Role Playing Games Group Build (Twilight 2000, The Morrow Project, and others)

[Jeffry Fontaine]

This group build would not be exclusive to Twilight 2000 (T2K) or The Morrow Project (TMP) but would also include any other role playing game that has vehicles, ships, or aircraft included.  So that would encompass pretty much everything from the mobile infantry jump capsule in Starship Troopers (role playing game), to the mighty Ogre.  It could also include other subjects such as a lightcycle or tank from Tron or space craft from other role playing games that have a space theme.  I started with T2K and TMP only because I had a passing interest in the vehicles that were used in these two games since most of the vehicle concepts appeared to be based on subjects that could be easily converted from existing armor models.  I am sure that the other members here can offer up their own suggestions for other role playing games that could be included in this group build.  

Here are links to Google searches for:

Twilight 2000

The Morrow Project

Both of the above search results have a number of links to pages devoted to each subject including the usual Wikipedia installment.  

[Steel Penguin]

   oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh now that catches my attention.
the thought of M1 giraffes, or a mav Bradley  does tend to call to me. ( yup gmed both 1st and 2nd ed twilight, as well as Dark Conspiracy and caddys and dinos)
i know that some one on the BITS site has built a 15mm 100Dton type S scoutship

[Weaver]

That's a good idea: I used to play Traveller back in the day.

Would it have to be based on an actual illustration from the game or just "in the spirit of"? The latter obviously gets wider participation, but with spacecraft in particular, there's a risk of the link to the game becoming tenuous. Then again, games like Traveller often include spacecraft design rules, so you could say that anything designed using the rules is in, maybe with a requirement to post the game stats?

[philp]

Would be a good excuse for a Car Wars project.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

That's a good idea: I used to play Traveller back in the day.

Thanks,

I have had this one in mind for a couple of years now.  Not that I can claim originality for this GB since it was first done over on Armordrama a few years ago.  The Armordrama GB was for only Twilight 2000 but there was a lot of participation as well as enthusiasm.  Chad Lebo (aka General Zod) and I have discussed the merits of having something similar here on WHIF off and on for a couple of years now and I finally took his suggestion to go ahead and propose it officially.  Instead of focusing on one RPG I thought that it would be a good idea for this forum to include all of the role playing games.  Since there are so many of them now and not everyone is a T2K or TMP fan.  I figured that in opening up the GB to include all RPGs that it would appeal to a larger group and hopefully all interests instead of trying to focus on one particular role playing game which may not be a personal favorite. 

As I mentioned in the opening comments for the topic I only had a passing interest in the two RPGs that I mentioned because they included a number of interesting vehicles that were possible to construct from existing model kits. 

Would it have to be based on an actual illustration from the game or just "in the spirit of"? The latter obviously gets wider participation, but with spacecraft in particular, there's a risk of the link to the game becoming tenuous. Then again, games like Traveler often include spacecraft design rules, so you could say that anything designed using the rules is in, maybe with a requirement to post the game stats?

That is like trying to determine what a dry martini consists of.  Some like gin with their glass of vermouth and others prefer their gin poured in the shadow of the vermouth bottle. 

I would have to say that if you have a description of the game piece and a drawing of said piece or an image to work with that it would be eligible for this GB.  I recall one of my subordinates having a thing for some game that may have been Traveler and it was played using floor plans or something but there was never any outside view of the space craft only the interior.  If you can put something together that is based on a floor plan with an exterior you should be able to build it for this event. 

I see no reason to exclude any game to be honest.  I see no reason to exclude someone that plays Dungeons and Dragons as an example (or any other role playing game for that matter) and wishes to enter a figure or token based on that particular role playing game.  There are any number of figures, games pieces, and tokens available for these games that are already made and need only to be painted to be considered finished.  I leave that decision up to the individual on how they wish to approach this group build. 

[nev]

So with the likes of D&D, AD&D, and Middle Earth Role Play you would be able to use Games Workshop figures.....

What about computer RPGs?  Baldurs Gate, Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.......

[Steel Penguin]

for figs for both baldurs gate and planescape you could have a look at Ral Partha ( as there both AD&D world settings,  baldurs is from the forgoton realms) so theyed be more "specific" that the GW ones, which are more and more tied to there own systems.
but for outhers ( i will add all of these are in the UK and are company's Ive bought stuff from)
fantasy and sci fi (mainly 28mm)
http://hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk/
http://www.heresyminiatures.com/

Sci Fi ( varius scales) (ground zero are Blindingly fast, both myself and friends have placed orders at mid afternoon one day and received them the next morning)
http://www.groundzerogames.net/
http://www.oldcrowmodels.co.uk/

Real world for various times from inter world war to ultra modern
http://www.forceofarms.co.uk/
http://www.imprintmodels.co.uk/about.aspx
http://www.sloppyjalopy.com/
http://www.hlbs.co.uk/
http://www.copplestonecastings.co.uk/

[buzzbomb]

Oh goody, goody, goody

Huge Traveller fan of old, plus Command and Conquer etc etc
Heaps of fodder

[Weaver]

I would have to say that if you have a description of the game piece and a drawing of said piece or an image to work with that it would be eligible for this GB.  I recall one of my subordinates having a thing for some game that may have been Traveler and it was played using floor plans or something but there was never any outside view of the space craft only the interior.  If you can put something together that is based on a floor plan with an exterior you should be able to build it for this event. 

The Traveller spaceship design rules themselves only produce a list of stats that define your vessel for travel/trade/combat purposes. Some versions of the rules (there have been MANY revisions) include rules that define the volumetric and aerodynamic efficiency of the vessel in relation to it's basic shape, but these are only generic terms such as "wedge", "sphere", "cylinder" etc...

There are games within the Traveller world that use deck plans, books of deck plans have been published, and, IIRC, there are rules for drawing them up somewhere, but deck plans for player-designed ships are very much the icing on the cake: you have to be REALLY serious about a ship to go that far. The deck plans are also pretty abstract, being a series of squares that roughly correspond to the external shape of the ship, wiiththe latterdrawn around them on commercial ones.

Traveller does have a wide range of "standard" ships that you can buy "off plan" from any shipyard, and all of these have illustrations, mostly the W.H.Keith jnr "classic" ones, and obviously, any book of deck plans will have a drawing of the ship too. Likewise, there are books of military ships (way beyond the means of a player) for large-scale wargames, so there is a wide variety of illustrations to choose from, with ships ranging from 20-ton ship's boats upto 500,000-ton battlewagons. Some of these illustrations are clearly inspired by late 1970s sci-fi: the Type Scout, for instance, is exactly the same arrowhead shape as a Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer, although ironically, it's actually one of the smallest standard ships in Traveller. Likewise, the Far Trader is embarrasingly close to the Millenium Falcon...

Something I've fancied doing my own version of is the "air raft", which is a small anti-grav vehicle. It's generally drawn as a wheeless flying convertible sports car, but I've always thought that's a bit lazy and envisaged something more utilitarian, derived from simple lifting platforms used in the days when anti-grav had very little excess power.

[Gondor]

MMMMMMMM Traveller......

I still have all my books stored around here somewhere and I have deck plans of a Frontier Trader designed to have lots of its components repairable on a tech lvel 6 or 7 world. I also had a go at designing an atmospheric entry craft to carry four grav tanks from a mother ship in orbit down into a planets atmosphere. Maybe I should drag out the plans and stats and get them onto the pc.

Gondor

[Steel Penguin]

the 1st 2 games mentioned are actualy "sit around the table" pen and paper roleplaying games, Twilight was published in the late 80s, and was the game of (just) post world war 3 where the hi tec wepons were starting to wear out, and most of the fancy ammo is gone, Air support a dream ( of nightmare) of the past and you playing a group of soldiers  from the last NATO drive into Poland, it expanded to cover most od Europe, the Persian gulf area and the continental US.  It was fairly apocolips light and with a good group fun to play.  The Morrow Project is set several hundred years after a far more devistating WW3, the group awake from cryo sleep as a rescue group set up by morrow industrys, who initaly think thebe been out for a few years and are there to help the imediate survivors, only to have to cope as the world has massivly changed, and the radiation has produced mutants and outher odd ness,  set in the continental US, it contains more unusal vehicles as they borrowed the land master from dammnation alley.
the puter games thing is that as a visual medium, its easy to take the images and transport them up to a larger size, of the 9 links i put up earlyer, only Ground Zero do true spaceships and there 1 to 4 inches long, the outher lower 6 do resin vehicles in either 1:56, 1:50 or 1:48th scales.

[Jeffry Fontaine]

I know the initial drive was (if I'm reading this correctly), towards space based RPG's? However now we seem to be widening it out in scope, a good idea IMHO.

Duncan,

The first two RPGs that I mention in the title are both oriented towards small unit ground combat.  I don't recall any space component in either one but that would be an interesting twist for the games.  I have never played either one and only developed a passing interest in the equipment that was used in the games.  Most if not all based on (then) current equipment in the NATO and Warsaw Pact inventories. 

But in the spirit of role playing games I felt it was wise to encompass all role playing games regardless of theme so naval ships and space craft as well as the magical mystery tour are included with the intention of sparking interesting and gaining greater participation. 



Since video games were also brought up, I would like to mention the one and only game I ever purchased and played.  It was a game called Iron Storm which is a first person shooter game that you either love or hate, there is no happy medium.  The theme of Iron Storm was set in 1964 and WWI never ended so you were fighting in trenches and such.  There was a bit of urban combat at one level that had some really good scenery and a rather large train in another level that had two floors and required securing each level before moving on to the next car.  The last level was inside of a huge building with many floors and required some skill in getting through to the end which was a bit of a let down but at that point I was grateful to have finished the game.  The game could be played alone or with multiple players and I believe that at one time there was an on-line game version of Iron Storm hosted by the company that you could also play.  I struggled through it and found some levels that definitely got the adrenalin flowing and I lost a lot of sleep trying to get down from the rush.  Other levels were not as interesting and seemed to be space fillers if anything. 

There were some odd looking vehicles included the game, none of which that can be operated by your character except in one instance where your character has to operate and fire the gun on a disabled tank to destroy another tank that is attacking.  There were some superior enemy soldiers that wore some kind of armor protection and required head shots to terminate.  Most of the other enemy soldiers were attired or equipped in a similar fashion to your own character and lightly armed. 

There was also a half-track type vehicle in the game that was about twice the size of a comparable our own time line M3 or SdKfz series half-track vehicles.  The game half-tracks had an enclosed troop compartment and appear as background scenery in most levels of the game and in the one level where your character actually interacts with this vehicle it is used to take him to the next level of the game while riding in the back. 

The only aircraft in Iron Storm was an attack helicopter that appears in several levels of the game.  It is a very dangerous opponent when you are on a level that requires engaging it and destroying it before it kills you.  This helicopter looks very much like an early model Mi-24 Hind A and is just about as heavily armed and armored.  I discovered the hard way that standard small arms fire will not defeat this monster which requires something with a bit more punch such as the occasionally available rocket propelled grenade launcher or the even more impressive rocket guns to take it on and win.   

The tanks, most of them thankfully are just background scenery in most levels of the game.  There are two levels where you have to fight these things and you were hard pressed to gain the advantage to destroy them with the few effective weapons available to you.  There is one occasion where your character has to mount a disabled tank and use the main gun to destroy another tank.  I use the term loosely here since this particular "tank" is more akin to a self-propelled artillery piece mounted on a tracked vehicle chassis which allows your character to enter the open fighting compartment and operate the main gun. 

I imagine a decent model could be built of the half-track, tank, or helicopter from this game.  The tanks might require some imagination but the helicopter could certainly be based on the Mi-24A Hind.   

[nev]

I tried Star Wars: KOTOR and it just left me cold, I returned it to the shop two days after I bought it, the look on the assistant at Game's face (an out and out game geek) was priceless...

"You're returning this?" You sure? It's Brilliant"

"Nope...its cack!"

More proof if proof were needed..........Duncan, you have missed out on not just one of the greatest games in the genre, not just the best Star Wars game ever, not just some of the best characters ever (physcopath assassin droid HK-47 anyone?) but also the best plot twist in computer games history.......... *sigh*

One of only 2 RPG's I was ever able to get into, and I loved it bits, so much so its still installed on my laptop, was Ion Storm's amazing "Deus Ex". I just loved it's whole "Six Million Dollar Man meets James Bond in an episode of the X-Files" feel. Even though you played a seriously tooled up, cybernetically enhanced secret agent, you always felt constantly outgunned and threatened.

I was always being told how awesome it was, but I gave up on the first level.  In the dark, creeping as quietly as possible when a guard 100 yards away, with his back to me, suddenly "spots" me, and now I'm dead  Too frustrating for words.

The other was the ultra creepy "System Shock 2", that game just oozed atmosphere, waking up from cryosleep aboard a starship where things had gone seriously FUBAR.

I'm not ashamed to say I was scared ****less by that game.  I couldn't even finish the demo!

But, back to the idea of this GB, exactly were do you draw the line on what actually defines "Role Playing"? In a strictly literal sense, all games are "Role Playing".
Half Life, Doom, Halo - your role is to play a man with a gun who kills everything in his path. Need for speed - your role is to be a driver who drives cars really fast.
Then there is a game that isn't really considered a RPG at all, its a shooter, but I say it is a RPG - Grand Theft Auto, IMHO one of the best games ever made.

Duncan, I think that there is clear genre that is defined as "RPG", but I agree that the lines are becoming increasingly blurred - even motor-racing games such as Forza include "RPG elements" as you gain XP to upgrade your car.  Nevertheless there are clear elements that mark a game out as a cRPG, wikipedia says
The player in RPGs controls one or several adventuring party members fulfilling one or many quests. The major similarities with pen-and-paper games involve developed story-telling and narrative elements, player character development, complexity, as well as replayability and immersion

Half-Life, Halo, Doom, and Need For Speed are not cRPGs, GTA blurs the line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_role-playing_game

[proditor]

You guys are missing one of the all-time awesome RPG's.  It's basically the whiff of RPG's really.

TORG.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torg

D&D world?  Check
Cyberpunk? Check
Biotech? Check
Gothic Horror?  Check
Land of the Lost prehistory? Check
Pulp/Indiana Jones vs. Nazis? Check
High tech Japan complete with Ninjas?  Check

[Weaver]

Now in an adventure for Paranoia (a classic RPG), there was an invisible robot hover tank called HARV-E. That could be really easy to model.......