A Colder Cold War

There are not a lot of roleplaying games which feature submarines. Polaris, the French roleplaying game originally published by Halloween Concepts in 1997 is one since it is set in a post-apocalyptic undersea future. Cold Space, from Better Mousetrap Games is another, presenting an alternate Cold War era in which interstellar travel has been achieved in spaceships which are designed along the lines of submarines. Then of course, Game Designers’ Workshop published a trilogy of scenarios—The Last Submarine, Mediterranean Cruise, and Boomer—for Twilight 2000 in which the Player Characters have to capture a Los Angeles-class submarine in the post-Twilight War and use it to help defend what is left of civilisation. SUBMERGED is a rules-light roleplaying game which takes it cue from Polaris in that it is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying game set under the sea. In its future, the climate did not heat, but cooled down, and the planet froze. The lucky few of the billions on Earth escaped to the underwater cities and survive under the icy waters in the ‘Sub-burbs’. Contact and trade are kept going via nuclear-powered submarines. The last contact with the surface was in 1983 when the plummeting temperatures forced the rapidly built ‘Sub-burbs’ to close their doors to more refugees. The Great Plan was to wait thirty years for the temperature on the surface to rise again and the survivors to return to reclaim the planet, but even after forty years that has never happened. In the meantime, ‘Sub-burbs’ have failed, others are barely holding on, many have become totalitarian states, and some have gone to war. With the failure of the Great Plan, the ‘Sub-burbs’ remain in a stalemate, not ready to go to war in the face of an uncertain future. Above and below, the Earth is in the grip of a new Cold War.

SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is published by Farsight Games and written by the designer of Those Dark Places: Industrial Science Fiction Roleplaying and Pressure. In it, the players take the role of crewmembers of a submarine trying to make a living, hauling cargo and passengers, scavenging and salvaging, smuggling, and fulfilling whatever contract they can and pays the bills, all to pay off the mortgage on their vessel. Think of it as an undersea version of a tramp freighter campaign in the vein of Traveller or the television series, Firefly. Certainly, SUBMERGED has a similar blue collar sensibility—just not in space.

A Player Character in SUBMERGED is simply defined. He has ten Skills. These are Agility, Charisma, Close Combat, Technical, Medicine, Ranged Combat, Science, Strength, Submariner, and Subterfuge, and they range in value between two and eleven. In addition, he has Hit Points starting at twelve and then modified by his Strength. He can have an extra specialist or hobby Skill which lies outside the scope of the standard ten. Lastly, the Player Character has four Submariner Sub-skills.* These are ‘Helm’, ‘Sonar’, ‘Engineer’, and ‘WEPS’, the latter being the Weapons Officer. To create a character, a player simply assigns each of one of the numbers between two and eleven to one of the Skills and decides on a specialist or hobby Skill, if any, a name, and lastly assigns six points to the Submariner subskills. Character generation can be done in thirty seconds.

* Yes. Really.

Sunday Faruku
Engineer
Agility 4 Charisma 3 Close Combat 8 Technical 9 Medicine 6 Ranged Combat 5 Science 7 Strength 10 Submariner 11 Subterfuge 2
Sub-Skills: Helm 1 Sonar 1 Engineer 3 WEPS 1
Skill: Singing 6
Hit Points 22

Mechanically, SUBMERGED is a simple. To have his character undertake a task, a player selects the most appropriate Skill and adds its vale to the roll of a twelve-sided die. If the result is thirteen or more, then he has succeeded. The Game Master can adjust the difficulty as needed. It is as simple as that. Combat is handled as opposed rolls, with the highest roll indicating the winner. Thus, Close Combat versus Close Combat in a fist fight, but Ranged Combat versus Agility if the defendant wants to dodge. A punch does 1d2 plus Strength in damage, a blade 1d4 plus Strength, a pistol 1d6+6, and a rifle 1d12+6. Most Player Characters will last a punch-up, even a knife fight, but once firearms start being used, the best thing a Player Character is to get behind cover as a rifle can kill in a single shot.

The Submariner Sub-skills are used in conjunction with the Submariner skill. They are spent on a one-for-one basis to modify rolls using the Submariner skill.

The submarines are equally as simply defined. Each has stats for ‘Knots’, ‘Depth’, and ‘Cargo’, so how fast it can go, how deep it can go, and how much it can carry. The Armament details its weapons and defences. For the most part, operating a submarine is handled narratively until actually matters. Such as in combat. Initiative requires a Sonar operator since submarines have to detect each other, submarines have to be positioned to attack, and so on. Submarine combat is run as a series of opposed rolls. Sonar versus sonar to gain initiative; Helm versus Helm to gain a better firing position and bonus to the firing roll; and WEPS versus Helm to track a torpedo. The latter is done three times with the best out of three determining if the torpedo hits the target submarine or is avoided. Countermeasures can be launched once per combat to try and distract an incoming torpedo. Fortunately, most torpedoes are not designed to destroy submarines, but to cripple them or slow them, though a lucky—or unlucky—strike can still destroy a submarine. The crew can suffer injuries from the jolt of a torpedo explosion and damage typically knocks out a system that the engineer must race to fix.

SUBMERGED details several sample submarines, some of which are cheap enough for the Player Characters to take a mortgage out on (though if second-hand or more, it means beginning play with damaged systems), and small enough to be crewed by three or four Player Characters. Others consist of transports, defence and combat boats, and even pirate and mercenary boats. There is also a list of equipment, some suggested rates for various contracts, and descriptions of the major city states. There are scenario hooks too, plus an introductory adventure. In ‘The Blue King’s Wrath’, the Player Characters are hired by the city-state of Sub-London to infiltrate the base of a notorious pirate called the Blue King, who has established himself and his cult in an abandoned city-state project off the coast of Iceland, so threatening the North Atlantic trade route, and claims to be in possession of the ‘ultimate weapon’. The authorities in Sub-London want to know if this ‘ultimate weapon’ actually exists, what it is, and ideally, stolen from the Blue King. It is a quick and dirty affair that can be played through in a session or so. Plus, there are some secrets that once revealed the Game Master could develop into further adventures.

Physically, SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is a bit messy and it does need an edit in places. The main problem is that not everything is quite in the right places, but the roleplaying game is short enough not to matter very much and simple enough that the Game Master will not need to refer to the rules too often.

SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game Of Life Under The Frozen Oceans has the very grubby feel of a seventies post-apocalyptic film and even a little of Escape from New York, especially in the scenario. Surprisingly, it combines quite a number of different genres in just a few pages—seventies disaster and post-apocalyptic films, all things nautical, piratical, and subaquatic, and blue collar trucking adventure—all of which will be familiar to both the Game Master and her players. SUBMERGED – A Rules Light Roleplaying Game of Life Under the Frozen Oceans is rough and ready, if not a bit damp and slightly rusty, but definitely easy to run and play. It would be interesting to see this alternate Cold War future developed and explored a little more.