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Forewarning: This is going to be a long, rambling couple of posts. Apologies.
I was thirteen years old in 1990. On a fairly regular family trip to CompUSA, I perused the video games section, when I noticed a video game called Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. Now, I was a fan of the Gil Gerard television show, but this didn't look quite like the television show. Regardless, it was a Buck Rogers video game, so I bought it. (Seriously, I was a huge Buck Rogers in the 25th Century fan as a wee lad. I remember watching the television show with my parents. I had most of the toys, and the comic books. When I was six years old, I had to go in the hospital for a few days for extensive medical testing. My kindergarten teacher knew that I'd be going in the hospital soon, and told me that my kindergarten class would all make me "get well soon" cards, and wanted to know who I would want featured on the cards. My answer? Buck Rogers, of course! I specifically recall my kindergarten teacher asking, "Wouldn't you rather have Pacman instead?" Pfft, Pacman. No, Buck Rogers. I received about a dozen and a half handmade "get well soon" cards, all with Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, and/or a Starfighter on the cover. But I digress.)
I played the heck out of that video game for a few weeks. It became quickly apparent that it had absolutely nothing to do with the television show, other than having characters named Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer, Killer Kane, Princess Ardala, etc. I was sucked into the setting, with rocket ships, ray guns, digital personalities, and a semi-hard science-fiction setting that was quite different from other science-fiction I knew. Inside the box though was a pamphlet, advertising something called a role-playing game called Buck Rogers XXVc. It told me that if I wanted to continue the adventures in the video game, to check out the role-playing game. In a coincidence of timing, a new, fairly large comic book shop opened up a couple of months later. I checked it out with a friend, and in addition to comic books, it carried role-playing games. Among those role-playing games was Buck Rogers XXVc. I had to buy it. My friend meanwhile bought the Palladium Robotech RPG. That was my introduction to the tabletop RPG hobby.
I'd go into a deep overview of the system, but someone else did a far better job than I would have back in 2019. You can read it here. It's lengthy and detailed, but well worth a read if you have any interest in Buck Rogers XXVc or hard science-fiction tabletop RPGs. To sum up, Buck Rogers XXVc is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2E re-skinned in a semi-hard science-fiction setting with rocket ships and ray guns, no alignments, a seventh attribute called Tech, and a percentile skill system. The system is functional, but IMO that's not the selling point.
The selling point is the setting. The setting, to this day, is phenomenal IMO. As mentioned, it's semi-hard science-fiction with rocket ships, ray guns, and Buck Rogers. Earth is a shell of its former self, polluted nearly beyond repair, occupied by lower class natural humans. The moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the asteroid belt are all partially terraformed and populated by genetically engineered diverse races of humanity. On Venus, you have the Lowlander, a genetically engineered reptile-human crossbreed. Mars is now the jewel of the solar system and the main political power, oppressing humanity on Earth, with humans genetically engineered to better fit the Martian atmosphere. There's political intrigue, corporate intrigue, digital personalities/AI, transhuman themes, revolution, secret agents, and a sort of class cold war threatening to break out into open war. It was science-fiction, but even as a young teenager, it felt more real than Star Trek, Star Wars, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and other science-fiction I knew of at the time. Except that it had its own fun 1930s/1940s pulp flair.
Unfortunately, TSR at the time was in dire financial straights and the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop RPG was largely a sales failure. Many people couldn't get past the Buck Rogers name, automatically assuming that the game shared the same setting as the Gil Gerard television show when it couldn't be much more different. Others blamed Lorraine Williams and Buck Rogers XXVc for the death of Star Frontiers, (which there probably is truth to that). In three years, the game line was dead, with a couple of advertised books never seeing the light of day. In 1996, Wizards of the Coast bought and rescued TSR. Years later, Wizards of the Coast discovered that TSR had a warehouse full of unsold Buck Rogers XXVc product. The inventory was transferred to Paizo and sold off online in the latter half of the 2000s. I managed to snag two brand new unopened core box sets, and a new copy of the extremely hard to find No Humans Allowed supplement.
I was thirteen years old in 1990. On a fairly regular family trip to CompUSA, I perused the video games section, when I noticed a video game called Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday. Now, I was a fan of the Gil Gerard television show, but this didn't look quite like the television show. Regardless, it was a Buck Rogers video game, so I bought it. (Seriously, I was a huge Buck Rogers in the 25th Century fan as a wee lad. I remember watching the television show with my parents. I had most of the toys, and the comic books. When I was six years old, I had to go in the hospital for a few days for extensive medical testing. My kindergarten teacher knew that I'd be going in the hospital soon, and told me that my kindergarten class would all make me "get well soon" cards, and wanted to know who I would want featured on the cards. My answer? Buck Rogers, of course! I specifically recall my kindergarten teacher asking, "Wouldn't you rather have Pacman instead?" Pfft, Pacman. No, Buck Rogers. I received about a dozen and a half handmade "get well soon" cards, all with Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, and/or a Starfighter on the cover. But I digress.)
I played the heck out of that video game for a few weeks. It became quickly apparent that it had absolutely nothing to do with the television show, other than having characters named Buck Rogers, Wilma Deering, Dr. Huer, Killer Kane, Princess Ardala, etc. I was sucked into the setting, with rocket ships, ray guns, digital personalities, and a semi-hard science-fiction setting that was quite different from other science-fiction I knew. Inside the box though was a pamphlet, advertising something called a role-playing game called Buck Rogers XXVc. It told me that if I wanted to continue the adventures in the video game, to check out the role-playing game. In a coincidence of timing, a new, fairly large comic book shop opened up a couple of months later. I checked it out with a friend, and in addition to comic books, it carried role-playing games. Among those role-playing games was Buck Rogers XXVc. I had to buy it. My friend meanwhile bought the Palladium Robotech RPG. That was my introduction to the tabletop RPG hobby.
I'd go into a deep overview of the system, but someone else did a far better job than I would have back in 2019. You can read it here. It's lengthy and detailed, but well worth a read if you have any interest in Buck Rogers XXVc or hard science-fiction tabletop RPGs. To sum up, Buck Rogers XXVc is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2E re-skinned in a semi-hard science-fiction setting with rocket ships and ray guns, no alignments, a seventh attribute called Tech, and a percentile skill system. The system is functional, but IMO that's not the selling point.
The selling point is the setting. The setting, to this day, is phenomenal IMO. As mentioned, it's semi-hard science-fiction with rocket ships, ray guns, and Buck Rogers. Earth is a shell of its former self, polluted nearly beyond repair, occupied by lower class natural humans. The moon, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and the asteroid belt are all partially terraformed and populated by genetically engineered diverse races of humanity. On Venus, you have the Lowlander, a genetically engineered reptile-human crossbreed. Mars is now the jewel of the solar system and the main political power, oppressing humanity on Earth, with humans genetically engineered to better fit the Martian atmosphere. There's political intrigue, corporate intrigue, digital personalities/AI, transhuman themes, revolution, secret agents, and a sort of class cold war threatening to break out into open war. It was science-fiction, but even as a young teenager, it felt more real than Star Trek, Star Wars, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and other science-fiction I knew of at the time. Except that it had its own fun 1930s/1940s pulp flair.
Unfortunately, TSR at the time was in dire financial straights and the Buck Rogers XXVc tabletop RPG was largely a sales failure. Many people couldn't get past the Buck Rogers name, automatically assuming that the game shared the same setting as the Gil Gerard television show when it couldn't be much more different. Others blamed Lorraine Williams and Buck Rogers XXVc for the death of Star Frontiers, (which there probably is truth to that). In three years, the game line was dead, with a couple of advertised books never seeing the light of day. In 1996, Wizards of the Coast bought and rescued TSR. Years later, Wizards of the Coast discovered that TSR had a warehouse full of unsold Buck Rogers XXVc product. The inventory was transferred to Paizo and sold off online in the latter half of the 2000s. I managed to snag two brand new unopened core box sets, and a new copy of the extremely hard to find No Humans Allowed supplement.
, but I'm glad that there's an optional rule for ascending AC as that will make it a much easier sell to others, especially those newer to the hobby. You can tell that 
), is that I'd really like to see more. I'd like to see something like the digital personalities/AI that were in Buck Rogers XXVc. I'd like to see more about the ARES Consortium, in-depth. The setting needs a bit more fleshing out.
