1. Forum
  2. Our Ranges
  3. Death Fields: The Greatest Sport is War!
  4. A little about the DF universe

A little about the DF universe

  • Hudson Adams

    Just some notes to help people understand it better. 

    This is set about 500 years from now so there are teams (like Ooh Rah) who are established well after the 21st century. 

    There's no time travel. A Roman team has been playing for 2500 years. Many teams are even older. 

    Humans on Earth and it's many colonies have no idea the larger galactic civilization exists. They've only found aliens of lesser technological ability or hints of higher tech worlds that are unpopulated and in ruin. 

    Weapons technology for the galactic civilization is far more advanced than what we see in the games. 

    AMA and I'll try to give answers. 

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • AB

    So my questions are:

    What is it about the human race that makes the aliens value them as competitors? Are other alien races used in the same way?

    Are the arenas specially constructed Gunner Games style?

    Are there human uprisings? Do the competitors know it's a game?

    Do teams or players ever "retire," and if so what does that look like? Or are they incentivised to play?

  • Cole Underdahl

    Are all of the teams selected because of their combat prowess in some way? What's the galciv's process for selecting teams? Death Fields IS for entertainment, correct?

  • GM

    Are the games planed as a real "War", with the sides given obectives to achive, and then released into a "Zone", that has full "Film" coverage, but a totally realistic enviorment.

  • FC
     
    How are losses handled?
    
Taking the example of the Roman team which has been playing for 2500 years, there have inevitably been deaths and it has been some time since there have been any legionnaires available to reinforce it. And later soldiers would not retain the Roman theme.

    So, cloning or raising the dead? But in this case, what about cannon fodder?
  • CF

    If teams have been participating for millennia what allows them to exist for that long?

    Are they cloned, or held in suspended animation?

    If a participant dies how do they get replaced?

    How exactly does the society holding the games maintain secrecy?

  • Hudson Adams

    Some answers in no particular order: 

    1. There are lots of alien teams as well which we will get to but humans are particularly savage and warlike. 

    2. Human uprisings - you'll have to wait to hear about that one 😜

    3. The players are VERY aware of what they've been put into - depending on who they are they have different attitudes to their status (basically slaves although some owners treat them very differently than others)  

    4. I don't know what "Gunner Games" is but arenas come in all shapes and sizes and are configured differently for different themes and matches. It's a big show. Some arenas are better known than others. Some smaller/less important worlds have more simple set ups. 

    5. Games take a variety of forms - some are just head to head matches with a standard field configuration so that tournaments can be held, others are narrative. There is every type of objective/mission you can think of. The physical environment (gravity, air, dangerous flora and fauna) can all be alterred/configured. 

    6. Matches are held for both private audiences and broadcasts. Not all galactic citizens support the sport and consider it barbaric. Nevertheless it has a massive following

    7. Players are injured and "die" on the regular but advanced medical technology, cloning, and consciousness backups allow players to come back to the field. In some cases owners are more generous and allow players to have families (some of which go onto be players themselves) and/or walk away from the games once new players are trained up. In other cases, owners wring every last bit of performance and "value" out of their slaves. It is those owners whose players are more likely to end up as Cannon Fodder as they are described: "These are the dregs of the Death Fields sport: the washouts, the mental cases, the warriors who just can't cut it or the teams whose strategy, training, or cunning have fallen behind new, younger franchises... These are also the one final chance for an owner to profit." 

    8. Earth and it's stellar colonies are in the backwater of the galaxy. They have not advanced to a point where they would be invited to join the larger civilization. Distance and deliberate subterfuge keep humans from getting too close to the core system. But as they expand, contact is becoming more likely. 

     

     

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • CĂ©sar RodrĂ­guez

    @Hudson Adams Is there a price or incentive for the teams to win (other than not dying), i.e. trophies or medals given by the game organizers? ¿Has there been cheating by a team?

    0 likes
  • E

    Are the spiders players or moderators?

  • Red Bee

    How sports-like are these events? Are there leagues, championships, regulated trades, etc?

     

    How are weapons handled? The poor Lizard-folk folk seem a little undergunned when compared to the Einhenjar. Is that a feature? Are there regulation blasters? Do the competitors make there own tech? Are they provided by the owners? The league? Are their standard regulations for every match, utter chaos, or do they mix it up with each event? 

    Are the game exclusively land battles? Is there some kind of Death-Dog-fights, or other mechanized events?  If so is there any plans to bring this aspect into the miniatures? (The Grognards heavy weaponry is really styling. I'd pay good money for a Ship, mech or submarine by them).

  • JTam

    @César Rodríguez 

    Has there been cheating?

    Well "The greatest sport is war," and there is no cheating in war.

    Or to put it another way, there's a saying in the Army.  "If you're not cheating, you're not trying."

    Just my thoughts.

  • E

    Is there a limit on what equipment can be used? Is there a regulation Arena Size minimum?

    0 likes
  • Hudson Adams

    Death Fields is first and foremost entertainment - hence the more over the top designs for many of the teams. Owners award players when they win with a variety of perks. There are tournaments - both regional and circuit-wide. Teams play a mix of specialty matches and then certain matches that are part of the qualifications for the main circuit tournament (more on that in future). For the qualifying and bracket matches the field is standardized so no team has an advantage. Weapon load outs, # of players per side, and the playing field itself is all standardized for those matches. 

    Zero-g, hostile environment, ruined world open area, and all kinds of other permutations have been done for the battlefields. Field designers are highly paid and treated as celebrities and constantly trying to bring the new, hottest design and innovative concepts to the circuit. 

    The spiders are not "officially" a team. Orginally bio-engineered to be a surprise during a match between The Vain and The Damned they have since been used as a horde army against Cannon Fodder and (with the addition of bio-weaponry) a regular opponent on the circuit. 

    Similarlly the lizardmen were a primitive alien race that is mostly used horde style in non-qualifying matches.

    Each match has strict guidelines and there is an intricate points system for both warriors and weaponry so that teams are evenly matched (unless a non-qualifying match calls for a last stand type scenario) Weaponry is mostly provided by the owners, but teams whose owners have given them more autonomy and set them up with their own dominions typically have their own R&D and manufacturing capability. There are few like this though.

    Death Fields is big, big money for the owners mostly in sponsorship and advertising. It's a cutthroat business competition and some owners have been driven to do whatever it takes to keep their teams in the spotlight. Like any sport that's betted on heavily there are also instances where criminal elements have worked with or forced owners or team members to throw a match. Law enforcement and the league's own security forces are always on the watch for this kind of corruption. 

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • NA

    Are abductions done "in person" (via aliens in stealthy FTL craft) or teleporting people from lightyears away (a malicious, intentional, John Carter)? Do abductions ever get the wrong people (whoops! Aim was off and grabbed this child instead of the Centurion), or people who are targets of oppertunity (grabbing these soldiers, might as well grab the civilians they were escorting too)?

  • William Redford

    @Nanashi Anon They occur when teams upgrade their cell phones and dont fully read the terms and conditions before signing.

  • JTam

    @William Redford 

    Human Centipad?

  • William Redford

    @JTam :) yeah. Great episode.

  • Hudson Adams

    @Nanashi Anon typically they are taking those who are either dying/dead or about to be dead from a battlefield or - like the Einherjar - scooped up out of their longship on the way home from battle. The acquisition ships are equipped with a matter transportation device so they can remain hidden and get them off the planet as fast as possible. 

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • Brian Waters

    Can players leave a team and join another one? An Einherjar joining the Raumjagers?

  • Hudson Adams

    @Brian Waters Only if their owner sells them or donates for a joint match.

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • TD

    Will there be star players? And bonsues for them? Coaches? 

  • Chris Guy

    Do the DF teams go out on actual military missions or train up local forces? Since DF teams seem to have the most amount of combat experience, even in a game, it would seem to me that they are the best choice for them to be deployed as a specialist force to combat pirates or suppress rebellions.

  • SS

    @Chris Guy I would have thought they weren't as effective as their alien overlords real militaries, otherwise they probably wouldn't be participating in a sport in the first place.

     

  • MD

    Who's to say the alien overlords even have a need for training militaries? Just print off as many soldiers as they need, if they even bother with that primitive way of doing things anymore. 

    The DF teams are LITERALLY their hobby. I doubt if they were themselves engaging in similar activity it would have the appeal. 

  • BVD

    Who knows, maybe all the political stuff like "who owns what panlet"  gets decided via the games due to complex treaties the backers have with one another. Would make sense given the "far, from true civilization" statement gives off tones mildly similar to Hellenist style elitism that suggests "ours is best way"  when it actually isn't.

    0 likes
  • ADC

    @Brian Van De Walker There was a series of novels by David Drake, about some legionaries "recruited" (well, bought, long history)by some aliens, given that for galactic laws they couldn't fight primitives, the romans were conscripted to fight for their new masters

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

    Naturally, given our prolificity, it's possible that the aliens had kidnapped also other peoples, so, btw the aliens' medtech and the normal humans' reproduction, the original legionaries are long gone, and their descendants are yet obliged to fight in the Death Fields' arena(s).

  • jf

    So with Death Fields, what is the scale of the battles? Are there different leagues for squad based skirmishes or full scale battles? And how uncommon would it be for a team owner to trade/buy individuals from different kinds of fighters?

    I had a neat idea for a skirmish squad (using One Page Rules: Firefight as a guide). I have 3 Ooh Rah as an infantry unit, 3 Einharjar as separate special weapons units, a Grognard commander with power fist(from the heavy weapons box) as a Company Leader unit, 3 Cannon Fodder as a conscript unit, a Raumsjager as a storm trooper unit, and a Raumsjager(with embelishments) as a Storm Leader unit. 

    I am halfway finished with this squad and will share when its completed but given that Death Fields is a sport I would think it would work a lot like how sports work here where teams would want skilled individuals as much as whole coherent groups of fighters. And this leads into another interesting aspect; stats. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of exceptional individuals single handedly securing a win. Anyone putting together a team would want to maximize their stats in order to get the best return and mixing different units with different skills would be the best way to do that. 

  • Hudson Adams

    @jordan frank Good questions Jordan and we will start to REALLY answer them in the next couple months! Hint, hint.

    Time to Make the Plastic!

  • BVD

    @Hudson Adams We are holding you to that.

    0 likes
Please login to reply this topic!

Search

Forum statistics

Page views (24h):
945
Page views (30d):
34,182
Topics:
938
Posts:
15,292
Members:
1,869

Newest members

© 2024, Wargames Atlantic | Powered by Xenforum