"Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic" Earns Its First Metals!

My first RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic dropped a little over a year ago, and I've been doing my best to get it into folks' hands, and to provide as much supplemental material for it as I'm able to. And while it can sometimes be discouraging to get lost under the constant crush of new posts and fresh games out there, I have made at least some progress on my goals.

Because so far both Army Men, as well as its first supplement Army Men: Threat Assessments, have both hit Copper metal status on Drive Thru RPG!

In case you needed even MORE of a target-rich environment.

But before I get into the meat of today's post, remember, 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! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

One Step Closer To Taking The Hill!

As most folks know, Army Men was a game that actually went to Kickstarter, and that's how it got made. So since a majority of the people who knew about it already had their books bought and paid for before it went up on Drive Thru RPG, it's been tough trying to keep getting it into fresh hands. It's been Deal of The Day, we had an Anniversary Bundle for it a little while ago, and I try to cover it on this blog as often as I can, along with putting together a show titled Tactical Plastic Report over on the Azukail Games YouTube channel to give viewers a run down on what's in the game to try to increase interest.

While it's definitely been an uphill battle, early this year I finally managed this little bit of progress! And even though Copper metal status is just the first tier you can hit (50+ sales), more than half of games and supplements that appear on DTRPG don't even hit that mark. And while I mentioned a while back that the core book had hit Copper, it wasn't until last month that Threat Assessments joined it!

However, if you're a fan of Army Men, why stop there? Consider grabbing yourself copies of some of the other releases that have come out so I can keep expanding the setting going forward!

- Army Men: Medals of Honor: A supplement that introduces the Medals System to help Game Masters reward players who have survived various missions, and conducted themselves in a way becoming of a trooper.

- A Baker's Dozen of Booby Traps: A collection of nasty surprises for Game Masters to deploy in the event you plan to conduct some guerrilla warfare in your games.

- A Night At Brekon's Beacon: An Army Men Mission Module: A stand-alone mission for Army Men, this brings your squad to an abandoned ruin far off the beaten track... will you avoid the fate that befell the squad that came before you?

In addition to all of these supplements, at time of writing I also have a second mission module that's currently in layout... so stay tuned for a mission that takes place in the Styric Republic (the northern faction inspired by the Soviets)!

What Would You Like To See Next?

Army Men, as a game and a setting, is still very young. Additionally, we were only able to fit so much into the core rulebook, so there's all kinds of room for further expansion in gear, enemies, missions, and more!

The question is... what do you all want to see? And to help folks avoid getting decision paralysis, I'll make a few suggestions:

- Mission Modules: The Army Men equivalent of adventure modules, these one-shot supplements do all the heavy lifting for the Game Master.

- Additional Equipment: From weapons and armor, to tool kits, vehicles, and more, Army Men's challenge is largely decided by what kinds of gear your troopers bring to the fight.

- Bigger Books: In the past I've had such suggestions as Motor Pool for vehicle rules, Soldier of Fortune for a mercenary-style secondary way to play that's geared more toward media like the A-Team, and a few others. These would take significantly more work, and would likely need to be Kickstarted.

- Fiction: Whether in text form or as an audio drama/podcast, Army Men has the potential for some really fun fiction, if that's something folks would like to see more of (consider the sample below if this interests you!)

However, as all the war bond posters said, we can't make any of this happen without your help!

If you're someone who wants to see Army Men expand as a game, and as a setting, then you need to help me make sure the signal grows, and that we find a group of folks who want to play it, and see more stuff come out for it! As such, please do as many of the following things as you can:

- Buy Copies: The more sales a game and its supplements get, the easiser it is to get more projects green lit, and the more the algorithm pays attention. So the best thing you can do is help our numbers go up!

- Leave Reviews: If you already bought your copy of the book and supplements, leave a rating and a review on them! You don't have to get in-depth, just tell people you liked it, and maybe mention something that sticks in your mind about it. Reviews are also key to getting the algorithm to take notice.

- Subscribe to The Azukail Games YouTube Channel: Maybe you've already done the first two, or you simply can't afford new game stuff right now. Either way, subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel is free, as is watching episodes of Tactical Plastic Report, and all the other Army Men-related content on the channel. Again, upvote videos you like, leave comments, and so on, because that helps us get paid, and sends a message that at least some of our audience wants MORE Army Men stuff!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Stay Up-To-Date On All The Latest "Army Men" Developments!

As most folks know, my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic dropped a couple of months back. It was the Deal of The Day last month on Drive Thru RPG, which got a lot of fresh eyeballs on the game, and less than a month after its debut we already had the first supplement available. In the event you didn't grab your own copy yet, Army Men: Threat Assessments is ready for you to snatch up if you need more antagonists for your missions!

However, there are a lot of fresh things coming up for the game, and I'm hard at work on even more... so if you don't want to miss what's going on, make sure you join the newly created Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic group over on Facebook today!

Seriously, if you're going to play this game, you're going to want this one!

As always, 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! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

A Central Location For Your "Army Men" Needs!

As we all know, social media has been tightening the leash more and more these days. Posts that used to be able to fly free are now routinely shot down by the algorithm, and this makes it significantly more difficult for gamers out there to stay tuned-in to what's going on with any given RPG... especially independently-produced and created ones, which don't have the budget or clout to get wider notice on a platform.

And while a lot of platforms were tossed around for where we wanted to start (including both a Discord and a subreddit), Facebook is where we decided on for the time being. Firstly because it's a platform that still has a lot of dedicated users, but also because it has discoverability (the potential for outsiders to stumble across the group and its content, even if they weren't specifically looking for it). Because the goal here is two-fold; to give existing players a place to congregate, but also to provide resources for new players who are looking for a community.

So what kinds of things can you find in this group if you join?

Well, it's certainly going to become a place for folks to share their experiences with the game, to find groups, and (hopefully) to post videos of live plays. It's very likely to be a place where additional tutorials (like the one above) are going to be shared as a way to help folks diversify their tables, and create more interesting arenas to battle in. It will also be a place to catch up on the latest news about supplements that are coming out, supplements that are currently being batted around as potential projects, short stories, audio dramas, and more!

So if you've wanted to give this game a try, or you want to talk to some of the folks who backed it and have been playing it, join the Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic Facebook group so that we can start growing our numbers. And if it gets large enough, who knows, we may even be able to expand and claim some territory on another platform as well!

It's also a great way to make sure that creators like myself, as well as other contributors, see what you would be interested in, so that we have some idea of what you want going forward as a community!

Lastly, make sure you subscribe to the Azukail Games YouTube channel. There's going to be a fair amount of Army Men content over that way in the near future, and I wouldn't want anyone to miss it!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Game Masters, When Running Army Men, Avoid White Rooming At All Costs

Since my RPG Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic recently dropped (and I'm hard at work on supplemental material for it) I've had it on my brain quite a lot recently. Which is why for this week's Crunch post I wanted to highlight something for the Game Masters who are planning on running a campaign (or even just a handful of missions) with this game.

Namely that under no circumstances should you be running your encounters in open, white rooms that are utterly disconnected from one another, with perfect lighting and fire lines. Because dynamic combat and strategy are the name of the game.

That's initiative! Go! Go!

Before we get into the nitty gritty 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! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

"Tactical" is in The Title, After All

When you sit down to design a game, you build in certain assumptions of play. For example, if you make a high fantasy game where magic is commonly available, then part of the challenge rating of your encounters assumes that players will have access to spellcasting, magic items, and so on. If a Game Master decides to then restrict the availability of magic, that's going to throw off the game's balance and challenge because players are now being forced to participate with one hand tied behind their backs in a way that the designer never intended.

The same thing will happen if you try to run Army Men in an open field where two lines of enemies line up, and keep rolling dice until one side or the other is dead.

Cover! Where is my damn cover!?

When I sat down to create Army Men, I wanted to make a version of the DND 5E ruleset that had more options when it came to combat tactics. From a morale system, to expanded rules for cover, to a wider variety of weapons, there's a lot of stuff in here... but one of the assumptions that I made was that Game Masters would create dynamic encounters that put a lot of different battlefield conditions into play in order to get the most out of the game. It's why there are so many rules for all of these different aspects.

And it's why I would strongly recommend that Game Masters use those rules! Because tactics and strategy is a big part of the challenge your squad will have to face, so remember to consider:

- Lighting Conditions: None of the resinous peoples have darkvision without the aid of gear.

- Cover: A huge concern, everything from trenches and sandbags to trees and chest-high walls.

- Height: Higher ground has always been desirable.

- Ammunition: From the Hollywood Guns rules where you don't bother with ammo tracking at all, to low-ammunition situations where every round is valuable, this is a big deal for challenge

- Time: When a mission is time sensitive, you can't spend days raiding, retreating, and resting.

- Alerting The Enemy: Gunfire travels, and if your squad opens up that's going to attract more threats to their position.

And in addition to all of those reminders, Army Men's first supplement Threat Assessments recently dropped, which is full of additional enemy types with their own, unique abilities that can cause serious problems for your squad (in case you needed more tools to do so).

It Helps To Think Big Picture

When designing encounters in most games, but particularly for Army Men, it's important for a Game Master to look down at the full map, and ask what might go right or wrong when determining challenge for their squad. Because too often we just end up looking at a creature's CR, and plopping them down on the map without utilizing their full breadth of abilities and stretegies that makes up that challenge.

Which is why so often your encounters end up feeling too easy, or you have to bulk up enemy hit points or numbers just to challenge your players. Because this time it's the monsters who have one hand (or other miscellaneous limb) tied behind their backs.

What do you MEAN it's still up?!

As an example, many of the vespoids (the huge, insectoid creatures that are one of the prime antagonists in Army Men) have a hive mind feature. This means that whenever your squad attacks, that information is immediately conveyed to the hive, and it can make decisions based on its available data. That might mean that your squad has 1d6 rounds before more enemies show up. Even if they manage to ambush these bugs and kill them before they know what's going on, their deaths will still be registered to the hive mind... they just won't know the precise nature of the threat.

That feature is a large part of what makes these specific kinds of vespoid such a threat to a squad, because if you fight one of these creatures, you're fighting all of them. There is no way to take out an individual cluster of drones or soldiers without putting all of the others on high alert unless it's done at a range where they're not connected to the rest of the hive. They can act in perfect coordination, and even worse for a squad, hive minds are often immune to fear... which means that the squad has to struggle with Morale effects, while their enemy does not.

Consider, if you will...

It helps to picture a mission from a bird's eye view, and to see all of these separate encounters not as disparate, unconnected events, but as parts of a whole. What a squad does, and how well they succeed or fail, should organically effect the rest of their mission in important ways.

For example, say your squad was tasked with dealing with a criminal syndicate who has been stealing ordnance from the military, and trafficking those arms. If your squad poses as corruptible members of the military, and makes the right overtures to sell additional weapons, they might get in close with the customers. If they pass all the social checks, they might even be able to get everyone drunk enough at a post-sale celebration that they pass out, or are severely hampered. This puts the enemy at an extreme disadvantage when the squad starts cuffing the criminals to hand over for prosecution.

Strategy carried the day in this example, without a shot being fired.

However, say your squad instead snapped up a criminal contact and squeezed them for the information about who was buying guns. Yes, they might get the information about who is behind these crimes, where they are, etc., but that contact going missing could put the gun runners on high alert. And if the squad chooses to go after the war profiteers with their fingers on their triggers, now they're facing a group of people who are ready for a fight, and who have prepared themselves accordingly with a booby trapped and reinforced warehouse where they store their merchandise, body armor, heavy weapons, and other threats that put the squad at a dangerous disadvantage. This version is much more difficult as far as challenge goes, but that challenge is a direct result of actions taken (or not taken) up to this point.

The enemies in question didn't change in both scenarios. All the NPCs you had at the beginning are still there, as are all the weapons, armor, traps, etc., that could have been brought to bear agaisnt your squad. But what options the players chose, the strategy they used, and how well their dice rolled (as they would have a serious fight on their hands if their cover was blown while they were in the middle of enemy territory, and the gang had to get rid of them) all play a part in how events go down.

This is the sort of mindset a Game Master should adopt in order to make their games feel more organic, and to give as much power to their players as possible. Think of the mission as a clock. You choose the pieces, you fit them together, and you set it in motion... from that point onward, you're just watching what your players do, and making sure that all the moving pieces act in accordance to the abilities and strategy they bring to bear. Everything should be connected, because that's what's going to lead to an overall better game.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Crunch post. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

Army Men: A TTRPG Where The Book Is The Most Expensive Part of The Game

There's a lie all of us fans of TTRPGs have heard at least once, and which many of us have probably said it to someone looking to get into the hobby. "Oh, how much does it cost?" they ask. "Not that much," we say, lying. "All you need is a book, some dice, a pencil, some paper, and your imagination!"

Those of us who've been in the life for a while, of course, know that this is a technical truth at best. Because the more you play, the more stuff you tend to acquire. From extra dice sets, to battle mats, to dice towers, the accessories add up... and nowhere do a lot of us spend more money than when it comes to miniatures (and sometimes) set dressing.

Now, a lot of us will use creative substitutions as our physical representations, and while they get the job done, it can sometimes scratch the paint on our immersion. For Army Men: A Game of Tactical Plastic, though, I wanted those cheap phys reps and Dollar Store plastic figures to be accurate representations of the field you see before you!

Pictured: A World-Accurate Miniature

Before we get into the nitty gritty 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! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

Spill Out The Toy Box!

A lot of us likely remember the days of the old Army Men toy soldiers from when we were little... well, they're still in production! Not only that, but they come in a wider variety than ever before, and their price is still pretty far below what you'd pay for most gaming-specific minis. For example, a classic, 400-piece collection of armies that has the green, gray, red, and tan soldiers (leaving out only the blue from the RPG itself) only runs you about $18. Detailed, action sculpts different from the standard soldiers of yesteryear are a little more expensive, but you still get 100 troopers for about $14. There are even packs of Army Women which, while a little pricier at $15 for 36 figures, have some pretty great detail that will really make them pop on the board!

There are even sets that have towers, bridges, tanks, tents, sand bag walls, and more, all for significantly less than you might pay if you went shopping for miniatures terrain that you'd see in a war gaming store. The Ikasus set and the Flexzion set are perfect examples, especially when you consider that both are under $20!

What about the enemies?

While some missions will have you fighting other resinous persons (whether it's dealing with those under the effects of mind control, squabbles between nations within the Federation, or simply dealing with unscrupulous mercenaries), a lot of the monsters your squad will fight in this game are other members of the discount toy aisle that a lot of us likely had sitting in our toy boxes as kids. The Vespoids are insectoid creatures that range from medium-sized, all the way up to huge, which lets you break out most of the giant spiders, ants, wasps, and other weird plastic bugs you might have. There's also the plastic dinosaurs, which are in the base book's bestiary (though I haven't disclosed where one might find them just yet)!

And if you're one of the folks who has picked up the expanded enemies and creatures found in Army Men: Threat Assessments, this trend continues. Creatures like the newly introduced mechanical menaces the Mekanauts can be easily replicated with the Futuristic Space Battle Toy Set, which has all the robots, droids, and alien creatures you could want! And if you look very closely at the illustration on the cover of Threat Assessments, then you might see why having some alien miniatures on-hand for future missions for Army Men might just be a good investment.

A Last Tip on Mini Preparation

It is perfectly acceptable to take the minis I've mentioned out of the bag, and play with them as-is. They'll be perfect represenations of the setting with no further work on your part... however, if you want to add a little bit of extra to your minis, consider grabbing some Nuln oil and giving your small soldiers a wash to really make the details on them pop! Vallejo black wash will do the job just as well, if you're keeping an eye on your budget, too, and you can get a lot of minis done with just one bottle... though putting a seal on them to protect the wash is a good idea, too.

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Moon Pope Monday. To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

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!

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