Customer Reviews

Book of Mars: Combat System for all RPGs

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This is a really old game system, long out of print, that is a sort-of hybrid between table-top strategy gaming and standard role playing combat. The first thing to be aware of is that this is strictly a combat system with some related topics (movement, sighting targets, etc). This is not a full-fledged RPG. The stats are based on percentile dice and are relatively easy to incorporate into most game systems, as long as you're the type of player/GM that doesn't mind dealing with those hassles. Simple rules are included to generate 'characters,' but only as far as the combat-oriented attributes are concerned. The combat is mostly geared towards resolving damage to individuals, but can be adapted to units of combatants on the battlefield. In modern RPG parlance, I believe that this would still be considered "rules lite," in that while there are many options in resolving battles, the combat itself is fairly linear - there are no lists of skills or feats or abilities (remember, this is from the early years of RPGs).

The rules cover all time periods (theoretically) and provide pages of armor and weapons to enable a battle between cavemen with stones and animal hides and soldiers from Starship Troopers armed with powered armor and lasers (although amusingly the near future depicted in the game is actually about now - where's my GE Sunbeam laser and Powered Armor suit? That's right, I left it in my flying car). There are no critical hits: rather, there are probabilities of gruesome combat outcomes (losing fingers or toes, breaking bones, etc) built into the system. There are detailed hit location charts based on weapon damage types - Superficial damage (things that 'smack', like clubs) and Penetrating damage (guns, arrows, etc.). There are also extensive modifiers for targeting - you could easily, with minimal on-the-fly adjustments to weapon damage, make that battle mentioned above into 10 cavemen vs. 1 six-inch tall future soldier if you wanted to... which sounds like fun, actually.

The Pros: I think they've made a fairly comprehensive combat system about as streamlined as one could hope for. Indeed I've looked for years and haven't really found anything as elegant as this (though I fully admit that I've only played a fraction of the myriad of RPGs out there). I misplaced my copy and have replaced it via Ebay once before (didn't even know the rules were potentially available via Amazon until today), as it is something that I value having in my collection of game books. It is a system that I keep coming back to.

The Cons: There is only one big drawback to this system, in my opinion: how it's organized... and I think this is what discouraged the other reviewer. The content is very logically segregated into broad categories (Movement, Trageting, Damage, Sighting, etc.), which is fine. The problem is that the rules, as straight forward as they are, are listed in large blocks of text that are essentially numbered bullet items, as if you described a simple rule system in a court deposition. It would not be uncommon to see something like this in the rules: "14.171. Combatants who ahve died are no longer able to participate in combat and are ignored in subsequent combat rounds." The idea is simple, but looking at a whole book filled with numbered bullet items is not exactly user-friendly. It's great if you like quoting rules at other players, though!

If you've gotten this far and are intrigued, and you can afford the gamble, I'd highly recommend checking out this ruleset.

This is probably the first gaming product I've ever bought. The game store guy sold it to me, when I asked for combat rules for toy soldiers. This generic rule set was meant to cover combat from rocks to lasers...years before GURPS. It features an 80'a style, percentile skill based system like Top Secret or Star Frontiers, but much, much more complex.

This thing is far too complicated to actually play. It's pages of charts, tables, and flow charts that would take months to master, and days to play on the table top. I picked up a copy though, just for nostalgia's sake...