Twilight:2000, The Morrow Project, Recon!, Aftermath all spring to mind.

Quasi-military games that are fantasy-in-military-clothing like the various mecha games do too.

I love me some Twilight:2000.  The Morrow Project seems interesting (and indeed there's no reason you can't blend the worlds of Twilight:2000 and TMP).  

However I wonder if there's a place for them any more.

T2k was as successful as it was because the immediacy of the game seemed ripped from next week's headlines : Nuclear war with the USSR in Central Europe.  As the 80s wore on and we found out the USSR was a paper tiger (although thanks to their wildly successful espionage, a conventional war in Europe would have been pretty much up for grabs), and then Gorbachev brought Perestroika and Glasnost and so on, and US military concerns shifted far southeast, the folks at GDW tried to keep the timeline "current" (and the game got worse for it, and less interesting as well).

However now that it's been almost 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the game's over-plot looks positively inviting with its retro-ness.  But again, I wonder if there's any real appeal to it any more. I certainly love it and I'd jump at the chance to play some T2k (or Morrow Project, etc.) - but just those.  I was never a huge fan of Gamma World nor "suddenly: radioactive mutants!" type apocalypse-fantasy games.

To be sure, I'm not a fan of misery tourism in general; the thing I like about T2k is that if you look closely enough and GM it properly there is a silver lining and there is hope for the future (the various modules linked in "The Last Sub" series involve rescuing environmental scientists who can at the very least help mitigate some of the long term damage to the earth, for example; there are other things, too, like "Satellite Down" which involves pursuing data tapes from the last functional weather satellite which crashed in Baja, Mexico, after the war and using that data to help the US forecast rain and drought cycles and relocate people and plant crops accordingly).

Unless you happen to come from a state with a tradition of military enlistment, the average American is more divorced from the military experience then ever before.  The lack of a draft and actual declared wars means you don't have a case where everyone knows someone who might die tomorrow in a foreign land.

This disconnect from the military life is one of the reasons I think there is a lack of modern military RPGs, the other is that when you get pissed and want to set the world to rights by lighting someone up with a M249 SAW, you play a videogame, you don't roll dice.

Quote from: CRKrueger;564738. . . the other is that when you get pissed and want to set the world to rights by lighting someone up with a M249 SAW, you play a videogame, you don't roll dice.

yeah, i think that's the case, the FPS has replaced it.  if anyone wants to do the mil-rpg thing, there already are plenty out there, in varying degrees of crunch.  there just isn't the demand or need for a new product in that genre.

Gosh, I sure hope not.  I'm currently working on Bleeding Sky, a modern/post apoc game

Granted, it's designed to be played at varying tech levels.  The whole thing is post-apocalyptic, but depending on where you are in the world, you could have a western-themed game, a modern military game, or even a near future game.

*Edit* alright, photobucket is being a dick.  I'll have to sort it out when I get home.

I would have argued that having two actual active theaters (read:warzones) with troops in them may have dampened the spirits of game designers for their war porn games.

That and they are competing with Call of Duty and Modern Warfare for fans... hard sell.

Quote from: Spike;564748I would have argued that having two actual active theaters (read:warzones) with troops in them may have dampened the spirits of game designers for their war porn games.

That and they are competing with Call of Duty and Modern Warfare for fans... hard sell.

That might have some merit, but I wonder how much.   That's like saying that people aren't playing fantasy rpgs because they could just play Skyrim.  I HATE CoD and similar games, but I like to play all kinds of genres in rpgs.  So I think they are completely different mediums.

Actually: I was thinking out the popularity of CoD and MW disproves that war porn demands drop off during times of actual conflict....


I'm sure an interesting sociological (anthropological?) analysis of the different subcultures cross referenced with the sales figures from Cod vs Skyrim could be interesting... but I actually, honest to dog, have a headache and can't be bothered to think of how to approach it, or why.

Well considering I alone have designed and published 6 military RPGs in the last decade, and have another coming out this week, I don't think this is a problem.

-clash

I think they'll come around again if they're not doing well now.  A lot of times society gets gung-ho about war and patriotism and fighting bad guys, then gets disillusioned by the horrors of battle a years down the road, and then gets gung-ho again several years later.

man, i hope so.  I'd love to see the new Morrow Project actually get released.

also, Sacrosanct i just realized who you were! (duhh yeah i'm that slow...)
Compact Heroes is awesome, and i can't wait to see what you do with Bleeding Sky! i'm a fan of the genre so count me in.

Quote from: kregmosier;564831Compact Heroes is awesome, and i can't wait to see what you do with Bleeding Sky! i'm a fan of the genre so count me in.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.  That's really all I ever wanted to do--create a game that people actually have fun with.  Not to derail or pimp myself, but right now I have an expansion in the mail coming to me, and if you PM your details, I'll work out a good discount with you if you're interested.  I always want to support the people who help support me.

Our game Terror Network isn't exactly a military RPG but a lot of our players use ot for military campaigns and it attracts a lot of military rpg fans (also it's our biggest seller).

Quote from: CRKrueger;564738Unless you happen to come from a state with a tradition of military enlistment, the average American is more divorced from the military experience then ever before.  The lack of a draft and actual declared wars means you don't have a case where everyone knows someone who might die tomorrow in a foreign land.

I'm sure my experience of the US is skewed since my wife is Tennessean, but from this side of the pond the US seems far more 'military' in culture than any other First World nation.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;564745Gosh, I sure hope not.  I'm currently working on Bleeding Sky, a modern/post apoc game

Granted, it's designed to be played at varying tech levels.  The whole thing is post-apocalyptic, but depending on where you are in the world, you could have a western-themed game, a modern military game, or even a near future game.

*Edit* alright, photobucket is being a dick.  I'll have to sort it out when I get home.

I don't know I think a good military game might do very well. The more important part is the complexity. Alot of those old military games were very complex much like alot of the games in that era. Today's playerbase seems to prefer simplicity the most. I would think this is because of family commitments, job commitments, and the general aging of the hobby more than anything else.

Quote from: S'mon;564846I'm sure my experience of the US is skewed since my wife is Tennessean, but from this side of the pond the US seems far more 'military' in culture than any other First World nation.

Oh yeah, we are, big time, however, most of us are chickenhawks.  We love war but very few of us actually have family members or friends who are servicemen.
As a result we load of Call of Duty and bust some ass with a rocket launcher, but aren't into RPGs where our character's best friend just took a random round in the brainpan.