I'm interested in the genre of pre-1990 games where the gameplay was small military or mercenary squads in historical or contemporary settings. Could be pure RPG or some sort of wargame/tactical RPG hybrid.

I'm aware of:

Commando (SPI, 1979)
Merc (FGU, 1981)
Behind Enemy Lines (FASA, 1982)
Recon/Advanced Recon (Palladium, 1982-88)


(It's interesting that both Commando and Behind Enemy Lines were Origins Award winners for Best RPG rules of the year. This has to reflect the bias of the judges in regards to genre, I guess, as both of these games pretty much dropped into obscurity.)

Did I miss any? Have you played any of them?

Does Phoenix Command count?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Command

Quote from: Tod13 on September 02, 2023, 08:29:28 PM
Does Phoenix Command count?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Command

Indeed, thanks!

We never played Phoenix Command. It was way, way too complicated. It would actually make a really cool basis of a complete/complex computer combat simulation.

We played Living Steel - a much simplified form of Phoenix Command. The aliens in it were cool. Think Predators, but they weren't after trophies, just wanted to fight. They'd lay aside high tech gear to fight animals, so the fight would be more fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Steel

Twilight 2000 circa 1984 by Games Designer Workshop

Had it, looked at it, and did dick-all with it (1st and 2nd edition, by the way) but after many moons in Uncle Sugar's Oil Stealers' Union afterwards, I think I could appreciate it and do something with the game moreso nowadays.

Depending on how one allows speculative elements, there is:

Twilight 2000 by Frank Chadwick (1984) from GDW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight:_2000

Delta Force by William H. Keith, Jr. (1986) from Task Force Games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Force:_America_Strikes_Back!

Freedom Fighters by J. Andrew Keith (1986) from Fantasy Games Unlimited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Fighters_(role-playing_game)

The Price of Freedom by Greg Costikyan (1986) from West End Games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Freedom_(role-playing_game)


Of these, the only one I've played is Twilight: 2000. It is pretty good, but in my experience, it came down to mostly wargaming. It was hard to get into the role-playing elements in a military command structure.

Quote from: jhkim on September 02, 2023, 09:09:01 PM
Depending on how one allows speculative elements, there is:

Twilight 2000 by Frank Chadwick (1984) from GDW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight:_2000

Delta Force by William H. Keith, Jr. (1986) from Task Force Games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Force:_America_Strikes_Back!

Freedom Fighters by J. Andrew Keith (1986) from Fantasy Games Unlimited

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Fighters_(role-playing_game)

The Price of Freedom by Greg Costikyan (1986) from West End Games

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Freedom_(role-playing_game)


Of these, the only one I've played is Twilight: 2000. It is pretty good, but in my experience, it came down to mostly wargaming. It was hard to get into the role-playing elements in a military command structure.

Wow, I suspected there were a few more in this genre. And what the heck was going on with the Keith brothers going head-to-head with games in the same genre in the same year?

Flying Buffalo's Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes lands on the edge of this as does TSR's Top Secret and Top Secret SI.  HERO's Danger International and Espionage are also in the general territory.  FGU's Aftermath is more post apocalyptic but is heavy on detailed guns.  Similarly The Morrow Project is a postapocalyptic game with military trained characters and detailed military hardware.  ICE's Rolemaster Black Ops from the nineties might be too modern but broadly covers military and espionage scenarios leaning towards counter terrroristm.  GURPS Special Forces might also be a bit late but covers a lot of military territory.  Year of the Phoenix is a bit of the odd duck as the characters are American Astronauts who awaken above a communist dominated world.

M.I.S.S.I.O.N. was a game by the creator of KABAL.  So the rules were probably incomplete, poorly writen, and unplayable but the map sheets were fantastic for the time.

What was the game with the Merc Style overlays by Chameleon Ecclectic?  Edge of Tomorrow or something.  Again, a little bit more black ops teams.

Millennium's End, I think it was.

Squad Leader might be of interest, though it's a wargame, not an rpg

There was the Merc 2000 supplement for the 2nd edition of Twilight 2000 that stripped out the WWIII assumptions and just made it a mercenary military RPG game. In the end, we ended up playing Merc 2000 more than vanilla T2000.

Quote from: Thornhammer on September 03, 2023, 12:58:28 AM
Millennium's End, I think it was.

That's the one.

On the farther ends of the spectrum...

Morrow Project is conventional forces waking up from cryo in a more or less realistic post-apoc world.

Fringeworthy is also conventional forces (especially the early game) doing ring gate exploration of strange worlds years before Star Gate was a movie.

Both are from TriTac Games and gone through several iterations over the years.

As briefly mentioned above, GURPS can be a legitimate option—you have Special Forces, Black Ops, and the entire WWII line of books. Obviously more setting material than mechanics, these various books make it very possible to play a military-oriented campaign with GURPS.

The little-known Submachine Gun from 1981.