1986: Delta Force

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.

—oOo—

The year is 1986. The Cold War continues unabated, the political, military, and economic forces of the Soviet Bloc and the Warsaw pact continuing to stand off against Western Bloc and NATO. Yet there is hope that the relationship between the United States and the USSSR can change, even thaw, with the appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the year before. In comparison to the present incumbents, he is seen as progressive and has already sought to improve Soviet–US relations, including participating in the Geneva Summit in 1985. Yet the USA—and many of the countries it is allied with—face another threat. International terrorism. Numerous organisations, often radically Left Wing, anti-American, anti-bourgeois, and anti-Israel groups seek to strike terror in western countries. In Germany, the Baader-Meinhof Gang robs banks, bombs US military bases, and supports Palestinian radicals. In Italy, Brigade Rosse also attacks US military bases, commits robberies and kidnaps, and murders judges, members of the police, and journalists. Numerous groups linked, but not necessarily directly affiliated to the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, such as Black September, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestine Liberation Front, conduct attacks on NATO bases and Israel and civilian targets across Europe and rival factions, as well as hijacking cruise liners and passenger aeroplanes. These are not the only terrorist groups operating in 1986, but they are perhaps the most notorious. Worse, many of these organisations are state-funded—by the USSR, Libya, Iraq, and Iran—and hovering between is the infamous Carlos the Jackal. In response, governments across the West turn to their militaries and from their existing special forces units, establish and train anti-terror forces. In the United Kingdom, this is the famed SAS, in West Germany, this is GSG-9, and in the USA, this is 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D), better known as Delta Force.

Operations against the international terrorist organisations of the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties are the subject of Delta Force: America Strikes Back! Designed (and illustrated) by William H. Keith, Jr., best known for his deep contributions to the background and setting of Game Designers’ Workshop’s seminal Science Fiction roleplaying game, Traveller, it was the first roleplaying game to be published by Task Force Games, better known for the Star Fleet Battles and Starfire Science Fiction wargames. It is interesting to note that The Delta Force, a film starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, was also released in 1986. Of course, there is no connection between the two, but the release of the film cannot have failed to elevate the prominence of the roleplaying game. At least within the hobby. Although two other military-themed roleplaying games were published in 1986—Freedom Fighters from Fantasy Games Unlimited (designed by J. Andrew Keith, William’s brother, but also illustrated by William H. Keith, Jr. with surprisingly similar covers) and the in some ways subtler The Price of Freedom, designed by Greg Costikyan and published by West End Games, and that in addition to the Phoenix Command fire combat rules from Leading Edge Games, the year marks the end of the strand of mundane military-themed roleplaying games. As the Cold War ebbed and relations between the West and East improved, so too did interest in strictly military roleplaying games slip away. Only fifteen years later with the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbour and the USA’s entry into World War 2 did interest in military roleplay games revive and that was with the military of past not the present. Arguably, the military roleplaying games of the early twenty-first century were not beset by the moral complexities of those nineteen-eighties.

Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a boxed set containing three booklets, a three-panel Game Master Screen, and two six-sided dice. The three booklets, coverless and done in black and white with greyscale artwork also done by the author, consist of the forty-eight-page ‘Rules of Play’ book, the forty-page ‘Warbook’ book, and the thirty-two ‘Scenarios’ book. Although the internal artwork depicts the members of Delta Force in action as you would expect, there are a couple of illustrations depicting the blood-spattered and bullet-ridden bodies of terrorists and a special forces operative just having killed a sentry with a knife. It is surprisingly blunt in its depiction of the consequences of the Player Characters’ actions. The Game Master Screen has all of the tables that he needs to run Delta Force: America Strikes Back! on the one side with illustrations of members of Delta Force in action the front.

A Player Character in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is defined by Strength, Agility, Dexterity, and Intelligence, which range in value between five and fifteen. From these are derived five secondary statistics—Training, Endurance, Experience, Reactions, and Stamina. Of these, Agility is physical co-ordination; Dexterity is fine manipulation; and Reactions are how quickly a Player Character responds to danger and threats. Training represents a Player Character’s military and specialist training, whilst Experience indicates his time in service and actual combat experience. Both Training and Experience are used as points that are spent to purchase levels in individual skills.

The Player Character creation process involves rolling dice for the four core attributes and then some arithmetic to determine the secondary attributes and other factors. Skills are categorised into Native, Basic Military, and Specialist Skills. The primary means of gaining skills during character creation is by selecting templates according to the nationality of the character. Skills such as languages, Culture, Negotiation, Interrogation, and so on, do point towards Delta Force: America Strikes Back! being a roleplaying game, but it very much a gun-first roleplaying game. Templates are provided for Delta Force and Seal teams of the USA, the Dutch Royal Marines of the Netherlands, West Germany’s GSG-9, the SAS of Great Britain, Italy’s Squadron Anti-Commando, Sayeret Matkal of Israel, and Egypt’s Unit 777. There is some bias here in that the more attention is devoted to the eponymous 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D) than the special forces units of other countries in that members receive more training beyond basic military training. Another oddity is that that none of the templates for or details of the special forces units are in the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet which is where character generation begins, but in the ‘Warbook’. The creation process is not complex, but it is fiddly. Oddly, there is no means of determining rank and no difference is made between enlisted soldiers and officers, important given that officers in most militaries have to attend military college and receive different training.

Name: Lowell Larson

Unit: Delta Force

Training: Basic Military Training, Airborne Special Training, Rangers Special Training, Special Forces

CHARACTER STATS

Strength 14 Agility 11 Dexterity 10 Intelligence 07

Training 09 Endurance 15 Experience 12 Reactions 09 Stamina 12

Weight: 94 kg Age: 29 Handedness: Righthanded

Load Carried (Unburdened): 28 kg

Load Carried (Burdened): 42 kg

Load Carried (Heavily Burdened): 84 kg

Load Lifted: 112 kg

Load Dragged: 140 kg

MILITARY SKILLS

Area Survival (Desert) 1, Area Survival (Forest) 2, Area Survival (Jungle) 3, Area Survival (Mountain) 1, Boat Handling 3, Camouflage 2, Chemical Warfare 1, Climbing 2, Commo Operator 2, Commo Repair 2, Culture (Shi’ite Moslem) 1, Driving 2, Demolitions 3, Driving (Heavy Equipment) 3, Driving (Motorcycle) 2, Driving (Tracked) 1, First Aid 1, Free Fall 1, HALO 2, Hand-to-Hand Combat 5, Language (Arabic) 2, Leadership 2, Mechanic 3, Negotiation 1, Night Operations 3, Orienteering 3, Parachute 3, Stealth 3, Swimming 2, Tactics 2

WEAPON SKILLS

Hand Guns 1, Foreign Weapons 1, Knife Fighting 1, Light Automatic Weapons 3, Machine Guns 4, Mortars 1, Rifles 1, Sniper 1, Special Weapons (Grenade Launchers) 1

Mechanically, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! manages to both underwhelm and threaten to overwhelm. It uses two six-sided dice, much like Traveller which William H. Keith, Jr. had also worked on, but where in Traveller, a player needs to roll high to succeed, in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! a player must roll under to succeed. All rolls in the roleplaying game are counted as ‘Critical Rolls’. To make a ‘Critical Roll’, a Relative Difficulty Factor (RDF), which can range from between one and ten, is deducted from the statistic a player is rolling against. A skill adds a modifier to the stat being tested. The problem here is that between the sections on ‘Relative Difficulty’ and ‘Applying Skills’ it is not explicitly explained that a successful roll is one of equal to or under, rather than over. However, it does state that, “Since complicating factors in a task might be almost anything, there are no clear-cut rules for establishing an RDF.” In other words, there are no set difficulty factors and the play of Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is very much down to Referee judgement, and thus at odds with much of its design.

If Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is vague about its core mechanic, it is detailed about everything else! This is where it begins to overwhelm, starting with the time and travel rules. ‘Strategic Periods’ can last minutes, hours, or days, and cover periods of travel or relative inactivity, or rather non-combat. This includes mission briefings, planning, and intelligence gathering. The travel rules encompass movement by foot, tracked and wheeled vehicles, and by air. For ground travel, there are modifiers for terrain and weather, whilst for air there are modifiers for weather and other hazards which can lead to malfunctions or crashes. For extended activities, including combat, Endurance checks are required and will result in a temporary loss of Endurance if failed.

Prior to combat, the Player Characters need to spot the enemy. Intelligence, whether provided during a briefing prior to a mission or by an update during a mission, may already indicate where the terrorist enemies are, but not always and there is possibility of a chance encounter or a different pattern of activity by the terrorists. In such situations, a ‘Sighting’ check is required. The ‘Base Sighting Number’ is based on range, from thirty for under five meters to one for five thousand meters and more. This modified by light, weather, terrain, target type, target character, and the sighting character to give a ‘Modified Sighting Number’. Roll under this and the Player Characters will have spotted the enemy (or the enemy spotted the Player Characters).

Once done, there is a chance that the Player Characters can surprise the enemy, based on their Stealth skill and the enemies’ Alertness Factor, which ranges from five and fully alert and ready to one or “Drunk, dazed, or thoroughly engaged in doing something else.” Actual combat is played out in five-second ‘Tactical Rounds’ and initiative is determined by the Referee based on the logical and obvious course of events. A Player Character or other combatant can take as many actions as he wants in Tactical Round, the limiting factor being time. If an action takes longer than five seconds, that is longer than a single Tactical Round, it will spill over into the next round. However, bar movement distances and the reload time for weapons in the ‘Warbook’, there is no set list of actions and the time they take. Again, this is down to Referee judgement.

Direct fire is determined by the range and the weapon used—each weapon listed in the ‘Warbook’ having its own range table—to give a ‘Base To-Hit Number’ which is modified by movement, cover and visibility, vehicle type and size, how the weapon is used (including Weapon skill), aiming, and firing mode. The rules cover semi-automatic, burst, automatic, and suppressive fire as well as aimed and opportunity fire. Oddly single shots are handled by the Rifles skill, not the Light Automatic skill, so the Player Characters and the NPCs are encouraged to use burst fire. The ‘Penetration Number’ of a weapon determines whether a round overcomes the Armour Value of any cover, which includes wood, sheet metal, concrete, bricks, and stone by thickness. Also included are ratings for furniture, human bodies, and of course, Kevlar armour. Hand-to-hand combat handles most melee situations, whilst the advanced rules add more detail, including martial arts (using the Martial Arts skill) and various manoeuvres. With that detail comes greater complexity and longer playing time, so they probably best saved for showdowns with more important NPCs or to silence a prominent . The rules also cover grenades and attacks against vehicles, mostly civilian and utility vehicles, rather armour. The rules for grenades also cover what happens if a Player Character wants to throw a grenade back or even himself onto a grenade if he wants to protect his buddies and/or win the Medal of Honour.

Damage to Player Characters and NPCs is handled as wounds rather than Hit Points. These are suffered per hit location and can be light, moderate, or severe. A light wound will reduce a Player Character’s stats, a moderate wound will typically disable a limb as well as reducing stats, and a severe wound will incapacitate a Player Character and may even leave him with a severed or mangled limb. A Player Character or NPC can also be killed outright and severe wounds can bleed. Wounds and blood loss can also lead to a loss of Stamina and when that falls to zero, a Player Character is dead. However, a player never knows what his Stamina currently is, only the effects of its loss. This is an interesting narrative wrinkle in a simulationist roleplaying game, but it does mean that the Referee has to track the Stamina values for all of the Player Characters and the NPCs. Wound location is determined by the degree of cover protecting the target and then a random role modified by half of the weapon skill used and the Sniper skill. Although a Player Character will probably have the benefit of cover and wearing body armour, getting shot at is a nasty, brutal experience. First Aid will stablise a wounded or injured Player Character or NPC, but in keeping with the simulationist nature of Delta Force: America Strikes Back!, it takes time, rest, and recuperation for a Player Character to recover from anything more than a scratch.

Other rules cover parachute drops, communications, morale and panic for NPCs, and oddly, victory conditions for scenarios. Thus, ten points for achieving the primary mission goal, two each hostage rescued, two for each terrorist captured or killed, and so on, with points deducted for hostages being wounded or killed, each Delta Force team member killed or captured, and more. This sort of makes every scenario repayable to see if the players and their characters can do better each time, but it also makes the play of a mission less like a roleplaying game scenario, and more like a video game mission or miniatures wargame scenario. However, what it is supposed to reflect is the American public’s reaction to the execution of a mission, successful or otherwise, with it being noted that a poorly handled mission can lead to war with the nation where a mission is being staged or the loss of an ally. Essentially, “It should always be remembered that elite military units assault teams such as Delta Force are extensions of American foreign policy — the President’s final resort when American lives and property are in danger. To be effective, such military units must strike hard, fast, and with surgical precision.”

Rounding out the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet is a set of three appendices. The third details various martial arts, but the first two give ‘The Delta Force Referee’ and ‘Surviving in Delta Force’, advice for the Referee and the player respectively. Both are a page in length and advise that both player and Referee start small with simple situations and training exercises. The author recognises that whilst the Referee has less of world to create because Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is set in the here and now, he has a lot to keep track of in terms of information to keep the world feeling real. The Referee is also advised to not always apply every combat modifier and to not be concerned about precise ranges or movement values, usually to ease play, but at other times to heighten the tension. Arguably, this is contradictory advice since it means that the author is telling the Referee that this simulationist roleplaying game is too much of simulationist roleplaying game, though only when it matters. Lastly, the advice points out that few if any Delta Force players are likely to have had any actual combat experience, so it is okay for the Referee to take the player whose character is leader aside and warn him of things that a real team leader know. This is further supported in the advice for players which focuses on roleplaying members of Delta Force rather than The A-Team and suggests numerous tactics and good practices.

The second book, the ‘Warbook’ is one part gear and equipment guide, one part setting guide, and one part the other half of the character creation rules. The first half lists stats and details of all of the hand guns, assault rifles, submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, special weapons, and grenade launchers that the Player Characters might arm themselves with and the referee might arm the enemy with. Most of them make sense. The inclusion of the Auto-Mag .44 seems more like a nod to cinematic recreation rather than reality and the inclusion of the Heckler & Koch G11 seems more like contractual obligation for a nineteen eighties military roleplaying game. A handful of vehicles are given stats, the M-113 APC being the only military vehicle, whilst more detail is paid to a range of civilian and military transport aeroplanes and helicopters. These are all included to be used to get the Player Characters close to the mission target and then away again, rather than provide onsite support. There are also sections on communications and surveillance gear as well as general items. Overall, the equipment content of the ‘Warbook’ is a job well done.

The penultimate section in the ‘Warbook’ consists of the ‘Delta Force Warbook Dossiers’. These detail twenty-one terrorist organisations across European, Middle Eastern, and both North and American theatres of operation. Each write-up describes each organisation’s origin, ideology, international ties, history, and present activities. The bulk of these are Palestinian, whilst there are some less prominent groups such as the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo in Argentina and the Republik Malaku Selatan in the Netherlands. The Provisional Irish Republican Army is written for use in the United Kingdom and the USA, but the write-ups for domestic US terrorist organisations—the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, and the Weatherman—are very broad in comparison. There is no denying that these groups committed acts of terror, but how much of a threat these groups posed to United States security is open to debate and by the time of that Delta Force: America Strikes Back! was published in 1986, they were all defunct anyway. Of course, Delta Force itself, as part of the US military, has limited capacity to operate on American soil. What the sole inclusion of these groups does indicate is a strong anti-Left Wing bias present in Delta Force: America Strikes Back!, since it ignores any Right Wing terror groups or movements—on home soil or abroad.

The last part of the ‘Warbook’ gives the templates for the special forces and anti-terror units featured in Delta Force: America Strikes Back!. It is followed by the templates for European, Middle-Eastern, and western hemisphere terrorists. These are again, fairly broad in their treatment.

The play of Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is mission-based and fairly formulaic in its structure. The Player Characters receive a briefing, plan the operation, select equipment, move to the area of operation, conduct the mission, and then exfiltrate, returning to base for a debriefing. Plus, of course, the valuation according to the Victory conditions for the mission. This makes missions easier to set up by the Referee, but barring the page of advice in the appendices of the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is decidedly lacking when it comes help in designing missions, whilst the possibility of long term play is mentioned, but really only as an aside rather than be supported.

The three missions in the third booklet, ‘Scenarios’ all have their own mission objectives, location, and background as well as the mission for the Referee and the Victory table for determining how well the Player Characters did. They start out simple with ‘Operation Red Thunder’ in which the Player Characters must rescue hostages held at a PX (a retail store found on US Army installations that sells food, clothing, and goods to military personnel and their families) on a US Army base in Germany as well as capture one of the terrorists. The complexity rises with ‘Operation Lightning’. The Player Characters must rescue American and Israeli hostages held aboard WTA Flight 874 on the ground at Beirut Airport as well as capture a hostage and prevent the local Shi’ite Amal militia from reinforcing the hijackers. It is nicely detailed and is accompanied by detailed NPCs and advice on running the mission for the Referee. Lastly, ‘Operation Swiftsure’ returns the Player Characters to Beirut where they have to penetrate an Islamic Jihad planning centre and headquarters, kidnap its leader, acquire intelligence data, and destroy the planning centre and make it look like a rocket attack. Again, it is nicely detailed and as with the other two scenarios are accompanied by decent location maps.

Physically, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is decently presented for the time. The illustrations are not bad, but not really great either, but they are in keeping with the world that the roleplaying game is portraying. That said, the depiction of Middle Eastern is far from positive. The cartography is simple, clear, and easy to understand.

—oOo—

Phil Frances reviewed Delta Force: America Strikes Back! in Open Box in White Dwarf #84 (December, 1986). After describing the basics of the roleplaying game, he said, “Actually the game itself isn’t too bad – the rules are comprehensive, and don’t waste space getting their point across.” However, he concluded by saying, “In all, not a bad game, I suppose, but it’s very unethical and awfully tasteless. Is it Ok to talk about ethics and taste in a review? No? Give me a place to hide them…”

Thomas A. Grant reviewed Delta Force: America Strikes Back! in Game Reviews in Different Worlds Issue 47 (Fall, 1987). Interestingly, he evaluated the roleplaying game on the basis of its rules, its capacity to simulate modern small-unit tactics, and its treatment of its subject matter. Of the rules, he said, “All in all, Delta Force provides a competent though unexceptional role-playing system.” whilst of its capacity to simulate modern small-unit tactics, he stated that, “As a game of modern small-unit tactics, equipment, and training, Delta Force is very good. The game includes an exhaustive listing of weapons, equipment, and vehicles, including every type of military-issue firearm of which I’m aware.” Of its subject matter—terrorism and counterterrorism—he was more critical, pointing out that its illustrations depict its terrorists as stereotypes, that is, “…[T]he unkempt Middle Eastern terrorist with a large black mustache and five-o’clock shadow” and thus as barbarians. He concluded, “Admittedly, Delta Force shows only part of the entire counterterrorism picture, though it gives no acknowledgement to the existence of anything else. Handling a controversial subject such as this is bound to displease someone, and Delta Force will probably sell mostly to people whose minds are made up about terrorism. However, just as politicians and bureaucrats often are led into blunders by looking at too narrow a piece of a problem, so too can the citizens at large. Delta Force, for the important subject it tries to cover, is just too narrow. Still, for the student of modern “unconventional” warfare, Delta Force can provide some important lessons.”

—oOo—

Delta Force: America Strikes Back! draws comparisons with Phoenix Command, published by Leading Edge Games in the same year. Both offer detailed combat simulations and both could be played as modern skirmish wargames. In fact, given its lack of non-combat skills, Phoenix Command works better as a modern skirmish wargame. Whilst both are comprehensive, Phoenix Command has the advantage of being a more coherent and definitely a more coherently explained set of rules. Delta Force: America Strikes Back! suffers from a lack of explanation in places, but gives a player a more rounded—though not too rounded—character to play, as well as setting in which to play. One that would have been familiar to roleplayers in the nineteen eighties. Of the two, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is the more engaging of the two, since it has an actual premise and appears to have been written by humans.

In terms of design it is debatable as to whether or not Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a roleplaying game. Its emphasis upon military action, including planning, stealth, and combat together with its primary method of interacting with NPCs being to shoot them shifts it away from being roleplaying game and towards being a special forces skirmish wargame. Which it very easy could be run as. However, its protagonists are defined and designed as Player Characters rather than simply characters and the rules do allow for them to interact with NPCs with skills such as Negotiation and Interrogation. So, the possibility is there. However, with play focussing on missions rather than who the Player Characters are from one mission to the next, pulls Delta Force: America Strikes Back! back to being a wargame. At best, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is very tactical roleplaying game focused on executing missions that support a political agenda.

Unfortunately, that political agenda is where Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is at most problematic. Of course, the roleplaying game is set in 1986 at the height of the Cold War and it reflects the political outlook of governments in the USA, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, but the USA in particular. Which means that whilst it would have been undeniably patriotic for some players at the time, for others it would have looked jingoistic and that is the main impression it gives today. The Player Characters are specialist members of the military trained to strike at terrorists and terrorist organisations and kill them. That was the reality then and in many ways, still is. Further, there is no denying that terrorists commit atrocious acts of brutality and murder, often targeting the innocent. That was the reality then and still is today. As a result, the outlook in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is black and white, good versus evil, and the NPCs, the terrorists are stereotypes, even clichés. Especially when it comes to the depiction of Middle Eastern characters in the artwork. There is no advice on creating NPCs other than the numbers so it is difficult to do anything more than create what are effectively cardboard cut-out villains. Another issue with the game is its masculinity—just look at the cover, let alone the internal artwork—but given its subject matter it is difficult to get away from that. Arguably worse though, is its strong anti-Left Wing bias which ignores the possibility of Right Wing terror groups. Overall, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is not a subtle game in its depiction of the world in the middle of the nineteen eighties or its political stance.

Delta Force: America Strikes Back! reflects a moment a history, especially American history, and models it as a roleplaying game—if only just about, but more as tactical skirmish wargame with the potential for some roleplaying. That seems appropriate given that it is the first roleplaying game from Task Force Games, a publisher much better known for its wargames. The consequences of that are its complexity of rules, attention to situational detail and action, and often poor presentation when it comes to teaching the rules all serve to give the Referee a lot of extra work to do to prepare it for play. Ultimately, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a roleplaying game from the nineteen eighties that captures perfectly its time, genre, and the political landscape just at the moment before they all changed.

1986: Phoenix Command

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.

—oOo—

If the apogee of the military roleplaying game was Twilight 2000 in 1984, there was yet life in the genre still. Not in 1985, but in 1986, there were four military roleplaying games published. Delta Force: America Strikes Back! from Task Force Games, Eternal Soldier from Tai-Gear Simulations, Freedom Fighters from Fantasy Games Unlimited, and The Price of Freedom from West End Games were all published in 1986 and that is ignoring the paramilitary elements of the setting for 2300 AD from Game Designers’ Workshop. But in the four decades since, the straight military roleplaying game has been a rarity, and barring the return of Twilight: 2000 with Twilight 2000: Roleplaying in the World War III That Never Was from Free League Publishing, most, such as War Stories: A World War 2 RPG from Firelock Games and Alien: The Roleplaying Game from Free League Publishing, have been set in the theatres of World War 2 and Science Fiction. Of the four from 1986, perhaps the most famous—or should that be infamous?—was Phoenix Command.

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.

—oOo—

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.”

—oOo—

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.

Strontium Dog I

In 1988, Games Workshop would have published its fourth home grown roleplaying game. Like its second, Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, this would have been drawn from the pages of Britain’s longest running Science Fiction comic, 2000 AD. Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game was based on the comic strip of the same name, telling the exploits of Johnny Alpha, an ‘S/D’ or Search/Destroy agent forced to live off Earth because he was a mutant and work collecting bounties on some of the worst criminals in the galaxy. Working Typically accompanied by one or more of his partners—Wulf Sternhammer, the Gronk, and Middenface McNulty, Johnny Alpha dealt with prejudice against mutants—the worst of which came from within his own family, rival bounty hunters, revenge-seeking criminals, and worse. The stories were essentially Spaghetti Westerns in space and the comic strip, which originally appeared in the pages of Starlord in 1978 before transferring to 2000 AD in 1980 ran until 2018 with the death of its artist, Carlos Ezquerra, was very popular. It has since been revived with stories exploring other characters and the wider setting. Had Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game been published by Games Workshop, it would have no doubt sold well. After all, in the mid-eighties, Strontium Dog was one of 2000 AD’s most popular series, as was Judge Dredd, and its familiarity to the British roleplaying game hobby would have given it as firm a fan base as Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game. Plus, there were fewer stories for Strontium Dog and its setting was more open—the whole of galaxy, plus time travel—so there was more space in which to create and tell adventures, and then, of course, the set-up was simple. Play a Mutie ‘S/D’ Agent, overcome the prejudice he faces, travel the galaxy, capture or kill criminals, collect their bounties, make a living.

Alas, it was not to be. In 1987, following the release of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, Games Workshop pivoted away from supporting intellectual properties that were not its own, dropping board games and roleplaying games in favour of miniatures and wargames. This included what would have been Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game.

This is not a review of Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game as released, for that did not come to pass, but a review of what could have been. This is a review of the playtest version that was very close to completion and came with everything necessary to play, including a beginning scenario.

—oOo—

Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game would, like the Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, have appeared as boxed set. Inside there would have been three books—‘The Player’s Book’, ‘Equipment Manual’, and ‘The Game Master’s Book’. In addition to this, there would probably have been a set of percentile dice and some cardboard standees. The latter, along with the box itself and the book covers would have been the only things in colour. The books would have otherwise been black and white, but exactly like Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game had its artwork by various artists to draw upon to illustrate its pages, so to would have Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game with the artwork of Carlos Ezquerra. This would have imparted the rough, working and frontier nature of the Strontium Dog setting as well as its action.

‘The Player’s Book’ introduces the setting and details both the means to create characters and the rules for Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game. There are some suggestions as to how it might be played using miniatures, and no doubt, Games Workshop would have made a set of miniatures available. Everyone plays a Mutant ‘S/D’ Agent, operating out of an orbital base nicknamed the ‘Doghouse’. He is defined by his Attributes, Special Abilities, and Mutations, and will also have some equipment and weapon proficiencies. The six attributes consist of Strength, Initiative, Combat Skill, Technical Skill, Street Skill, and Psi Skill. Of these, Strength is both an ‘S/D’ Agent’s ability to both inflict and suffer damage, Initiative is both his speed and his agility, and the Psi skill is his ability to withstand psionic attacks and if he has a special Mutant Power, use that as well. These are all percentile values and are created by rolling ‘2d10+30’. He will definitely have a mutation of some kind, including minor, major, and extreme physical mutations, animal mutations, and Mutant Powers. If an ‘S/D’ Agent has a Mutant Agent he will still have a physical or animal mutation, and in all cases, the mutation also imparts a negative Reaction Check modifier. The more extreme the type of mutation, the more negative the Reaction Check modifier. ‘The Player’s Book’ includes multiple tables for determining an ‘S/D’ Agent’s mutation and its extent, providing for a lot of detail whilst still leaving room for the player to detail the specifics. This can lead to the creation of grotesques, but this is not out of keeping with the source material.

The Mutant Powers consist of a range of psionic powers, such as Absorb Energy, Chameleon, Illusions, Mind Control, Psychic Attack, Pyrokinesis, Telepathy, and Teleportation. They also include Johnny Alpha’s Alpha Ray Vision. Special Abilities consist of a mix of what would be abilities and skills in another roleplaying game. They are categorised under Initiative, Combat Skill, Technical Skill, and Street Skill. For example, Initiative-based Special Abilities include ‘Ambidextrous’, ‘Dodge’, and ‘Target Tracking’; Combat Skill-based Special Abilities include ‘Fast Aim’, ‘Hammerfist’, and ‘Weapon Specialist’; Technical Skill-based Special Abilities include ‘Computer Use’, ‘Drive’, and ‘Medtech’; and Street Skill-based Special Abilities include ‘Detect Traps’, ‘Intimidation’, and ‘Smooth Talker’. These Abilities provide a range of effects, including simply being able to undertake a particular task, grant a bonus to the associated Ability, or change when an ‘S/D’ Agent acts in combat. They typically require a roll against the associated Ability to activate. Penultimately, the ‘S/D’ Agent receives the standard equipment for an ‘S/D’ Agent and an advance to spend on extra arms, armour, and gear, which will be paid back from his first successful bounty. Lastly, the player rolls for his ‘S/D’ Agent’s weapon proficiencies. These represent some training and the weapons the ‘S/D’ Agent used during the Mutant Uprising.

To create a ‘S/D’ Agent, a player rolls for his Abilities and his Mutations and their depth and detail. Having generated his ‘S/D’ Agent’s Abilities, he receives points to spend on their associated Special Abilities. This is equal to the number of points above thirty for each Ability or equal to the die roll used to generate each Ability. Any excess points are saved to be spent later. He will also purchase further equipment. By the end of it, the player should have a very good idea of what his ‘S/D’ Agent looks like and what the extent of his mutations are. The process is not difficult, but slightly fiddly when it comes to determining the nature and extent of his mutations. It helps that there is a full example of ‘S/D’ Agent creation. Plus, at the end of the process, there is an engaging in-game briefing that the ‘S/D’ Agent would receive that sets the scene for his reception of his first bounty.

Raggedy Ann O’Riley

Strength 44
Initiative 47 (1)
Combat Skill 38 (0)
Technical Skill 36 (0)
Street Skill 40 (0)
Psi Skill 43

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Dodge (Initiative), Target Tracking (Initiative), Weapon Specialist (Combat skill), Drive (Technical Skill), Pursue (Street Skill), Sign Language (Street Skill)

Reaction Check Modifier: -05
Security Rating: CCC

MUTATIONS
Skin colouring is quartered (indigo, magenta, dark brown, normal flesh)
Skin is like coarse fabric
Eyes have strange colour (wheat yellow iris)

WEAPON PROFICIENCIES
GCC Standard Issue Single Cartridge Blaster, Skatta Gun, Lazooka

EQUIPMENT
GCC Standard Issue Single Cartridge Blaster
No. 1 Cartridges (3)
Wanted Meter
Custom-Fit Chest Armour, Upper Back Armour, Arm Protectors (pair)
GCC Standard Issue Jumpsuit, Black
GCC Standard Issue Combat Boots, Pair, Black
GCC Search/Destroy ID Badge with CCC Security Rating
GCC Standard Issue Pouch Belt with eight Pouches
2,500 cr

Mechanically, Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game is a percentile system. To have his ‘S/D’ Agent undertake an action, his player rolls the percentile dice and compares the result against the appropriate Ability. If the result is equal to, or under, the Ability, the action is a success, but if over, a failure. A roll of ‘01’ is always a success and a roll of ‘00’ is always a failure.

Combat, a major aspect of the roleplaying game, is played on a timescale of one Round equals five seconds in which there are five Phases. A combatant can act in one or more of those Phases, the number determined his current Initiative. All ‘S/D’ Agents begin play being able to act in two Phases, but their Initiative can go up and down. Up due to improvement, down due to injury. Most actions take a single Phase. Firing a weapon involves aiming, weapon proficiency (halved if the ‘S/D’ Agent lacks the appropriate weapon proficiency), size, distance, movement, and illumination. Combatants can target specific locations, but weapons can jam if a ‘00’ is rolled. A jam might simply be that, but it could also be a misfire or even the weapon exploding!

The combat rules also cover thrown weapons—a lot of different types of grenades are available and thrown in Strontium Dog, hand-to-hand, and so on, all supported by examples. Damage is determined by the attack type and for missile weapons, the base damage is modified by range. More damage is inflicted at close range, less at long range. Damage itself is applied to hit locations, which can be a challenge because not every mutant is going to have the same body parts, the same number of body parts, or the same bodily arrangement as other mutants or normal humans. The rules include advice on this, but ultimately in such cases, it is down to the Game Master to decide upon what part of the body that the damage is inflicted. Armour, if worn on a particular location, has a percentage chance of stopping the damage completely equal to its Armour Rating. If this Armour Roll is successful, the damage is stopped, but it damages the armour and reduces its Armour Rating. Damage is deducted from a target’s Strength and Initiative Abilities, potentially reducing his speed and capacity to act. Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game does include rules for critical hits, which occur when an ‘01’ is rolled, or an ‘01’ or ‘02’ if the combatant has the ‘Weapon Specialist’ Special Ability. The list of effects is not extensive, but range from loss of an eye or ear and permanent Initiative to extra damage and temporary unconsciousness. It can every result in the target being killed outright. This is rare though. There are Critical Hit Tables for each location. ‘The Player’s Book’ makes clear that the Critical Hit rules are optional.

The rules also cover movement, pursuit and fleeing, tracking, sneaking and searching, listening and observing, driving and flying, and more. Traps are covered too, as criminals not infrequently lay them for nosy ‘S/D’ Agents. What Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game makes clear though, is that combat is an option. An ‘S/D’ Agent can attempt persuade or intimidate a bounty into giving himself up and may well need to do so, since the terms of a bounty may require the apprehension of a fugitive or criminal rather than execute him. To that end, particular attention is paid to intimidation. The Intimidation Special Ability will give an ‘S/D’ Agent an advantage here, as will Persuasion and Smooth-Talker. That said, the negative Reaction Check Modifier from being a mutant and an ‘S/D’ Agent will counteract that.

‘The Player’s Book’ comes to close with a discussion of warrant types—‘Apprehend & Return’, ‘Dead or Alive’, and ‘Termination’—and the crimes that lead to their being issued and what sort of bounty an ‘S/D’ Agent can expect to be paid for completing each type. Presented here too, is discussion of the regulations as they pertain to each warrant type, how to use the Wanted Meter, and lastly, the rights of criminal once he has surrendered. This is all useful information as it underpins the structure of how the game is played from one scenario to the next. There are similarities here between Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game and Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game with the lists of crimes and associated values. Of course, in the former, the Judge is apprehending perps and sending them to the isoblocks for years, whilst in the latter, the ‘S/D’ Agent is apprehending criminals and bringing them back for money. Both are dispensing the law, if not justice, and there are situations where both can be regarded as executioners.

The ‘Equipment Manual’ is an extensive guide to the guns and gear used by ‘S/D’ Agents that appears in Strontium Dog. From signature blasters and blaster cartridges to mini-nukes and planet-busters, the list of equipment is lengthy and detailed. Lasers, grenades, bombs, hand-to-hand weapons, vehicles, and more are all described. The miscellaneous section covers bleepers (or tracking beacons) and com-units of various ranges), jetpaks, maps, medi-paks, toolkits of various kinds, security devices, and a lot more, including Plastiflesh for disguising oneself. The vehicle section gives profiles for various models and types along with rules for driving, crashing, and vehicular combat. These are comparatively more detailed than those for man-to-mutant combat, and so require more attention and study to bring them into play. The last entries in the ‘Equipment Manual’ explain the workings of the ‘AAA Security Weapons’ that Johnny Alpha is occasionally issued with in the comic series. Things such as ‘Stasis Grenades’, ‘Time Bombs’, ‘Time Traps’, and ‘Time Shrinkers’. Developed by the Galactic Crime Commission that the ‘S/D’ Agents ultimately work for, they are issued only to the most trusted agents and their unsanctioned use is a crime. Essentially, these are only to be issued by the Game Master and only for specific missions, their use serving the story rather than anything else.

‘The Player’s Book’ begins by giving the advice that the reader work through the examples included in its pages and create some examples of the ‘S/D’ Agents before running them through the rules to grasp how Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game is designed to work. This element of advice continues for the reader in ‘The Game Master’s Book’, suggesting she skim it more than once to gain an idea of where everything is in its pages, before examining its different elements in more detail. The specific advice focuses on the creation of scenarios and on running the game itself, discussing in turn, plot, settings, and encounters, all leading to the climax. It also provides Game Master with advice on various aspects of the roleplaying game, including mutations and Special Abilities, skill checks, combat and damage, as well as adding more details for criminals surrendering, including even the possibility of a reversal of any such surrender!

‘The Game Master’s Book’ includes the introductory scenario, ‘Doggy in the Middle’. This is specifically designed for beginning characters who are ready for their first bounty. It opens with the ‘S/D’ Agents in the Capitol on the planet of Sleaz, assigned a warrant from the Doghouse raised by the Sleaz Police. It wants the ‘S/D’ Agents apprehend several members of the Pleasant Street Gang. The ‘S/D’ Agents are told where the bounties can be found and told that they cannot use firearms of any kind. Fists and clubs are okay. The gang members are in Sammy’s Bar and the ‘S/D’ Agents are to apprehend them without causing too much collateral damage or killing anyone. There are about thirty staff and patrons in the bar and the ‘S/D’ Agents must sort the bounties from the innocent civilians. ‘Doggy in the Middle’ is fine for a single evening’s worth of play, but it is disappointing at the very least. It only showcases limited aspects of the roleplaying game, with no scope for the use of blasters and other ranged weapons, for investigating a bounty, and for action beyond the confines of the bar. For a barroom brawl, it is not a terrible scenario, but for an introductory scenario, it only does half the job. This would have been disappointing had Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game actually been published, but its failure to fully support the rules and showcase what an actually showcase what a Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game would actually look like is compounded by an editorial note deleting the mention and thus possible inclusion of a longer adventure.

‘Doggy in the Middle’ does show what an NPC looks like in Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game and in addition, the roleplaying game gives rules and tables for creating a variety of NPCs, including mercenaries, police, engineers, scientists, and aliens. Naturally, particular attention is paid to the creation of criminal NPCs since they will be the target the bounties in play. It includes minor criminals, criminal henchmen, and major criminals, and their equipment and their crimes. The most interesting addition here is for ‘Security’, specifically the ‘Security Rating’ for ‘S/D’ Agents. An ‘S/D’ Agent’s Security Rating consists of three letters such as ‘CCC’, ‘BCC’, and ‘BAC’. The first letter indicates the amount of bounty that an ‘S/D’ Agent has brought in, the second how well an ‘S/D’ Agent pursues warrants, and the third a general assessment of the ‘S/D’ Agent’s capability. The ratings can go down as well as up, and in the game, it represents an ‘S/D’ Agent’s access to equipment, which at a Security Rating of ‘CCC’, this could be Pressure Sensitive Device or Magnetic Decoder; for ‘BBB’, some Plastiflesh or a Retina Printer; and for ‘AAA’, the aforementioned special devices that the Galactic Crime Commission only assigns to its more trusted ‘S/D’ Agents.

Rounding out ‘The Game Master’s Book’ are sections on space travel, including vessels and hazards, and then time distortions. Time travel is known in Strontium Dog, indeed, one of the first stories sees Johnny Alpha going back in time to collect the bounty on a certain Adolf Schicklegruber! Dimensional travel is also possible as the universe is not stable, both being intended for use as narrative devices. There are some details given too on various galactic organisations, galactic and planetary law, crime and punishment and the legal process, as well as the means to create planets where criminals might be operating or hiding.

Overall, as a playtest version of what would have been the Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game, the files are very, very close to being complete. Everything necessary is included in its pages to be a playable, fully rounded roleplaying game. Character generation, core rules, combat rules, objectives of play, background, advice for the Game Master. It is all there. Of course, there are things missing. One is a fuller, more sophisticated, and more detailed scenario. The other is details of the cast of the source comics translated into game form. The latter though is something that the manuscript does acknowledge it as needing.

Physically, Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game in its playtest form is plain and simple. Literally plain, simple text. Further, it actually consists of over two hundred pages of printout from a late eighties dot matrix printer, which has then been marked up with red pen. Not extensively, but some. This means that it is not an easy manuscript to read physically and there is a degree of fragility to it.

Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game is a lost, forgotten roleplaying game. As an artefact, it is a possibility of what could have been. Another roleplaying game based on the pages of 2000 AD, supported with scenarios, miniatures, and content in the pages of White Dwarf. As a design, it is not ground-breaking, but it is a sound adaptation of the source material and it is more sophisticated than Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game, but not as complex as Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, sitting somewhere between. It is easy to understand and easy to play and doubtless, it would have been a popular roleplaying game had it been published and supported. And likely, it would go on to be held in as high an affection just as Judge Dredd: The Role-Playing Game is held today.

—oOo—

Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game is a very playable roleplaying game because I have played it twice—thirty years apart. In the September of 1986, we made the trip from Dorset to London for Games Day ’86 held in the Royal Agricultural Hall. It was notable for several reasons. As our first trip to a gaming convention. As where we met gamers outside of our gaming circles. As where we first encountered the roleplaying game, SkyRealms of Jorune. As where I sat down and played a playtest version of Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game. My ‘S/D’ Agent was striped green and brown so had the name Esmeralda Brown. Somewhere I still have that character sheet for her. It was a fun game and in the months that followed, I awaited the publication of Strontium Dog: The Role-Playing Game. Of course, it never appeared and that character sheet remained the only proof of such a game actually existing. Games Workshop moved on and that Saturday afternoon experience became a memory.

Fast forward three decades and a Strontium Dog roleplaying experience was offered at the Manchester convention, GrogMeet. Not the versions based on Traveller, First Edition from Mongoose Publishing or Judge Dredd & The Worlds of 2000 AD from EN Publishing, but using the original ruleset. The ruleset that had never been published. I was both flabbergasted and intrigued and could not wait to speak to the Game Master. I wanted to find out how he had got hold of them and tell him about my connection to them, however tangential that was. I got to play them too and they still worked. I said at the time, that I was interested in reading them and reviewing them. I also said I understood that was not possible. After all, the three folders that hold the printouts of the rules are a singular artefact, a piece of roleplaying, Games Workshop, and 2000 AD history which never came to pass. It was very unlikely that anyone else had a copy and unlikely that Games Workshop had an accessible copy in its extensive archive. Of course, the Game Master wanted to ensure that they remained safe. Then in 2024, the Game Master turned up a convention and handed me the folders, saying that he trusted me to look after them and write the review that I wanted to. The review is late, but it is the review that I wanted to write and now, the files are going back to the Game Master next week at GrogMeet 2026.

—oOo—

With heartfelt thanks to Sam Vail for his patience and trust and generosity without which this review would not have been possible.

With thanks to the late, much missed John Amos, and Alex Blair without which that first trip to a national gaming convention would not have been possible.

[Fanzine Focus XL] The Travellers’ Digest #7

On the tail of the Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showed how another Dungeon Master and her group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.

Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry. However, not all fanzines written with the Old School Renaissance in mind need to be written for a specific retroclone. Although not the case now, the popularity of Traveller would spawn several fanzines, of which The Travellers’ Digest, published by Digest Group Publications, was the most well known and would eventually transform from a fanzine into a magazine.

The publication of The Travellers’ Digest #1 in December, 1985 marked the entry of Digest Group Publications into the hobby and from this small, but ambitious beginnings would stem a complete campaign and numerous highly-regarded supplements for Game Designers Workshop’s Traveller and MegaTraveller, as well as a magazine that all together would run for twenty-one issues between 1985 and 1990. The conceit was that The Travellers’ Digest was a magazine within the setting of the Third Imperium, its offices based on Deneb in the Deneb Sector, and that it awarded the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award. This award would be won by one of the Player Characters and thus the stage is set for ‘The Grand Tour’, the long-running campaign in the pages of The Travellers’ Digest. In classic fashion, as with Europe of the eighteenth century, this would take the Player Characters on a tour of the major capitals of known space. These include Vland, Capitol, Terra, the Aslan Hierate, and even across the Great Rift. The meat of this first issue, as well as subsequent issues, would be dedicated to an adventure, each a stop-off on the ‘The Grand Tour’, along with support for it. The date for the first issue of The Travellers’ Digest and thus when the campaign begins is 152-1101, the 152nd day of the 1101st year of the Imperium.

To best run ‘The Grand Tour’, the Referee will need access to The Atlas of the Imperium, Supplement 8: Library Data (A-M), Supplement 11: Library Data (N-Z), Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (or alternatively, Supplement 5: Azhanti High Lightning), as well as the core rules. In addition, other supplements would be required depending on the adventure, in the case of this issue, The Travellers’ Digest #7, Adventure 5, Trillion Credit Squadron. Of course, that was in 1985, and much, if not all, of the rules or background necessary have been updated since. The campaign is also specifically written for use with four pre-generated Player Characters. They consist of Akidda Laagiir, the journalist who won the Travellers’ Digest Touring Award; Dur Telemon, a scout and his nephew; Doctor Theodor Krenstein, a gifted-scientist and roboticist; and Doctor Krenstein’s valet, ‘Aybee’, or rather, ‘AB-101’. The fact is, AB-101 is a pseudo-biological robot, both protégé and prototype. Consequently, the mix of Player Characters are surprisingly non-traditional and not all of them are easily created using the means offered in Traveller or MegaTraveller. This is addressed within various issues of the fanzine.

The Travellers’ Digest #7 was published in 1986 and is a ‘Special Starship Issue’, the editors highlighting this and the big interview with Traveller creator, Marc Miller, in the issue. It also highlights the forthcoming publication in early 1987, of the Grand Census, its companion supplement to the Grand Survey, and looks back at some of the previous issues with the publisher’s warehouse manager having found some back issues.

The seventh part of ‘The Grand Tour’ in The Travellers’ Digest #7 is ‘Feature Adventure 7: The Fourth Imperium’, written by Gary L Thomas and Joe D. Fugate Sr. The publishing date for adventure is 344-1112, or the three-hundred-and-forty-fourth day of the year 1112, whilst the starting date for the adventure is 014-1103, or the fourteenth day of the year 1103. The adventure takes place in the Dynam system of the Masionia subsector of the Lishun Sector. This is the site of an Imperial Naval Depot where over a thousand mothballed starships are held. These ships are held in readiness in the event of another interstellar war or emergency and all can be restored to full operation with relative ease. The Player Characters are continuing their journey to Capital and having got half way there, Doctor Theodor Krenstein wants to stop off at the depot in the Dynam system to visit the August, a 75,000-ton battlecruiser on which his great-grandfather served during the Third Frontier war. Admiral Walter, who has been in command of the Dynam Depot for over two decades, readily welcomes them and will even give them a guided tour, the fact that they all have been recently knighted for their bravery being a contributing factor towards their recognition.

The action begins with the Player Character coming aboard the August and beginning the tour, given by Ensign Amherst. The tour is brought to an abrupt halt when another Naval officer is discovered in the bridge of the ship, much to the Ensign’s surprise, as the officer draws his gun and shoots him dead! This leaves the Player Characters unarmed and facing an armed opponent, though ‘Aybee’ can use the laser in his arm. The scenario escalates from there, with the discovery of another four men aboard the ship, all armed, and then, once the Player Characters alert the rest of the base, it becomes clear that more of the mothballed starships are being powered up. And then some other ships turn up… It appears that there is a grand hijacking taking place.

‘Feature Adventure 7: The Fourth Imperium’ presents an interesting situation, but arguably, not one that is actually interesting to play. It starts with a lot of exposition, including directing what the Player Characters, notably, ‘Aybee’ acting oddly before the tour begins. Once past the point where the rogue Naval officers aboard the August have been dealt with, bar a diversion to find out what might be happening to fuel being siphoned off from the depot, the scenario rapidly scales up in terms of scope and away from what the Player Characters are expected to do. At this point, the Player Characters are no longer involved in events, primarily because only one of them has any applicable skills to participating in a grand space battle. Instead, the players are expected to play out the battle using the rules given in Traveller Book 5: High Guard, using the given stats for the various ships and incorporating the highly detailed sensor rules included in the scenario.

If the players are happy to switch from roleplaying their characters to handling such a space battle, then ‘Feature Adventure 7: The Fourth Imperium’ is fine. If not, half of the scenario is wasted. Either way, however the Game Master has had to tailor the adventure to her players, in roleplaying terms, ‘Feature Adventure 7: The Fourth Imperium’ is actually very short and should take no more than a session to play through. The space battle may be longer, but that is optional and the fact it is optional and it ignores the Player Characters is why it is simply underwhelming.

The key feature of the issue is ‘The Future of Traveller: An Interview with Marc Miller’. It covers how he got into gaming and founded Game Designers’ Workshop, and discuses some of the early games published, including its first roleplaying game, En Garde!, before getting into Traveller and its development. It also discusses the development of what would become Traveller: 2300 as a game alongside Traveller rather than replacing it, Miller making clear that he believes that the future of the roleplaying game to be secure. It is an interesting read, capturing the optimism of the period and about the future of the roleplaying game.

The scenario is further supported with background information for the Dynam System and the Masionia subsector, as well as ‘Library Data of the Lishun Sector’. There is also ‘Computer Software for High Guard’ by Dale L. Kemper and J. Andrew Keith, which adds three new programs. ‘Squadron Operations’ enables computer-linked ships to operate more efficiently; ‘Fleet Operations’ does the same for fleets; and ‘Simulation’ offers a means of handling simulations aboard ship without interfering with ship’s operation. These are useful for campaigns which focus on large scale ship operations and combat.

Gary L. Thomas examines the role of the Social Standing attribute in Traveller for ‘The Gaming Digest’ in ‘Characters with Class’. The article begins by acknowledging that Social Standing has little effect on game play if it is not ‘A’ or higher and a Player Character is not a noble. It breaks down the social classes according to Social Standing and suggests that a Player Character spend Cr250 per point of Social Standing per month to maintain it. Otherwise, it falls. This is fine in a static game in which Social Standing is important, but Traveller is about travel, the Player Characters typically moving from one star system to another. In which case, who is a Player Character trying to maintain his standing against? It also suggests that by spending more, a Player Character can improve his Social Standing. It should be pointed that this will only go so far and not beyond Social Standing ‘A’, since the Player Character is likely to be looked down upon as nouveau riche. Snobbery counts, after all. Also, a Player Character with high Social Standing spending time with someone with a lower Social Standing will also affect their Social Standing, which means that Player Character with high Social Standing will suffer for it by spending time with his fellows. The article comes to a close with guidelines for when a Player Character of higher Social Standing wants to throw his weight around, which are useful. Bar the breakdown of what Social Standing ratings mean, the rest of article is not, since it is divorced from the style of play at the core of Traveller—travel where few NPCs are going to know who a Player Character is versus a static location or even organisation where more NPCs are going to know who they are.

Rounding out The Travellers’ Digest #7 is more background support for the scenario, ‘Feature Adventure 7: The Fourth Imperium’. Part of the fanzine’s ‘Traveller Tech Briefs’, ‘Starships in Mothballs’ by Joe D. Fugate Sr. and R. Leibman, is a guide to putting a starship into and taking it out of mothballs. This is solid explanation of how it is done and nice background detail.

Physically, The Travellers’ Digest #7 is, as with all of the issues so far, very obviously created using early layout software. The artwork is not great, but it does its job and it is far from dreadful.

The Travellers’ Digest #7 is the ‘Special Starship Issue’, which it is and is not. Yes, there are lots of articles about starships and a scenario involving starships, but none of the content about starships in the issue is relevant to a Player Character. It is all pitched at a level above the core play of Traveller and whilst it is interesting, it fills out details of the Traveller universe rather than being immediately playable content. Similarly, unless the players are really keen on running large scale starship battles, the scenario does not offer the amount of play that scenarios in previous issues did. Overall, interesting, but not enough playable content.