"Antares Needs Actors" is a tribute to the classic Sword & Planet pulps, especially Edmond Hamilton's "Kaldar, World of Antares."
You can find it in Galaxy's Edge Magazine, Issue 61 a.co/d/dYjL9Eg
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ELF HARD is a Christmas story about a misfit human raised by elves. He can't do anything right. His supervisor at the toy factory hates him. Life couldn't get worse.
RECON bills itself as a role playing game of the Vietnam war.
The rules are built for squad-sized elements of PCs conducting LRRP operations. The majority of the game mechanics—including the XP system—reward stealth. The ideal mission involves sneaking to an objective without being seen, hitting it hard, and moving di di mau to the LZ for exfil.
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The only dice used are d10, and the primary mechanic for task resolution is roll-under percentile.
There are three primary stats (Strength, Alertness, and Agility). There’s also a weapon skill called “Base Effectiveness.”
Like the ability scores, Base Effectiveness is rolled at character gen.
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@myth_pilot My one-and-only Joint Service mission was my sole exposure to women in combat. It was primarily Air Force, but each team had an Army Infantry guy as tactical advisor.
One of the teams had a female Linguist who traveled everywhere with her teddy bear attached to her pack.
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@myth_pilot It was embarrassing in training, but she kept it up on deployment. Her team’s advisor never corrected her, because he was busy trying to get in her pants.
So we get to Kuwait. We’re on the flight line, boarding planes to Baghdad.
And I notice her flak doesn’t look right.
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@myth_pilot I call her over so I can inspect it.
The reason it looks so fucked up is it’s just the shell and the SAPI plates. It doesn’t have any of the Kevlar inserts.
I lose it.
I tell her to open her pack, and get those inserts fucking NOW.
Time for another Military SF live react & analysis thread.
Today’s subject: HG Wells’ 1903 short, “The Land Ironclads.”
Before Hammer’s Slammers, before BOLOs, and before the real life invention of the tank, Wells gives us a vision of armored warfare.
Let’s dive in.
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The story opens with a war correspondent and an officer staring across no-man’s land.
One of the enemy fires a token, ineffectual shot, and the two men discuss the crushing stalemate the war has devolved into.
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Wells is exceptionally spare on the details here. He doesn’t tell us which countries are fighting, what they’re fighting over, or give us the names of his two characters.
We only know the other side are the invaders, and the young officer is one of the defenders.
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There’s an excellent point here about the thematic difference of a fantasy story vs an SF story.
In SF, the weapons used to fight the enemy are “new.” You fight the bug aliens with the most advanced, cutting edge tech. Mech suits armed with nukes, orbital strikes, etc.