I'm designing a tabletop war game and want to make it a cartoonish modern military setting with no political or national shit, just fun ideas... Everybody I mention it to warns me not to use that setting.
"People only want scifi and fantasy, user"
Seems like everybody hates modern military setting for a tabletop game, even though you can take it in so many directions. Look at Team Fortress 2 and Metal Gear Solid as examples. Experimental tech, classic old tech, primitive shit that never goes out of style.... You can have everything except aliens and wizards.
Do you really need aliens and wizards? Which parts of sci-fi and fantasy automatically catch your interest, and which part of modern setting turns you off?
Andrew Flores
Team Fortress are still Fantasy and Sci-Fi, respectively.
Thomas Campbell
N.... No?
Cooper Ward
Bump
Brayden Sanders
Bump for Warhammer 40k
Chase Morgan
I'm totally on board with your idea OP. I run into the same kind of problem with some of my ideas, but deep in my heart, I still think it could be a cool idea.
it may just come down to how you pitch it. Maybe even call it like... near future, light sci-fi, if you're going to be messing around with weird cartoony tech.
As much as I hate drawing direct comparisons to a video game for table top purposes, maybe straight up saying "it's going to be kind of MGS like", or "like Overwatch with the tech dialed back" might help people get the appeal in some cases.
Oliver Foster
>cartoonish
There's the part you need to capitalize on.
What constitutes "Cartoonish"? The Advance Wars series (vidya, but applicable) handles it perfectly - the war is more or less a game that cheeky shounen protagonists are competing in. Dudes go "Pew! Pew!" and get wiped off the map, capture cities willy-nilly with no regard to civilians or radicalization or collateral damage or any of the grimy unpleasantries of war.
Modern settings are a turn-off because of those unpleasantries. We don't want to be reminded that that kind of shit actually happens in the real world.
Sci-fi and Fantasy settings appeal to us because they're so far removed from us, even when there are similarities. Protagonist's big bro died? That's sad, but it's also wrapped in a big layer of GIANT ROBOTS POWERED BY MANLINESS. The fantastical elements act as padding for the sharp, pointy bits of realism.
If you instead file off the unwanted pointy bits, you'll be in a good position to start. So make it fun to blow up enemy dudes, and fun (to an extent) to watch your dudes get blown up.
Michael Carter
I guess people just want to hear the words sci-fi so they know it's not "realistic" or "serious", which it won't be.
I look at something like Worms, where units use shotguns and revolvers, but also ninja ropes and homing missiles.
It's about an abundance of distinct ideas that you understand immediately, without calling a basic pistol a "molecular recombobulator" just to sound special
Lucas Nelson
I've always wanted to run a game of absurd soldiers/mercenaries ala the Metal Gear games. Wouldn't know where to begin though.
Charles Martin
They are though. TF2 has literal wizards and aliens showing up. Granted, most of the stuff from TF2 is restricted to halloween events, but plenty of the stuff there is pretty sci-fi. It's just retro 60s spy thriller sci-fi.
Metal gear solid starts out pretty mundane, until you get the cyborg ninjas fighting giant robots.
The problem with making a modern military wargame is that you're basically pitching to people to buy things that are just 'generic soldier' or 'tank'
As soon as you start bending the rules to make something like TF2 or add jetpacks like OPs pick, you're basically going to sci-fi territory through sheer tone shifts.
People like sci-fi and fantasy wargames because it's easy to have weird interesting models like giant monsters and robots.
Leo Harris
>At best: MGS- boring edition, the rpg >At worst: CoD- the rpg
that's why people don't want modern military. Keep the modern if you like but dial it back from hoo-ra bullshit and make something more..spyish? some cia spookem bullshit. Also there is a real possibility that overlapping close to real-world and modern guns will land you a turbo autism /k/ motherfucker of epic destiny proportions
Bentley Flores
That makes sense, so I guess the question is how to pitch something with the aesthetic of 20th century military with many other elements that are goofy, sci-fi, magical, and other "genres"
"Over the top"? "Science fantasy"? Cartoony?
It's a tricky thing to label.
John Parker
>You are living and operating in the same world as deathklok. Billion-to-one misfortunes, death, dismemberment and more money then god will be common themes.
a small party of dudes, either hired by the tribeunal or working for deathklok themselves. EZ.ModE
Henry Hernandez
...
Bentley Thomas
>cartoonish modern military setting
Go on...
Jeremiah Wood
I think cartoony usually gets it across decently well. It allows you to stretch and bend without breaking genre entirely. You can bring in less realistic elements and have them fit fine, and you can also have the tone be less harsh.
Advance wars and Tf2 both kind of fall into this, but I wouldn't call any of them modern any way, as they're closer to alternate history or historical fiction.
Still, as has been said, even they both have things that are out of place in a typical modern war game. TF2 has teleportation, alien tech, invisibility watches and the like, while advance wars starts off pretty basic but eventually gets things like the kinda-walker Neo-tanks, giant pipes the size of mountains, and artillery guns that move back and forth on the pipes.
You really do want to aim for that sort of wacky alt history type thing you can get from this sort of thing. Wolfenstein is another good example.
Mundane tanks and infantry can still be the core, but sprinkle a bit of that retro-future tech in there and keep it lighthearted and nobody will bat an eye.
Ethan Mitchell
Fantastic. Retro-future alt history cartoon -- all terms I can go for.
Owen Sanchez
I am liking the sound of this more and more, though I will say the scale should probably be kept relatively small. Even in advance wars where you're technically having entire squads of tanks go up against blocks of infantry, most of the time you're just looking at a handful of them on the map.
Having it be closer to a squad level fits the tone better, and even when someone brings a giant walker-tank, you just end up having a cool metal-gear style fight.
I'd imagine it'd be tricky to get the feel right. You don't want things dying to easily, but you also want people to feel like they're making progress.
Caleb Nguyen
Modern Military is mundane real life stuff. We live in mundane real life stuff.
You want to change something, to make it interesting.
>Historical setting. >Alternate History. >Time Travel. >Future Tech. >StarGates. >Magic. >Wuxia "Everyone knows wushu, lives for honor or at least their reputation, problems must be solved by violence, and that violence is cool and flashy, and not gun focused, for some reason or another."
Something.
Mundane is boring.
I mean, I have a hard enough time getting into a mundane action movie for a few hours unless it's stupid ridiculous, like "The Losers", or "Shoot Em Up".
For a *CAMPAIGN*?
I'm just going to need more to keep me interested. That's all there is to it.
Owen Ross
Part of the reason for me is that whenever I read 'modern setting', I immediately picture a typical city. Only humans live there. Nothing extraordinary happens. Technology and culture are at a similar point to our own.
It's what you do with it at that point that's interesting. If you add magic, it's modern fantasy. If you add fictional science, it's science-fiction. If you add superheroes, it's a supers setting.
It's hard to have a modern game that is only described as modern sound interesting, because that implies that there's literally nothing different about it from real life.
Thomas Hughes
This, if you really want to make a modern setting, mix it with a bit of the others. >Modern Fantasy >Modern Alt Hist >Modern Wuxia >Modern Magic
shit would be better than just plain real-life.
Jack Walker
I guess when I think "modern military setting" it includes all those as possibilities, just like "fantasy" can be so broad and include grimdark Conan or Tolkien high fantasy.
This is quite helpful
Zachary Martinez
>Fantasy encompassess half a dozen different genres, including alt-history and modern horror/urban fantasy >Sci-fi includes everything from cyberpunk 2020 to space exploration and possibly supers >Modern military is just one thing
I see a problem with your stance.
Luis Williams
Come to think of it, Modern Wuxia (with guns) would be cool. What with named combatants and sheeit. >Your party is preparing to raid the ISIS HQ, but suddenly a shot rang out! You narrowly evade out of the way, your cheek bleeds as a result. It's true, Juba the Sniper wants to duel you!
Juba the Sniper, Bulldozer of Fallujah, White Death, Hawk Feather, General Butt Naked...
Mason Ortiz
My most successful campaign to date has been a "d20 modern with fantasy and sci fi shit tossed in" setting.
Basically it is roughly "now", with genericized versions of major cities ala DC Comics taking obvious real cities and calling them Gotham, Metropolis, Coast City, etc. Then portals open. The theory is either scientists fucked up and opened portals, or wizards on the other side fucked up and opened portals, and all kinds of monsters and magical thingers spilled into our world.
Then it's basically GTA : D&D edition. If the players want to treat this like Vice City and run around stealing drugs and becoming mafia kingpins, that's fine. If they want to become Paladins of Law and use anointed AK-47s to kill demons that are possessing the infirm of mind, that's fine too.
I basically just scatted a fuckload of plothooks across the map and follow through on any ones the players take a liking to.
It doesn't work for everyone but my guys really like to fuck around in a big sandbox setting, so that's what I do.
Cartoony is a good way to explain it I think, but too many people immediately imagine Looney Tunes/Roger Rabbit and start trying to pull giant hammers out of their pocket and other dumb shit.
I prefer to consider it more "comic book-y". Comics are still unrealistic but they tend to set their own rules and then follow them, unlike cartoons, which love to break them, on purpose.
Samuel Campbell
>Do you really need aliens and wizards? Which parts of sci-fi and fantasy automatically catch your interest, and which part of modern setting turns you off?
I think the point is not having aliens or wizards, but having something interesting and fun to do. Adventures. I agree with you that you can take a modern setting in a lot of different directions, but IME more often than not settings of that kind seem more interested in the minutiae of realism than in actually taking players into something interesting; which is undoubtedly a niche that some people love, but is not for everyone. I can think of several tv series from a few years ago that would work well for RPGs (Leverage got its game, for example), but I haven't seen many well-done games in that sense, and if I want to scratch my /k/ itch, I'd rather play Shadowrun.
Hunter Martinez
I'm not looking at an RPG, but a wargame. Somebody said smaller squads would be better, I agree
Elijah Bell
If you're homebrewing a wargame, you have to ask yourself what sort of pieces people are going to play this game with. Paper stand-ups? Minis they already have? Meeples? Little green army men?
David White
Came here to post this, I'll totally be behinde an Advance Wars like setting
Benjamin Rodriguez
Main thing I'd want from a modern-ish military setting would be a campaign about playing as a tank crew.
Sadly, there isn't really a good system for that, and the operation of a tank doesn't leave much for some players to do.