Palladium's Recon Role Playing Game

Like many, my interest in miniatures wargaming stemmed from RPGs. Back in the early 80's, my friends and I began with playing Basic D&D and became quick fans of TSR. We weren't really big fans of medieval fantasy and we quickly shifted over to TSR's more modern titles like Top Secret and Gangbusters. During this time, we also started gaming the early version of FASA's Star Trek RPG. In later years, after the Starship Combat Tactical Simulator game came out, we shifted our focus to minis themed games. During this time, we kept seeing Palladium's Recon RPG at our local gaming store when we went in,  but we were so immersed with Trek and our modern TSR games we never really bought the game. Back then, gaming books were expensive and you really had to make smart choices to make your allowance go far. So rather than buy the game, we made our own, THE NAM (the name based off the excellent Marvel comic series that was on shelves at the time) and used 20mm Platoon 20 figures. The US was the US, and the Germans were painted as VC. It really was still an RPG, but had a miniatures wargame feel to it.

Years later, I found the Advanced Recon book in a gaming store in some small town and I picked it. AR was the second supplement to the first Recon book. In the early 2000's they merged the two games Recon and Advanced Recon into one book..... Deluxe Revised Recon. Confused yet??  I began to look up the history of the game and learned there were a few early versions to the one I'd seen in the gaming store in the early to mid 80's, plus a gaming module I didn't even know existed. I own the Deluxe Revised Recon book and there's some good ideas in there for RPG themed games, but the game system itself wasn't my cup of tea. Like so many other games I own but don't play, they are good to keep as a resource guide for ideas.

I've listed pics of the book cover art below, as it's worth a look for posterity's sake. Very 80's in artwork and theme. The Advanced Recon book is my favourite cover art of the bunch. The one with the two VC attacking the US soldier was the one I remembered from the old trips to the gaming store.













It's hard to tell from the Deluxe Revised book cover photo, but up close I was thinking...... "why is this guy standing in the middle of the group wearing a cammo truckers hat????". Not very historically accurate.  

I remember playing the second one...may still have a copy buried somewhere...

-BadMoon

Oh awesome! Some RPG history.

These are all new for me.

Tom

Not sure if it was by Palladium, but I had/have a adventure "Raid on Hai Phong"(??), I believe that was written for Recon. Mine was printed on something like newsprint, and had a large fold out map of a Russian Freighter... Haiphong H.A.L.O. maybe(???).

-BadMoon

There was also (I think) an adventure set in Sans Suchi (or something like that). It might now be in the deluxe revised advanced revamped redone expanded (grin) version now. I have that latest incarnation somewhere. It was kinda neat to read through but I thought it was weak on the vast amount of small arms used in Vietnam, if I am remembering correctly.

I have Advanced, revised, and delux Recon. I had no idea they had supplements, I would love to see them.
We only played 2 short campaigns. In one of them we were an early CCN team and infiltrated into Laos and set timed explosives on a truck park and a bunch of Nightingale devises leading off to the east. This was a diversion, as the true objective was to hit a nearby POW camp. Of course it all went wrong, no prisoners at the site and we had to E&E towards Thailand. We were eventually picked up by Jolly Greens but had lost 2 indig and 1 American team member.
The other one we were a different Spec Ops unit and did a series of recon patrols in the DMZ and points northward, marking artillery units, SAMS and AA concentrations along the border. We also did a dash-and-grab from a Nasty boat, bagging a NVA Col. of the artillery units. Later we went in and planted rigged artillery and AA ammo so when the USMC started a new operation up there and NVA started to shell them they'd have their own guns blow up in their faces.
Relatively low level stuff, but tense. We had a great GM who was in Vietnam in 1971-72. He didn't talk much about it, but turned out he was part of SOG when they were going by the Training Task Force moniker after 1970.
I wasn't a fan of the Palladium system either. I don't like "leveling", where when you go up a level you suddenly get better at everything, like cooking and dancing and map reading, whether you've used them in adventures or not.

This info came from the Palladium forum:

Palladium Forum wrote:San Succi
"A 16 city block map of the business area of a small city, with 40 floorplans of buildings in a variety of shapes and sizes. The floorplans can be cut out and arranged in different combinations for scenarios using any modern roleplaying system; they are in 1/72 nd scale for use with 20 or 25mm metal miniatures or l/72nd and HO scale military miniatures. The set includes descriptions of businesses, a system for generating NPCs, and ROADKILL - a vehicle combat system.

The Haiphong HALO
Published in a curious newsprint-type format.

"Under OPS 31 (Maritime) and OPS 35 (North Viet Nam) SOG RTs penetrated deep into the heart of North Viet Nam. The Haiphong HALO allows you to recreate some of the most dramatic missions of that war. This module is designed to allow you to run overland or amphibious operations with new insertion and contact systems and tables.
Special terrain generation tables for the Central Highlands and the Coastal Plain allow you to lead your RT overland to the very gates of Hanoi
New insertion and extraction systems allow you to take SEALs or Marine Force Recon swimmers (SCUBA divers) into Haiphong harbor for recon, sabotage, snatches, assassinations, and rescues."
1983 ... RPG 6652

Hearts & Minds: Module 2
"Recon module two. Your Special Forces A Team must organize and train a Montagnard village in the Central Highlands of the Republic of Viet Nam, Includes a 2d100 daily events table within the village, and a 2d100 table of VC/NVA contacts along the Ho Chi Minh Trail."
1983 ... 43 pages ... RPG 6653

Sayaret/Track Commander: Supplement One
"Recon supplement one. Covers running an Israeli reconnaissance/ special operations character against terrorists and conventional troops. Track Commander introduces a roleplaying system for being the crew of an Israeli tank or armored personnel carrier."
1983 ... 50 pages ... RPG 6654

Well now that's interesting. A little misinformation there on Ops 31 and 35, but interesting none the less.

Darby wrote:I have Advanced, revised, and delux Recon.  I had no idea they had supplements, I would love to see them.
We only played 2 short campaigns.  In one of them we were an early CCN team and infiltrated into Laos and set timed explosives on a truck park and a bunch of Nightingale devises leading off to the east.  This was a diversion, as the true objective was to hit a nearby POW camp.  Of course it all went wrong, no prisoners at the site and we had to E&E towards Thailand.  We were eventually picked up by Jolly Greens but had lost 2 indig and 1 American team member.
The other one we were a different Spec Ops unit and did a series of recon patrols in the DMZ and points northward, marking artillery units, SAMS and AA concentrations along the border.  We also did a dash-and-grab from a Nasty boat, bagging a NVA Col. of the artillery units.  Later we went in and planted rigged artillery and AA ammo so when the USMC started a new operation up there and NVA started to shell them they'd have their own guns blow up in their faces.
Relatively low level stuff, but tense.  We had a great GM who was in Vietnam in 1971-72.  He didn't talk much about it, but turned out he was part of SOG when they were going by the Training Task Force moniker after 1970.

This sounds great - I would totally have played this in the 1980s but never even knew it existed. And wow - I guess there wouldn't be much arguing about authenticity with a Game Master who was actually in SOG.

OTB wrote:This sounds great - I would totally have played this in the 1980s but never even knew it existed. And wow - I guess there wouldn't be much arguing about authenticity with a Game Master who was actually in SOG.

Right?!?! Had no idea how authentic we were playing it in procedure (though the scenarios were mostly fantasy) until long after.

So, found a copy of Hearts and Minds on one of those sharing services that are bad bad, and just had to take a look. I tell you what, it's pretty cool. Basically you're trying to form a new CIDG camp out of an established village almost like was done in '62-'64 (rather than creating a remote camp from scratch like they did in '65+) that is home to a fictitious 'Yard group that is based on the Halang. You can tell that the author had real experience with Montagnards because there is a LOT of "slice of life" flavor, even a whole table of random things that can occur during the course of a regular day, conversions had, observations, etc. Fucking brilliant. I WISH we had a copy of this back in the day. Worth reading and using for RPGs, not so much for table top.

Hanoi HALO is ok. It has some interesting ideas and info. It is usable for table top if you wanted to convert some of the intrusion methods.

I had Recon and Hearts & Mindsalthough never played them but stole ideas from. I may still have them somewhere

Alnewhaven wrote:...never played them but stole ideas from

I have many games and scenario books in my collection for that exact same reason!