Yo, Joe! My Initial thoughts on the GI Joe RPG.

 

I grew up in the 80s, and like almost every 80s kid I know, I loved GI Joe. My parents bought me the giant-sized GI Joe #1 comic. My first Joe was straight-arm Short-Fuze. When the first 5-part series, which we to this day still call "The M.A.S.S. Device" even though the official title was "A Real American Hero." IMDB tells me it's since been re-titled to include both those phrases. Kind of like "Raiders of the Lost Ark" now has "Indiana Jones and the" added to it. Everything about GI Joe captivated me as a kid. The initial years of the toy line and comics were firmly rooted in a modern military aesthetic and technology level- except for the one or two things that were meant to be cutting edge, like Flash's XMLR-1A laser rifle. Heck, a couple of the vehicles, namely the Dragonfly and Sky Striker, were barely modified real-world vehicles over ten years old at the time the franchise re-launched. Others, like the VAMP. and MOBAT, were based on prototypes or designs not adopted by the US Military. The VAMP was based on the Lamborghini Cheetah, and the MOBAT on the MBT-70. Heck, even some of the small arms were old hat by the time the figures came out, like Grunt's Vietnam-era M-16, Gung-Ho's oddly pump-action M-79 derivative, Short-Fuze's mortar, and Zap's bazooka. This was peak GI Joe for me. 

Now, I have always thought it was a damn shame that TSR didn't release both a GI Joe and Transformers RPG back in the 80s. Why TSR? Because TSR had a working relationship with Marvel thanks to the Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon, and that agreement allowed the classic Marvel Superheroes RPG to be produced. The same animation studio working on D&D was also working on GI Joe and Transformers. All the comics were produced by Marvel. The tie-in was there. And I wasn't alone in thinking this- I wrote, for my own use, and others have written and posted online conversions of the characters from GI Joe and Transformers using Marvel FASERIP stats. And if you think about it, it's sort of a perfect fit. Marvel has just enough resolution at the low end to make modern military action work, and has high-end enough stats to handle giant transforming robots who can create holograms, teleport, cause earthquakes, and other things we might otherwise classify as superpowers. In the intervening years I have also done GI Joe with Spycraft, Top Secret/S.I., and Ninjas & Superspies. When Everyday Heroes dropped, I immediately statted the original 13 Joes in that system. There had never been an official GI Joe RPG. Until now.

 Renegade Game Studio was not a name I was particularly familiar with when I heard the announcements about GI Joe and Transformers. That was quickly remedied. Along with the RPGs, Renegade has released some damn good card games with those IPs, and some GI Joe miniature and board games that look great. I'm very much intrigued by their "Powered by Axis & Allies" board game. Something that initially gave me pause, however, was that these games were advertised along with the new My Little Pony RPG, and the Power Rangers RPG. 

OK, so, I missed the bus on both those IPs the first time around. MLP wasn't on my radar other than commercials that ran in my childhood until my daughter got into it. We even picked up the previous RPG, Tails of Equestria, when Kaylee spotted it on store shelves. Power Rangers debuted shortly after I graduated, so it was in that terrible blackout spot where a teenager tries to grow up, and I never got into MMPR. Again, my kids changed that. My son loved Power Rangers, and so did my daughter. They were both rangers for Halloween one year. I watched some of both the MLP and MMPR shows with them. I still think the Yellow SPD Ranger is winking at me during the intro. So I have no hate, on the contrary I have quite a bit of respect for both those IPs. They missed me as a kid, but as an adult and a parent I appreciate the shows, and the messages they convey, especially MLP. Oh, and as an aside, Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, is also worth a watch as an adult. The in-jokes are funnier than hell. 

What alarmed me wasn't the subject matter of the MLP and MMPR games being rolled into GI Joe and Transformers per se. It was the tonal shift. I couldn't wrap my head around a game session in which Apple Jack teams up with Dr. Kat Manx to defeat Megatron and Golobulus. OK, it sounds cool when I say it now, but... anyway.

It goes without saying that I snatched up the GI Joe RPG when it arrived on game store shelves. I gave it a cursory flip-through. And then it went on my shelf. I only recently picked it back up, after listening to some YouTube videos about how the system worked, and playing a LOT of the GI Joe Deckbuilding Game. I figured I'd give it another look. I am glad I did.

Two main things had made me bounce off the GI Joe RPG. First was I didn't get the Essence20 system at first. For some reason it just didn't click. The second was more about the realities of creating a game that would encompass every version of an IP that goes back 40 years. To me, GI Joe would always be a period piece set during the Cold War. So many of the original two years worth of Joe characters backstories depended on them being Vietnam veterans. Stalker, Snake-Eyes, Wild Bill, Duke, etc. The tech was 80s contemporary with the occasional bit of superscience, like the MASS Device or Weather Dominator. But mostly, a tank was a tank, and at least in the original 5-parter, a gun was a gun. Snow Job uses an actual firearm in the battle at the crystal caves. There are more firearm sounds throughout the miniseries.

This version of GI Joe encompasses technologies that just don't fit in the GI Joe of my youth. One of the character roles gets a freaking energy shield as part of the role. All Joes have satellite uplink tablets. Cool stuff, to be sure, but outside the realm of what Joe was to me. Thing is, there have been a couple of generations since 10-year-old me sat down to watch GI Joe. And the game needs to either serve up their Joe as well, or go against the current presentation of the IP and call itself a period piece. Of course the former is the more lucrative option.

So I sat down with my fellow GM and frequent co-conspirator Ed, and we each made two characters for the GI Joe RPG one afternoon- and damned if the game didn't just "click" in a way it hadn't before. As we stepped through character creation, we started to see that under the hood of Essence20 are common concepts from d20-derived games, mixed with some new or borrowed mechanics. Origin replaced race/species/ancestry. Role replaced class. Skill proficiency was expressed a a die type, sort of like Pathfinder 2e had a lovechild with Savage Worlds. Essences were Ability Scores with the raw number eliminated to just reflect the modifier. It all suddenly made sense. 

I created Inkwell, a Marine Combat Correspondent, who used her journalistic and interpersonal skills for the Joe team but becomes a bit distracted when she's attempting to observe and record things. This "hangup" comes from the option available to choose more than one Influence, for Inkwell I chose Artisan with a focus in writing, and Professional with a focus in journalism. One influence is free, you may select up to two more, but they come with hangups. I like this, it gives the character an interesting weak spot. Inkwell was created with the Officer role, even though she's an E-4. Officer is a catch-all role for leadership, and enlisted/NCO characters can have the Officer role without being officers. As a focus I chose battlefield psychology. This gives Inkwell some pretty bard-like abilities to bolster her allies. We got to equipment, and find that it's done in a very innovative way, Equipment in which a character is proficient can be used without penalty, just like in any other d20 game. If a character has a "Qualification" however, not only can they use the equipment, they can automatically bring it on any mission without requesting it. Requests are handled by the requisition mechanic, and some roles, notably the Officer, can have an effect on the requisition process.

By the end of character creation, I felt like I had a much better grasp on the underpinnings of the Essence20 engine. We also created a character with random elements. Instead of allocating 12 points to the 4 Essences, we rolled 12d4 to see where the points landed. If given a choice for things like influences, origin, and role, we rolled randomly to select them. I ended up with an ex-COBRA Commando with a focus in infiltration called Overthrow. Thanks to an influence from The Cobra Codex, I found that Overthrow was unhappy with the way the system worked in his home nation, and joined COBRA to try to change things. He left COBRA, and joined GI Joe hoping to fix the system from the inside.

In closing- I've overcome one of my two speedbumps to enjoying this game. The system now makes sense to me, and I very much enjoy the character creation process. My issue with the modernization of GI Joe still nags me a bit. There's enough equipment and vehicles from the classic era where this isn't a problem in those areas. The integration of energy shields with the Vanguard role still sticks in my craw. I dunno if I can just handwave it as plot immunity, but we'll see.