I played a lot of RECON back in the day. When I was young teenager watching movies like Platoon, Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket I dove right into it. In light of all this I went on in life to do two things: join the Infantry and play a lot more RPGs. Returning to RECON years later I realized what a horrible mess it was. I used to joke that RECON was not an RPG of fighting in Vietnam, but rather an RPG of dying in Vietnam. Which, in some dark kind of way is not the worst way to learn about the war. I've been jonesing for a new edition but then I found PATROL.

PATROL is a full size RPG, a meaty book at around 200+ pages. I takes inspiration from RECON and 'reboots' it. It introduces some nice modern RPG dynamics such as a narrative combat system which I really like! In PATROL you wont spend time worrying about the difference between a 5.56mm bullet and a 7.62x39. at its core, the system is simple. There are a large number of actions which require people noses to be in the book for a while from time to time.

What I liked:

-military advisors to the game added details that didnt go unnoticed to this grunt.
-narrative combat system that produces realistic results. Getting shot sucks, suppressive fire works, players have agency in battle. -the book has an excellent GM section -mature theme

what I disliked:

-numerous status to track. Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, Doubt (morale) and Injury are all tracked in a more game-ist fashion. After 1 session we started ignoring Hunger and Thirst assuming that unless the PC went on a long patrol, food & water were simply available.
-dice pools can be a little clunky. The Warhammer players love them, but the old-school RPG players hated all the dice on the table (and rolling onto the floor).

PATROL is a worthy sucessor to RECON. I might like to see a modern conflicts/mercenary version, taking the action into Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Phillippines or Venezuela. It would be interesting to how this system would handle drones, GPS, smart phones, fake news and modern body armor.

Patrol Review

GMed for five players over six sessions.

Patrol is an ambitious modern military RPG that frames the Vietnam War through the lens of survival horror. Borrowing from the 1982 RPG/wargame hybrid Recon, Patrol mixes old-school simulationism with a fresh modern approach. The game makes room for players who want to count every bullet, take a hallucinogenic trip into the Heart of Darkness - or something in between.

But dodging VC bullets is just one of your worries. Seemingly everything in the jungle conspires to sap your precious strength/sanity: hunger, thirst, weather, and the war crimes your squadmates keep committing. As your Doubt grows, plain ole Lucky Strikes and LSD won’t cut it anymore; throwing down your rifle, or turning it on the next village, starts to make sense. It’s too bad that the mechanic for tracking doubt, and the status effects that produce it, is the game’s chief liability.

But first, the good stuff.

Well Sourced. Erika did tons of research – and it shows. In just 206 pages, this book boasts an extensive history of the Vietnam conflict, multiple glossaries of military terms, ‘60s slang, and Vietnamese phrases, maps, and detailed timelines of events. (A character rolled in 1964 doesn’t have the same gear, training, or morale as a character rolled in 1970.) Patrol draws heavily from Oliver Stone’s film Platoon (Patrol’s alignments are modeled on the four main characters) and Michael Herr’s “Dispatches,” one of the best non-fiction books ever written, that gives Patrol its name. (Herr also wrote the hardboiled narration in Apocalypse Now and co-wrote Full Metal Jacket, two other key sources.) The atmosphere drips off the page capturing the chaotic, trippy nature of the war.

Layouts. The book is well laid out with attractive fonts and art. It lacks an alphabetical index but makes up for it with a detailed table of contents, glossaries of terms, and printable handouts. The art, with the exception of the full-color cover, consists of chilling vintage photos solarized in stark black-and-white. (A more printer-friendly version without the background overlay would be welcome.)

Play Options. As with Cary, Grunt, or Recon, you can just roll some GIs and hit the bush. But Patrol expands your options, adding characters from Vietnam (North or South), Cambodia, Laos, Korea, New Zealand, or Australia. (Is this the first ‘Nam RPG that lets you play as the VC?) You want to do Wages of Fear with NVA truck drivers dodging bombs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail? Check. You want to play post-Vietnamization ARVN desperately staving off the inevitable in 1973 Saigon? Check. You want to play a fantasy game pitting GIs against an army of Ivan Drago-ass Spetsnaz supermen? Check, check, and check. Every force and faction has NPCs ready to drop into any type of campaign, be it a heroic struggle against imperialism or the adventures of terrified Iowa draftees counting the days until they can go home.

Character Creation. Is simple and relatively quick with lots of cool MOS (class) choices. But I could’ve used a few sample PCs as guidelines - or to assign to new players. The ability to hand a fresh sheet to someone whose GI just got napalmed can’t be undervalued. The end of session move is also great: by secret ballot, players nominate squadmates for medals or for punishment for war crimes.

Alignments. Alignment determines how characters both accumulate and alleviate Doubt, or their overall feeling about their place in the war. Although these mechanics are very interesting (and quite provocative), this section is ultimately a miss for me. The alignment guidelines feel too restrictive and mechanical and could largely be replaced with a list of general guidelines and emotional triggers. For example, the Pragmatist alignment is far too passive - two out of five Doubt-reducing actions que off of other characters.

Dice. Dice rolling is fast and fun – simply add the relevant attribute, gear bonus, and modifiers and roll some D6s. 6s are successes – 5s and 6s when you have the relevant skill - and 1s are failures. Roll more failures than successes and you FUBAR – something catastrophic has happened. Each action (of which there are many) clearly delineates consequences of success, failure, and FUBAR, making strategic planning easy. Nothing feels better than opening up with a M60 and tossing a giant handful of D6… so if you like rolling fistfuls of D6s, this is your game.

Combat. Combat is fast, tense, and very deadly. Recon’s wargame DNA is mostly felt in Patrol’s large number of combat actions, extensive weapon and equipment lists, and detailed rules for movement and initiative. (Playing with minis on a battle mat is recommended.) Strategy and teamwork are a must - and suppressive fire will absolutely save your life. I love the battle buddies rule that uses background NPCs as ablative armor for the PCs. Nothing is more nerve-wracking than performing battlefield surgery under fire while your buddy bleeds out and the Pigman has jammed his M60 again.

The Roundel. Clocks are a big tabletop trend lately (hello, Blades in the Dark) and Patrol is no exception. The Roundel is a clock-like chart for tracking the accumulation status effects like hunger, thirst, and doubt. Turn length is variable - an hour of marching in the hot sun or five minutes of combat - and each Roundel space shows what effects accumulate. Sure, it’s possible for your resident min-maxer to “game” the clock, as these statuses accumulate in a mechanical way. (“We can march for two more turns before I need to rest for three.”) But nothing drives home the core attrition mechanic quite like staring down all those attribute penalties headed your way. This humble chart soon became the greatest source of dread – for all the right and wrong reasons – in our campaign.

Okay, now the bad stuff.

Tracking Status Effects. It’s difficult to convey how simple tracking status effects seems on paper… but how convoluted it is in practice. This is the single biggest issue with Patrol and the reason I can’t give it a better review.

A single table monitors exhaustion, thirst, hunger, injury, doubt, and cumulatively, fatigue. As the first four effects increase, they reduce effectiveness by lowering your attributes. They also generate fatigue, a measure of your overall mental health, which is used to determine XP rewards. If this sounds like too much heavy lifting for one humble chart, you would be right. It’s not just poor presentation of important information - you’re just tracking too many things in the first place. Why not consolidate some of these statuses? Why have four physical tracks and two mental tracks when one of each would be enough?

Just to review, each character is tracking five values, three of which directly modify their ability scores, a fourth that modifies ALL of their ability scores, a fifth that tracks the very complex morale mechanic, and adding up all of those values to derive a sixth that determines end-of-mission XP gains. Now imagine all six of those values are changing. Every. Single. Turn. Got a headache yet? My players struggled with this even after I created a PowerPoint specifically to explain it to them.

Managing all this stuff ground the game to a halt several times. Status penalties accumulate so quickly that frequent rests became essential – and further mitigating penalties requires bulky supplies too heavy to carry in large amounts – requiring more interruptions for foraging. Simulating slogging through triple canopy jungle doesn’t need to feel like this much of a slog.

Doubt. One of the most ambitious mechanics is charting the accumulation of Doubt. Different alignments gain or lose doubt in different ways. As Doubt mounts, characters unlock increasingly desperate actions – including desertion and friendly fire – that alleviate it. Too bad the Doubt chart is a convoluted mess of plusses, minuses, and symbols listing over 25 specific circumstances in which you “take Doubt.” A simple alignment playbook with a few brief guidelines would’ve sufficed instead of another monster of a convoluted chart. And none of those Doubt builders are MOS specific – like a Medic losing a patient, for example.

Actions and Skills. Simply put, there are too many of both. Presenting a new player with eleven pages (!) of actions to choose from is a recipe for analysis paralysis. Likewise, skills are far too specialized, with a few being universally good (mainly weapon skills) and most being almost useless (I can’t imagine too many SCUBA trips happening in I Corps.) And considering how many actions overlap, they could easily be consolidated. For example, there are three different radio actions (keying off of three separate radio skills) that could easily become one “Use Radio” action governed by one “Use Radio” skill. And don’t get me started on the twelve separate movement actions.

Handouts. This game requires too many pages of handouts. With a character sheet, several pages of equipment print-outs, ammo and battery trackers, a status tracker, doubt tracker, and a code of conduct list, that’s like 10 pieces of paper per player. Worse, the character sheet is incomplete, with no room for your MOS perk, base vs. current attributes (these will constantly change), strength, fatigue, or carrying capacity. I eventually created my own sheet just to record everything.

Weapon References. I could use a quick reference for weapons with modifiers and damage rolls.

History. Not mentioning Strategic Hamlets, which were such a huge part of the counterinsurgency efforts of both the French and the Americans, is a major omission. Not to mention a great plot hook.

Copy Editing. It’s to be expected that an independent product largely created by one person would have some goofs, but there are many typos, errors, and missing sections. For example, the text can’t agree how much a body weighs (20 or 10). The roundel and the book can’t agree on how many Rest actions players need to take to recover. All of the trap actions have the same flavor text regardless of function. Breaking down doors is dependent on the hardness of the door – for which there are no rules.

Conclusion

In her first major game, Erika Chappell has created something to be proud of.

Patrol boasts considerable positives – it is meticulosly researched, atmospheric, and boasts a huge variety of play options. It takes on an important subject with sensitivity and intelligence and still manages to be a gripping tabletop experience.

However, I feel the game got away from her in several key areas, chiefly the messy status effects and doubt mechanics. It’s too bad these core rules are so fussy because there’s a killer game fighting to break free from under them.

If a revised edition is forthcoming, sign me up.

Even if you never want to play a historical Vietnam RPG, there is much to recommend here. The alignment system and how it effects how the various soldiers react to fatigue and stress is great. As things happen in the game, characters react differently to various events based on their outlook and how tired they are. It does encourage PC vs PC conflict which I am reluctant to use but I would certainly use it as a guide for NPC actions which seems very real for Vietnam conditions. I could see the increasing doubt mechanic applied to a bunch of rpg games of all types. Players can smoke and drink (or worse!) to help them manage their doubt. That alignment and doubt mechanic alone is worth the price of admission. The players are encouraged to write after action reports which they can write characters up for misconduct. Completely fitting the Vietnam time frame and military aspect. The turn tracking sequence and the action templates make things clear as to what is going on especially during combat.

A very captivating successor to Recon! Like Recon was capable of I'm currently using it to run a morally ambiguous Western Mercenaries game in a Cluster of "Imagi-nations" dealing with corrupt local governments, extremist militias and Shady Spooks running in the "Saigon Gothic" flavor. It all works wonderfully. I eagerly await my opportunity to consume all the expansions. Even if vietnam is not your thing this is simply the best military RPG on the market and as someone who deeply appreciates work in this underserved genre I can't recommend it enough.

I was really looking forward to this game. After trying several Vietnam era RPGs and not getting exactly what I wanted, I had high hopes for Patrol. But unfortunately those got burned as I was trying to understand the rules and writing a CheatSheet.

First the Pros:

• Nice layout and okish but fitting artwork
• The authors seem to really dig the theme, you can feel the energy invested in writing this
• The basics rulewise are understandable and seem to work pretty well
• A clear map
• Printable goodies for playsupport

Now the Cons:

• The rules seem easy at first, but I just got smacked in the face by loads of sub rules, special rules and rules snippets hidden in the text.
• The amount of tables, which are really needed all the time as I understand the system, is stunning for a “fast-paced” game.
• I am not sure if I understand the system at all, especially the Turn/Action structure. Since a typical Turn Sequence is laid out in the Basic Rules section, but not fully explained (Reset Player Suppression?) and the Combat Example is a mess, I am very unsure of me understanding anything correct.
• The Combat Example: As I said before, this example does nothing to clarify anything. There are things/rules mentioned which are not explained before but after the Combat Example, like the rules for radio charges for example. How does the player fire artillery? There is dice pool for the crew mentioned, but I couldn’t find anything regarding this
• Why do People, Vehicle and Aircraft need different To-Hit rules?
• I don’t get some rules regarding Skills. Skills don’t have Ranks, but at one point one can read of a Stealth Rating which is the sum of several other ratings, including the Skill Rating/Rank?!
• As I understand, the gameis trying to implement some mechanics similar to PbtA Games, which would be a good thing. If the mechanics would have been explained better. For example the Roundel reminds me of the Clocks, found in several PbtA Games like The Sprawl. But again, this pretty cool game aid gets bogged down by special rules written on the aid itself (which are, again, not explained in the rules section). Or the Actions, which are the heart & soul of the system, are quite similar to PbtA Moves, but holy shit I counted them:68! And I think I missed some which are not part of the tables but scattered throughout the text. And Every. Single. Action. has its own rules.
• All in all Newstand Press seems to force the picture of a rules-light game, but only highlights the obvious facts (e.g. 3 stats), but says nothing of those tons of additional stats and rules. I am not sure how some of the other reviewers came to the conclusion that this is a light game.

Maybe the Q&A would clarify some things, but the link doesn’t work.

So finally: Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I’m too dumb for this game. Possible. But at this stage I can not give a higher Rating, even if I wanted. And to come to a conclusion: Like I said, I really wanted to like this game but could not. This leaves me kind of sad.

This RPG is not only cheap, but it's a pretty long read that doesn't seem to waste your time on any of it's pages. I can't think of a better RPG set in the Vietnam War and frankly most RPGs with firearms are either too complicated or well....too complicated.

The stats work, there is a lot of different options for play, many many factions and NPCs, lots of features that show the glory and horrors of combat, and page after page of detail on the conflict itself.

After two years of American History in High School and College, I didn't expect to learn anything new but I did.

Looking at the system now, I'm frankly suprised all the weapons are so balanced and the most recent patch I keep hearing about is so good.

I'm incredibly, almost manicly excited for the supplements and I believe this rpg deserves every sale that Twight 2013, which is a garbage system of complexity and bad writing.

In fact the system is so good, I use it as a resource for third world D-20 based RPGs, because it's just full of ideas and infomation.

Hope more footage of people playing this game is uploaded, it's fun to watch.

I am interested in games about people facing difficult choices, and this one delivers. Patrol has some really innovative and interesting takes on a how to approach a squad based game. The roundel marking time and the asymmetrical way PC decisions directly impact on each other is a great addition to the genre. It is like Recon for grown up gamers. While I am drawn more toward the story-telling aspects and simplicity of Derek's story games like Turncoats and Hell on Treads, I can't help but admire the scope of this one.

I just wish my game group was as keen as me to play games not set in a fantasy world!