Area 88

I just had to go to the source material. If you’re making a game about mercenary pilots, you’re going to be thinking about Area 88. You’re going to be channeling Area 88. That’s all there is to it. Why? Coupla reasons:

1) As far as I can tell, there are no mercenary air squadrons that fly jet fighter aircraft, and never have been. Real life PMC’s may fly their own helicopters and transport aircraft, but not fighters.

2) Fighters require way too much expensive maintenance to make them profitable to operate. And while it’s okay for private individuals to own certain decommissioned fighter aircraft, they usually aren’t allowed to mount effective air-to-air weapons on them!

We can quibble about light attack aircraft and such, but if you can find me a real-life, operational mercenary air unit flying F-4’s, F-16’s and whatnot, I’d love to hear about it!

So anyway, I watched the Area 88 OAV again last weekend and it was, as I remembered, awesome (last time I saw it was probably around 1988). The transfer was a good one and although the animation is a bit crude compared the GGI wizardry of today, I thought it held up well. The story of course was fantastic and I saw a lot of applications for the Energy mechanic in my game. Something else I want to be sure to bring in is the scrabbling for money that the pilots have to do.

Finally, the whole bit about Baggage and the pilots having to address it in play was spot on in regards to the way the characters in Area 88 had to deal with their issues. For example, at the end of the story Shin makes his choice (no spoilers), and it’s a good example of someone who’s run out of Energy. He’s got resolution on his issue, but things definitely do not go the way he had always thought they would. Another character, Nguyen, probably maxed out his Energy, but the outcome of his story was also not what he expected.

I’m going to think about this some more. Y’all go watch Area 88!

The Aggressor

I’ve mentioned the “Aggressor” player in a couple of posts. Right now, the Aggressor is the nominal GM of the game, though I find it could turn out to be a GM-less system. The Aggressor basically does traditional GM things, like setting out and playing the opposition and controlling pacing. But given the way I’m envisioning play, the pacing takes care of itself, and anyone could conceivably come up with something to throw at the player who’s turn it is to have his character in a Ground Scene.

Say you’ve heard Cam’s baggage for his character Lt. Shimada, the pilot who is trying to escape the reach of his manipulative father. You have a great idea for a Ground Scene for Shimada – his dad shows up at the base to try and force Shimada to come home. You don’t necessarily need to have your own pilot character in the scene (it’s not your turn anyway, and you’ll get your spotlight next regardless) so YOU take the role of the Aggressor here. Lt. Shimada is the one on deck, and perhaps the other players can have their characters involved as well, but only in supporting roles.

There has to be a payoff for playing the Aggressor in these scenes of course, and the duty would have to rotate around so everyone gets a turn at it.

Then there’s the question of who plays the Aggressor in Mission Scenes where the whole squadron is meant to be up in the air. Still haven’t worked that out.

Dogfights on the History Channel

Some of y’all may already be into this but the Dogfights show on the History Channel is extremely cool. I’ve seen most of the episodes already but now I’m going back and looking at the jet age episodes more closely as you might imagine (particularly the Vietnam and Arab-Israeli War for obvious reasons). You can pick a lot of nits with the show, but still it’s the only show of its kind and has some amazing stories.