Phoenix Command?

[rgard]

Has anybody ever managed to play Leading Edge Games' Phoenix Command (PC) for any length of time?

I played about 6 game sessions max with it...not counting about 8 sessions playing LEG's Aliens game (combat was slightly watered down in the Aliens game.) The PC games we played were mostly about blasting dinosaurs or being eaten by them when LEG released their dinosaur supplement right around the time Jurassic Park came out.

Playing PC was only a diversion as we were taking a break from AD&D 1E.

Just wondering if anybody out there ever managed to play it...or if anybody still plays it?

P.S. If this is in the wrong forum I missed my spot check to find the correct forum. Any Mods, please feel free to stick this in the correct forum if I goofed.

 

[jdrakeh]

You may want to track down "Cpl Ferro" (Google him + Phoenix Command). He's the biggest fan of PC that I know online and has written various fan supplements for the game that are hosted across the internet. Notably, his PC conversions based on John Carpenter's "The Thing" make for a great one-shot. And I say that as somebody who doesn't particularly care for PC

 

[rgard]

You may want to track down "Cpl Ferro" (Google him + Phoenix Command). He's the biggest fan of PC that I know online and has written various fan supplements for the game that are hosted across the internet. Notably, his PC conversions based on John Carpenter's "The Thing" make for a great one-shot. And I say that as somebody who doesn't particularly care for PC

Thanks for the info. I appreciate it!

 

[ExileInParadise]

Shameless Plug:
The best place for everything Phoenix Command (PCCS) is the Phoenix_Command YahooGroup:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phoenix_command/

Cpl. Ferro is there, as well as many many other fans of these rare/obscure games.

To answer your question, yes, LEG games are still played, including convention play here and there, such as Eero Juhola's days-long RopeCon sessions. Eero also wrote up a nice card-based turn system to replace the static turn sequence in Phoenix Command which makes it *much* faster and much more like the chaotic swirl of combat. The card-based turn system is one of the mods that have become mandatory for me in Phoenix Command/Living Steel games.

But, yes, you will find that most people are not fans of Phoenix Command. It, and the related games like Living Steel and ALIENS, are misunderstood and definitely an acquired taste. Once you get past the initial hurdles, they become quite fun, even today. But they are so unapproachable, they tend to put people off before they get to the good parts.

Now, as far as being on-topic here, there have been discussions of how to get parts of Phoenix Command to inter-operate with the OGC, but its a very elaborate and daunting task. I am speaking as one who as gone a ways down that road personally.

Start with how to merge d20, d20 Modern, and d20 Future. Then grab Unearthed Arcana which can help a lot. Some sections from it which apply more or less to how PCCS works:
* generic classes
* character background (for Living Steel character who start with an extensive military history)
* armor as DR (to simulate effective impact damage or PEN values)
* vitality and wound points (if you want d20 damage, this is closer to PCCS. really PCCS wants PCCS damage)
* combat facing
* hex combat
* contacts (for a Bram Stoker's Dracula game)
* reputation, honor, and taint (a start for converting Living Steel's Karma system)
* level-independent XP awards (PCCS does not use classes or levels)

In the yahoogroup search, plugin the search topic "d20" and you should run over my original post there about this, which I believe had more detail.

Any notes you can find for mixing GURPS with d20 would probably help with PCCS and d20 issues.
GURPS and Phoenix Command share a lot of similar approaches to how to work things, so solutions for one may help devise how to do that for the other.

 

[jdrakeh]

I really cannot say enough good things about Cpl Ferro -- as I mentioned above, I'm not a big fan of Phoenix Command. That said, Cpl Ferro's work alone pursuades me to play it from time to time (particularly The Thing conversion, as I'm a huge fan of Carpenter's adaptation of Who Goes There?). The guy can probably make oral surgery fun if he tries.