Quote from: The Good Assyrian;523065I would love to put together a game set in Vietnam, but the biggest problems are the same as any structured military style setting - from Vietnam to Star Trek.  Players just usually chaffe at not having the freedom to do exactly what they want, which makes a "grunt level" Vietnam game problematic.  There is always the special forces operators route, but I don't personally find that all that interesting.  What were you thinking?

My initial plan is to focus on LRRP patrols.  See, I think the fun conflict is to play with the "on the leash" thing - specifically, the tendency of command to send these guys "into the shit" HOPING the mission would "fail" (i.e., be discovered), and that the patrol would rack up a disproportionately high enemy body count extracting themselves.  That, and the tendency for command's understanding of a situation not to match up with the reality on the ground, and making the players deal with that dissonance.  In the end, it's all about doing what you have to do to survive, with your conscience intact or no, and then keeping your stripes (or avoiding court-martial) when you get back to camp.  (Whiffs of Paranoia, here, where it could end up being the team leader and/or radio man's word against the rest of the party - think Platoon.   )

I've always wanted a copy of this.  I had the PDF of the original RECON.  For some reason I've always been fascinated by Vietnam as a game setting.  The unique circumstances just seem well-fit to gaming to me, moreso than WWII.  You're more likely to have the lone squad journeying through hostile territory kind of thing, and it's also an easy fit for horror-ing it up a bit.

Quote from: SgtSpaceWizard;523047We played the original alot back in the day. I loved that the missions were brief suggestions of a situation, as GM I ran that one on the fly and it always went over pretty well. It was pretty educational too as most of our knowledge of the Vietnam war came from movies. Someone always died.

No one has yet mentioned the comic book "The 'Nam" so I will. One of the best war comics ever, written by a vet. Try to find the early issues if you can.

Yep, the early issues of "The Nam" were a great resource for Recon. I'd forgotten about them. Thanks for mentioning them!

Quote from: The Good Assyrian;523065I would love to put together a game set in Vietnam, but the biggest problems are the same as any structured military style setting - from Vietnam to Star Trek.  Players just usually chaffe at not having the freedom to do exactly what they want, which makes a "grunt level" Vietnam game problematic.  There is always the special forces operators route, but I don't personally find that all that interesting.  What were you thinking?

One of the ways to get around it is to run a LRRP game. In the field LRRP teams were pretty loose on military discipline, it really comes down to appointing a Player as the Team Leader who is smart enough not to be a dictator and micromanger.

Quote from: DestroyYouAlot;523083My initial plan is to focus on LRRP patrols.  See, I think the fun conflict is to play with the "on the leash" thing - specifically, the tendency of command to send these guys "into the shit" HOPING the mission would "fail" (i.e., be discovered), and that the patrol would rack up a disproportionately high enemy body count extracting themselves.  That, and the tendency for command's understanding of a situation not to match up with the reality on the ground, and making the players deal with that dissonance.  In the end, it's all about doing what you have to do to survive, with your conscience intact or no, and then keeping your stripes (or avoiding court-martial) when you get back to camp.  (Whiffs of Paranoia, here, where it could end up being the team leader and/or radio man's word against the rest of the party - think Platoon.   )

Yea, we found that a LRRP or Tunnel Rat game was the best way to go with Recon.

One of the only Palladium games I never played or ran.

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