The 12 Days of Rifts-mas: Day 10, Recon

It is not a Palladium Megaverse game, but Recon won our hearts in the 1980s when Rambo was playing at the movie theater, Chuck Norris was saving the PoWs, Tour of Duty was on the television, and the Vietnam War was the stain on a country's consciousness, and the loss of innocence for a nation in the free love 1960s.

The Vietnam War ended the science fiction future we were promised in the 1950s.

It ended with a hedonistic, jaded, and drug-addled discotheque nation in the 1970s, lost in a malaise and gripped by inflation and an oil crisis.

And a role-playing game trapped in the jungles of Southeast Asia about one of the darkest periods of modern history seems almost obscene and too controversial. Yet, here it is, honoring those who served.

We got this game early, and while we never played a whole campaign, we played the system for a few one-shots and enjoyed the authenticity and design of this fantastic book. Recon is a true beer-and-pretzels RPG, one you crack open, design some characters, and see if they can survive a long-distance patrol for enemy infiltration in the local villages. You talk with the regional forces and take along an interpreter to ask the locals questions. You are supposed to be here keeping the peace and spreading democracy, so you need to help, not hurt.

If this sounds much like nation-building in Iraq or Somalia, then you will know how familiar this mission is. This could also be far-future science fiction, with Earth Marines on an alien world.

And it never changes.

Our soldiers will be forever behind the 8-ball, on the defensive, and always painted to be the bad guys. It isn't fair, right? Yet here we are again.

Who are you in these moments?

What choices do you make?

Do you look out for yourself, or sacrifice for your buddies?

In the face of the impossible, do you keep your morals and make good choices?

Or do you succumb to the horrors of war?

I don't know of another game that tackles these topics, yet the book presents them in a neutral, almost technical manner. War is what it is, the game manual says. It doesn't judge you, any more than the manual for an M-16 judges its user.

Where the mud meets the boots is on the ground, in the middle of a mission, deep in that jungle, and your squad stops when you hear a noise.

What was that?

...

What do you do?