From: Dave Townsend Subject: [consim-l] AAR: John Carter, Warlord of Mars Well, apparently I can reach consim-l, now. Here's something that I tried to email in September of last year. -------------------------------------------------------------- A few weeks ago I wrote, in response to Markus Stumptner's JC,WoM report: >My "game group" is also probably younger than yours, as it >usually involves my kids. At 7 and 5, I don't think they're >quite ready for JC yet. :^) Well, you know how it is: discussion makes you (well, me) pull out the game. The cover art piqued the interest of my son (the 7-almost-8-year-old), and next I knew I was finally playing this game against a live opponent. Interestingly, the lack of graphics and unfamiliarity with the source material did not seem to be a deterrent to him. I was surprised, given the competition that a SPI-era wargamish RPG has from modern-day Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. I tried to use the copious color commentary within the game to keep things interesting, and spent as little time as possible looking up rules in the interest of keeping the game moving. As such, I'm sure that we weren't playing 100% correctly. But I'll wager that we came pretty close, and we had fun doing it. Jeffrey took the role of John Carter (understandably) and I took Carthoris. The idea that a father and son would be competing was a little confusing to him at first ("Don't they like each other?") but we sorted it out. We played over several evenings. The first evening saw John Carter have unholy good luck, doing the standard hot-knife-through-butter act that seems to be John Carter's usual routine. He arrived at his first city and managed to rescue Dejah Thoris before being discovered. Meanwhile, Carthoris seemed to be always getting his flyer shot away, getting arrested after every city encounter (and failing to make any friends in jail, naturally), and in general having a hard time of things. Of course in the great cosmic scheme a Barsoomian hero still has it pretty easy -- unlike a normal RPG, he's not going to die or anything. But it looked like JC was going to get an easy win, as when we called it night he was halfway done and I was not even to my villain's first city. This evening we finished up. It initially looked like JC's luck was going to continue as before. His villains did get away, running fom Manator to Toonol and then Dusar, but of course these are all in the same general vicinity, and naturally he made the 8000 haad trip from Horz to Dusar in a single prodigious leap. By way of contrast, Carthoris eventually slogged his way to godforsaken Kobol (mostly by foot), only to have the villains run all the way to Zodanga on the other side of the planet. A lucky draw of the "Atmosphere Plant" card put Carthoris right next to Zodanga, but of course he was again discovered almost instantly and the villains ran back to Tjanath, so it was yet another trip around the globe, with nothing much to show for it other than blisters on his feet. But while Carthoris was mostly being a target for the Green Martians, John Carter was skulking around Dusar looking to kill Thurid, Matai Shang, and Salensus Oll. And here his luck finally changed, dramatically. A Treachery card made an incidental friend kidnap Dejah Thoris, and in the resulting melee the anonymous Red Martians managed to get the dread 0/0 roll, knocking JC unconsious. (I had forgotten about the Woola rule, which would have changed the details of what follows but not the ultimate ending.) This was the first of a series of mishaps for the Warlord. He escaped an Arena Duel automatically, but the Mind Battle put him down a level for several turns. He entered the city again and got an encounter with a single Red Martian. By this time we weren't even bothering with the counters. I told him that he'd kill the RM on anything other than a 1. He rolled a 1 (chuckle). Then the RM counterattacked and again got the 0/0 combo. That was one *tough* martian! Back to the dungeon for JC. He escaped again, made it to the palace to fight the villains in the throne room, and even got within 2 moves of them before they woke up. Unfortunately, after they did get alerted they pounded him good and sent him back to the dungeon again. Finally he escaped, maneuvered a little better, killed his villains, and we called the game over. Technically I think you're supposed to play until both sides finish, but further play seemed a bit anticlimatic, and it was his bedtime anyway. So we managed to have a good time, and I'd like to thank Markus for, inadvertantly, I'd guess, helping me get some gaming time in. :^) -------------------------------------------------------------- Update as of 12/2003: Jeffrey's 9, our family has read the first six JC books -- we know who Vad Varo is now -- and we haven't touched the game since *sigh*. Dave Townsend townsend@patriot.net