I feel like there's a game in here; hear me out:

Consider a WWII setting - maybe a bomber crew, or individual pilots; maybe a tank crew or a even a submarine or pt boat - but something with a lot of downtime in between literally life or death missions.  Maybe even a semi-historical WWII mecha?  But not the true grit of infantry combat.

Game would focus mostly on the downtime, really, with battle scenes infrequently.

Could also be done with Star Wars pilots or the like as well, as long as it's small unit based.  Ditto for mechwarrior or SF3d, or the like.

Obv. a submarine is a larger group, but troupe style it could be interesting.

I did a game like this once upon a time, with solar-system spanning war of contenders from the planets & earth remainder and small mecha.  It worked great, for a time.

Rules light-ish.  IDK system, open to thoughts.

My personal sense is something along the lines of a US crew near London, or a Russian crew, both circa 1943, or a Brit crew based in Alexandria circa 1942.  I'm also interested in WWII Russian mecha or a PT boat crew also circa 1942.

Open to any thoughts.

In reply to Kyndig (msg # 1):

Are you familiar with LANCER? It's designed for the mecha when it comes to combat, which it doesn't seem you're particularly looking for, but it works really well for the divide of combat interspersed with non-combat. There's essentially two separate rules frameworks. A grid based Mech Combat(very reminiscent of 4th Edition D&D in how you tend to fill roles, and use positioning to your advantage) is the combat side of it, with players "leveling up" by unlocking access to new types of weaponry and mech frames.

And then when you're out of direct mech to mech combat, whether in downtime or as part of a larger mission that involves stuff besides mechs, you use very Powered by the Apocolypse style skills, with a rules light narrative based structure. Leveling up there gets you more points in your pilot's specific skills, such as "move quickly," "command attention," "put fists to faces," etc.

V cool, like that; I’ll look into both.

You might consider Night Witches, with whatever hacks you deem appropriate, as it is literally a WW2 game about Soviet pilots with a strong focus on the downtime. If you’re not going to want heavily realistic or crunchy combat rules, the existing Night Witches material can probably be tweaked to cover mecha with a little work.

Ditto the above suggestions - Lancer, Night Witches, or even Band of Blades.

There was a Fate setting using crews fighting Mecha to fight Kaiju. Most of the play was about the downtime interaction.

The d6 Epic-based Honorverse RPG (set in the backdrop of David Weber's Honor Harrington novels) specifically promoted troupe play:  each player had a naval character who was part of the ship's crew, and another character who participated in any away missions.

Unfortunately, the system ran into some problems, and the publisher has decided to replace it with something d20-based.

Full Disclosure:  I was part of the playtest team for this system.

That 'Night Witches' mechanic is _great_ innovative and fun; thanks for that suggestion.

I'm kinda torn between that, and a more traditionally styled gurps or something like that.

The key is the players, I guess.

Any opinions on

night-bombing russian gals of the 588th, starting in 1942?

or the misfits of the No. 270 Wing RAF attached to the Western Desert Force in the Fall of 1940?

Obv. can't do both

In reply to Kyndig (msg # 8):

I'd be very interested either to be a player or a spectator; one of the ideas I've had on my back burner for so long now it's probably congealed involved a WW2 game (British forces in the Western desert 1941-43, by coincidence) where each player controled a small infantry section - three or four guys, able to operate with a degree of independance from each other but as a team overall.
I'd thought of using Savage Worlds but never got futher than gathering intel and ideas.

Cool!  Im not all that demanding on the system; i like to have one but the best ones run in the background.  I want story, not mechanics.  Im trying some tactics in the gurps combat club, but I mostly need input/advice.

I decided & I'm running a Night Witches WWII game; the link is up in Players Wanted.

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