“The Warfare of Barsoom in Miniature”

Copyright 1974, Tactical Studies Rules

By Gary Gygax and Brian Blume
Illustrated by Greg Bell

5 1/2" x 8 1/2" booklet, 57 pages

Contributed to the Museum by Luther Martin

Warriors of Mars is not a role playing game. We include it in the museum because it represents the flip-side of Dungeons & Dragons. Both rules sets were published in 1974, with Gary Gygax as the lead author, and both were an attempt to write rules to allow games about pulp fantasy or science-fantasy using miniatures rules as a base. Where D&D focused more on individual figures with armies in the background, Warriors of Mars focuses on the armies, with individual figures taking a prominent role in those battles. There was also some expected cross-fertilization of these two games. D&D has Barsoomian wildlife in its encounter tables, never explained, while Warriors of Mars tells readers to buy D&D if they want to conduct "individual adventures" in the pits beneath Barsoomian cities.

Physically, Warriors of Mars bears a strong resemblance to original D&D, with the same typesetting and similar style illustrations. Because these are miniatures rules, the material is rather different. Rather than go into the details of the miniatures game (which seems to be fairly basic and workable, although we are poor judges of miniatures rules), we will comment on the suitability of these rules for role playing.

Characters

Unlike D&D, Warriors of Mars is intended to work within a single coherent universe. The prominent characters from Barsoom are provided: John Carter, Tars Tarkas, Cathoris, and others have combat values. As is appropriate to the setting, John Carter is all but invincible, with Tars Tarkas only slightly weaker. John Carter and Carthoris have special jump moves. There is no provision for creating new characters, although the experience point system implies players choose someone of relatively low power and work them up, much like D&D.

Combat

Units are rated for their combat ability in levels, ranging from 1 (females) to 13 (John Carter). Regular troops (Helium soldiers, perhaps?) are 5th level; Green Martian males are 6th. Melee combat for individuals is fairly simple. Initiative follows a rigid sequence, being decided by, in order, surprise, weapon length, charging, man or creature, and finally, who moved. The attacker compares his level to the defender, and rolls 3d6 against a pair of target numbers found on a combat table. Beating the more difficult number means the defender dies; failing that, beating the lesser number means the defender is wounded. If the attacker fails to hit, the defender may roll on the table to try to obtain initiative. If not, the attacker keeps initiative and attacks again. After one side has had three attacks, initiative automatically shifts to the other side. The number of wounds a figure can take is based entirely on its level. A Regular can take 6 wounds; John Carter can take 15.

Role Playing on Barsoom

There are eight pages dedicated to "Individual Adventures." These basic rules include simple encounter tables, a simple D&D style experience table to boost the level of one's character (remembering there is no way to generate characters) and descriptions of adventure hooks. Most interestingly to us is the section on adventuring in the pits: readers of Barsoom may remember many cities featured underground tunnels. The authors recommend interested players to read all eleven of the original books, and "pick up a copy of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns". (This is exactly as it appears.) Adventure hooks also include capturing and taming wildlife as battle companions, or dealing with assassins. There are notes on the honor code of Barsoom, which has most warriors ignoring their radium rifles and fighting with swords.

Background Material

The book includes four hemispherical maps of the planet and some brief character notes on some of the major personalities (John Carter, Ulysses Paxton, Carthoris, Tars Tarkas, and Solon of Okar). We have notes on the major races of Barsoom: Red, White, Black, Yellow, and Green Martians. A few creatures are described: white apes, darseen, malagor, and orluks. Readers are pointed to the original Edgar Rice Burroughs stories for all other inhabitants of Barsoom, although combat statistics are given for a few more creatures: apts, banths, calots, plant men, siths, thoats, and zitidars.

Of course, because this is a miniatures game, we have combat statistics on fliers and the armies of the various major powers.

Summary

Warriors of Mars is not an RPG, but more of a "proto-RPG". The rules suggest individual, D&D-style campaigns and give some notes on how to do it, but a referee is pretty much on her own. In a way, that's a shame, because Barsoom would have been a great setting for RPGs. Heritage Miniatures put out a game in 1978 (See the Encyclopedia of Role Playing Games), but from the description , it was also primarily a miniatures game. GDW's Space: 1889 mined much of the same territory as Barsoom, but it avoided any messy copyright battles with the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. Back in 1974, an enterprising referee could have easily modified D&D to work on Barsoom with the help of these rules.

The rules have their sexist side: females are decidedly inferior to same-race males in combat, but this could simply be Gygax and Blume adhering to Edgar Rice Burrough's original material. If one was going to use these rules as a basis for role playing, there's no reason a female PC couldn't be as powerful as a male, although the attitudes of the Barsoomian peoples may need some adjusting.

This book is a real rarity. The copyright holders of Edgar Rice Burroughs's work forced Tactical Studies Rules to stop publication, and this game went out of print very quickly. It's more of a curiosity than anything else today: any referee who really wanted to game on Barsoom would probably do as well to work directly from the original source material. We feel this game sits in the Museum best for those old D&D players who wondered where the Barsoom encounters in D&D came from.

January 29, 2004

—RAD