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A little context is required to understand what went wrong. Cyborg Commando was published in 1987, a time at which the themes of role-playing games were developing towards darker themes. This was, after all, the period which produced the apocalyptic Twilight 2000, the darkly humorous Paranoia and the grim fantasy world of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that, when veterans of game design Gary Gygax, Frank Mentzer and Kim Mohan decided to create Cyborg Commando, they picked up on themes that were popular at the time. Unfortunately they applied the design sensibilities of the 1970s to the gaming themes of the 1980s, an unholy union that could only produce something like Cyborg Commando.
The game’s background is set in 2035, a time at which earth is invaded by evil aliens known as the Xenoborgs. Fortunately, in the years between our present and the game timeline the world has developed a new kind of soldier, capable of fighting off these foes, the Cyborg Commando!
Or rather CYBORG COMMANDO as the writers are so fond of the phrase that it is capitalised whenever it appears.
As befitting a game of its period Cyborg Commando was a boxed game, coming with two books, a booklet and a set of dice. The dice, at least in my edition, are nicely pre-inked and polished, meaning that the purchaser got at least one quality component.
The CCF manual is the players’ book and introduces many of the basic concepts of the game, including the d10x system. This is a dice rolling system in which a result is generated by rolling two ten-sided dice and multiplying the numbers generated to produce a result between 1 and 100. In itself it is not a bad system. Rather than producing a bell curve or a linear number range, results are clustered around the lower end of the possible number range. There are many positive things to be said for this system; it rewards gains at low skill levels more than at high skill levels and is relatively simple.
On the other hand it does produce some oddities. The range is very granular and at times uneven. As the CCF manual helpfully points out on its third dice-rolling table, increasing a skill rating from 32 to 35 will mean that you are only 2/3% more likely to succeed at an action, whilst increasing a skill rating from 35 to 36 means that you are 3% more likely to succeed at an action.
“On its third dice-rolling table?” The tables in question aren’t actually part of the rules, but are part of a three page section of the rulebook, which includes three tables and five graphs, showing the reader how the d10x system is the best possible dice system for a game. This tone is symptomatic of the rules. At several times the reader is lectured on how they should use the metric system in play, rather than the “archaic and unwieldy English [sic] system”. The rules, of course, go on to tell you that the standard units of measurement can be either miles or kilometres; they are, apparently so similar as to be interchangeable. Rather than using a single system of measurements, the rules lecturer the reader on what they should be using, but provide poorly matching approximates in both systems and end the GMs book with a useful reference table of weights and measures, including conversion equations of troy grains to troy ounces because we’re apparently playing the game of cyborg fucking jewellers or something.
For a game with such attention to detail, character creation is remarkably simple. The player selects their character’s stats and skills and then apply the modifiers imposed by the cybernetic body. There are games which elegant in their simple execution. This is one of the other games.
A starting character has 60 character points, of which 20 to 50 must be used for stats and the remaining 10 to 40 for skills. There are no guidelines to what particular stat scores mean, though a character must spend at least five points in each of the three stats, mental, neural and physical. Human averages are given, with, for instance women having an average of 15 in their neural stat, with men having 10. Since neural represents, amongst other things, the ability to recover from being drugged, we learn, indirectly, that women have an 8% better chance of recovering from being stunned.
A character’s mental stat is particularly important as it determines how many skill fields a character may purchase. Since this number is one’s mental stat divided by three and the average human has a mental stat of ten, it means that the average human can purchase three skill fields. Thus, a policeman might have Movement: Vehicles, Combat: Unarmed Combat and Law: Enforcement, but would be unable to fire a pistol, since they would lack the ability to purchase Combat: Personal Weapons. Let us hope that the police employ exceptionally intelligent individuals.
The skill system of Cyborg Commando is confused by the use of a numeric system of skill designation which resembles that of a library. For instance, the categories of combat is 200, whilst the skill fields of unarmed combat and personal weapons are 210 and 220 respectively. The writers helpfully change the numeric system between its introduction on page 12 and the rest of the book, starting with different designations on page 13.
The final part of character creation involves applying the modifications of the cyborg body, which mostly include adding extra skills and 100 points to the character’s physical stat. This means that, despite having a robot body, a character’s cyborg strength is influenced by their biological strength before their brain was sucked from their body.
The book also helpfully includes an advanced character generation system. The user may wish to adopt this for its additional stats, such as mental integrity and neural recovery, which have obvious game-enriching properties. The advanced rules also include stat based data, such as speed (derived from neural capacity – the average woman runs 50% faster than the average man). The advanced rules also include an increased skills list which is more encyclopaedic than useful.
The highlights of the skill table include Domestic Arts I: Cooking, Domestic Arts II: Entertaining Guests, Simple Communication Devices: Flag Signals and Veterinary Medicine: Marine. This is evidence of the game breaking the new ground that the authors intended; never before has marine biology figured so highly in a role-playing game. Of course, skills are fairly useless, since you may only gain a very small number and, even then, one is likely to fail most of the time. Why? Well, to gain a skill rating beyond ten, one must be educated at a top secret military base. The average man or woman on the street must be content with a skill rating of ten, giving them a mere 27% chance of success. Do you want to cook a meal? Roll that d10x and try to get a result equal or less than ten. That’s if you have Domestic Arts I: Cooking in the first place. It is fortunate that Cyborg Commandos don’t need to eat.
The remainder of the CCF manual covers combat and the construction and intrinsic abilities of a cyborg commando. These sections go naturally together as the only weapons the game describes are those built into the bodies of the cyborgs. A commando can fire electrostatic shocks or lasers out of their fingers and microwaves or sonic blasts out of the palms of their hands. All this costs power. A cyborg commando has 200 power units (PU) contained in internal batteries. As a rough guide, it costs 5 PU to fire a laser and 1 PU to function for the 8.6 seconds of each combat turn. The reader may wish to note that a cyborg commando will run out of power after half an hour of combat. If they fire their laser once every 8.6 second combat round they will run down in less than five minutes. One wonders why the cyborgs’ designers didn’t fit in bigger batteries or, more simply, give the cyborgs guns. The pictures in the rulebook give the cyborgs guns but, the designers vision was that cyborgs should fire lasers out of their fingers, so guns appear nowhere in the main rulebooks.
Combat is fairly simple. The player has to roll a d10x under the targets defence value and, if successful, the target takes damage. This system is, in fact, so simple that a character’s skill has no impact on the roll.
The CCF manual ends with an experience table. As a character gains experience they gain a chance to be promoted. This seems reasonable. If promoted they gain a decrease in their combat rating, which makes it harder for them to miss an enemy in combat outright. This decrease only takes place if a character is promoted. It doesn’t matter if a cyborg is the most experienced warrior on earth, if they don’t go to a promotion board they’ll never gain the benefits of their experience. The promotion table also includes a “physical stat” column which is never explained. Does a high-ranking cyborg need to be able to lift 2.5 tonnes before being promoted to the rank of brigadier general? Do they gain the ability when promoted? This mystery is never explained.
The second book in the Cyborg Commando set is the campaign manual, allegedly written for the most part by Gary Gygax. The book is designed to help the GM with running campaigns and to this end it provides the most useful information possible, starting with 31 pages on world maps, population figures, population calculation equations and lists of cyborg commando bases. I say lists advisedly, for no real information is provided on them other than their location. Interestingly enough, there are on average twice as many cyborg commando bases on a continent than cyborg commandos and the populated bases rarely have more than one type 2 (that is to say, player character) cyborg.
We also learn that Bulgaria has long been considered part of western Asia and that Skegness is the perfect place in Britain for a cyborg commando supply base.
Skipping over the world overview we come to a section on the aliens and their biology. We have been warned that they are “very realistic aliens”, with the game being based on hard science; as the writer ominously warns, “every detail may someday become reality”.
The xenoborgs, 820,312 of which have invaded the earth, are giant insects with big organic lasers and electromagnet guns. I say “organic” for all the xenoborg equipment is possibly grown organically, as hinted at some points in the text, or possibly not, as hinted at others. We must not be sceptical because insect electromagnet guns “may someday become reality”.
Xenoborgs are constructed out of a single type of organic cell, the X-cell. The X-cell is around 3.5 cm across and is apparently flat. Having big cells allows the xenoborg to breathe by osmosis, even underwater, convert water to oxygen and hydrogen and use the entire collection of body cells as a brain. They may harden their outer layer of cells to the strength of mineral quartz merely by dehydrating them. This is all possible because the xenoborgs are “very realistic aliens”.
They can only be killed by a direct nuclear strike or a cyborg firing lasers out of its fingers.
The final booklet in the Cyborg Commandos box is the adventure notes booklet. Mostly this contains advice on how to act as player or GM. The booklet also contains the rules on how to use combat skills in combat. Apparently. The rules don’t seem to have been designed with the game’s combat rules in mind, introducing several new concepts in a few short paragraphs. It would probably be easy to mesh the two systems, but then it would be easier to go to a shop and buy a game that is actually good.
So what went wrong?
Fundamentally, the problem with the Cyborg Commando game is the idea that playing cyborgs shooting lasers out of their fingers, in a world overwhelmed by aliens, was in some way cool. The writers were sadly mistaken in this. The background seems ridiculously silly and contrived. The alien race has invaded earth “just because” and is virtually undefeatable despite the fact that the book points of there being only one alien for every 11,600 humans. The aliens may be tough, but, at those odds, it is hard to believe that the various world militaries shouldn’t be able to defeat them.
The problem is that the premise isn’t very involving. One might get dramatic tension out of civilian amateurs fighting powerful enemies, a theme invoked in the film “Alien” and in the role-playing game “The Price of Freedom”. One might get dramatic tension out of trained military types being placed in an untenable situation, or against overwhelming odds, such as in the film “Aliens”, or in “Twilight 2000”. Alternatively the idea of a hidden menace works well, triggering paranoid responses, with the film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or in the game “Paranoia”. However, openly wandering around and blowing up giant insect aliens with guns just isn’t very involving as the basic premise of the game.
The situation is made worse by the scientific slant. Cyborg Commando has the poorest take on hard science fiction ever to grace paper. It is possible to have an involving game with biologically unlikely aliens, but spending large amounts of space on transparently bogus pseudo-science openly invites the contempt of the reader.
Originally the game was planned as revolving around three boxed sets, the second one, Cyborg Champion, apparently being some kind of mecha game, in which the characters were encased in giant robot suits. Unsurprisingly it never saw the light of day.
The final assessment must be that whilst Cyborg Commando isn’t the worst game written, it is outstandingly poor. This is a product that should be held up to designers as a lesson in how not to write a game.
