This of course is a great book and is based on the author's experience in the Vietnam conflict. One of my favourites.

I was always intigued by the pseudo time travel element and how logistics of warfare could work over century long campaigns.

Now that has potential for a HUGE wargame experience.

Try Warpwar by metagaming. It has the time warp mechanic in it as newer ships are higher tech than older ships. And a new fleet setting across the map by the time they get there can be met with ships 3 generations more advanced.

I've owned WarpWar even longer than Forever War. It's good enough to be a core engine for the interstellar movement/combat system, yes, but there are other elements that are also needed.

TimelagTimelag, another old microgame does include some of the elements you'd need, such as the lag in techonology etc etc. Sadly it doesn't include the necessity for calculating time dilation and other relativistic effects!

Given that the point of the novel was that ultimately the was completely pointless, it would be difficult to write victory conditions for a game on the strategic level - unless perhaps it was a cooperative game where both sides were trying to achieve the conditions necessary for this to be realised (also 'unrealistic' as neither side knew what these were until it happened.

As interesting as a game based on Forever War would be, I think it would go against the general message of the novel. Great novel though,

I have to say that I would agree with Ian, it would be hard to get across the point of the book and have a good game. Here is my idea though. You have a game where there is ever advancing technology from multiple races tech trees and crossover techs. A randomized tile-based map of different space sectors. Pre-assigned attack orders. A randomizing time element such as 5 or 6 or a d6 to pass through each tile so that you never know how long transit will take and when your attack order will be initiated. VPs for tech captures, advances, and planets captured. Two phased game. The first phase you try to destroy enemy and capture technology. At random points in the game (e.g. 4 or 5 cards out of a deck) you will have an oportunity for peace. At this point, players must send out ships to intersect their own ships and prevent attacks. vps are scored for intersepting ships. If there are no attacks for x number of turns, then peace is achieved and everyone scores peace vps and game ends. If not all ships can be stopped, then no peace, no peace vps. Return to phase one. I think a game like this where peace is the goal but still having a good light wargame too would make the most sense for a game like this.

Elephants on Parade

Elephants in Space. I can smell the crackling of Pacyderm.

Love it.

Fantastic book! This the best invasion novel in existence. The only downside is that it's so good that other sci-fi authors won't even try the invasion genre (at least not where aliens take the direct approach, as opposed to being secretive pod people).



Yes, as do most Niven/Pournelle books, especially Lucifer's Hammer and Mote. I wonder why they've never been done...? Too vast, I suppose. Hollywood has tried the "asteroid disaster" movie a few times, as with Deep Impact and Armageddon, but they have never approached the epic scope of Lucifer's Hammer. And they basically missed the point -- it's the aftermath that's most interesting. What the fall-of-civilization genre really needs is a TV series, preferably of HBO quality. I'd love to see an HBO mini-series adaptation of Lucifer's Hammer (or any sci-fi for that matter -- everything they do is phenomenal).

I thought this new Jericho show might pan out (even though there is no comet/asteroid), but early indications look like they are playing it safe and are taking the approach that their audience is not very bright. Boo!

Sorry, I got off track. I' m just saying that end-of-the-world science fiction is the best. Guess I should have made a separate entry on this list, using Civilization as the game....

Bellingham gets nuked. I love it.

Heh, I read it while living in Bellingham.

This is obviously NOT THE Bellingham in Beckenham in Kent, UK. The TRUE Bellingham.

I'd love to try the game in "The Player of Games". Not for the stakes they play for though

Great series!

Spaceships with a length of about 60 miles or more. Weapons that work at 1.000.000+ miles and with the power to devastate whole starsystems.
I guess scaling could be a real problem.
But still this is a real cool space opera. My favortite book is Excessions.

I started a thread about the game (the main one) in "The Player of Games". Probably been archived by now...

Excellent choice. My preference would go to The Player of Games and Azad.

Excellent theme and background, knife missiles, special circumstances, not to mention the ship names - i seem to remember one called Vermillion Stance.

What a fantastic book! I must re-read it!

I love Peter Hamilton.

We could also look at his meisterwerk "Night's Dawn Trilogy".

Nasty aliens making Humanity go insane.

This has so many locations amd dramatis personae, a great source of material for a CCG a la Game of Thrones.

I might start wrting this one myself....

I'm partial to "The Reality Dysfunction" myself, but all of his works are gold.

Interesting gameplay can be drawn from the theme with this one. Like the human player gets a tech tree while the motile(?) player doesn't but whatever the human player researches the motile player gets it on the next turn/round/whatever (point being the human player only gets a one turn advantage with tech but gets to control the flow of tech).

Meanwhile the motile player has to constantly keep adding units to it's hive mind to keep up with handling the ever increasing resource needs of it's growing army.

Good points, David. There's a lot in a Hamilton work to convert into gameplay - probably too much, in fact. Some judicious snipping would probably be in order.

Even the battleroom exercises might make a nice game - though 3-D movement is notoriously difficult to replicate in a game, especially on a 2-D board.

This is the one that immediately sprang to mind for me.

What might also make a good game is the Bean/shadow "trilogy" that came for the same universe. Gobal war with super military genius kids.

Good choice... And do you do something like Starship Troopers with scenarios for each mission Ender had to do (ST did it on planets) or do you make it more of a campaign thing?

This is definately the book I would like to see as a game; maybe even two games. A game from battle school. But also Ender's and possibly Bean's lives with overcoming obstacles, solving adversities somehow. At any rate this is a game I would like to see soon.

Totally agree. I have to whole series, and I even played the poorly done computer game version of the books many years ago.

Nerd

And, if made a board game it would have huge expandability (or it would be a colossal game if it were all packed together) with each of the elemental worlds being represented somehow. I'm sorry I can't remember the names, it's been probably at least 10 years since I've read the books, but you're right the theme would make a great game if well done.

Second this one.
Awesome series.

You're my hero for mentioning Turtledove, my all time favorite author, I actually have 43 of his books and thats not even all!! A lot of his books would make interesting campagine games

You know, the only Timeline 191 novels that I've read so far are the American Empire series and the first Settling Accounts novel, and it wasn't until I saw the cover of "The Victorious Opposition" that I realized that he was making the CSA analogous to inter-war and WWII Nazi Germany. I felt so dumb when I realized that, but it really helps (I found) to understand a bit better some of the social conditions and whatnot that existed in inter-war Europe. And yes, I think they'd make great games, even in a larger scale (come on, a war between the Union and the Confederacy using WWII level technology? That would be great!)

Love the choices for Turtledove. I've been waiting for anyone to pitch Guns as a movie. Could work really well if done right.

How about a non-wargame. Between the Rivers would convert nicely into a trading/caravan/gain influence game.

Maybe you could develope and spread enough effective influence, commerce routes, technology and litterature to take control of your own major city (Gibil for ex.) from the hands of the the demons and Gods who are running them?

Good list.

I would think the Videssos cycles would probably work - big world map, lots of different countries - sort of a Divine Right thing.

Except it's more fantasy, I suppose. That doesn't disqualify it, does it?

Now is this a good book, or are you just saying I should read it because it's about games? Also, how much does the game figure into the story line?

I read The Omega Game a couple years ago (forgot the author's name, sorry). It was okay, but the "game" was just a hook for a pretty basic murder mystery. If you're into murder mysteries, you might like it, but if you read it because you're interested in games, you might be disappointed, as I was.

I am also reminded of an old 1980's horror novel called Hobgoblin, which used a made-up role-playing game as the hook. For this one, I remember the author's name -- John Coyne -- because the book holds the distinction of being the most astoundingly bad novel I've ever read. Another murder mystery, with an irrelevant gaming theme that was
"pasted on", as we like to say here.

No, this really is a good book and Game Playing and Gambling are at the heart of it.

If your bag is intelligent sci fi mixed with your favourite hobby this is for you.

If memory serves me, I think Iain Banks is a bit of a gamer himself....but I think more into "Civ" computer type games.

Go read it and let me know what you think: You have stimulated me to want to read it again. Thanks

Dean

The story is on record. He was three months late with his last manuscript because of Civ4 and eventually had to destroy the CD to stop him from playing it...

Bank's love of Civ comes across in his non-SF novel 'Complicity', whose protaganist is addicted to a fictional Civ inspired game called 'Despot'.

And as for the book, it is indeed a very, very good one on it's own merits. It's one of a series of novels set in a common background, but although it is not the first sequentially it is probably the best one to read first (though all the novels are fine as a stand-alone, perhaps bar 'Inversions').

Ah, Azad, that was the game. As I said I started a thread on it some time ago...

I like your style....I would love to play this game!

It would be an interesting one to try & capture the essence of.

One minute the books are grand in scope as a brother raises an army in Shadow to try & topple the ruling brother from the throne, next it was quite personal & intimate with lots of dialogue.

Fantastic series.

I actually did play the Amber RPG back in college. All the other guys were CS PhDs and huge Amber fans. I'd played D&D, but had never heard of Amber. They made me read the books before letting me play the game (I was lowly tagalong undergrad). Good read.

It was interesting bidding for relative powers, but the game bogged down quickly. The problem, and maybe this was the fault of the DM, was that the world had so few restrictions. We could do almost anything we could think of. There weren't enough rules and chains to tie us players down and we just sort of drifted aimlessly in this uberpowerful void.

Maybe we were doing something wrong. I remember at the time being surprised at how boring having god-like powers turned out to be.

"An Amber collectible card game was being designed by Nebula Games, which now seems defunct. As of August 2000, Precedence had picked up the rights and had plans for a release in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2001, but there is no information on their website concerning the game."

What would have made a FAR better 2-player ccg would be the ELRIC saga... each player representing either Law or Chaos with the Elric card thrown in as an element that can be used by either side.

IMO, the first "Chronicles of Amber" books are all classic must reads. The second "Chronicles of Amber" books are fun, but pale in comparison to the first.

I think game balance would be very difficult in an Amber-based game. But I would love to see someone try and make one!

Should be, 'the only GREATER "epic" scale...'. That's what I get for not previewing...

I always thought that world would make a great setting for an SF RPG. I just want to roleplay a dolphin.

These are probably my favorite sci-fi series of all time. The 2nd trilogy was enjoyable, but its really the 2nd and 3rd books of the original trilogy that are the cream of the series.

http://www.pen-paper.net/rpgdb.php?op=showbook&bookid=3173

I have a copy of a very old (early 1980s)fanzine called Dragonlords which includes a spoof RPG set in the HHGTTG universe. Highly entertaining, I will attempt to summarise if anyone asks!

This could also be made into a mass market family game....like Cranium where you have to attempt to make weird stuff ...from weird stuff..."land on the improbability drive" ....perform something improbable.....like Grognards driving Ferraris

The bits could also be really out there too......could be a DVD game concept....but it would have to be done properly to preserve the intergrity of the special place these groupof books have with their fanbase..

That spoof RPG does sound highly entertaining!
Please share, so we can be blessed by the goodness that is the hitchhiker's universe.

Hehehehe Talk about the ULTIMATE Trivial Pursuit. "Who really runs the universe?" etc. heheheeh now that would be difficult. (providing real answers, not just the ones from the book.)
Let's see catagories would be:
Life
The Universe
Everything
Politics
Travel
The Fundamental Interconectdness of All Things
(okay I know that last one is from "the other series" but it's too good a catagory title to pass up.)

Another book with a similar theme to this is "The High Crusade", by Poul Anderson. A medieval English village is stunned when an alien spaceship touches down, but are able to overpower and subdue the invaders. They board the ship, intending to "finally finish the battle with the French", but one of the aliens locks it on course for their home planet instead.

The main theme of the book is that the aliens have become so dependent on technology that they've lost the ability to wage or defend against traditional warfare (sieges, etc.). Perhaps the best scene from it involves a tactical nuke being launched from a trebuchet....

Is that even possibile without the trebuchet being caught in the blast radius? The old phrase "Hoisted by his own petard!" comes to mind.

Who cares if it's really possible!?

Just imagine a nuclear warhead strapped to a mediaeval wooden war machine. Awesome.

I have heard of Steam Punk but what would you call this?

Actually, Ares magazine had a game based on "High Crusade".