Mechanized Men of Mars Review

Mechanized Men of Mars is an adventure by Thomas Denmark for Warriors of the Red Planet, an OD&D inspired sword & planet game that I really liked. Unfortunately, Mechanized Men of Mars doesn't live up to that standard.

It sells for $2.99 at DTRPG/RPGNow and is a single column PDF of 32 pages. Seven of those pages are taken up with titles, credits, and legal stuff. Another five pages details the background of the adventure, though it can be summed up as basically a mad scientist who can turn people into machine soldiers has returned from the dead (sort of) and the PCs must stop him.

Warriors of the Red Planet Review — Improves on OD&D

Dungeons & Dragons was firmly rooted in the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and to a lesser extent, other sword & planet stories. There actually was a game from TSR released during the OD&D era called Warriors of Mars, which was something between a miniatures game and an RPG, but that apparently ran into legal trouble and was pulled from the market.

So sword & planet was mostly ignored (save a few Dragon articles) until Dark Sun came out, a fairly popular setting at least until TSR went under. Unofficially there have been a few attempts to make D&D with the genre. A bootleg version of TSR's Warriors of Mars using more D&Disms by "Doc", an OSR version of Swords of Almuric (based on Robert Howard's novel of the same name), and an appendix in my retro clone. But the most ambitious is these is Warriors of the Red Planet by Al Krombach with Thomas Dennmark doing illustration and layout. It released a while ago on Lulu, but now is out in PDF form, both there and RPGNow/DTRPG/OBS.

Warriors of the Red Planet now available in PDF form

The excellent OSR game, Warriors of the Red Planet is now available in PDF form at RPGNow/DTRPG or at Lulu. Both places $15

It was previously only available in hard copy form at Lulu  (also $15)

Warriors of the Red Planet adventure in the works

Warriors of the Red Planet is an OSR game set on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs which came out recently, and now there is an adventure for it in the works. More details soon, hopefully.

Beta version of Warriors of the Red Planet on Sale at Lulu

And at a remarkably low price. Under $4 

Warriors of the Red Planet still alive!

Honestly, yes, there are so many retro-clones that it's hard for me to get excited when a new one is announced or is released.

But there is one big exception to that, Warriors of the Red Planet, a OD&D style retro clone set on Mars (or Barsoom) of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

According to a recent post, it's not only alive, but beta copies will be sold at KublaCon, a gaming con in California.