I like the cover though, and the interior art is weirdly high quality for what is a pretty low effort book coming out at the end of the line’s lifespan. TSR was often content to use any old crap to illustrate its Forgotten Realms sourcebooks, and those were generally marquee releases.

The reason for this level of quality is because here, and in most of the XXVc books I own, the art was produced by Continuity Studios (no doubt thanks to Flint Dille’s connection to the comic book and animation scenes). Continuity was founded by the late, great Neal Adams and the equally late, great Dick Giordano as a way for comic artists to ply their trade in other fields, like film storyboards or, in this case, RPG illustrations (I imagine that outfits like this got comic artists money far more commensurate with their skills than the funny books). The list of associate artists who’ve worked for Continuity is long, and includes folks like Larry Hama, Howard Chaykin and Al Milgrom. I kind of wish TSR gave clear credit, as I am just shy of being able to identify the artists.

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A monster book? Yeaaaaah. See, advantageous genetic manipulation in humans is pretty commonplace in XXVc to allow, say, Martian humans to live comfortably in Mars’ less Earthly environment. They’re still recognizably human, though. More extreme modifications for more extreme environments or for particular tasks (like hard labor) tend to produce “monsters,” who are perfectly suited for the tasks they are designed for. Woof, not great! This sure sounds like boutique slave labor and, like Dark Sun’s slave races, rises from racist concepts of eugenics. Dark Sun at least confronts and attempts to break down those concepts. Here they are either glossed over or presented uncritically. You can kind of get the vibe from the cover — it should read as a Frankenstein-esque mad scientist tableau, but instead it has all the critique of a portrait of a former CEO hung in an office lobby.

This all seems like a missed opportunity: genetic manipulation is essentially identified as XXVc’s central question and then all the books I have seem to quietly avoid even attempted to answer it. Maybe this sort of stuff is tackled in the adventures or other sourcebooks (I’ll never know), but it seems a shame at best and (given the racism in the source material, which is also present in the Buck Rogers Adventure Game produced in 1993) sinister at worst.

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So, yea, Mars. Mars sucks. Its the seat of power for a totalitarian government run by the solar system’s richest mainframe, by which I mean a rich jerk who had is brain downloaded into a computer (truly amazing that in our modern world, some real live rich jerks think this is the way to go). The civilized regions are ruthlessly oppressed into an efficient work force kept pacified by the promise of fiscal security, blood sport and the threat of imprisonment, conscription or worse. The wilderness, meanwhile, is full of “monsters.” It’s hard to figure out which is worse. Winninger paints this portrait with zero subtlety: Buck and his rebels need a machine to rage against. Here is that machine.

It is tempting to read the whole thing as a satire of TSR’s c-suite. You’re probably expecting me to be like “but nah,” when really, go ahead: read the whole thing as a satire of TSR’s c-suite.

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If you’ve read about TSR’s largely idiotic history, you probably know at least some of the back story. The woman who ousted Gygax was the granddaughter of John F. Dille, the publisher of the Buck Rogers comic strip (not even the damn creator, Philip Francis Nowlan, just the guy who owned the strips), and in some egregious self-dealing, she had TSR develop a board game (1988) and this RPG out of the IP. She initially stuck her brother, Flint Dille, on it (he who was responsible for the Dragonstrike video and all those D&D products with audio CDs inside), but he couldn’t deliver, so it fell to more capable hands.

Again, no one wanted this. The main touchstone for Buck at that point was the corny two-season TV series (1979), and that was primarily a cheap knock-off of Star Wars. But the boss wants what the boss wants (I should note, however, that the popular theory that Star Frontiers was killed so that Buck could live doesn’t hold water — the dates don’t line up). The thing is, though — being unwanted doesn’t mean bad. Buck Roger XXVc…is not bad. Believe it or not.

It’s basically 2E D&D with a sci-fi skin. It isn’t elegant and there is no thematic unity between the setting and the mechanics and the ranged combat is a mess, but it hangs together all right. And there is a lot of fantastic setting stuff in here, supported by excellent art (the art is legit far better than your average 2E Forgotten Realms book). Hostile AI’s, billionaire’s downloading their consciousnesses, evil megacorporations, corrupt governments, freedom fighters, pirates. There’s a lot of good stuff that was basically smothered at birth because it was Buck Rogers and no one cared.

What I’m saying is that maybe we should be so quick to dismiss a game designed by Mike Pondsmith, even if it was for a DOA property.

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