Sup Veeky Forums.
I'm trying to find a good RPG for air combat. Specifically an RPG, or a wargame where the mechanics can be adjusted to allow for RPG-like mechanics. I am trying to do what's basically an Ace Combat campaign, and need to know what would be some good, simple, fun combat mechanics for jet fighters, with minimal simulatonism.
Any suggestions?
Buddy?
>minimal simulatonism
Okay, so every turn each player rolls a 1d6. If they get a 6, their plane shoots down an enemy plane. if they get a 1, they get shot down.
Is there a way to get more detailed than that without going full-bore 'holy shit, all of the tiny details are gonna fuck me up' and making it overly complicated? That's my main concern for a game like this. Jet-fighter combat is not simple, but I need a way to make it palatable to players.
With an afternoon's worth of work you could probably mod just about any highly customizable, setting-free RPG system for it. Fate Core comes to mind, though you'd need an entire new skill list for it.
Gurps
Only downside is a lack of a current Vehicles supplement, but there are workarounds using the spaceships book, and a scaling down article from Pyramid. It's a bit wonky but helps you ballpark the few stats you need on various planes.
Plenty of gun porn in high tech tho, so that's nice
Just make a diceless freeform system where every player gets a turn with a time limit to describe what happens, or something like that, if you like narrativism.
F-15C Eagle
Refresh: 3
Aspects:
>4th-Gen Air Superiority Fighter
>Not A Pound For Air To Ground
>Undefeated Record
>Twin-Engine, Single-Pilot
>Flying SAM Site
Skills:
>+4: AAM
>+3: Maneuver - Thrust
>+2: Flare - Radar - ECM
>+1: Chaff - Fuel - Durability - Stability
Stunts:
>"Solo Wing": Immune to Compels from Aspects related to wing damage or similar.
>Heavy Fighter: May choose to fire more than one AAM attack per turn with AIM-120D Phase-4 AMRAAM. Limited to eight uses total per sortie.
>Coordinated Effort: When vectored by friendly AWACS aircraft, add +2 to Radar checks.
It's less a focus on narrativism, and more 'I don't want my players to stare at massive spreadsheets.' Our issue is with extremely complex mechanics, and jet combat is extremely complex. Nobody wants to sit there and actually learn every detail behind jet fighters and how they work for the sake of the game.
I'll look at that one, but we've never been big on GURPS. I'll float the idea.
Never done Fate Core before, so I'll run this by them too, and see if anyone's interested.
Checks out GURPS Action 2. It has some very nice rules for abstract chase scenes that are easy to port over to dogfighting (you basically just allow the pursuer to become the quarry until someone gets downed instead of ending the "chase" via capture/getaway). The short version is that each participant chooses want they want to do that round -- focus entirely on widening/closing the gap, attacking, tricky shit, etc. -- and roll vs the relevant skill with a bonus for being faster or more maneuverable than the other person. In most cases, this will result in a change in distance between the two pilots e.g. the pursued jet shakes the pursuer and drops the distance between them from Medium to Far (this penalizes most attack rolls) but may call for an evasive maneuvers roll instead.
Honestly the subsystem doesn't really rely too much on GURPS mechanics, so you could always rip the rules from Action 2 and use them in your preferred system.
Okay
Get this
What if
Listen to me
What if
you refluffed
Dive in the Sky