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The Book Itself
MARS is a 192 paged black and white hardcover. The cover depicts airships, a white ape soldier, and red men battling off green men. About 40% of the cover is a large vertical banner with the name of the game on it. The interior art ranges from some pretty bad pieces that look like unfinished ink drawings to a few pieces of excellent work. The art seems sparse with more bad than good.
Chapter Breakdown
Introduction (Pages 7-8)
Well the book’s table of contents tells me there is an Introduction section on page 7-8, and chapter one begins are page 9; however, there is no marking to tell you of chapter one in the actual section. This caused me confusion thinking the intro was way too long till I hit chapter two never seeing a chapter one page.
Anyways, the Introduction is nothing but the blurb on the back of the book. It is word for word the same.
Chapter One: Ancient Mars (Pages 9-34)
Chapter goes into detail of the settings history. Red Men seem to be the good protagonists who are constantly fighting the White Apes of the jungles and the Green Men of the swamps. There is also Grey Men who seem to be generally alien and evil to everyone and Earthlings who for some reason have powers the other races don’t. At one point Mars was luscious with water and life, and then it all started to disappear. The Red Men made canals from the northern water areas to their kingdoms and let the rest of the world just go. So all the races fight for control of these kingdoms with water.
The chapter continues by giving us information on the current kingdoms and major cities. The Red Men have some major cities, the White Apes have the jungles, the Green Men have the swamps, the Grey have a volcano, etc… Most of it is pretty basic and stereotypical based on the racial descriptions. With the exception of a Red Man who has gained a foothold in ruling over several tribes of Green Men seeking vengeance on his own race, most of the descriptions here seem rather lackluster. I come away feeling that I as a GM will have to add a lot to the setting to make it interesting, or to give my players a reason to care to be playing in the setting.
Chapter Two: Characters (Pages 35-71)The characters section begins by listing concepts common to MARS. They are basic concepts such as Adventurer, Outcast, Defender, and Trickster. These seem just to be thematic paragraphs explaining what the concepts are; they do not give any mechanics to support the archetype leaving that up to the player. Character creation seems to stick to the usual Savage Worlds’ ways with the exception that players start with 10 experience points. There are racial packages for each race with the Red Men filling in for the normal humans with a free edge. I find it odd that all the races are presented for play, but the world info so far does not support multi-racial parties so far. The setting so far has not given any reason what so ever for different races to ever form a group; quite the opposite seems true. The races do not get along with one another in the setting data so far, period. MARS also gives rules to create your own races, which uses the same rules as those found in one of the Savage Worlds’ science fiction toolkits. MARS also gives some new hindrances and edges appropriate to the setting, and alters a few from the core book.
Chapter Three: Gear (Pages 72-85)
The gear section begins by saying that the lists give no prices and players should just take what’s appropriate. It then spends most of the rest of the page explaining the different currency and monetary systems for each race. After being underwhelmed as to what the players are to do in this setting, I now see I have to be burdened with handling the value of everything in the game with less guidance than most games give easily. The section finishes with stats for common gear in the setting. There are weapon charts, common items, and vehicles such as air ships. Air ships?!? Cool. But this brings up another point; I didn’t realize they were in the setting. I am starting to feel the book was written expecting me to have already known the setting from somewhere else. I do not read pulp science fiction stuff, and the old serials were before my father’s time much less mine. Maybe the author expects me to have watched and read these a lot?
Chapter Four: Setting Rules (Pages 86-99)
MARS does provide several rules that can be added to Savage Worlds to fit the style of play better. PCs pretty much never die unless someone gives them a villain only “Killing Blow” when they are incapacitated. Rules for stunts and story declarations are given, allowing the players to affect the story in a more narrative type way. There rules for mooks and a villain’s henchmen. Henchmen are extras with wild dice, and mooks are all D6 stats with any hit beating Toughness taking them out types. There are stats and rules for Airships which seem to play off the vehicle rules in Savage Worlds. The optional rules here seem to have been thought over a bit more than the setting so far. At least that is the impression I get.
Chapter Five: Game Mastering (Pages 100-116)
These 16 pages are what needed to be blended into the setting info at the first of the book. It’s still not quite enough for someone like me who does not read or watch things in this genre, but it would have been at least a little helpful. The section begins telling you of the history of “Planetary Romance.” While it’s nice to know, it comes off more of someone telling you the order of his favorite books than helping you understand the genre.
The next section goes into detail about the thematic elements of the genre. Okay, this is what I have been missing. Ruined cities, romance, weird science, grand schemes, and strange vistas are explained as being the top elements of the genre. The section talks a small bit about each and truly helps me to understand the genre better. Too bad the setting fluff so far doesn’t convey it very strongly. The section even gives an adventure generator. It seems like a quick die roll chart system to quickly make an adventure. Just seems odd I can have this but not process for equipment.
Chapter Six: Beasts of Mars (Pages 117-)
This chapter gives us very little write-ups, but it does provide a several page generator for turning other creature write-ups into “Martian” form. The generator is neat, but I would have liked to see many more pre-made write-ups unique to the setting. It just seems another missed opportunity and making the setting stand out, and at attracting new people to the genre.
Chapter Seven: Slavers of Mars (Pages 134-179)
This chapter is a five part Plot Point campaign and a few other adventure seeds. The plot point I believe presents the author’s intentions with the setting better than the rest of the book. It’s basically a hack ‘n slash adventure. Sure there’s some plot, but most of the adventure is action. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s definitely not railroading, but if you are looking for an adventure to use some player intelligence. This is not it. However, if you are like the author in understanding this genre to be virtually nothing but action, it will be right up your alley.
Chapter Eight: Encounters (Pages 180-192)
This finished up the book with several NPC write-ups. There is no index, but that’s okay, there’s not enough stuff in this book to really need one.
Style is getting a 2. The layout is basic two column which is fine with me, but the art is sparse and not so great.
Substance is getting a 2. I just feel completely underwhelmed by the book. I feel it fails in trying to describe and inform on a genre and setting that not a lot of people today know or understand, and assumes too much on the GM’s part. The reasoning and lack of prices on gear is a bit ridiculous.
