The 80s don’t have a monopoly on bad RPG licenses. Exhibit A: The Lawnmower Man RPG from 1992.

Let’s start with the astounding: this book is 180 pages long. You would think you’d go simple with an RPG licensed off a not very good Stephen King film, but no. Leading Edge Games made a bunch of licensed RPGs (Terminator 2, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Aliens) and they are all very, extremely, painstakingly complicated. 50 pages of this book is dedicated to tables and firearms.

The game takes up after the movie ends, with CyberJobe (part of me can’t believe I am typing this) having taken over the DataNet and waging the War for Virtual Reality. Players take the roles of various agents setting themselves against Jobe and his minions, both in a murky techno-conspiratorial real world and the brand new virtual one. There are lots of rules for combat, both conventional and within virtual reality – this is partly because all the Leading Edge Games licensed RPGs used the same complicated house system, I guess so you could mix and match them like GURPS and finally find out if Dracula or the Xenomorph would win in a fight (Dracula, obvs).

Aside of the guns, the illustrations are all stills from the movie. In fact, every page in the book is accompanied by quotes from the film (often with no clear relation to the text it is adjacent to). They must have most of the film’s script in here. I guess that means this is a must for all of you Lawnmower Man super fans out there? Are you out there? Anybody?