Modiphius Entertainment

First of all, I should probably admit (ashamedly) that I have never read a John Carter book. My John Carter experience includes watching the movie once and reading the same comic twice (I thought I had the complete series so I started it again only to find out I was wrong). I do, however, have a lot of experience with ttrpgs. Before reading this, I had no exposure to Modiphius’ 2d20 system which this system uses, with some changes (I believe that’s what it said in the introduction).

Really what sold me on this book was the beautiful cover and the fact that it was formatted wider than it is tall. I was also interested in the system mechanics. The book is EXTREMELY detailed, as far as I can tell they didn’t miss anything and sometimes they repeated themselves. It was quite a shock after reading a couple “minimalist” systems like Mork Borg and Lightbringers. Over 100 pages were spent on the cultures, cities, religions, characters of Barsoom, about 25 pages spent on an introductory adventure and other adventure seeds and about 80 pages of game mechanics.

Overall, I thought the system was interesting but not mind blowing. I didn’t like that “talents” were described before the rules that the talents used were described. So a talent might say that it “reduced threat” but while reading it I had no idea how the threat mechanic worked. And on the threat mechanic, basically the DM has points, the players have points, the players can use points to make things easier by giving the DM points to make things more difficult later. It didn’t really sit well with me as a DM because it felt restrictive.

I was also disappointed that there were only 17 monsters included and most of them didn’t have pictures. I love having pictures of monsters to say, “You see something like this…” and also to help me conceptualize them. I guess maybe they plan(ned?) to put out a “monster manual” later with more monsters, or maybe they wanted to just stick with the monsters that were in the books.

The system really does seem setup for the swashbuckling, pulp style adventures and I also like the idea of “renown” where characters become more and more influential and respected over time and depending on their deeds. Also thought the using XP to get equipment was interesting.
One last thing that seems like it would ruin a big part of the game is that most Martians have a kind of telepathy that makes it hard for them to lie to each other successfully. I’m pretty sure that’s the first change I would make if I was going to run this.… (more)