1974 is an important year for the gaming hobby. It is the year that Dungeons & Dragons was introduced, the original RPG from which all other RPGs would ultimately be derived and the original RPG from which so many computer games would draw for their inspiration. It is fitting that the current owner of the game, Wizards of the Coast, released the new version, Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, in the year of the game’s fortieth anniversary. To celebrate this, Reviews from R’lyeh will be running a series of reviews from the hobby’s anniversary years, thus there will be reviews from 1974, from 1984, from 1994, and from 2004—the thirtieth, twentieth, and tenth anniversaries of the titles. These will be retrospectives, in each case an opportunity to re-appraise interesting titles and true classics decades on from the year of their original release.
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Phoenix Command was published by Leading Edge Games, which had already released its first roleplaying game Rhand: Morningstar Missions, in 1984. It was designed as an accurate simulation of gunshot wounds with detailed aiming and firing rules, and authentic modern weapon data to create a simple, fast-paced game with an incredibly realistic feel. It came as a boxed set which included a forty-eight page, spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’; a twenty-six page, fully illustrated ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’; four double-sided Reference Cards; character sheets; and a single ten-sided die. Like many roleplaying books from Leading Edge games there was a streak of sly humour that ran through the quotations given in the extra-wide margins of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’. For example, ‘Blam. Blam. “Stop.” Blam. “Police.” Blam. Officer Axly.’ and ‘If you can’t dazzle them with style, riddle them with bullets.” Corley Norris’. The tone of that humour is set by the blurb on the back cover of the box:
“Are you tired of your current small arms combat system? Tired of inconsistencies and rules that simply don't work? If so, we invite you to conduct a short test:
Using your current small arms combat system, place the muzzle of a large caliber pistol between your character's eyes. Squeeze the trigger. Continue squeezing the trigger until he falls unconscious. Then have a friend put a band-aid over that nasty .45 caliber dent in his skull, and try not to get him shot too often in the week or two it takes to heal.
Now, using Phoenix Command, place the same pistol in the same place. Squeeze the trigger. You now have a choice: you can either roll up a new character or rush the body to a very sophisticated medical facility and discover the joys of role-playing a vegetable.
If you are nodding your head and smiling, and thinking that it would be nice to have a combat system that really works, welcome to Phoenix Command!”
This then sets out the stall for Phoenix Command. It was a highly detailed, highly accurate simulation of small arms combat designed to be used on its own, but more obvious as a replacement for the smalls combat rules that the Game Master and his players were dissatisfied with from whatever modern or military roleplaying game they were playing. There was fertile ground for this in 1986, whether it was The Morrow Project or Merc, Delta Force or The Price of Freedom, or more obviously, Twilight 2000. Essentially, just like the constituent parts of Rolemaster—Arms Law, Spell Law, Claw Law, Character Law, and Campaign Law—before it became a roleplaying game all on its own, were designed to replace the parts of the fantasy roleplaying game that a group was dissatisfied with, Phoenix Command was designed to bolt onto the modern or military roleplaying game of a group’s choice. However, unlike the various parts of Rolemaster which coalesced into a roleplaying game all of its own, Phoenix Command and its various supplements never would. Instead, stripped down versions of the rules would appear in Living Steel and the Aliens Adventure Game.
The spiral-bound ‘Combat System Rule Book’ is surprisingly short. However, do not in any way think that this means that Phoenix Command is not as complex as its reputation suggests it is. Phoenix Command is complex and that starts with Player Character. First, a player rolls three six-sided each for Strength, Will, Health, and Agility. Then the Game Master or player decides on the Player Character’s Gun Combat Skill Level. This ranges from one to twenty, with an average solider having a 2nd Skill Level, a veteran a 3rd or 4th Skill Level, an elite soldier a 5th Skill Level, 6th Skill Level, or 7th Skill Level, and a marksman a 9th Skill Level at the very least. What determines the actual Gun Combat Skill Level will depend upon the role that the Player Character has in whatever game or encounter that the Game Master is about to run or by the rough skill level in the roleplaying game that Phoenix Command is being used to replace. It should be noted that beyond noting that it represents the Player Character’s competence with small arms, there is no real explanation of what it is beyond that, and it is also the only skill in Phoenix Command.
What the player is instructed to do next is determine Encumbrance. This is the total weight of armour, clothing weapons, and equipment carried into combat. There is a surprisingly short equipment list and no real explanation of what each item is in comparison to the explanations of what each gun is in the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ and the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’. After that, it gets complex with a lot of cross-referencing on tables. Base Speed is determined by cross-referencing Strength and Encumbrance on Table 2A and Base Speed and Agility on table 2B to find out the Player Character’s Maximum Speed. (This means that should a Player Character drop or shed a lot of weight, such as dropping a Squad Assault Weapon and switching to a pistol, all of this will need to be recalculated…) The Gun Combat Skill Level is checked on Table 2C for the Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level, which measures his actual skill with weapons and knowledge of small arms tactics. Typically, a Player Character’s Skill Accuracy Level is six points higher than his Gun Combat Skill Level. Skill Factor is the Player Character’s Agility plus Gun Combat Skill Level, but there is no explanation as what it is. The number of his Combat Actions is determined by cross-referencing Maximum Speed with Skill Factor. Knockout Value is derived from Will and Gun Combat Skill Level. This is percentage chance of a combatant withstanding the pain of wounds and not falling unconscious.
Officer John Smith
Strength 11 Will 9 Health 11 Agility 12
Gun Combat Skill Level: 3rd Skill Level
Encumbrance 13.2 lb.
Base Speed: 2.5
Maximum Speed: 5
Skill Accuracy Level: 9
Skill Factor: 12
Combat Actions: 4
Knockout Value: 13
EQUIPMENT
Clothing (5 lb.)
Medium Flexible Armour (2.6 lb.)
Fighting Harness (0.6 lb.)
Holster (0.4 lb.)
Magazine Pouch (two magazines) (2.2 lb.)
Beretta M92F (2.4 lb.)
There is an example character, but not example of the creation process. There is also the basics of pre-generated troops intended to be used as quick NPCs.
Mechanically, there is no skill roll in Phoenix Command and no rules for handling actions that are not directly related to combat. So, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ quickly moves on to weapons, movement, actions, and shooting. Each weapon has data for length, wait, reload time, rate of fire, ammunition capacity, and ammunition weight and feed device, which you would expect as per any roleplaying game with firearms. Added to this are Sustained Automatic Burst, a weapon’s accuracy during burst fire; Aim Time Accuracy Level Modifier, a measure of a weapon’s accuracy when time is spent aiming; Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class, which measures bullet penetration and bullet damage capability respectively; and Minimum Arc, the minimum number of hexes over which a burst of automatic fire is spread. Then each weapon has Ballistic Data and this is not for the weapon itself, but for different types of ammunition—Full Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, Armour, Jacketed Hollow Point, and Jacketed Soft Point—the Relative Impact Damage and Damage Class varying according to range.
Phoenix Command is intended to be played on a grid of two-yard hexes in a continuous stream of two-second phases. In each phase, the player will expend his Combat Actions on movement and actions that have an Action Cost. Movement takes into account direction of movement—forward, backward, oblique, and sideways; stance, including crouching, hands and knees, and belly crawl; elevation and terrain and depth of water; injury; and more. Actions include assuming a firing stance, ducking, changing facing, getting up and down, breaking and clearing glass from a window, drawing a pistol from multiple different types of holsters, tossing a grenade, and so on. The list is extensive, but advice is included on how to work out what the Action Cost is for any action not listed.
Each phase is broken down into three periods. First, in the Allocation period, players and Game Master allocate their Combat Actions. A player does not have to allocate all of them, but can save some of them for the Response period. In the Movement Period all combatants expend their Combat Actions assigned to movement, whilst any remaining Combat Actions are spent in the Response period. This can be on type of action, except movement. Primarily, it is spent is on combat actions. Fire resolution takes place at the end of the phase.
Fire resolution assumes that combatants take time to aim. The rules allow for hip fire and snapshots, both of which are done at a penalty, but otherwise to gain the full accuracy of a weapon, a player needs to assume a firing stance, which takes Combat Actions, and then spend one or more Combat Actions aiming. The Odds of Hitting is determined by aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target. Each of these provides an Accuracy Level Modifier (ALM), which are in turn the Aim Time ALM, Target Range ALM, Firing Stance/Situation ALM, Visibility ALM, Movement ALM, Target Size ALM, and Effective Accuracy Level ALM. The Aim Time ALM will vary according to weapon and every weapon has a table for the number of Combat Actions spent aiming and the resulting modifiers. Visibility ALM accounts for smoke, darkness, optical scope, and so on. The Target Size ALM not only includes the stance and position of the target, but modifiers for the head, body, arms, and legs, which can be applied if an attacker wants to shoot at a specific body location. The total number of Accuracy Level Modifiers are called the Effective Accuracy Level and the higher this is, the greater the Odds of Hitting. This is cross-referenced on the Single Shot Odds Table to get a percentile chance and this is rolled equal to, or under, for a single to hit a target.
In addition, Phoenix Command also takes into account visibility of a target if the target moves. So, a target might be visible at the start and in the middle of the Movement Period, but not at the end, it allows a shooter to potentially fire at a target before he moves behind cover. It simply applies an Action Count penalty, the longer the target is out of line of sight the higher the Action Count penalty.
So far, this is the only time that anyone has made a dice roll. And what is important here is that it is not a skill roll of any kind—at least not in the traditional sense of a roleplaying game. Rather it is determined by the choices made by the player as to what stance his character will take, how many Combat Actions will be spent aiming, what weapon he is using, and so on. The character that a player has created and is controlling has no immediate effect on how good, or how accurate, a shot he is. Ultimately what the factors created during character generation influence is how many Combat Actions he has in a single phase. The more he has, the more can move, take cover, and so on, but ultimately, the more time he can spend aiming.
This though, is only for single shots. The process for fully automatic fire is slightly different. It is done in half second bursts into an Arc of Fire that indicates how many bullets are fired into each hex and thus at each target. Target visibility, which already accounted for the amount of time that the target was visible over the course of a single phase also indicates how many bursts can be fired at a target. In addition to aim time, firing stance, range, visibility, movement, and size of target all being factors in finding out the Odds of Hitting, automatic fire adds elevation as well as Arc of Fire. Automatic Elevation target size modifier replaces Target Size ALM and is taken from the Burst Elevation Odds Table. It is rolled first and if successful, the burst is at the correct elevation and a roll to hit using the Automatic Weapon Hit Chance Table. The chance of hitting depends on the Arc of Fire and Rate of Fire and is rolled per target, with the result also indicating how many bullets hit. An attacker can continue to first bursts or fully automatic fire from one phase to the next, but there is a Sustained Automatic Burst penalty for each weapon which is applied to the Effective Accuracy Level on each subsequent rounds of firing.
The next dice roll is to find out where a target is hit. This is a simple roll on the ‘Hit Location and Damage Table’ which gives different results based upon the target was looking around or over cover, if he was firing around or over cover, and if he is in the open. The amount of Physical Damage inflicted is determined by the weapon’s Damage Class and Effective Impact Damage. However, first you need to know what the Effective Impact damage is and that is worked out by subtracting the Protection Factors of any armour worn from the Relative Impact Damage. Relative Impact Damage is a measure of a bullet’s penetrating power and both that and the Damage Class depend upon the range of the attack and the type of ammunition fired. Armour is by location and its Protection Factors will vary from four for Light Flexible to thirty for Heavy Rigid. If the Effective Impact Damage is reduced to zero by the Protection Factors, the shot does not penetrate and no damage is inflicted. If the Effective Impact Damage is more than zero, but less than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates, but its damage is reduced. To learn how much, the roll for the hit location is cross referenced with the correct Effective Impact Damage for the Damage Class of the weapon. If the Effective Impact Damage is greater than the Protection Factors, the shot penetrates and inflicts the full amount of Effective Impact Damage listed under the Damage Class. (The term used here is “full Damage Class (DC) column”, but there is no Damage Column marked ‘Full’, so presumably, the authors meant the maximum value.) Depending upon the Effective Impact Damage, the Damage Class, and the hit location, the Physical Damage inflicted can range from one to millions of points. Hit locations run from forehead to ankle-foot and also include glancing blows to general locations. In general, hits to the head—forehead, eye/nose, and mouth—will inflict anywhere from hundreds of points of Physical Damage to hundreds of thousands of Physical Damage.
The rules also allow for disabling blows if the shot hits an arm or leg and a target being knocked out by damage suffered. Any damage suffered greater than a target’s Knockout Value and there is a 25% chance that he will be rendered unconscious. This rises to 75% if the damage suffered is more than twice the target’s Knockout Value and 98% if is more than three times the target’s Knockout Value. And to remind ourselves, Knockout Value is not determined by Health, but by Will and Gun Combat Skill Level, so effectively, the better you are at firing guns, the less likelihood you have of falling unconscious due to pain.
After a battle, all wounded characters must check to see if they will live. Physical Damage Total is how much damage a character has suffered, whilst the Damage Total is a measure of the severity of the injuries suffered. To get the Damage Total, the Physical Damage is multiplied by ten and then divided by the character’s Health. The Medical Aid And Recovery Table is consulted to discover the Critical Time Period during which time the character must receive aid and the Recovery Roll to be made at the end of this period. This will vary according to whether the character receives no aid, first aid, goes to an aid station or field hospital, or is sent to a modern trauma centre. There are suggested adjustments for trauma centres, or hospitals, from 1831 to 2345—even though the weapons listed in the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ cover the period from 1910 to roughly 1990. The Recovery Roll is a percentile value and if the roll is made, the target will survive, the Critical Time Period also indicating how long it takes for the target to recover. Results of “00” on the Medical Aid And Recovery Table mean that the character cannot survive. The rules also account for the lingering effects of old injuries.
In general, if a target suffers a Damage Total of one hundred or more, he is in trouble without dedicated medical aid. At a Damage Total of a thousand and more and the Recovery Roll values plummet. However, there is no chance of a character dying in actual combat. There is a chance of being knocked out—a good chance—and only after a combat is it discovered whether a character has lived or died. For all that Phoenix Command claims to be accurate simulation of gunshot wounds, there is no means of working out if a character is dead in the midst of a shootout and no rules for rendering first aim whilst in combat. Experienced players of Phoenix Command can estimate the likelihood of a target not recovering from the amount of damage suffered, but both omissions make no sense.
Now all of this takes up sixteen pages of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’! Which begs the question, “What the hell is in the rest of the book?” There is some advice for running Phoenix Command, which includes delegating some of the tasks, using a ranging stick, and using markers to indicate each character’s status. There are two sample scenarios. Scenario one is ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, a beginning scenario for five to eight players and involves German and NATO forces facing a Russian invasion just outside Mainz and Wiesbaden. Each player controls a single figure, so all together equal to two squads who must hold off forty-eight Russians! It is designed to teach the rules for Odds of Hitting and damage. The second scenario is ‘The Defence of the Apollo Rey’. It places for four SAS (Special Action Squad) commandos aboard a vessel that has been taken over by nine terrorists. It is not as static as ‘The Bridge of Oppenheim’, with the terrorists searching for passengers and the commandos trying to incapacitate the terrorists without alerting them. Both scenarios come with maps and pre-generated characters.
The remaining ten pages of provide optional rules. These differentiate between non-blocking cover—that is, cover that blocks sight, not penetration and blocking cover that does both; field of view which can be increased by expending Combat Actions to look around; shotguns which involve Base Pellet Hit Chance and a Pattern Radius in working out the resulting Effective Accuracy Level; explosives and grenades, which includes the possibility of damage from both shrapnel and concussion; improved accuracy for all weapons; spotting and sound detection; defensive skills, initiative, and morale; Master Phasing Count; and second shot accuracy, pinned targets, and semiauto bursts. Of these, the Master Phasing Count is a means of determining when detailed timing of fire occurs, such as who fires first. This is discovered by cross-referencing a character’s number of Combat Actions with the Action Count and is measured in tenths of seconds. The defensive skills are the only rule to use a character’s Intelligence and the first mention that a character should have an Intelligence characteristic, but the inference is that it comes from the roleplaying game whose combat rules Phoenix Command is replacing rather be rolled for as in a standard roleplaying game.
The ‘Combat System Rule Book’ packs a lot of rules and a lot of detail in its forty-eight pages. There are moments where it is possible to see what the designers intended and grasp the rules as written, helped by numerous examples. However, turn the page and there is another set of rules for another specific situation and they have their own complexity. And then again. The advice for the Game Master suggests delegating tasks to her fellow players, but that assumes they understand the rules. The complexity of the game means that it is challenging to teach and none of it is necessarily intuitive or easy to grasp, whilst the constant need to consult the tables at the back of the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ can only serve to slow down the play of the game. At the very least, what Phoenix Command needs is a set of flow charts per player, one flow chart per action, and even as much as that would ease play, there is no denying that it would still be intimidating.
In comparison to the ‘Combat System Rule Book’, the ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ is straight forward. It lists almost one-hundred-and-twenty handguns, submachine guns, assault rifles, squad automatic weapons, general purpose machine guns, light machine guns, heavy machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, anti-tank rockets, and rocket propelled grenades, and twenty-four grenades. The earliest weapon given is the Browning M1911A1, whilst the then most recent are the Italian Benelli CB-M2 submachine gun, German Heckler & Koch G11 assault rifle, and British XLE85E1 assault rifle, all of which were underdevelopment at the time of Phoenix Command’s publication. The only thing missing perhaps is a standard .38 caliber revolver instead of just the Smith & Wesson M36 2” Barrel, Chief’s Special.
Physically, Phoenix Command is well-presented and the production values are high. With its spiral bound format, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ definitely looks like the technical manual it is supposed to be. There is a glossary of terms, and even though it is only forty-eight pages long, the ‘Combat System Rule Book’ could have done with an index. Arguably, ‘Phoenix Command Modern Military Small Arms Supplement’ could have done with one too. Otherwise, the illustrations—nearly all of them guns—are fine and the maps serviceable.
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Roman J. Andron reviewed Phoenix Command in ‘Game Reviews’ in Different Worlds. No. 47 (Fall 1987). He opened with, “IMPRESSIVE. THAT is the first word that comes to mind when Phoenix Command is implemented in a game. Never before have such high degrees of realism and playability been achieved simultaneously in the gaming world. Compared to this, all other combat systems are nothing.” His only issues were with the use of English (or Imperial) measurements rather than Metric and that the high number of abbreviations slowed down the process of learning the rules. Other than that, the review was very positive and Andron awarded it four stars before concluding with “I heartily recommend this system to weapons buffs or anyone wanting to put realism into their role-playing or wargaming. Phoenix Command provides for a simple yet highly-realistic simulation of modern firearms combat. However, my recommendations cannot do justice to the system. It has to be used to be fully appreciated.”
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Although Phoenix Command can be praised for its degree of detail and accuracy, in terms of game design it is a developmental dead end. It represents the simulationist drive for accuracy and detail pushed to the nth degree, to the point of not necessarily unplayability, but at the cost of playability and engagement. More skirmish wargame than roleplaying game, Phoenix Command is a love letter to statistics, the nadir of the trend of military roleplaying games in the nineteen eighties, and today, a dinosaur.
