Essential components of a VSF ruleset?

[Froggy the Great]

So I'm pondering a 1-page supplement to FUBAR for VSF games.  What, in the opinion of the exalted masses here, are essential components of a ruleset that make it VSF?

I'm not asking what defines VSF as opposed to other genres, I'm asking what constitutes particular VSFy bits in a ruleset.  What needs to be included?  What would be nice?  What should be omitted, and preferably beaten with weasels?

[The_Beast]

I sometimes think GASLIGHT goes a bit overboard on the unreliability, but I feel you do have to have vehicles of a 'certain character'.

Doug

[Froggy the Great]

So rules for automatons and Victorian-era weird science vehicles, then.  FUBAR does a good job of abstracting weird weapons into numbers - that's taken care of.  What about characters - are they essential for it to be VSFy?

What else am I forgetting?

[Dewbakuk]

I agree that GASLIGHT goes a little far, particularly on the damage tables (or perhaps I've just rolled the result where the vehicle fires it's main gun, which is always pointed at my stuff, a little too often), but I do like the idea of sustain rolls.

[VSF Gamer]

As far as GASLIGHT goes on the sustain rules, it should depend on what era your of VSF your playing. The GASLIGHT rules as written by the authors are for Civil War Era Machines and hence very unreliable. As the Beast knows, my games then to be turn of the century so I make the sustain rolls better to keep the machines running. However if they do fail the roll, starting them again isn't so easy and there is just no accounting for bad dice.

As for what makes a set of rules VSFy, There are lots of good combat rules for troops and individuals, It's the rules for weird and bizarre machines of all types and the combat rules for the machines that peak my attention.   

[Red Orc]

OK, I'm not sure if this is what you want at all, because you say 'not what makes it VSF as opposed to other genres' and I'm using other genres as a point of comparison, but I think what makes VSF VSF and not Pulp, Colonial Gaming or 'hard Sci-Fi' is important (that's not to say that I think VSF games can't use Pulp, Colonial or Sci-Fi rulesets with a bit of creative jiggery pokery).

I may be being a bit heretical here, but to me what makes things VSF (rather than say Pulp) is that the heroes are called Captain Cholmondely-Carruthers, not Zac Smash; and dependable old Blenkinsop is as likely to be a Martian/Clockwork rather than some chap from the lower orders. So the ability to have characters from any of the innner planets of the Solar System (I don't think we really need jellyfish-gasbag Jovians and whatnot, but Selenites, Venusians and Martians certainly, both as heroes and as troops), constructed entities, or certain kinds of alternative-earth people (eg Atlanteans, Insect-people from Inside the Earth or whatever) would be good. Oh, and I would certainly regard 'characters' as vital, if by characters you mean the ability to put certain models on the table with a changed or abnormal statline or abilities to represent their different capacities.

Obviously what seperates VSF from Colonial Gaming is the 'weird science' element, which you've already covered (but see below). But VSF should be able to do asymetric warfare, whether that's 100 Zulus against a small detatchment of Armoured Flux-Bombardiers, or a horde of Transylvanian peasants against Dr Grimlichfienden and his Glavanic Titan, or even a small party of intrepid explorers going through the caves beneath Iceland and encountering weird beasts and troll-men on their Travels to the Heart of the World. I know that is pretty Pulpy too, but to me Pulp is a bit like VSF 30 years on.

I'd say what seperates VSF from more 'hard' sci-fi is the experimental nature of the creations. I know you've said that it's covered, but I think there's a really important point here, so I'm going to persue my angle on it. VSF is to me a cusp of history, when technology is moving from the time of inventors in their sheds to large companies with big factories. The idea of breakdowns occurring should be built in. I'd propose that it's not individual objects that should break, it maybe could be types of object - if you have a Colossus Steam Walker, and a patrol of 10 cavalrymen with Galvanic Lances, the Colossus, being a jerry-built one off that Professor Parpington built in his shed, should be inherently more unreliable than the Galvanic Lances of Imperial Galvanic Engineering Ltd of Hull. Perhaps some sort of 'tech level' might be necessary (the further from the norm the more chance of breakage) or some relationship between how many of something there are, and how reliable they are, to reflect the difference between craft and industrial methods of production.

Beyond that, dinosaurs and airships; if it has those, I'll be happy.

[Alfrik]

I like my VSF rules also to have reliability checks, but as a "move it along" part for a game, I limit those checks to when they go to "full military power" to make their first check. If the machine trundle along slowly after shots are fired they are still reliable, till they fire their weapons, then start checking. Otherwise playing a game along the short sides with maximum distance between means most machines break down and never get to add flavor to the battle. Just my 2 cents worth.

Along another way to look for what you think should or is needed, make a list of what you would like to see take place in any given VSF battle you play in and make sure your rules reflect those possibilities?