I already hate myself for asking about this, as it smacks of fan-boy, but I swear I've been thinking about this for a long time.

WWII, in some sort of full-military (not resistance) role.  A few ideas:

PT (or similar) boat; the PCs might be half the crew, and might have special ops to perform on an ad hoc basis in addition to trying not to die

Tanks; each PC might have the command of a tank, with one PC taking the role of platoon commander (until they died, in which case they would start a new PC, as the most jr of tank commanders)

Pilots; of any kind, barring perhaps heavy bombers (days and days of sheer boredom punctuated by a few minutes of terror).

Having just seen Fury, I have to bring this to the fore.

I apologize in advance.

I do have GURPs WWII, for Gurps 3rd (all the gurps I have is 3rd).

GURPS WWII would be a blast.  The WWII books are all very well done.

what kind of wwii role would you think most fun? land, air or sea? and from what nation?  honestly, they all offer some fun, if chosen correctly...though i might have some trouble playing a nazi.

Personally, I feel like tanks, US/Russian/British/German, offer the best opportunities for action and role-play; PT boats, either US, British, or Italian also offer some fun opportunities.
This message was last edited by the user at 10:12, Mon 27 Oct 2014.

Hmmm...  tanks would be fun.  I like the idea of a recon platoon.  You'd have armored cars, light tanks, motorcycles, jeep-type vehicles and a fair bit of freedom.  German or US would be best I think.  You could play Wehrmacht from Poland through the very end if you wanted.  If you moved the story to North Africa, then Italy, then France/Germany you could avoid the moral perils present on the Eastern Front.  With US you could play Torch, Husky and then Overlord as the battles in Italy became rather attritional and slow moving.

Italian PT boats would be... very different.  I'm not sure I could grok that.

US PT boats could be interesting if you started in the Philippines when the war started and played through Guadalcanal and back to the PI in '44.

I would say the British Commandos would be ideal.  They served in every theatre where CW forces were engaged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Commandos

One of my ideas - just one of many - is that we go a little ahistorical and have a Vospers boat that escaped from HK, made it to the Philippines? And maybe had a mixed crew; RN, SBS?, a Nurse, maybe an OSS officer or a Nationalist Chinese? That might give them tons of flexibility; they might end up 'attached' to a US PT squadron for supply & reenfircements, too. Commando actions, Diplomatic & Espionage adventures, and the opportunity to yell "torpedoes away".

British Commandos had mixed nationality units actually.

Commandos would be fun certainly.

I do like the idea of ops in the PI.  Corregidor held out for quite a time and with all the islands you have lots of opportunity skulk about in a PT type boat.

The problem w/ RP'ing any SF unit is that SF is both very demanding and very unforgiving - and very few Players can live up to that standard. So, either the GM has to set the bar very low (which makes the SF team seem flacid) or the SF team gets wiped out due to incompetence - equally unsatisfying.

What might be better is a simple grunt Infantry squad, with all the flaws and uncertainty that comes with such. If a Player makes a mistake or misjudgement, that's to be expected IC - which is just not true of SF.

(And as for any "vehicle" crew, whether tank or PT boat or bomber, there are very few "RP" options once combat starts - you man your station and do your job, over and over until combat's resolved - you're part of the killing machine, that's about it. It would take a ~very~ good group of RP'ers to make a story of a vehicle crew - not impossible, but unexpected imo.) :/