Although I love the Mars books, the thought of putting some kind of Barsoom setting on my upcoming gaming wish list was pretty far down on the priority level. Other science fiction and fantasy genres are on my radar such as a Dune game of some kind, or maybe doing Star Wars saga (to make up for my negative experiences with a group of creeps last year).
Sure, back in the day I owned both the 70’s RPG (pretty much created to market the Heritage miniatures out at the time) and the SPI board game. I played and enjoyed them both, even getting friends unacquainted with the John Carter series of books to play. Actually, for some reason there were a lot of laughs there. In the RPG you had to roll on a table to impress a princess, and some of the classic flubs include things like “…you suggest to the princess that she and you go outside and study the underside of a bush until the air crackles…” and other such gems. And the random events in the board game were always worth a hoot – player’s airships constantly crashing to the planet surface forcing the unlucky chit to have to walk 3000 miles to Helium or the South Pole or whatever.
I Ebayed both those beat-up games several years ago during my great “Gaming Material Purge.” Well, I managed to get a very nice copy of the SPI board game on Ebay last week, and it is in great condition. The map and chits are almost mint, and the box has no smashing of any kind. But what was I to do with it? My regular players don’t want to do a board game if they can help it. And it was great for the ancient days, but in this modern world of great graphics this almost graphic free game sure doesn’t look that great. The chits just have numbers and letters, no images of dashing John Carter or his fortunate son Clitoras (or Catheter or whatever his name was).
The real saving grace as far as graphics was the map of Mars itself, and all the great little tactical areas like palace rooms and dungeons, airship decks, and dueling arenas. And the game play, though a bit difficult to learn at first, was always a good time. You flew from one location to another, often crashing your ship, and would eventually arrive at your tactical area where you usually had to fulfill a quest, i.e. fighting bad guys and saving a princess. You ran both a famous personage of Mars, and also ran the villain of one of the other players. The villain would have these misfortune cards he could play on his good guy, so you always had something to do in the game.
But in a way I regretted getting this item despite getting it for less than half the going price. None of my rpg players would play a long board game. Now I just had another item to sit around collecting dust.
That is, until my regular AD&D player Terry came by for a couple of hours of video gaming last night. For some reason I brought up John Carter, and she informed me she had read and loved the books. Wha? She did? I knew her for over 20 years, and had no idea she was a JC of M fan. Whoda thunk it?
I ran and got the game to show her, and she loved the great cover, and spent a few minutes gandering at the Barsoom guide that comes with the game (it’ll make a great resource for an RPG). So of course I asked her if she would be up for some kind of RPG game play on Mars, and she loved the idea.
So natch I am thinking about Barsoom gaming now. I would love to do a little campaign next year some time. I actually think the genre is a little light for long campaigning, but I think I would take a cue from the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, that depicted a Mars that not only had ER Burroughs flora and fauna and societies, but also that of many other literary Mars settings, such as Gulliver of Mars, and include creatures like the Hinter People and the Sorns from Out of the Silent Planet. I think there are a lot of ways to go with that.
So here I sit, with another genre campaign on my plate. Let’s see if at some point I follow through.
