Re: [GZG] Question: What's in a name - WYSIWYG or not?

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und Zero Games wrote:
> If a mini (say, a vehicle or starship) is described as belonging to a
specific power or faction in a specific game system, is that going to
make you any less likely to use it with a different force or in a
different game system than if that same mini was described in very
generic terms? If I named something as a "UNSC Marines MkVII 'Piranha'
Light Grav Tank", would you ONLY think of it in those terms, or would
you still think "Hey, cool tank, that'll do for my Peoples' Republic of
New California Revolutionary Guards"? And, if you DID use it for your
own army, would any of your little 
> gaming buddies grumble that "That's a <xxx> tank for <xxx> army/game;
you can't use it for your PRNCs."
>   
The mini itself, I have no problem with making into whatever I want it 
to be. My "NAC" fleet (quotes because, while the ships themselves are 
mostly "old" NAC designs, they have no specific markings -- yet) 
includes an "Atmospheric Squadron" made up mostly of ESU ships which 
look as though they're at least partly streamlined. Similarly, my OUDF 
fleet has a "Strike Fleet" made up of non-BORON designs from other 
manufacturers, my rationale being that the OU bought in some hulls from 
outside for purely military roles, while the BORON ships get the more 
general "cruising" jobs; and my UNSC fleet filled in what I remember, 
rightly or wrongly, as a gap in the initial release of the range by 
adding a couple of BCs from another maufacturer because I particularly 
liked the design. And I have ESU ships and a couple of ESU/NAC hybrids 
acting as the "small ships" in an Empire of Man fleet currently headed 
by a pair of /General-/class BCs (haven't worked out how to make a 
/President/-class BB yet). But you get the idea.

Once it's painted, however, it becomes a little harder to justify using 
it as what the Evil Empire calls a proxy model -- with the caveat that 
this only strictly applies to ships with recognisable markings, and 
particularly names, etc., in English or any other recognisable human 
language. It's difficult to accept that the USS /Enterprise/ or the EDS 
/Yamato/ is, in fact, a tug/carrier for a squadron of Battle Riders from

a little-known League of Non-Aligned Worlds race when you can see the 
name and serial number painted on the hull. OTOH, alien ships are rather

easier to deal with that way; if I want to use Phalon or Minbari ships 
as a Kinshaya fleet to fight the Klingons, then who can reasonably say 
that they're wrong?

I suppose what that boils down to, in terms of your questions, is that I

make use of anything in the way of minis that I think will fit in a 
fleet/army that I'm building. "Official" names and designations are nice

to have, but I will discard them if they don't fit the way I want them 
to. For instance, I like Brigade's AmRep ships, but they seem a little 
small in comparison with the GZG ranges, so I will downgrade, say, a 
nominal CL to being a DDL, and so on.

As for grumbles from fellow players, well, I've never had any to deal 
with of that nature. In general, if you identify the type of ship each 
model represents as part of the game set-up or when the enemy gathers 
enough intel to identify its capabilities, there's no ground for 
complaint. I'm not sure I'd want to have to put up with someone who was 
that petty; it smacks of the worst of the Gumby Workshop zealots, and 
while taking WYSIWYG to that extent can barely be justified for 
tournament play, it's well OTT for casual gaming.
> What prompted this thought was the fact that while our Stargrunt
infantry figures have always been named for particular powers within the
game background, the vehicle ranges have always been kept fairly generic
rather than being specifically tied to a faction, and we've always
encouraged people to use them for whatever forces they like; but I'd be
very interested in any opinions either way on this.
>   
Well, I've said something on this when the subject of generic vs 
specific vehicles came up before. I go along with the generic idea and 
letting people choose their own mix of vehicles accorind to taste and 
their idea of the doctrine used by a given faction/nation/race. Of 
course, I recognise that, from a commercial point of view, producing 
specific designs for each f/n/r offers the chance to sell more minis, 
but I remember when Brigade switched their starship range from being 
that of the SemFed to individual fleets for the various Iron Cow 
nations, and I didn't like it. Perhaps it was an irrational reaction, 
but I didn't particularly care for the ships in my fleet suddenly being 
deemed to be on opposing sides. It made commercial sense for Tony and 
co. to do what they did (and saved the SemFed from appearing to either 
be the galaxy's most outrageous militarists or its most inverterate 
tinkerers, due to all the different ship classes they had), but my gut 
objected to the destroyers of my fleet, deliberately chosen for their 
design resemblance to the larger ships, suddenly being presumed to have 
been created by an entirely different nation. As I said earlier, 
irrational, but powerful nonetheless.
> Related to this, do folks like to see vehicle types NAMED, even if
they are not specifically tied to a force or faction? Do you think of
the V15-01 as a Cougar, or just as a tracked MBT...?
>   
I like them being named, even if the name makes no sense by the time 
I've used the mini as part of a force for an entirly different f/n/r 
than it was nominally intended for (if there is one). It catches the 
attention, too: I'm a definite vacc-head, so ground vehicles are pretty 
uninteresting to me, but I at least took a look at the Wombat APC when I

saw it in the catalogue, purely because of the name. And a name can help

when talking to other players: saying, "This round, the platoon of 
Cougars on this hill are going to launch anti-tank missiles at the 
Goliaths on the road there," is easier and simpler than reeling off a 
stream of alpha-numeric gibberish or even just calling them all tanks, 
even if the forces involved are meant to be the United Esperanto League 
and the EkiekiekiF'Tang! Hegemony, neither of whom can /pronounce/ 
"Cougar" and "Goliath", much less call their vehicles by those names!

Phil