Wait...What?! There's a Trancers (1984) Role Playing Game?
Strange (un)Licensed Role Playing Games Selection #5
Dry hair's for squids.
— Jack Deth
Before Sharknado There Was Trancers
I have a special place in my heart for B-Movies. If I was to guess when my love of these small, often micro, budget films started I’d probably say it was when I was around 10 to 12 years old when I first saw the Roger Corman classic Death Race 2000. While the special effects were minimal and almost camp in their presentation, the compelling story and the commitment of the actors drew me into a dystopian world where bloody spectacle distracted the populous noticing that they lived under a tyranny.
When I later saw Rollerball, a personal favorite and much bigger budget film released the same year (1975), I came to further appreciate what Corman and his team were able to achieve on a much smaller budget. Death Race had a budget of $300,000 while Rollerball came it at $6 million. You can see the differences in things like film stock and the durability of the practical effects, but the craftsmanship is there on the smaller production.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I noticed that there was a strong correlation between successful genre film franchises and the closely timed production of a B-Movie alternative. For every Conan: The Barbarian, there were a host of Deathstalkers (Deathstaker II is the best), Ator the Fighting Eagles, Barbarian Queens, and The Barbarians. By the time I moved to Los Angeles in the early 2000s, studios like The Asylum made this connection explicit with their “mockbuster” concept that included films like Snakes on a Train, Transmorphers, The DaVinci Treasure, and Death Racers.
That last film has a little metacognitive circle going on since it’s a mockbuster of a blockbuster based on a cult-classic B-Movie. I have a kind of love and hate relationship with The Asylum. They produced two films based on screenplays written by my friend Bill Cunningham, Scarecrow and Scarecrow Slayer. I’m also as big a fan of Sharknado as your average Angelino (which is to say big enough to participate in the viral event for the second film) and I have a special fondness for their Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes film released around the same time as the Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) films. As much as I like the RDJ. Holmes movies, and they are among my favorite adaptations of the character, they are distinctly lacking in the steampunk elements, krakens, and dinosaurs, all of which are included in The Asylum version.
The hate part of my relationship with The Asylum is equally personal. I’ve known other people who worked for the company who noted that they were not very considerate of their below the line employees. They didn’t do anything particularly nefarious, just a lack of courtesy and respect on a repeated basis. As a point of comparison, when I was an intern (and thus not credited) on the J.J. Abrams production Joy Ride (directed by John Dahl) I worked with the set dressing and construction teams. It was hard work and there was one day where my friend and I kept moving huge tires back and forth to create the proper look for a remote auto shop. The tires we were moving were the massive tires associated with mining rigs and we were out in Nevada gold mining country. The team wanted us to get the tires lined up just right for the lighting of the shot, a shot that is less that 5 seconds if memory serves, and my friend and I were exhausted by the end of the process.
When we were done, the team took us out to dinner acknowledged our hard work. While we were essentially student volunteers, we were treated as a part of the team by everyone from Rob Pearson (the Production Designer) and Harlan Spatz (the Buyer/Dresser) and a I give J.J. Abrams credit for creating a team atmosphere. I felt so much a part of the team that I almost looked forward to the couple of days cleaning out pigeon droppings out of a former rest stop, to get it ready for the “diner” scene, but that’s a tale for another time.
Long before The Asylum though, there was a production company called Empire International Pictures, an obvious nod to American International Pictures where Roger Corman worked prior to creating his own production companies. Empire was a small distribution company formed by Charles Band that eventually became B-Movie distributor Full Moon Pictures (a company parodied in Robert Meyer Burnett’s cult film Free Enterprise). Empire produced a number of classic B-Movies ranging from The Dungeonmaster and Re-Animator to Robot Jox. The catalog of films ranged from those inspired by H.P. Lovecraft and science fiction luminaries like Joe Haldeman to pure exploitation.
There are a ton of fun films in the Empire catalog, but one holds a special place in my heart and that’s Charles Band’s 1984 high concept mashup of Blade Runner and The Terminator. It’s a film called Trancers and it is a B-Movie that, even though it was done dirty by all of its sequels, deserves a big budget remake.
The film focuses on Jack Deth, an Angel City law enforcement officer in the year 2247 who is charged with hunting down Martin Whistler and his zombie like cult followers. Whistler, though the use of drugs and psychic abilities, is able to transform weak willed people into worshipful servants who transform into zombie-like Trancers. When the film begins, Jack believes he has killed Whistler and is merely hunting down the last remnants of his cult when he he is summoned by the Council (the ruling body of Angel City) to watch a holographic message from Whistler in which Whistler reveals his sinister plan:
Greetings to the Council. As you may have gathered, I have survived the pathetic trap set by Trooper Deth on Mekon VII. For twelve long years, you have hunted my disciples like dogs. Now my day of vengeance is at hand. I've synthesized your time drug, and in a moment, shall retreat down the dark corridors of history. Know that it is I who am solely responsible for your demise. One by one, your ancestors shall be murdered, and you, their progeny, shall cease to exist. Then shall I return, join my legion, and claim the seat of power for my own. Adieu. Adieu... — Martin Whistler, Trancers (1984)
That’s right, Whistler has learned how to travel into the past using a time drug that allows you to temporarily take over the body and mind of one of your own ancestors. While in the past, Whistler plans on killing Jack Deth’s ancestors, as well as the ancestors of every member of the council, thus ensuring that his cult will be victorious in the future. It’s a great setup and even though the budget is miniscule, the film is a great time due to the total commitment of the actors, special shoutouts go to Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt. While I have no proof, I personally believe that Trancers heavily influenced the plot of my favorite Jean Claude Van Damme film, Timecop.
Okay, That’s Great Info About the Film, but You Mentioned A Game
Last January, I finally singed Martin Whistler out on one of the rim planets. Since then, I've been hunting down the last of his murdering cult. We call them "Trancers:" slaves to Whistler's psychic power. Not really alive, not dead enough. It's July now, and I'm tired. Real tired. — Jack Deth, Trancers
This discussion varies from the first four entries in the strange licensed roleplaying game series in a couple of ways.
This will be the first article in the series to not recommend that you try and track down the game for your own gaming pleasure. Though it has some interesting elements, the Trancers Role Playing Game is not a finished product and isn’t a fully realized role playing game. It’s closer to the game that you’ll see at the bottom of your email if you are a free subscriber (yes, there is a free RPG at the bottom of every free subscriber email).
This is also the first article in the series where the “licensed” game isn’t actually licensed, but is a passion project from an online designer. Since the game is for sale as a self published game on Lulu, as a physical book on Amazon where I got my copy, is available on Walmart’s website and Books A Million, and is even on Apple Books, I don’t consider it a mere fanbook. Instead, I few it as a “semi-pro” fan publication. Pro because Wind Lothamar has actual indie publication credits and “Semi” because the cost of the books look to be solely for the cost of printing. If this was merely a pdf, I’d still write an article but it would be in a fanbook/free-rpg series and not in this “strange” series.
As you can probably surmise, what makes this game strange is that it falls somewhere between official and unofficial. It is clear by the number of freely available supplements for Trancers that the designers not only wrote this game but that they actually play it. They clearly love the Trancers setting and their free supplements include rules for expanding the Trancers-verse to include Mechs, Fantasy and magic, and even alternative settings inspired by the Necroscope novels. The production quality on these books may be low, but the passion quality of these books is very high.
In the early 2000s, Ron Edwards coined the term Fantasy Heartbreakers to describe a games that broke his heart for a variety of reasons. The primary reasons for his heartbreak were that he could see real passion on the part of the creators, but that he also saw that they were essentially spending 10s of thousands of dollars to publish their house rules for D&D. The games were often very good and included interesting innovations, but were doomed to not only fail but to cost their creators a lot of money. The nature of the publishing industry in the 1980s and 1990s was such that modern desktop publishing and pdfs weren’t possible, so the lack of understanding of the size of the game market could only lead to financial heartbreak for the creators and empathetic heartbreak for Ron.
More recently, I’ve coined the term Fantasy Heartwarmer. These are games that are similar to Fantasy Heartbreakers, in that they are based on prior properties, but that because the creators understand the changed marketplace they are able to avoid financial ruin and maybe turn a small profit. I see Fantasy Heartwarmers all over the place from itch.io to personal websites to drivethrurpg. Some Fantasy Heartwarmers like Matthew Tapp’s Barrows & Borderlands will only ever appeal to small fandoms while others like Kelsey Dionne’s Shadowdark will have much larger fanbases. In both cases, the creators will find the experience psychologically rewarding and even small successes warm my heart.
The Trancers role playing game falls somewhere between Heartbreaker and Heartwarmer. It breaks my heart because I think I’d really like to see a full blown and fully developed role playing game based on Trancers designed by Lothamar and the rest of the team. It would take a lot of work though and getting the license would not likely be easy for them to pull off. It warms my heart because I see how much passion they have and that they’ve created enough of a framework that they could build something really special that would appeal to a large number of Trancers fans. Let’s just say that if my friend Bill Cunningham can put together financially successful high quality products based on Chilean spy comics, Frankenstein stories by Donald Glut, and behind the scenes discussions of Battle Beyond the Stars, then a Trancers role playing game that had as much added value as Bill’s book on Battle Beyond the Stars would have a pretty sizable audience.
Right now, two major obstacle stand in the way of Trancers making the step from “Semi-Pro” Starbreaker (an SF Heartbreaker) into a Starwarmer. The first is that even though the rules have a decent mechanical process as a foundation, though they need some statistical analysis and tweaking, as they currently stand they are too vague and would likely put off any potential for getting a license from the IP holder.
The basic mechanics of the game use a kind of skill check where the player rolls a 10 sided die and adds their skill level + 1/2 the relevant attribute against the following chart.
SKILL LEVEL + 1/2 ATTRIBUTE + 1d10 = RESULT VALUE
This means a character with a Guns skill of 2 and an Agility (Guns is based on Agility) of 6 would add 5 to the roll, giving them a basic minimum possibility of an Average success when shooting someone. That person would then roll to dodge and their level of success will add or subtract levels of success from the initial roll in a way that bogs down as most opposed roll systems can. The game also uses “exploding” dice where you reroll and add if you roll the highest value on the die, but doesn’t fully flesh out how this works since a 10+ is already as good a success as you can get.
If I were to change this, I would take inspiration from games like Champions and bake the opposition into the difficulty. In this system I would have the opponents skill level + 1/2 their attribute value subtract from the initial roll. This would be hidden information, but could then be compared to the chart for overall success in a single step. This requires a bit of pre-game mathematics where you write down Skill and 1/2 Attribute Totals on the character sheet (and NPC sheet) rather than doing the maths on the fly, but I think that should be done anyway.
Take a look at the character sheet for Jack Deth above. As you can see he has statistics and skills, but instead of requiring players to add the Gun skill of 4 to 1/2 the Agility (9 * .5 = 4.5 = 4 because you round down), the Gun skill itself should just list the total as Guns +4 (8) where the +4 is the skill bonus and the 8 is the total skill. The maths are easy enough to do that the designers might have thought that to be unnecessary, but having it written down speeds things up. Let’s do the maths during character creation and advancement just like D&D and Runequest and Dragonbane do. My updated core resolution system would be:
PC SKILL TOTAL - NPC SKILL TOTAL + 1d10 = Result Value
If the opposed roll was completely subtracted from the acting roll in Trancers core rules, I’d have added an additional - 6 or have the Average NPC or Monster start with a 6 Skill Total before attributes and skill points. Since the current Trancer rules compare success outcomes, which range from 4-7, that’s already baked into the older system and a straight skill comparison can be done.
That’s just one place for improvement. Other areas include where the rules present a concept and then completely drop it. For example, the rules say that Trancer Hunters like Jack Deth are resistant to being Tranced by Trancer Bosses, after all “only squids can be Tranced.” Mechanically this means that a Trancer Hunter has to roll 1 and 1/2 times the Trancer Hunter’s Determination in order to Trance them. One problem. How the Trancing skill works isn’t clear. Does the Trancer Boss roll a normal skill roll that ALSO requires the total to be 1 and 1/2 times the Trancer Hunter’s Determination to succeed? Is there an opposed roll where the Trancer’s Determination roll and relevant skill also take effect? These things aren’t made clear and should be
The second big obstacle to the Trancers RPG design team being able to get a license is the art. The fact that it’s better than any thing I can draw isn’t saying anything. I’m a terrible artist. I cannot draw. Wind Lothamar can draw in a basic cartoony style, and has gotten better over time, but I don’t think that’s what the owners of the IP would want. Add to that the fact that this has been a below the radar Semi-Pirate rules set and I can see heartbreak on the horizon.
Should you check out the Trancers Role Playing Game? I dunno. How big a fan of Trancers are you? If you are a “there is only one Trancers movie” level fan, then probably not. If you are a “I’ve watched all the movies and know the universe in intimate detail” fan, you will also want to avoid it. If, however, you are a casual fan who loves games and tweaking games, then sure. It’s super cheap and there is a decent amount of free support on the web.