...You ever hear of Encounter Critical by Riley and Ireland? A long-forgotten piece of amateur RPG design from the 70s, originally published "on a school mimeograph" and sold through hobby stores, and now available only as a scan.
It's one of those early masterpieces in which fantasy and science fiction tropes collide. And yes, that does mean the currency is "gold credits".
Quest into the slaver kingdoms or hurl yourself into the galaxies of space to find wealth and destiny. Your tactics and your character are yours to control as you undertake ENCOUNTER CRITICAL.
...Of course, it's a joke. This
"forgotten gem from 1978" was created by S. John Ross in 2004, with flourishes such as advertisements for an official Gazette (a newsletter in four supposed issues), as well as a reference to "a forthcoming line of Encounter Critical miniatures" and a search for a book deal.
Originally it was cast back in time 26 years from the true 2004 publication. Now 21 years have passed in turn.
How does the hoax hold up?
🛸 The aesthetic is perfectly on point: typewritten; amateur; hand-crafted and hand-drawn; retro; photocopied
🛸 The prose is breathlessly earnest, and preoccupied with its own relationship to conventions of war gaming
🛸 The game is full of sci-fi plagiarism and the kind of dated sexism obsessed with 'seduction' and 'doxies'
🛸 It's the classic nine-stat system we all know and love: Adaptation, Dexterity, ESP, Intellect, Leadership, Luck, Magic Power, Robot Nature, and Strength.
Um
The insane retro creativity of Encounter Critical
You roll for character race. Possibilities include, on the fantasy side, 'Amazons', 'Frankensteins', and Hobbits I mean 'Hoblings'. The purloined sci fi IP includes 'Klengons', 'Planetary Apes', and 'Vulkins'.
You can also play as a 'Wooky' and be penalised for wearing armour, although of course 'a Wooky will seek out magical rings or energy armor when it is available'.
You also have a chance to end up as...
You also may be a mutant, and therefore suffer from character traits such as Cannibal Urges, Allergy to laser, Unusual Sexual Gifts, or Self-Consuming Brain.
The writing mostly serves the "lost 70s indie game" in-joke, but also has its genuine funny moments:
Amateur indie design
The mechanics, while harking back to OD&D, very much like they're just being felt out.
🛸 Warriors get followers and/or animal companions, and an underdetermined number of multiattacks.
🛸 Hit points, damage, and number of monsters appearing, are given as ranges instead of the underlying dice codes.
🛸 The nine stats barely interact at all with the (percentage-based) class abilities, only underpinning the general character abilities.
🛸 Instead, a class's key stats give xp bonuses or penalties. So does Intellect, which means it'll stack for the classes with Intellect as a qualifying stat (pioneer or warlock). If they roll maximum Int they will get +20% experience as well as "a 10% chance at experience bonus", i.e., 10% chance of doubling.
🛸 The terminology is slightly inconsistent.
🛸 The game is stuffed with percentage tables.
In these ways and others, it's all deeply connected to OD&D (while taking sniping pot shots at that game).
The book is laid out as if you pull out the middle pages to use at the table. Pages 23 and 27 are ("mistakenly"?) transposed, breaking the table of monsters.
Which includes extremely compelling types such as: Asteroid Worm, Bee Girl, Dragon of Wisdom, Rogue Robodroid, Sky Piranha, and:
(The entry for the Phasic Wolf helpfully notes that it is "phasic in nature".)
The intended 70s style rings true, IMO
An incautiously designed disease table gives you a chance of getting a brain disorder from sex work. Or you could get the "Pestilence of Dark Withering" or "Curse of Seven Hundred Minds" from a rusty nail.
There is a combat system which somehow combines simplicity, percentage rolls, underspecification, and assuming an understanding of how OD&D did things.
Does the ranged weapon table have "sling", "musket", "tommy gun", and "phasic sniper rifle" on it? Yes. Is it possible to do more damage with the sling than said rifle? Yes.
The text is very persnickety and period-appropriate, with pot shots at house rules and gaming styles, etc. It describes its spells as "correctly balanced", snubs spell levels, and says the authors prefer "a more science fiction approach where a spell is a spell".
(Speaking of spells, I love that a science fiction game has a spell that lets you travel... 500 miles.)
The inscrutably-named abilities are pretty great. Consume alien, Ensorcel, Illicit, Machine friend, and See the future all on one character sheet!
...And Seduce, of course. I've draw a veil over all the gendered stuff, but it's there – doxies, amazons, succubuses, etc. While it's clearly intended as a send-up of the 70s trappings, and works as such, the benefit of another 20 years makes it feels awkward and unnecessary. Rather than making a lot of content actually hinge on it, it could have been presented as a one-note joke.
The world of Encounter Critical
In the accompanying adventure, goblins are stealing the brainwaves of abducted girls to fuel up a spaceship in a warlock's lair.
This takes place in the game's setting: "Vanth, a fantasy world of adventure". (Is Vanth just Xanth, but different?)
It comes, of course, with a map:
It feels delightfully like the kind of thing I would have been making as an early teen.
My copy of Encounter Critical is from almost twenty years ago. These days you can find it for free on DriveThruRPG. Apparently there's an updated version.
To me, this game reads like a how-it-could have been of the original D&D, like an alternate history Dalluhn Manuscript. The game that resulted from Arneson watching some slightly different films.
Well done.
