Under The Hood With "Army Men": A 5E Game With a Lot of Tactical Add-Ons

Folks who have been around here for the past few weeks have likely heard that my first RPG "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" is now live on Kickstarter! And while I've been talking about the game in very general terms the past few weeks, for this particular Crunch installment I wanted to get into what I did with the game's mechanics. Because while it uses the rules of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition as a basis, there is a lot more to it than the basic package you might expect with a standard 5E game.

EDIT: Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic is now available on Drive Thru RPG!

Let's pop the hood, and see what's going on beneath your top coat.

Before we get into the details this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

The Origin of "Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic"

I've talked about it in a couple of interviews thus far, but for those who haven't caught any of the media I've been sharing around, Army Men was first devised several years ago when I was more or less put on retainer for a new game company who wanted to put together a product they could break into the market with. The head of the company wanted to design something that would appeal to the wargaming crowd, and while they originally wanted something that ran on the FATE system, after a lot of discussion we finally settled on using a system that was going to be more tactical in nature, but which was still going to be simple enough to pull in newer gamers.

And while there were a lot of options available at the time, DND 5E was definitely king of the heap. Even now, post-OGL, it's still a system known to a large portion of the tabletop community. It might not be their favorite game, but it is still one they won't need a crash course to learn how to play. And while this game was originally designed as an add-on for DND 5E, it is now a stand-alone game which uses the parts of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition that have gone into the Creative Commons.

However... I felt the need to make additions.

First, Tactical Options

Targets acquired.

As we all know, Dungeons and Dragons was originally inspired by miniature combat games. It's one reason that, for all its story potential, DND (and games that use its various engines) is still a very combat-forward game. The 5th Edition, of course, was a little light on tactical rules... so I felt that should be corrected. Some additions I made include:

- Suppressing Fire: A standard tactic used by modern militaries, this maneuver is a particularly useful in Army Men where it allows you to give your allies cover... but it may be a tactic your enemies use against you as well!

- Taking a Knee: No one stands up during a firefight. Dropping to a knee is similar to going prone, but it only gives you some of the AC bonus. It does allow you to make better use of existing cover, however, and it's easier to get up and run from kneeling than from full prone.

- Flanking: While the 5th Edition of DND rules did have optional rules for flanking, Army Men makes them standard.

- The 5 Foot Step: A rule that was removed for 5th Edition, I felt it was a useful thing to bring back. For those not familiar, it allows someone to take a single, 5-foot-step in any direction without triggering an opportunity attack. This removes the need to spend your entire turn disengaging in case you just want to step behind cover, or give yourself a bit of breathing room before emptying your clip.

- Morale: Army Men has a morale system that takes you from +1 (battle frenzy), to -4 (utterly demoralized). This system provides a fluid way for battle to shift and change, and things like the Shake It Off action can be used to remove negatives from you and your comrades. It also means things like critical hits, and slaying enemy commanders, can have a serious effects on your team's ability to keep fighting.

Streamlined Gear Acquisition and Character Advancement

One of the major challenges that Game Masters have to deal with in traditional DND games is treasure acquisition, and making sure that PCs are properly equipped. This means you need to give them proper amounts of gold, make sure they have proper gear in treasure hoards, and so on, and so forth. Not only that, but if you follow the traditional rules, you also have to make sure your players are getting enough XP to level up, and that they're given the proper number of challenges to justify that reward.

Army Men does away with both of these concerns, in a way that gives more power to Game Masters.

Treasure management is a thing of the past.

First and foremost, Army Men does not have any XP; player characters will level up roughly every 3 missions. This saves GMs and players a lot of headaches when it comes to keeping track of who is close to leveling up, but it also removes the onus to solve problems in a particular fashion so that players will get the points. If they can sneak past periphery guards to steal the documents they were sent in to get without being caught, the mission is accomplished. If they infiltrate a militia as double agents, get everyone absolutely hammered, and then arrest them while they're passed-out drunk, the mission is still accomplished. And if they build layers of booby traps for a nest of Vespoids, and then lead the insects into the maze of tripwires, stake traps, landmines, etc., so that they barely have to pull a trigger at all to win the battle, the mission was still accomplished.

This flexible style also lends itself well to pick-up games, as well as character swaps due to death, wanting to try something new, etc. If someone new shows up (or a player had to make a new character), there's not really a lot of hemming and hawing over adding the new party member; command simply assigned them to the squad, here's their specialty, now shake hands and share your names, you've got a mission to complete.

Secondly, while characters in Army Men may have personal items and gear, a majority of what they're bringing into the field was given to them by the military before they were sent off on their mission. This removes the GM's need to make sure everyone is getting gold and treasure, because the PCs can just fill out a requisition form for the weapons, armor, ammo, etc., they want. But the Game Master can also restrict the gear that's available to add challenge/threat to a particular mission, if they so choose.

The very same mission with the same layout and the same enemies can be a very different game depending on what you allow the PCs to take into the field. If they're going to be fighting waves of Vespoids, but you give them huge belts of machine gun ammo, boxes of grenades, and high-quality armor, then it's going to be a Hollywood blockbuster sort of setup, with bullets flying and bugs dying. But if the PCs have standard armor, limited ammo, and they have to scrounge additional weaponry from the destroyed wreck of a base while avoiding Vespoid patrols, now that mission is going to feel tense and dangerous, with the squad choosing sneakier approaches, conserving ammo, and trying to keep moving.

Guns, Armor, and More!

Lastly, something I tried to do with this game was to try to avoid what's been dubbed the D20 Modern problem. Which is, namely, a game that has page, upon page, upon page of firearms, but where there's no real functional, mechanical difference between most of them. What I wanted to do instead was to present weapons and armor choices that each had their own strengths, unique capabilities, and which will allow players to really customize their characters in meaningful ways.

From plate carriers that can sacrifice a certain amount of armor to negate critical hits, to ballistic shields that can bring an old-world aesthetic to a modern battlefield, to shotguns rammed full of shrapnel to wreck utter devastation on close-range targets, there's all kinds of unusual options for players to play around with.

One shot, one kill.

And speaking of character customization, I altered both the way character backgrounds work, and introduced the Exploits System.

The changes to backgrounds is fairly simple. They still take the same form they did in Dungeons and Dragons 5E, but the difference is that each background gives you access to a specific, mechanical ability, in addition to a bonus exploit. These background abilities might be the power to requisition bonus equipment because you were a supply sergeant, so you know who to make the right phone calls to. Alternatively you might have been an irregular, so you can gain short-lived proficiencies in skills you don't normally have. You might be a spy with a cover identity, or a conscript who has friends in low places, allowing you to call in favors from the criminal elements of the setting.

And what is the Exploits System? Well, for folks who've played older editions of the game, it's basically the DND 3.5 version of feats. For those who haven't, they're a series of abilities that can shape the unique things your character is capable of doing when combined with their class features and background ability. Characters gain 1 exploit every odd level (including at creation), as well as an exploit from their background.

Exploits can do everything from making you better at hand-to-hand fighting, to granting you proficiency with certain types of weapons and armor, to allowing you to speak different languages, or granting you additional skill proficiencies. Some eliminate penalties from shooting from a prone position, while others give you bonuses to resisting fear and maintaining your morale. And by combining these abilities together, you can create a truly unique skillset for your soldier.

We Need You!

If that sounds like an interesting game system you'd like to give a try, back the Kickstarter today! We're 84% of the way to our initial funding goal at time of writing, but we have stretch goals at 10k and 15k that I would love to hit. And the more support this game gets at this stage, the more likely it is that we'll be able to expand and make even more supplements, missions, etc., going forward!

Like, Share, and Follow For More!

That's all for this week's Crunch topic! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio! Or if you'd like to read some of my books, like my alley cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well! And if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron! Even a little bit of help can go a long way, trust me on that one.