Dude. Just today I was contemplative and morose over the Spanish-American War.

My question is, why weren't you?

~J

Probably because I unfortunate enough to have paid money to play Rogue Warrior.

I'm not familiar with it, so I looked it up.

It is a game based on some guy's autobiography.

You have my deepest condolences.

~J

An embellished version of the autobiography, no less. The best part about the whole game was the music and voice acting. Otherwise it was probably the worst title of this year.

Check it out, I found an AWESOME version of Sky Pilot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69zvFnVa03g

Holy crap, it just got me so pumped up I bought a M16A1 stock and resin triangular grips from a surplus website!

This is probably a bit off-topic, but. I'm currently reading James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy of novels, which take place from 1958 to 1973, and are about America's underground history in those turbulent times--the KKK, the Mafia, JFK, Cuba, MLK, etc. The second book, The Cold Six Thousand, features Vietnam very heavily. Not the actual on-the-ground grunt fighting, but all of the political stuff surrounding it--CIA-run heroin camps, using the heroin profits to purchase guns for anti-Castro rebels, things like that.
They are fascinating reads. They aren't non-fiction, exactly, but they are so heavily researched that one could see them being close to true--we'll likely never know the truth behind JFK's assassination but the scenario laid out here seems more plausible than most. Each book has three main characters but also has dozens of peripheral characters, many of whom were real. One quote sums these books up perfectly: "He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to history."
The first book is American Tabloid (1958-1963), followed by The Cold Six Thousand('63-'68) and Blood's A Rover('68 to '73). Check out your local library.

This is just my ignorance, but I'm not really aware of any RPGs set in any historical wars. Given that, the lack of Vietnam ones isn't surprising. Video games pretty much have the wars nailed down, and that's a realm where Vietnam gets no 'love', for sure.

Sorry, just now seeing this.

Honestly, I don't think it's a "better" thing. It would work with either one. The SW mechanics would have your PCs be a little "heroic," since they have more "hit points" than almost everything else (basically only your "major" baddies get Wounds like a PC does), and the SR3 mechanics would bring the same issues and high points that they do to SR. Both systems have a magical component that you could just ignore, and both of them handle vehicles.

Honestly, I'd probably be more inclined to use the SW rules, because I think that even though I loved SR3, SW is a bit more internally consistent.

Did you ever get around to running a Vietnam game? I was actually just thinking about this again the other day.

No, I haven't run any games for years now. I'm (luckily) working full time, and I decided to focus my free time on getting into top physical shape, and improving my firearms abilities. It's getting to the point where I feel like multiplayer FPS games are pointless when you could instead go out and participate in a competitive shooting sport, play some paintball, or attend some tactical training. Why deal with whiney 12 year olds and hackers when you can go out and have much more realism?

Part of me would love to do some kind of ultimate Vietnam War campaign, though. I've now been reading about it for years, I've made a friend who was a refugee from Vietnam who told me all about Vietnam after the north took over, and I even got a CD full of declassified after action reports etc which appears to include the cultural and historical materials which appeared in Vietcong.

It would be a hell of a research project, and I feel that as for the engine I'd either have to go with Pheonix Command, or else revise SR along the lines I'd been musing about for years to include suppressive fire in a better way, which in and of itself would be a big complex project.

There would be some really wonderful sorts of stories to tell, though. I recommend to anyone some good Vietnam war memoirs. Some are written by very bright second lieutenants coming out of west point. I feel that probably bright young men who play RPGs could identify most easily with those authors who are all very smart guys good at articulating abstract concepts in their writing.

Apparently this song is about World War 2 but it came out in the late 60s and I like it.

"When I Was Young"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur30bn_3G58...feature=related

Depends on how much you count having both "reasonable trajectories" and "targets that shoot back" at the same time.

~J

Paintball or airsoft outdoors can get kind of borked, but if you do indoor force on force training the weak trajectories are less of an issue. It's also more realistic in that getting hit really hurts and can leave a beautiful welt.

Check out this AWESOME small time Vietnam War song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_-T0JJRSnc...feature=related

I guess it's not from the late 60s, but it's in the style of American folk music, so it makes me want to air riff.

I got my resin A1 grip and stock in the mail today, so this was the perfect touch at the end of the day, finding this song.

Check it out, I finally uploaded a picture of my M16A1 parts.

http://tinypic.com/r/152i3b5/7