Recon (role-playing game)

Recon is a mildly controversial modern military system of jungle combat in the Vietnam war. The rules cover character creation, skills, recon teams, missions, recruiting and debriefing, hand-to-hand combat, small arms and heavy weapons, and terrain generation.[2]

The first edition was written by Joe F. Martin and published by RPG, Inc. in 1982 as a 44-page book.[2] A 44-page digest-sized second edition packaged with a referee's screen was published in 1983 by RPG, Inc.[2] This edition introduced the idea of easily created and disposable characters. Like Dungeons and Dragons, the Mission Director (the referee or Game Master) used a Random Encounters table to generate terrain and villages, create groups of adversaries for the players to fight, obstacles to overcome, or problems to solve. Combat was resolved using miniatures rules.

San Succi (1982)[3] was a 7-page 23-inch x 30-inch broadsheet map pack that came folded up in a 9-inch x 12-inch envelope. It detailed a 16-block area in 1:72 scale for use with 20mm or 25mm lead figures. It also contained a guide to the 40 buildings on the map, a Non-Player Character (NPC) generating system, and a vehicular combat system (called ROADKILL).

The Haiphong H.A.L.O.: SOG Operations in North Vietnam (1983)[4] was the first adventure campaign, and involved missions behind enemy lines in North Vietnam. It expanded roleplay to include Army Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and Marine Force Recon commando characters, and detailed real-world airborne, sea, and amphibious insertion techniques. Missions included reconnaissance, raiding, sabotage, assassination/ambush, prisoner snatching, and search and rescue.

Hearts & Minds (1983)[5] was the second adventure campaign, and involved a cadre training mission in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Characters are part of a Special Forces "A" Team sent to train a group of Montagnard tribesmen to fight. They have to win the tribespeople over, protect them from reprisals, and secure their area of operations. It included a random-generation tunnel complex table.

Sayaret/Track Commander (1983)[6] was a supplement set during the Arab-Israeli Wars (1967 to 1983). Players could generate Israeli soldier characters that could operate as a commando detachment or a tank crew. It allowed the Mission Director to run Israeli commando raids or tank battles. The rules could also conceivably be used to simulate other contemporary conflicts involving urban warfare or armored combat from World War Two to the present (1980s).

Headhunters LTD. (1984)[7] was a contemporary adventure campaign where the players play veteran mercenaries working for the eponymous mercenary force. It was announced in the gaming press[8] but was probably never released before RPG, Inc. went out of business.

Platoon 20 RECON was a line of 20mm (1:72 Scale) lead figures for use with RECON. They came 5 figures per set, including the Vietnam-era American Army (Infantry,[9] Special Forces[10] and Recondos[11]), ARVN troops,[12] Nung and Montagnard mercenaries,[13] Vietnamese civilians,[14] VC Main Force,[15] and NVA troops.[16] There were also Israeli troops[17] and PLO terrorists[18] for use with Sayaret/Track Commander.

The Revised RECON

Front cover of The Revised RECON, illustrated by Kevin Siembieda
Designers	Erick Wujcik, Kevin Siembieda, Matthew Balent, Maryann Siembieda
Publishers	Palladium Books
Publication	June 1986 (1986-06) (1st edition) April 1999 (1999-04) (Revised edition)
Years active	1986–present
Genres	Wargaming
Languages	English
Website	palladiumbooks.com

The Revised RECON was designed by Erick Wujcik and published by Palladium Books in 1986 as a 152-page book.[2] It was a reworking of the 1982 Recon tactical miniatures game in which Wujcik turned the focus of the game to ambushes to transform a game about miniatures warfare into a role-playing game.[19] Because of its origins as a miniatures game, The Revised RECON was the only Palladium game, aside from Valley of the Pharaohs (1983), that did not use the company's house Megaversal system.[19] However, Palladium does provide conversion rules in order to bring things in line with the rest of their role-playing game series.

Many of the basic rules from the original Recon were kept the same, but Wujcik made an attempt to "balance" them. This was achieved by reducing elements of chance or luck. For instance, rather than randomizing the number of skills a character had, one could select a number of skills based on his class. Another significant change was the concept of a "minimum" skill level for weapon proficiencies. These were originally decided by rolling percentile dice, which meant that a character could theoretically have a skill level anywhere from 1 (meaning that he was a very poor shot) to 100. However, in the revised edition, a low roll could be "bumped" up to whatever the minimum skill level was for that particular weapon (usually 20–30). Also notable in the revised edition was the substantial amount of information it provided about equipment and vehicles. Whereas RPG Inc.'s version had only limited information regarding guns, the Palladium edition had pages of gun statistics as well as fully illustrated, detailed descriptions of aircraft, seacraft, and vehicles, rules for playing mercenaries, several scenarios, and guidelines for interfacing The Revised RECON characters with other Palladium game systems.[2]

The new edition focused more on the fictional Recon world,[20] which used OPFOR-type nicknames for major nations. The three major powers are "Stateside", "Big Red", and People's China. Central and South America and the Caribbean are represented by Delancourt (a mixture of Guyana and Belize), Sangria, San Isabel, San Marcos, Buntar, Coluzia (located south of Buntar), and Tragnar (a mixture of Cuba and Haiti). North Africa and the Middle East are represented by Grugashan (a mixture of Syria, Iraq and Libya), Ephor (a disputed territory between Grugashan and Chandracia that wants independence from both), and Chandracia (a mixture of the Middle East, Iran, Jordan and the Arabian Peninsula). Africa is represented by Dakali, Iswandah, and Boorland. Off the Atlantic coast of Africa is Greenham Isle (an uneasily-partitioned country like Cyprus that is like Lebanon in the north region and the Hawizeh Marshes in the south), and Sofi (home to a "Stateside" naval base). Southeast Asia is made up of the thinly-veiled countries of Southern 'Nam (backed by "Stateside"), People's 'Nam (backed by "Big Red" and "People's China") and Lao.

The Revised RECON received only one additional book, Advanced RECON, released February 1987.[19] It was an expansion of the rules allowing the creation of Special Operations characters and detailed a four-mission campaign set in 1960s Laos. There were also sections on American and North Vietnamese tactics and strategy, period electronic equipment, a primer on the game world in 1965, and briefings on the Kingdom of Laos and other military and government agencies.

Palladium published Deluxe Revised RECON in April 1999. This integrated and reprinted the content from both The Revised RECON and Advanced RECON into one book. It also introduced new rules, focusing more on the characters' lives after the wars.