I have a really random question, but does anyone else here have a background in miniature games? I played a lot of warhammer, d&d, d20 system games, and built armor models before I re-approached model railroading seriously. I dont know if there is any correlation with my hobbies, but it would be interesting to see if anyone else on this forum ever played (or plays) tabletop games.
Well its a, rolls 3d6, great day. I try to find any traps in the message and, rolls 1d20, don't find any....
We host regular game tournaments - Silverton, RailBaron, Railroad Tycoon, all the 1830 series(tile games), Rails Through the Rockies, all the Empire Builder series(crayon games), Railroad Rivals, Stephen's Rocket, Age of Steam, Santa Fe, Transsib, C&O-B&O, Dampfrost (English rules), Dispatcher, Northwestern Rails, etc.
Developed my own extension to Rail Barons that adds a lot of railroads like the Erie, D&H, KCS, MKT, CoG, etc.
I invented the Lenny NPC type for AD&D first release while Dragon Magazine was still in double digit editions. Wrote a series of adventures published locally in St. Louis. Mastered a weekly regular game at the local hobby store on Tuesday night and one at my house on Saturday afternoon.
I've got a brand new copy of "The Pillars of the Earth" sitting here that I can't wait to learn to play.
Killer Bunnies.
My young children started me in Pokemon earlier this year, sure does beat Candy Land, Shoots and Ladders, and Jr. Monoploy.
etc, etc, etc.
Of course, I am opposite of you. I was a serious model railroader long before I started playing games.
I'm currently writing a system based on actual failure percentages for different manufaturers first generation diesels.
Each time a trian starts from a stop on my layout, engineers will roll a percentile dice and (as an example) have 5% chance of turbocharger failure if using Alco or Baldwin (proceed at 2/3 speed,or setout 1/3 of train), 2% chance of electrical failure if using a Baldwin (call dispatcher for "protection" engine), etc,etc.
Guilty.Or is my picture not enough of a give away?
FASA, Warmachine, Flames of War, etc - and a whole lotta Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k). Grew pretty disalusioned with the continual crappy codecies aimed at imbiciles with deep pockets and rule changes designed to only increase quarterly profits.
Now spend most $$ on trains, and a board game or two a month. - I still meet every couple of weeks to game with friends, and working on my LGS to carry railroading stuff.
Cheers!
I'm trying to model 1956, not live in it.
I've dabbled a nice bit in miniature and board games. I played Mage Knight for quite a while, right up until Wizkids killed it with all the new gimicky rules. I also played Axis and Allies Minis for a little bit but never found anyone to play with around here consistently. However, both of those I picked up in middle/high school, whereas I've been model railroading since I was 6.
ScarpiaFASA, Warmachine, Flames of War, etc - and a whole lotta Warhammer (Fantasy and 40k). Grew pretty disalusioned with the continual crappy codecies aimed at imbiciles with deep pockets and rule changes designed to only increase quarterly profits.
Scarpia, thats pretty much the reason I stopped playing warhammer, albeit after i finished my third army. All well, I had a lot of fun at the time. I used to even play warhammer from time to time on my old layout. I always had trouble justifying the old bombed out bunkers and heavy weapon pits along my mainline....
Maybe some of you guys dont see it the same way, but I see a lot of the same qualities in model railroading and miniature gaming. For the most part I have stopped gaming often and just play the occasional casual Magic: the Gathering game, or a short weekend D&D campaign.
I'm not a gamer but have wondered if there's any similarity to Model Railroad Operation. Some of my kids teachers hada developed role playing game to teach kids history ,which I thought was kinda cool,and so did they. BILL
I am a 1st edition Warhammer 40k player with multiple armies, tanks, and yes a Baneblade. I still have all the minatures and tanks that i painted when i was like 13 years old. The building and painting does assist me in the MRR world and I still am using the same Xacto knife set and even some of the paints. 40k was fun but they change the rules and minatures every 2 or 3 years and over retailed it out of my interest. The skills I learned then i do use now, i was not a good painter at 13 but i did build models well.
Roll a D6 for armour save on the head on collison, +1 modifier for the snow blade attachment.
I was playing D&D back when it was being decried as the bane of youthful society and all you had were some funny dice, a couple of books, and grid paper. Also very much enjoyed playing the Avalon Hill war games, like Squad Leader & Third Reich. I'd probably still enjoy them if I had the time & knew anybody else who played.
Don't know how much influence those played in my growth into a model railroader, other than putting me in touch with my nerdy self.
Jim
"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words." - William F. Buckley
I haven't been sleeping. I'm afraid I'll dream I'm in a coma and then wake up unconscious. -Stephen Wright
Let's see, Railroad Tycoon 2 orig. through 3, MSTS, Trainz, Incredibots, (Where I make locomotives and freight cars) Airport Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, and Risk.That is all I can think of as of the moment.
Nik
A friend of mine introduced me to D&D and down the road developed DMing skill, along the way computers came around, a thing called PLATO, prolly the best example of the internet before the internet (circa 1975-1980+ ) had interterminal stations on colleges and I sure played my games worth of computerized D&D on it.
The board game style isn't limited for that, lots younger my father had this game called "Dispatcher" from Avalon Hill, 2 players set up the board with cardboard tabs representing trains. It had no dice but had play "event" cards that described trouble situations on trains or tracks whatever. (train 21 derailed east of yards, cannot move this turn, bad weather between MP20 and Taney, all trains reduced one track section this turn, and so on) gave you a simulated train operation.
Our model railroads do a similar kind of functioning, challenges, puzzles, role playing.
GTX765Roll a D6 for armour save on the head on collison, +1 modifier for the snow blade attachment.
armor save? whats that?... I played orcs!!!
I am a full blown historical miniatures gamer and also a board gamer. Part of a group that plays every Friday. My interests are ACW (land and naval), AWI, anything else Naval. When I started building my layout, the design was against the walls so I would have room to set up a game table for board games.
I was a Battletech player, and my college friends and I would get serious from time to time about it. The most incredibly insane thing we ever did was a battalion vs. battalion game with 16 maps plus artillery, vehicle, infantry, helicopter, and Aerotech support. Turns took forever! FYI: a battalion is 3 companies, a company is 3 lances, and a lance is 4 'Mechs, so we were playing 36 vs. 36 Battlemechs. The game took several weekends to conclude.
I still have all my minis, over 100 IIRC, and I have most of the sourcebooks, maps, & novels from the pre-Wizkids era. But no Wizkids "Clickytech" for me. That's when I checked out. Going from a Universe where the primary weapons were autocannons, lasers, and gauss rifles to one where chainsaws were predominant? Ugh. Even worse, you went from a game where the minis were optional (you had the paper records where the info was kept) to a game where not only where the minis required, you couldn't just buy what you want...you had to buy sealed boxes and hope you got what you wanted. IOW, they tried to turn Battletech into Magic: The Gathering. I don't think it's worked.
Not to say I don't like Magic. I have thousands of cards. The problem these days is that I can't win against new players. I don't have the old power decks of the past where 1st turn kills were possible (Lightning Bolt-Channel-Fireball, etc.), and these new cards these days are just incredibly fast. You know it's a fast game these days when a pure burn deck can't do much damage. The only old deck I ever got to work against new players was my old blue/white/black Millstone & Denial deck with Circles of Protection. Oh, they hated that. I was pulling cards out they had never heard of ("Maze of Ith"?).
The other card games I played was the Star Trek: The Next Generation game and the Battletech card game. Both interesting, but just never got much hold on me.
I tried Fantasy Warhammer once. Hated it. In fact, I don't like any kind of role playing game. For all the years I played Battletech or Magic, I never pretended to be a Mechwarrior or a wizard. I'm not an actor and have no interest in developing characters. Real Life is full of enough characters that I don't have to invent any new ones.
I tend to treat my model railroading operations the same. I'm not pretending to be an engineer or a dispatcher. I am one that just happens to control little trains compared to big ones. IOW, I don't have any interest in wearing overalls, a denim cap, or red bandanas unless it's for Holloween.
Paul A. Cutler III*******************Weather Or No Go New Haven*******************
Interesting thread.
I may be too old to dig into role playing games or any other of that sort. My son started out on this some years ago and it got him into modeling his own figures and "battle fields" - don´t ask me the name of this game.
He never developed an interest in model railroading in the time when he lived with us, but now he is getting more and more interested in what I do. Keeps on asking me on modeling techniques and I guess it won´t be much longer now for him to start with a train....
cahrn armor save? whats that?... I played orcs!!!
now datz proppa!
GTX765, a baneblade? please. I have a looted one, plus 3 Gargants.....plus an Armored Krumpany, plus a def squadron, all 40k scale, etc.
if you're interested, you can check out my old site...I don't update it anymore, but it's still high on the Google list. If you hit the conversion section (da mekshop), you can see where I was developing my model railroading skills! I even had a couple of models in WD, but that was back when GW actually cared about gamers.
'ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go!
In started my gaming career with the Swedish version of D&D. Then played most other Swedish RPG's. Then I tried out Rollermaster.
After that I started playing World in Flames. When I moved away from my parents I bought an apartment big enough so that I had an extra room just for WIF. It needs it. After that I got hooked on Warhammer Fantasy and it was while looking for terrain material I stumbled on to MR. I bought some scenery stuff and of I went on another crazy way to spend money.'
My kids are now old enough that they have taken an interest in WFB, my daughter is collecting Vampire Counts now and I play a bit with her, I used to take part of tournaments and consider my self a rather good player. I own every army except WE and CD. Neither of which I have any interest in.
I do believe that there is a correlation between the two groups. I.e miniature gamers and MR. They Are quite similar and I do believe that a hobby shop could make quite alot of money by showing there stuff for the gamers. As it is now it's two similar worlds but they don't cross paths. MR could teach war gamers about terrain and building structures. War gamers could teach MR about painting, especially people. I'm often astounded by the LACK of quality painting on the people on the layouts. Most good mini painters would laugh at the quality.
Magnus
I started with Morschausers' basic WWII armor and infantry miniatures games around 1963, didn't really stop until 1995 or so. Eventually we built company level armor units in 1/35, and played outdoors (in every kind of weather, including falling snow). Our rules evolved to a placed-shot system where every tank round was figured for dispersion, and measured out on the tank models. We did extensive research into armor penetration mechanics, and wrote and published a book (WWII Ballistics: Armor & Gunnery by Lorrin Bird and Robert Livingston). I learned a great amount about physics and metallurgy researching that book. And, I still have all the tank models.
Also played medieval combat miniatures, using our own rules. And a version of D&D we made up before D&D became famous. Played a 1/1200 naval game with modified Fletcher Pratt rules, in which we had to learn how to estimate range to the inch.
Most of my gaming has been with miniatures, is research based, and isn't with canned rules. Today, there are several WWII tanks on flat cars on my railroad, including some captured German equipment being shipped to an evaluation facility, along with an American 3" AT gun for live ballistic testing.
As a model railroader, rules and procedures are the farthest thing from my mind. I am more interested in the look of a scene, and the working of a locomotive. My other hobby is slot car building and racing, in which I became very involved in writing rules for historically accurate building and racing in 1/32 scale, but so far the railroads have evaded the rule mania.
As a teenager back in the early 1960s, I discovered the early Avalon Hill games - Gettysburg, Tactics II, DDay and Dispatcher. I even created my own game - 4 countries, all separated by water, so the game was dominated by naval fleet actions. I even included rudimentary logistics. The game was playable, but realistically it was way too complicated for the pre-computer age.
Next was Harpoon. This was originally a board game, but it was so detailed that I found it unplayable in that version. The computer version, however, was superb. Unfortunately, computer power wasn't up to the task back then, and ownership of the product was transferred between gaming companies, with bad results. A year or two back I picked up a modern update of the old game, which seems to run very well and is quite stable. (It's a modern naval simulation, by the way.)
MS Flight Simulator caught my attention, and I got way too involved in it. As with trains, I'm more of a modeller than an operator. I got into the detailed add-ons, both for planes and for ground scenery. My wife was annoyed at how much time I spent on the computer, and suggested that I pull my old trains out of the attic. About that time, my hard drive crashed and I lost most of my detailed Flight Sim setup, so I dropped it completely and switched to trains. Now, of course, my wife is annoyed at how much time I spend on the trains. I think she expected a 4-foot square Martha Stewart Christmas tree layout.
Just a few miles from my LHS in Chelmsford, MA, incidentally, is a gaming shop called "Three Trolls." They also have a significant amount of Woodland Scenics stuff. In the front of the store is a large flat table with a grid, clearly used for large-scale miniature gaming.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
MisterBeasley Next was Harpoon.
Next was Harpoon.
Now there's a nice memory. I loved that game. I still have the board version around somewhere.
MisterBeasley MS Flight Simulator caught my attention, and I got way too involved in it.
MS Flight Simulator caught my attention, and I got way too involved in it.
As did I. I ended up writing quite a few addons for it:
Airport and Scenery Designer, CoPilot, CoPilot Pro, EZGPS, CAP Search and Rescue and a few others.
Wow...there seem to be alot of us...
My focus was on wargaming. Avalon Hill...Gettysburg, D-day, Squad Leader. And how many of you remember Simulations Publications, Inc's Strategy and Tactics magazine? I still have a shelf full of the games included with each issue.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
Cool to see there are a lot of people that game or used to game. I dont know if building war game scenery helped with my model railroad scenery though, I dont have much of a use for burned out pillboxes and heavy weapons pits on my layout... but I am planning a new one... hmmmm
AlreadyInUse As did I. I ended up writing quite a few addons for it: Airport and Scenery Designer, CoPilot, CoPilot Pro, EZGPS, CAP Search and Rescue and a few others.
Gee, I wonder if we ever met in an earlier virtual life. I was "Captain Barfbag" on the Flight Sim forum. I got very good at playing with Traffic Tools and getting airport ground traffic to go where I wanted it to.
Cahrn, Pillboxes and bomb craters might be good for a scenario based on Europe just after the war or whats that system of models based on the premise that the war contunued to the present or the future,with all those fantastic floating tanks etc.? BILL
MisterBeasley Gee, I wonder if we ever met in an earlier virtual life. I was "Captain Barfbag" on the Flight Sim forum. I got very good at playing with Traffic Tools and getting airport ground traffic to go where I wanted it to.
It's possible. I didn't spend much time at FlightSim.com after Nels took his site commercial. I did know him from his BBS days and on the old IUP flightsim listserv. My stuff for MSFS has all been sold through a distributor for quite a while. CoPilot has over 65,000 registered users:
http://www.abacuspub.com/catalog/s715frame.htm
rekleinCahrn, Pillboxes and bomb craters might be good for a scenario based on Europe just after the war or whats that system of models based on the premise that the war contunued to the present or the future,with all those fantastic floating tanks etc.? BILL
Im not sure, I did play some variants of mechwarrior, but thats pretty new school stuff. Anyhow I like my Southern Pacific just fine as it is!
Played the classic Avalon Hill games when they were "new" - like D-Day, Gettysburg, Jutland etc. Also played some of the S&T games and even had a subscription to S&T for a while back in the late 70s early 80s.
My two favorites were Battle Fleet Mars and Starforce Alpha Centauri!
Haven't played in years though...
-Kosmo
"And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpet made of steel..."
I played some S&T games; I recall a very large version of DNO (Drang Nach Osten) that we played at the MIT Noreascon (some name like that) convention around 1977. Dim memories. I also recall flogging a couple of companies of 1/285 German armor across a field and being shot to bits by Russian anti tank guns hidden in the edge of the woods. I think I lost every game I ever played at a convention.
As for using war game scenery, yes, I have some sand bag revetments ready for the 120mm AA gun battery that will be protecting the airfield on my WWII era East New York Railroad. And come to think of it, a number of the HO structures built for war games are now on the layout, as they are humble barns and sheds which look American enough. Not to mention the 19th century brick brewery building which did duty as a generic factory in the war games, and is now part of my main industrial area.
I started with minatures when I was around 8 or 9. My brothers and I had large armies of painted lead soldier flats. Later I played Avalon Hill's Tactics II, Gettysburg (the original pre hex version), Dispatcher, Afrika Korps, Waterloo, and others when they were new. Later on there was Magic Realm, Titan, Merchants of Venus Rail Baron, Civilization, and 1830 plus many others I have forgotten. I still play board games with my sons when we get together including several of the 18xx games, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico, etc. .
I have played various computer war games including the original Civilization by Sid Meier. I have also played the Might and Magic series, Baldur's Gate series, and others. I played the original Railroad Tycoon and later follow ons.
Rail Baron for light hearted fun and 18xx for more serious games are the best railroad games I have played.
Enjoy
Paul
Old D&D player. Played at GenCon when it was at Uof W in Kenosha WI. First edition, Second edition and started Third edition when I just got fed up with gaming and the rules. Gave all my stuff to the guys who kept playing.
Fazby was the Cleric Mage I played. Usually a Th.D is tagged on as a Dr of Thaumaturgy. I had the character create a flashlight with continual light in a tube. The DM went along beautifully. Then I created a flashdark with the reversed spell. That blew his mind.
Well, the games got you to think outside the box......