TSR’s 1993 High Adventure Cliffhangers: The Buck Rogers Adventure Game is designed around the original Buck Rogers comic strip. The game covers the first major story arc - the war against the Han (the Mongolian rulers of the Earth). The technology is jumping belts (which reverse gravity for the wearer), rocket pistols (like explosive needle guns), airships, biplanes, and disintegrator weaponry. The world of the 25th century is summarized, from the orgs (organized resistance to the Han rule of America) to the Golden Dragons, from major personalities like Buck and Wilma to minor players like the Wild West cowboys Buck stayed with for a while. A largish adventure introduces players to the setting the same way Buck himself was - waking up from a mysterious-gas-induced suspended animation to find themselves in this war-torn and ripe-for-rebellion North America of the future. Most of the game’s art is borrowed from Dick Calkins’ 1930’s work. The three books’ prose is clean and easy to understand, the selected strip art is placed appropriately, and all the major components of the first arc are touched on - if nothing else, High Adventure Cliffhangers: The Buck Rogers Adventure Game is a nice reflection of the early days of science fiction, capturing its two-fisted do-gooder style of adventure.
Along with the three books, maps and fold-up counters are included, as was common for the TSR’s boxed games of the period. Ten six-sided dice and a bag of white and red poker chips (which are used to influence the action) round out the package. The box it all comes in is rather large for what’s included, but does hold folded counters and the game’s one supplement with ease.
The game itself uses a simple d6 system. Each character has four abilities (Strength, Aim, Brains, and Health), which are each rated one of four ranks at character creation (OK, Good, Better, Best). Skills are associated with each ability, which raise your rank one level for that activity; characters start out with five skills spread out amongst the four abilities. Movement and combat are regulated by action points. Action resolution is, as I mentioned, d6-based - your rank determines the number of dice rolled, sixes re-roll and add, and there are target numbers to beat. There is a cap of eight dice for any single roll. Earned Experience Chips help increase your chances.
Combat is lightning-quick due primarily to two factors. First off, the heroes automatically have initiative, though certain situations can change this. Secondly, there’s the system’s lack of hit points. Each time a character is successfully hit, his player makes a Health roll (with the target number determined by the attack). Failure means the character's down and out, but some weapons require a second roll to avoid death. Success on this “mortality roll” lets the character live, sustaining a wound and receiving some penalties to action resolution. Vehicular combat, a common feature in the strip with all the biplanes and airships the orgs and the Han use, is also touched on.
The introductory adventure is easy for new GM's to run and includes a lot of the common strip features: betrayal by Killer Kane, fights with Bad Bloods, airship battles, etc. This adventure is one of the most newbie-friendly ones I’ve ever seen, giving advice on about any conceivable character action and plenty of presentation hints. Following the adventure, designing your own Buck Rogers-style adventure is covered. Placing special emphasis on capturing the right style nicely shows that TSR really wanted to marry the game to the source material. All the beginner advice and hand-holding strikes me as strange, though, because the game seems to have limited entry-level appeal. I'm not sure that there are many fans of the original Buck Rogers who are young enough to have never played RPG’s, and all the original fans are probably too old to give a care about games like this.
The War Against the Han boxed supplement fleshes out the story line of the game beyond the original set. Two books and additional maps and counters are included. The first book is of more world details as outlined in the continuing story of the strips, and the other is the actual campaign. The campaign book also covers campaign generation in the same way adventure generation was described in the first release. For those interested in following the strip continuity through the Pact of Perpetual Peace, this set’ll do it.
Future releases were hinted at, which probably would’ve started with coverage of the Tiger Men of Mars (who are mentioned in the core book), but none appeared. Given that the “Buck Rogers” part of the game’s name was a subtitle, I also have to wonder if there were to be other separate titles in the High Adventure Cliffhangers line. As it is, the game remains one of TSR's most puzzling releases. Lorraine Williams, the then-head of TSR, supposedly made TSR buy the rights to Buck Rogers from her (her grandfather was the original publisher). I can't see any way other than an iron-fisted rule from her that the rest of TSR could've gone along with another Buck Rogers game. The previous one had tanked shortly before and there wasn’t exactly overwhelming public demand for RPG coverage of the original strips. The game’s laser-sharp focus on the source material gives it little immediate application outside of simulating the original Buck Rogers adventures. I have heard repeated rumors that TSR had market research showing that gamers would be less prone to buying a game simply because of the Buck Rogers name on it. Sales of this version prove that out - many have never heard of it and you can still find shrink-wrapped copies on Ebay and online used game stores all the time.
So is the game worth it if you come across it? Personally, I'm a big fan of the original Buck Rogers, so this game is a favorite of mine. The system is clean and quick, and is worded and designed to capture the clean and quick action of the series. While, like the original TSR Buck Rogers RPG, it revolves around rebellion against tyrannical overlords, it does so in a much more timeless manner than the XXVc game’s awkward foray into cyberpunk. The game lends itself to pickup sessions remarkably well, so, if anything, it can be a fun one-nighter every now and again for a change of pace.
Buck Rogers was the first science fiction hero, beating out Flash Gordon (who remains more popular because he made it to film first). It’s too bad that despite efforts like the RPG's, Buck will probably be most remembered mostly for the 1970's TV series. The “strip bible” for the original Buck Rogers stressed plausible extrapolation of science, equality of the sexes, and most of all, high adventure. These tenets are carried into High Adventure Cliffhangers: The Buck Rogers Adventure Game. For those curious about how science fiction’s first hero got started, this game is a decent entry point into Buck’s world of high adventure.
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