rapid Wastage!  Although some characters did survive to complete their missions.  I liked some things about it, but overall I think that The Sword and the Flame has more advantages, and is not quite so bloody.  Melee is more interesting in TSATF.

Saw a couple of big VSF games at the Enfilade convention in Olympia, Washington.  The first was set on Mars, with relatively open ground.  The few ground troops available pretty much had to hide behind rocks because there were so many tanks and walkers and flying machines spewing death.  The second was set on Venus, with a column snaking through the swamps.  There were no so many death dealing machines in the Venus game, and the hordes of green critters that attacked out of the swamp seemed to be achieving an Isandlwana type result.

[P_Clapham]

There's an academic article I'm using for a Tarzan/Conan paper, it covers quite a bit of this issue.  Loincloth, Double Ax, and Magic: "Heroic Fantasy" and Related Genres.  Author Hans Joachim Alpers.  Science fiction Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1(Mar., 1978), pp. 19-32.  In the unlikely event you don't have this on your coffee table, it's avalible online.  I got my PDF through JSTOR, and online repository of academic journals and articles.

http://www.jstor.org

[flooglestreet]

I'll re-iterate my comment. VSF is an era.Sword and Planet is a genre. You can have a VSF sword and planet story by using the devices of Verne and Welles in a game that is about a planet with a sword armed culture. You don't need a horde of steam tanks and steam zepplins in VSF, the original VSF stories usually featured only one device.  Victorian era technology is the central theme of VSF while swashbuckling warriors and the weird world the inhabit is the central theme of sword and planet.

[former user]

it appears to me that this evolves into a divergent discussion, since everyone has his own oppinion of what what is...
(btw, I don't think VSF is an era - it is fictional and nobody talks about georgian or edwardian SF.)

wouldn't it be better if we quoted fictional works like books and movies, since this is where the tags come from? I think it is hard to tag anyone's games and way of wargaming, since we all want to be somehow idiosyncratic and mix up our favourite fiction

Here, I'll give an example:

Back to the future - whereas being clearly a timetravel SF, it successfully mixes dark future, VSF and gunslinger pulp genres.

[Dewbakuk]

Dewbakuk, the tanks and airships and airplanes of WW1 were not very reliable either!  And early in WW1 the French at least still had bright uniforms.

In the games I've played in though that doesn't seem to be reflected in rules at all. Others could be different though. As to the French, yeah I did think of that, they're the reason I went back and added the word 'usually' to that line before I posted it. 

As to the games/rules, I've got Valour Steel & Flesh but I haven't used them yet. They hadn't appeared to be that vicious, perhaps I'll think otherwise after giving them a try. From your description though, I suspect the problem is down to what the players are putting on the table. We have had games where there was probably too much steam-tech on the table (looking at you Dave  ) but even then the infantry were the ones to win the game by achieving the objectives etc. Usually we have far more 'normal' stuff than techy stuff on the board.

[gamer Mac]

The last big game of VSF I played in at BLAM had a load of steam tech but the game was still decided by a big punch up in the middle of the table by the infantry. The steam tech either broke down or was busy concentrating on other steam tech, to leave the PBI's to get on with the job.
We had on the table a lot of tech
An Aeronef
Two steam walkers
two steam tanks
A Zepplin
various armoured suits
Balloon riders
Helicopter troops
Steam staff car

[Dewbakuk]

Balloon riders
Helicopter troops
Steam staff car

True, we do tend to have quite a bit like that but they're pretty much just infantry/cavalry with a different type of movement. The armoured suits can be useful but essentially it's a machine gun or anti-tank gun team with a saving throw.

Only the Nef/Zep, walkers and tanks would make any real effect over and above the infantry. There were at least 2 units of infantry for each of those and as you said, the steam stuff has a tendency to conk out when you need it.

[Dr. The Viking]

I keep reading it "The Sword and The Plant" thinking "Oh what an unbalanced scenario!" when this turns op in my "new replies since last login"