Frank Chadwick, the game designer indirectly responsible for so much wasted time in my adolescence, has a blog.
Also indirectly, it was exposure to the '80s-era U.S. military through his games that caused me to predict, when a couple of older friends tried to tell me that the Gulf War was going to be a stalemated bloodbath and I didn't understand because I didn't remember Vietnam, that the whole thing would be over in "a week, tops, once the first tanks roll. It's going to be the most one-sided ass whuppin' in the history of modern warfare. Care to bet?" As you know, the Army beat the point spread and I won twenty bucks.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
45 comments:
Wargaming?
What is this wargaming wikipedia speaks of?
Shootin' Buddy
YOU played Traveller? SQUEE!!!
You were already pegged up pretty high on my list. If you played Traveller, TOO...
Heck, I have a whole butt-ton of the Little Black Book-format originals, and the Far Future Enterprises re-issues. :D
...and an unpunched copy of Fifth Frontier War.
Traveller, Twilight 2000, 2300 AD - ah, the good old days. I've got the joy of introducing my sons to those worlds. Once I wean them off Star Wars, I can show them what a real Empire is like...
...waitaminute. Did you say an unpunched FFW?
Wow. I don't think I've ever seen one of those. Mine, like all the rest I'd ever seen, was punched, carefully sorted, and played maybe twice. (Imperium got more play.)
This is my second copy.
Do you have any idea how much it cost me to buy back my childhood on eBay?
T-Bolt <3 Tam
"a week, tops, once the first tanks roll. It's going to be the most one-sided ass whuppin' in the history of modern warfare. Care to bet?"
I'da given a finger to have a girl say something like that to me right before Desert Storm. Alas, the only two females that ever gamed with us were crooned by early spotters long before the rest of us would believe that such a lady existed at all:)
Dude's blog is good stuff. I'm linking up post haste.
tweaker
For some reason I'm flashing on Lyle Lovett chanting, "One of us! One of us!"
Glad I helped you win twenty bucks. You owe me a beer.
A long time ago, before the Internet became popular, I wrote an article about how writers could use RPGs, such as TW2000, as research sources.
I thought the video game version was pretty decent, too, especially since it ran on 286s.
Do you have any idea how much it cost me to buy back my childhood on eBay?
Heh. I remember how much my punched, shopworn copy went for on eBay, several years ago. Oddly, FFW was one of the few Traveller things I was willing to part with when cash was tight.
I had to go look and...
I still have my copy of Twilight 2000 in the basement. Along with way too many other games I don't play anymore.
Damn I loved those...
me: "All right, I'll show that SOB. I'm gonna shoot right at the door."
he: "With what? With the plasma gun?"
me: "Hell yeah, I'll show Laughing Boy how you mount a one-man rescue."
he: "The PGMP-12? But you're INSIDE, in an ENCLOSED AREA."
me: "Not for long."
he: "Well, all right, but before you roll I just want to say this is a really bad idea."
me: "I know, that's why he won't be expecting it."
:)
Somewhat sadly, those little black books were the only little black books I made use of in high school.
I have the 1984 boxed TW2000 (although when we played, we had the second edition/one volume edition).
I also have most of the Dangerous Journeys set. Dangerous Journeys, of course, being the game that killed GDW.
You mean there's a market for old Traveller stuff? Hmm, might have to see if I can find that box tonight...
I had (long gone now) the 1st edition Traveller 2300 rules, the one with the blatant rip-off of the M41a from "Aliens". Fantastic game, as are all of Frank's designs ("Cool, a Scout ship on mustering-out! Interstellar space, here we come!") .
And Atom Smasher, your bit about the PGMP-12 had me in stitches. Shooting a plasma gun in a small room is something a Traveller character will do once (and only once...) in their lives.
(BTW, Frank wrote some EXCELLENT miniatures rules as well. His Volley & Bayonet rules are great.)
I remember my first FGMP-15.
It shot through schools. Literally.
Did Frank Chadwick design or co-design the Third World War series? I had all three, once (and a whole bunch of Traveller books, and several of the GDW WWII Europa series games -- Western Desert was the best of the lot, the low unit density made it extraordinarily playable). The last Chadwick-designed game I played was Command Decision II, not all that long ago. We switched to Spearhead a couple of years back, though.
Ken,
"Did Frank Chadwick design or co-design the Third World War series?"
Yup. I have all three (again), too. They're unpunched and waiting for me to find a big enough table and an opponent.
You know, you can get any edition of T2K or Traveller on a CD these days -- basically the entire set of books for a particular game edition on ONE disk. For about $40.
Yes, I got a copy of Twilight:2000 when it was first released, played Traveller black books, and got the early 1990's versions of both until GDW went under.
Geodkyt! Don't tease! Give up a link so I can maybe buy that CD!
Dammit, Tam. Now you've made me want to dig up the old rulebooks.
Check Marc Miller's site at Far Future Enterprises, I'd reckon...
I won $50 bucks on the Falkland's War. My office mates didn't understand the concept of Highlanders, Gurkhas and Guards vs. conscripts. Like those who bet against you the war was seen through Viet-Nam War era glasses.
My war gaming is old school. Avalon Hill, Simulation Publications, et. al. Steel Panthers is the closest computers come to my old experience.
Stretch,
I prefer cardboard counters to pixels, too, but Robby the Robot is always available as an opponent.
You need to find a copy of a game called The Operational Art of War from Talonsoft.
It lets you port almost all your favorite hex & counter games to the 'puter.
I went in for miniatures (particularly horse & musket) in a big way a while back, but I still have a few boardgames. Unfortunately I let go of most of the really good ones (the Third World War titles, the Europa titles, The Next War, MechWar 2, War in the East...). Every so often I get tempted to hunt down a copy of Squad Leader and Cross of Iron, but I think I'm cured of Star Fleet Battles. :-)
There's one area where I think Robby the Robot actually offers a better game experience: carrier operations, at least in SSG's Carriers at War. Best I ever saw.
Traveller (original, one-volume The Traveller Book) was the bomb.
My tween/teen buddies and I owned a metric ton of RPGs, but for whatever reason the only two that ever really gelled into a fun, extended campaign were Traveller and Champions (superhero RPG).
I was the ref. Our little crew of mercs/troubleshooters had the sweetest little pimped-out Scout ship to cruise the stars with...
I have Talonsoft World at War Series and Rising Sun. I started with the Original SSI Panzer General. I go way back to Avalon Hill Panzer Leader. I miss doing Board Games but the Talon Soft Series kicks asss.
Yup. I have all three (again), too. They're unpunched and waiting for me to find a big enough table and an opponent.
3? There were 4 - 3WW, Arctic Front, Southern Front, and Persian Gulf.
Those, I miss.
And while I don't have the table space (wife wants to park the cars in the garage, the nerve of the woman), the idea of getting to play those again...man, that's tempting.
"3? There were 4 - 3WW, Arctic Front, Southern Front, and Persian Gulf."
I sit corrected; I have all 4. (Forgot about Persian Gulf.)
I once slept on the couch so I could use my bedroom floor as a puppy-free space for Fall of France, Case White, and (I think) Marita-Merkur...
Traveller- many a day of my youth was wasted on that game. I wasn't sure there were any of us left.
What? No love for Morrow Project from this group of game-geeks? I'm so disappointed...
:)
Ah, Morrow Project. No matter what we originally set out to do at the beginning of a mission, we ended it killing farmers in job lots. During a dry spell, the tracers in an M2 will set the whole durn town on fire.
Stretch, I lost my bet on the Falklands. I took Argentina and the points...
If you love Squad Leader / ASL ("More than a game, it's a way of life!"), check out the Combat Mission series from Battlefront.com: They've even adopted it to modern-day battles real and imagined.
Ken, I played in a Morrow Project game for a whole year where the sole goal of one of my fellow players was to engage in melee combat. He failed. :)
I sit corrected; I have all 4. (Forgot about Persian Gulf.)
Mom, can I go over to play at Tam's house?
(I've got to start hitting those local blogmeets. Guns, Traveller *and* monster wargames? People after my own heart.)
I wasn't sure there were any of us left.
Left? Heck, I've got some of the most recent iteration, from Mongoose Publishing. It's not that good, really, despite a valiant attempt to rationalize the various elements from OT, MT, TNE and some from T4. Then again, I've come to the conclusion that other systems serve the Traveller setting much better than anything with technical specs; for me and mine, Traveller-as-space-opera is a heck of a lot of fun. Nobody worried about the displacement, computer rating or M-drive performance of Serenity.
ExurbanKevin,
"If you love Squad Leader / ASL ("More than a game, it's a way of life!"), check out the Combat Mission series from Battlefront.com"
Oh, Marko turned me on to CMBO back in '00. Remind me to get him to tell the tale of Otto the Ubergunner some time. Any Squad Leader geek would let out the same fangirl squee I did on seeing the Saving Private Ryan-cam turn replays in that game...
Noah D,
Srsly. I have an attic full of games. We need to set up a gaming club. The existence of The Boardroom was nearly the closer on my decision to move from K-town to Broad Ripple; I was crushed when they closed.
Srsly. I have an attic full of games. We need to set up a gaming club.
Well, if IUPUI or another nearby school puts up a tenure-track position in marketing in a year or so, I'll apply. Indiana is one of the states both my wife and I find acceptable, so why not?
Heh, I found a copy of the old Avalon Hill Starship Troopers game in the box that I got in 6th grade.
Ah, my misspent youth...
I have two of the original TW2000 rules boxed sets still in the original shrink-wrap. Ah, the good ol' days...
Was Aftermath! a GDW game?
http://www.farfuture.net/cdroms.html
CD-ROMs
Holy Petunia, the Classic Traveller CD has Striker included!
Anon 5:14,
Aftermath! (Comes Algebra!) was from the Chaosium. That was the flavor of the month for us for a while. I finally manged to find a used copy a couple years ago...
Ah, Chaosium...I still have the rulebook and a couple other things from my old 2nd Edition boxed Runequest. :-)
Post a Comment