The Morrow Project

[dwayanu]

I'm pretty sure this slender book is buried somewhere in Chateau Manque, but it would require some archaeology to get down to specs.

TMP was a "hard SF" approach to the post-A-bomb SNAFU scenario given a more "wa-hoo!" treatment in Gamma World.

What is particularly interesting to me is that the game was criticized at the time (e.g., in the DRAGON review) for leaving too much up to the referee -- and that one of the designers went on to offer (in the Tri Tac line) hit locations tables so recondite as to make parody superfluous.

A factual lowdown on the Steyner (spelling?) Weapons System was not enough; gamers in those days demanded "stats" and more stats, and detailed combat round sequences, and rules for everything from Teflon-coated bullets to plutonium ingestion.

Goodbye to little booklets packed with inspiration on each page; hello to volumes resembling in bulk and density Internal Revenue codices!

[badger2305]

dwayanu said:

A factual lowdown on the Steyner (spelling?) Weapons System was not enough; gamers in those days demanded "stats" and more stats, and detailed combat round sequences, and rules for everything from Teflon-coated bullets to plutonium ingestion.

Goodbye to little booklets packed with inspiration on each page; hello to volumes resembling in bulk and density Internal Revenue codices!

I've got a copy of The Morrow Project right here

Stoner weapons system - great concept, even used a little by the SEALS in Vietnam, but then adopted whole-hog in the game setting.

TMP is weird - on one hand, you find out about different kinds of munitions and real-world military vehicles, and many of the die-hard players extoll how realistic it is, yet when it comes to the "monsters" section of the game, it's not that far removed from Gamma World. "Blue Undead" and "Giant Porcupines" and the like. Once you get past the details of the "Project" and its equipment, there's a lot and I mean a LOT of room for creativity.

And there's still active mailing lists for it and a decent website:
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
www.thesupplybunker.net/morrow.htm

[badger2305]

dwayanu said:

The very context of demands upon a game is shaped by the players' reality. We came from a different world when we contended for it with the Soviets and met the Red Chinese most often in circumstances less beguiling than their being the chief producers of the goods Wal-Mart sells. Pick up an old module ignorant of that old-fashioned (?) mindfulness of submarines and missiles and the doom at our throats, and something is missed.

Absolutely. It's hard to explain the Cold War to a younger generation these days.

[Thorulfr]

badger2305 said:

Absolutely. It's hard to explain the Cold War to a younger generation these days.

I'm running into that myself - my son is 5 and has picked up a fondness for 'James Bond' movies... (Thank Prime for the 'chapter forward' button on the DVD remote...if it gets a little too racey or violent, I can blip right past it.)
I am finding it ....interesting, to say the least, to try to explain intricacies of who the different players were in the global game and how that relates to the movie... to a 5 year old, remember... ("Well, they used to be the 'bad guys', but now they are the 'good guys', but some of them decided to be criminals and are still 'bad'..." hooookay.....)

On another note, I was in a gift shop a few months ago, and notived a refrigerator magnet (of all things) that totally floored me as I tried to figure out how to explain to my son just what it meant and how iconic it was to the people of our (speaking to the older members of this board) generation: The Checkpoint Charley sigh...you know "You are now leaving the American Sector" in English, German, and Russian?



That said, I loved TMP - I went to the Origins convention in 1981 and while in a Traveller game, waiting for the game to get underway, one of the kibbitzers was amusing us with interesting tales of things one can do with grenades. It turns out he was one of the authors of The Morrow Project, and the next day I stopped by their booth and spent the last of my disposable cash on the game.

I'm very glad I did. )

I still remember refereeing that first game, and the utter pandaemonium that erupted when on the first night out of the bunker, the party heard a rustling in the bushes. They unloaded with everything they had - assault rifles, WP grenade, and finished it off with a few long bursts from the Rh202 20mm...
...the looks on their faces when they found the tattered remains of that poor skunk were priceless.

[dwayanu]

I deleted that second post because on second look I thought it maundering and bloviation ... but to judge from your quotes and thoughtful comments, maybe it was not all that bad after all.

If you have the book handy, what's the page count? I had occasion to think of the Tri Tac games, and that brought to mind TMP -- and its (at least in my memory) relative brevity.

Weaponry enthusiasts could sometimes get carried away on their hobby-horse. I remember a Traveller ref who read aloud one weapon description after another.

The mutants were not so "hard science" based, but I think they were a bit less far out than in GW. I associate the game with d**nation Alley (especially the movie version).

[bigjackbrass]

dwayanu said:

If you have the book handy, what's the page count? I had occasion to think of the Tri Tac games, and that brought to mind TMP -- and its (at least in my memory) relative brevity.

The 3rd edition (which includes the role-playing supplement derived from the Chaosium system) lists 66 pages, although it's actually 70 since the numbering doesn't actually start at the beginning of the book... Still pretty slim and packed with information by the woollier standards of current game books.

[Finarvyn]

I'll confess that TMP is one of those games that I've seen on shelves and heard about vaguely, but to my knowledge have never ever looked at. Certainly not ever played.

What kind of game system is used? Is it all d6's or d20's or percentile dice, or what? Is the game system similar to any other RPGs out there? This game is just so far out of my experience that I need a point of reference.

I didn't even realize that it was a post-holocaust game. I thought it was something military since I seem to recall pictures of M-16 rifles on the cover....

[calithena]

TMP vs. Aftermath head to head: what do you like better about each, and why?

[foster1941]

I never owned nor played this game but all the adults in my local game-club back in the 80s (i.e. the folks who were in their 30s-40s when I was 13 years old) loved it, and it alongside RQ (2nd edition) was the adult-rpg of choice (whereas we kids played mostly AD&D and WFRP). The way they played it (which I don't know whether it's the way it was written or not) player knowledge and character knowledge were essentially one and the same, so if you wanted your character to know a lot about computers or chemistry or military hardware or outdoor survival skills or whatever, you as a player had to know it. This was always intriguing to me, but also intimidating (because, of course, as a punk kid I had no valuable real-world knowledge of any kind...).

[doc]

I've never played either of those games, Calithena. Back when I was a kid, postapocalyptic gaming began and ended with Gamma World.

Doc

[Stonegiant]

Aftermath was a typical FGU rules overload (They have a rule for just about everytning), The Morrow Project was a really cool campaign idea but I wasn't to keen on the system and usually used their ideas but used the RECON game as the actual game mechanics. TMP's injury system was way to detailed (blood loss, trauma, etc.) and way too deadly (It seemed IMO that if you got shot you were pretty much dead and every campaign and adventure module seemed to require at several firefights). RECON is no cake walk either but character generation is much faster (roughly 10-15 minutes on the high side).

I should also say that if you think RQ 2nd edition is to rules heavy, than you better steer well clear of Aftermath it makes RQ look like a piece of fluff reading in comparison.

[dwayanu]

RECON sure was a handy rules-set (at least for more "wargame" style scenarios); I may try to find another copy someday. There was also a WW2 game (Commando?) that seemed to me a poor choice of topic for an RPG but was at least easily tryable because the rules were similar to Traveller's.

My own experience with TMP was light on fighting. I think that's the more reasonable response to RPG rules that make combat very dangerous to PC survival. Traveller IMO got it just right for its approach to play: the first hit (at least from one of the commonly encountered weapons) is unlikely to kill a character but very likely to take him out of action.

Aftermath seemed too complex for my taste as GM, but I enjoyed playing it once. I had a friend whose mastery as ref made even RoleMaster fairly "rules light" from the player's perspective. He was at his best, though, with Twilight: 2000.

I think that match with the GM's capabilities, interests and style is the main determinant of how good a game is. One problem with the latest version of D&D is that it seems to burden players with its complexity. I prefer the good old days when only the DM needed to be manically obsessive!

The reliance on real-world knowledge is something I mentioned (in the slightly different context of GMing) in my deleted post. Basically, it seemed to me that TMP could be so slender in part because of an assumption that if one knew enough about some arcana to care about it, then one knew enough to contrive a satisfactory mechanical implementation. I sense something "old school" there ...

[Thorulfr]

I have Aftermath, but have not played it; TMP I have both played and run a fair bit. Morrow Project is very much in the "Old School" vein, in that it is essentially a basic background, a combat system, and everyting else was up to the referee. By the third edition, they had grafted on a skill system adapted from RQ (I believe that Tadashi Ihara wrote it, but don't quote me.)
Aftermath's FGU-standard rules-overload has already been mentioned, but one thing I DO like about the game books is that Aftermath is a toolkit for designing a wide variety of post-apocalyptic backgrounds, and has a lot of good thoughts and information on different 'oops' scenarios (post nuke, plague, asteroid collision, population explosion, etc.), and guidelines on what the effects on society and the population would be near-term, long-term, and very long-term. This helps a referee whether they want to run a game inspired by "The Day After" (immediately post-nuke), Daybreak, 2250AD (100-200 years post-nuke), or Hiero's Journey (500-1000 years post-nuke).
A look at the bibliography of each is revealing: TMP is probably 50% military manuals (Field Manuals, Technical manuals, Training Circulars), Jane's books, etc., with fiction in the minority, while Aftermath is heavy on a wider variety of fiction (a lot of overlap, too), like Earth Abides and The Sheep Look Up.

By the way: Hiero's Journey is well worth reading. Davy is good, but depressing. The Texas-Israeli War is fun beer-and-popcorn post-nuke military adventure.

Fun trivia: did you know that the cartoon "Balto" and the book D@mnation Alley are based on inspired by the same event?

edit: "Inspired by" is probably a better description...

[casey777]

My understanding is that TMP is a bit inbetween TW2K/Aftermath and Gamma World. Not as heavy or "realistic" as the former and not as gonzo weird as the latter. System is like Call of Cthulhu on 11. I've not really heard a bad report on it, most people seem to enjoy the focus of theme (restore civilization) and the original modules had a pretty good Postman type campaign that built up over time, so it hits a sweet spot.

It's still in print and they're setting more realistic goals for a 4th edition (i.e. it'll be out when it's out).

Some of the fansites have great play writeups on them, very enthusiastic groups and fun reads.
www.timelineltd.com/

Aftermath: I got this on PDF just to see WTF was up with it and while I'd never run it the GM advice and support + some of the equipment ideas are very good.

[dwayanu]

The best parts of most FGU RPGs may have been the background bits and "chrome" beyond the core rules. Other than V&V, Bushido and Flashing Blades, I ended up treating them as sourcebooks for stuff to use with other games.

I remember especially the planetary types and the (very space-operatic) spacehip rules from Space Opera. C&S was great for setting up a medieval campaign with some realism.

The Chaosium-derived skills system is later than my TMP experience, and I never saw any scenario packs.

[wulfgar]

Anyone have any experience with the Time & Time Again rpg (about Time travel) from the Morrow Project people? I'm intrigued by it's claim to have "the most realistic combat system, armed and unarmed, ever published"

Of course my experience with rpgs leads to me think such a "realistic" system is an unplayable mess of near endless rules, but I'm curious if anyone around here has actually seen the game and what they thought.

[badger2305]

I do have a copy of Time and Time Again, but never played it. I suspect it's a variation on TMP combat. I'll check.

[philotomy]

I had some great times with TMP. I don't remember much about the game system (except it was confusing, and my edition had the hit location charts in them), but the background story, "how to run a campaign" material (e.g. marking up a road atlas of the state with nuclear strikes to create a post-apoc. campaign map) and adventures rocked.

I do remember the Stoner weapons system being in the game.

[wulfgar]

Hey Badger2305, just wondering if you ever got the chance to look at the Time and Time Again combat.

[badger2305]

Wulfgar, thank you for the reminder; I was going to check when I went back to Minneapolis recently (where I have some of my stuff). However, I did not have the chance. When I get up there next (which will be in 2-3 weeks), I'll take a look. Sorry!