Suggested reading and other sources for a merc campaign

[Charakan]

I remember seeing the Virgin Soldiers on telly many moons ago but can't remember much of it. I'll look for Dog Soldiers next time I'm in the video store, curiously enough this thread has just reminded of an excellent film I saw back when I was a kid about an Australian SAS unit in the Vietnam war, I think it was called the odd angry shot, I'm off to google it.

Edit: Just found it on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079652/

 

[Silvereye]

Dog soldiers is definitely worth watching, and not to be taken too seriously. Great film.

It might be worth reading the Nights Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. While it's gerneraly more than just a sci-fi war, there are some interesting set pieces that could easily be looted for mercenary tickets with a few tweaks.

 

[Gravmonkey]

[/b]ARMOR by John Steakly is good. Sort of like Starship Troopers, only better.

 

[Charakan]

Thanks for the replies Silvereye and Gravmonkey, I've read the Nights Dawn Trilogy and enjoyed it, I'll take a look at Armor.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

This thread has got me thinking a bit, and I even had another look a the Mercenary book (read it once when I bought it, was not impressed, and had to blow the dust off), has anybody ever used the Mercenary Ticket chapter?In particular, the compensation "Pay Grade Amounts" don't seem to take any account of either the number of mercs in the unit, or the time taken to complete a mission, so a team of 4 working for a week could get as much as 400 working for months (so the individual pay out would be very low). I have probably missed something, but where?

Perhaps not a big issuse, as I disregard pretty much the rest of the book anyway, and would be likely to write more detailed missions and renumeration rather than relying of die rolls, but I don't see how the system as published works.

Egil

 

[Ishmael]

you might take a look at the movie "The Wild Geese"

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Watched that about 20 years ago, only part I can remember is the end, don't virtually all of them die? Is there a section somewhere that explains the pay grade amounts on trav mercenary tickets?

More seriously, there have been a number of mercenary type activites in sub-saharan Africa over the last 50 years, Congo, Biafra, the attempt to over throw Equatorial Guinea's dictator in 2004 etc

Egil

 

[justacaveman]

Novel: The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth.

The movie version stars Chistopher Walken.

 

[rinku]

On a slight tangent, the old PC game Strike Commander has some good stuff. For those who aren't familiar with it, you're part of a mercenary F-16 wing operating out of Turkey. You had to juggle economics (good missiles are *expensive*) vs cost-effectiveness, and you tended to get real good at nursing a crippled bird down (where in a military flight sim you'd just eject), since you could ill afford the insurance clause to replace it.

The old manga Area-88 also dealt with a similar situation (and I suspect was a major influence).

 

[Da Boss]

BattleTech anyone? lots of good source books and novels 8)