Have raygun, will travel!
As I’ve mentioned, I love those old serials and pulps involving rockets, rayguns, and all that good stuff. While it’s something of an acquired taste, it seems like several people who got into gaming have the same taste. However, they seem to be few and far between. I find it easier to locate RPGs that involve the setting, so imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this minis game called Fantastic Worlds with some good old pulpy action on the cover.
Using the Pulp 45 game rules, Fantastic Worlds captures the spirit of Rocky Jones: Space Ranger, John Carter Of Mars, and Flash Gordon; allowing for all manner of heroes and villains. This means that the game allows you to replicate many of these different types of settings and characters. There’s characters who are part of an interplanetary police force, people from “modern” Earth who have been transported to strange and alien worlds, aliens from different world, despotic rulers of kingdoms and their minions, and even Amazon warrior women. Oh, and let’s not forget the nobles who ignore their responsibilities to have adventures, as well as mad scientists and their robotic creations. Once you settle on your hero or leader, you get to pick their allies or “supporting cast” meaning your plucky co-pilots, loyal underlings, and so on. After that, there’s your typical grunts and extras that will survive if they’re lucky. That also means that there’s a variety of skills, weapons, and equipment to give to these characters, as well as rules for a few vehicles. Oh, and mounted combat. In case you want to replicate The Hidden Empire, which is an old serial with Singing Cowboys versus Ancient Hidden Empire. I’m not kidding.
Unfortunately, there’s a fair bit of complexity to these characters and equipment. There’s seven main stats, which are going to be modified by the skills, abilities, and equipment that your characters have. Weapons have several range bands, making them vary wildly in terms of effectiveness depends on where your target is. And since this is a d10 system with an unopposed goal of a 10, you better hope that your stats are high enough to make the rules you need to activate some of the abilities or equipment you need. So, you might have problems doing what you want, when you want. To add to complexity, each model is going to have four hit locations (head, torso, arms, and legs), which can take several hits and will effect your stats with each hit. This means that combat is going to drag on for a while, even after you play a few games, and that you’re going to have a lot to remember. All of this also kind of annoys me because it means that I can’t really make character cards using 3x5 cards, like I do for most miniature games I play.
Which brings me to another thing I’ve noticed: this is either a miniatures game that wants to be an RPG or an RPG that wants to be a miniatures game. While they do kind of defray the problems by keeping forces down to 3-7 models per side, there’s still a lot of bookkeeping involved in not only playing but running a campaign, as characters can “level up” to another one of the character types as games go on. It also means that there’s quite a few different scenarios and each one is clearly part of an ongoing story. However, there’s a problem when the situation they’re describing may not match the forces you and your opponent have chosen. For example, one of the scenarios starts right after a regent or king or emperor has been assassinated and the heroes have to try to escape. But, they also provide you with the characters you should use, which is a poor choice for either type of game this one straddles the line between. And, while they do give you ideas for making your own, there’s no hard and fast rules for it. Which feels off. Now, in 45 Adventure/Pulp 45, they do discuss having a GM for your games, but there’s no real exploration for that in the core book.
Oh, that’s right, this game has a source book, Planet X: Terror From Across The Universe. And it’s actually pretty good? The first thing is does is give you some better, hard rules for the various types of common alien races we see in the old stories (except for the inclusion of Greys, which are a more modern invention). After giving you the rules for making your own aliens, they introduce several races that are home to Planet X, so you know what these rules can do, as well as giving the game a more established campaign setting. I don’t know how I feel about that but I don’t hate it. While the flexibility of the game lets you do whatever, having something to look at, to maybe get started with, can help you learn the basics or get someone into the game.
Another thing that this book adds is some better Psychic powers, as well as Psychic character types, and hive alien races, so you can include some more interesting aliens in your games. And things get better when they give you rules to include random alien creatures and monsters. So, if you do want to have a GM, as well as two players, things can get more interesting.
The last few things the book gives you, aside from new equipment and abilities as you would imagine, is some sample monsters, some interesting scenarios, and campaigns, is a time line of the setting. Which I really liked, because it felt like I was getting two or three different stories with the flavor text in the books.
As much as it may sound that I don’t like this game, I do think it has a place and a use. While it isn’t the raygun gothic game I’ve been looking for, it does have some things going for it. It’s played on a 2x2 board, which are easy to make/build/assemble, and it only needs a handful of models. Since models in this genre have been hard to find (Reaper has perhaps a dozen unique minis in this genre), that isn’t too much of a problem. Personally, I’d like to make a little “Heroic Trio” to go on adventures on strange planets. Even if you don’t have the minis that fit the theme, you can use your fantasy stuff you probably already have, using the Amazons and Tribal groups they name. Even an evil cleirc mini can become a High Priest or Warlord. Just give them some rayguns in their equipment and have at. Also, with the world the way it is these days, you could make this into a solo game with some tweaks, and have some fun on your own. That’s probably what I’m going to do, before too long.
So, if you’re trying not to go out but love this genre, this might be the solo game for you. If you’re looking for a new, smaller project, this could be something to give a try. However, if you’re looking for a skirmish game with rockets and rayguns to play with friends, this isn’t it. That said, I’m going to keep searching for that one. Maybe I’ll find it. Someday.
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