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View Full Version : Are there any systems good for Air-battles/Dogfights?



DuctTapeKatar
2017-07-18, 11:14 AM
I want to try to do a game where people play as pilots for planes, or ships, or something that allows them to fly. Of course, I might also want to mess with it a bit, help it fit better into the setting, story, yadda yadda ya, but I want a good place to start from.

Does anyone know of any systems that run like this, and if you have played it yourself, is it any good or has any massive problems?

Knaight
2017-07-18, 11:42 AM
There's a few systems that have passable rules (e.g. Fudge if you use the Dogfighting rules from the 10th anniversary edition), and a lot that are pretty bad.

Then there's Warbirds. Playing as fighter pilots is the central concept of Warbirds, and while the default rules are for a 1930ish tech level it has expansions that expand it. If you get Warbirds and the Space Age expansion in softcover you'll get everything* needed for basically any era, for about $50 after shipping. It's a beautiful system in a lot of ways, and the air combat shines in particular, with enough rules to cover both dogfights and attacking big targets with fighters without being so rules heavy that it gets bogged down. The system is also built so that you can essentially strip out the air combat and stick it on anything else if you don't want to use the rest of the system, which helps fit it to other settings - although just changing up the skill list will also do that within a pretty wide range. It's the sole recommendation I'd make for this, and I'd recommend it as something pretty close to perfect for your needs.

*You can get Warbirds as a .pdf, but the .pdf for the Space Age expansion is only the Space Age expansion, while soft cover has the other expansions as well. There's also a complete .pdf bundle for about $25 which has everything in .pdf form, for about $25.

JNAProductions
2017-07-18, 12:04 PM
Have you looked into X-Wing? It's not a TTRPG-it's a wargame-but it does dogfighting pretty good.

DuctTapeKatar
2017-07-19, 01:29 PM
I'll check both out. Thanks.