Action! Classics: the War of the Worlds Sourcebook Copyright © 2003 by Gold Rush Games
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Action! ClassicsTM The War of the Worlds Sourcebook Authors Christopher McGlothlin, M.Ed. Herbert George Wells Additional Material Mark Arsenault Christina Stiles Introduction by James L. Cambias Cover Illustration by Tom Kidd Interior Illustrations by Morgan Bonthoux Action! System rules created by Mark Arsenault Patrick Sweeney Action! System Core Rules written by Mark Arsenault Patrick Sweeney Ross Winn Action! Classics: The War of the Worlds Sourcebook copyright © 2003 by Gold Rush Games. All rights reserved. Action! System copyright © 2001-2003 by Gold Rush Games. All rights reserved. Action! System, Fast Action!, Action! Packed, Action! Ready, the Action! System logo and all associated marks are owned by Gold Rush Games (www.goldrushgames.com). ‘Gold Rush Games’ is a trademark of Gold Rush Games. Do you want to publish your own Action! System product? You can with the Action! System License, available at www.action-system.com. ‘D20 System’ and the ‘D20 System’ logo are trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used according to the terms of the D20 System License version 4.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20. Wizards of the Coast® is a Registered Trademark of Wizards of the Coast and is used with Permission. Stock # GRG4202E v1.1 111 T h e Contents W a Chapter Two: The War in Action! System 76 r Introduction Realistic, Cnematic or Extreme? 76 by James L. Cambias 3 Traits 76 Optional Wealth Rules 78 o Skills 79 f Chapter Three: Weapons 81 f The War of the Worlds Pistols 81 by Herbert George (H.G.) Wells Rifles 81 t Introduction 6 Machine-guns 81 Book One: The Coming of the Martians 6 Artillery 82 h Chapter One: The Eve of War 6 Naval Guns 82 e Chapter Two: The Falling Star 8 Civilian Weapons 82 Chapter Three: On Horsell Common 10 Martian Weapons & Equipment 83 Chapter Four: The Cylinder Opens 11 Human Weapons (table) 87 W Chapter Five: The Heat-Ray 12 Martian Weapons (table) 88 o Chapter Six: The Heat-Ray in the Chobham Road 14 Martian Vehicle Stats 88 Chapter Seven: How I Reached Home 15 Chapter Three: The Martians 89 r Chapter Eight: Friday Night 16 Martian Biology 89 lll Chapter Nine: The Fighting Begins 17 Game Statistics 90 d Chapter Ten: In the Storm 20 Chapter Four: The Novel’s Characters 91 Chapter Eleven: At the Window 22 The Narrator 91 s Chapter Twelve: What I saw of the Destruction The Narrator’s Brother 92 of Weybridge and Shepperton 25 The Artilleryman 93 Chapter Thirteen: How I Fell in With the Curate 29 The Curate 94 Chapter Fourteen: In London 31 Ogilvy 95 Chapter Fifteen: What Had Happened in Surrey 35 Henderson 96 Chapter Sixteen: The Exodus from Lodon 38 Stent 97 Chapter Seventeen: The “Thunder Child” 43 Chapter Five: Running The War of the Worlds 98 Book Two: The Earth Under the Martians 47 Living in the Past 98 Chapter One: Under Foot 47 A Change of Scenery 99 Chapter Two: What We Saw from the Ruined House 50 Time After Time 99 Chapter Three: The Days of Imprisonment 54 Giving the Players a Fighting Chance 99 Chapter Four: The Death of the Curate 56 How Not To Be Seen 99 Chapter Five: The Stillness 58 Fighting Back 100 Chapter Six: The Work of Fifteen Days 59 Surviving the Game 100 Chapter Seven: The Man on Putney Hill 60 Giving the Martians a Fighting Chance 101 Chapter Eight: Dead London 66 Alternate Endings 101 Chapter Nine: Wreckage 69 A Sample Rewrite 102 Chapter Ten: The Epilogue 71 Beware the Beast Called Man 102 Campaign and Adventure Scenario Set-Ups 102 Depression-Era Technology 106 Sourcebook War of the Worlds Battle Rules 109 Appendices 110 by Christopher McGlothlin, M.Ed.,with Mark Arsenault Resources (Bibliography) 110 and Christina Stiles Contributor Bios 110 Introduction 73 Open Game License 111 Chapter One: The Setting 74 Establishing an Exact Date 74 Early Edwardian Britain 75 Setting and Character Conception 75 2 III n Introduction t r by James L. Cambias o d u c Herbert George Wells was in some ways as alien to his its surface worn smooth by erosion and its oceans long t time as any of his Martians. He was born in 1866 to a since dried up. Because Mars was a smaller world than iii struggling lower-middle-class family at the height of the Earth, it had cooled faster, its crust shrinking and fractur- o Victorian age. His mother’s fondest hope was that he might ing and its oceans draining away into the interior. As Lowell someday become a shopkeeper. Instead, an interest in sci- put it in Mars and Its Canals, “Within the bounds that make n ence got him into the Normal School of Science where he life possible, the smaller the body the quicker it ages and studied under the formidable Thomas H. Huxley (famous the more advanced its denizens must be.” He believed that as “Darwin’s bulldog” during the early debates on evolu- the planet-wide scale of the Martian canal network dem- tion). The young Wells became a religious skeptic, a So- onstrated the superior intellect and determination of the cialist, and a severe critic of 19th-century British society. Martians. Wells took up writing, producing some science text- H. G. Wells himself had speculated on what humans books and contributing scientific articles to magazines and might be like in the future. His 1893 essay “The Man of newspapers. His first novel was The Time Machine (based the Year Million” suggested that humans might evolve into on a series of essays he wrote speculating on the future of little more than huge heads with vestigial bodies and large human evolution) in 1895, followed by The Island of Dr. complex hands, feeding on some sort of specialized nutri- Moreau in 1896 and The Invisible Man in 1897. ent solution injected directly into the bloodstream. That By 1895, Wells was prospering as a writer, and had became the model for his Martians. established himself in a comfortable suburban village out- Wells placed the invasion point in his own suburban side London. One afternoon that year he was out walking back yard. He was learning to ride a bike at the time—the with his brother, discussing the sad fate of the natives of introduction of the safety bicycle had made cycling a huge Tasmania, who had been completely exterminated by Brit- fad—so he pedaled all over Surrey, choosing locations for ish colonists during the preceding decades. As an analogy, the invaders to land, and picking out local landmarks to be his brother remarked “Suppose some beings from another destroyed. Some of his neighbors were to be the first vic- planet were to drop out of the sky suddenly, and begin tims of the Martian Heat-Rays in the novel. laying about them here?” The War of the Worlds was first published as a serial in The idea struck a chord with Wells. Mars was very much Pearson’s Magazine, and was an immediate success. Wells in the public mind at the time, thanks to the efforts of the expanded it for book publication in 1898, and it was a best- American astronomer Percival Lowell. Lowell was from a seller. Translations into other languages followed, and the very rich Boston family, and read with interest Giovanni story has remained in print ever since. In America, the New Schiaparelli’s description of the mysterious “canali” on the York Evening Journal and the Boston Post serialized the surface of Mars. In the spring of 1894 Lowell set up a story, but in order to appeal to local readers they trans- well-equipped private observatory atop Mars Hill, outside posed the action to New York and Boston, without bother- Flagstaff, with a powerful 24-inch telescope and a staff of ing to get Wells’s permission. The newspaper versions also assistants. From then on he studied Mars at every opportu- cut out everything but the scenes of destruction. A parody, nity, churning out a series of books chronicling his obser- The War of the Wenuses, by Charles Graves and Edward vations, beginning with Mars in 1895. He was a regular on Lucas, lampooned the action and Wells’ sometimes preachy the lecture circuit and always ready for an interview or an style. Garrett P. Serviss, apparently mortally offended by article in the newspapers. The fact that other astronomers the presumption of Wells’s Martians, published Edison’s couldn’t see the canals at all and disputed most of his find- Conquest of Mars, in which Earth’s greatest inventors de- ings didn’t bother Lowell one bit: “Wolves hunt in packs, velop super-scientific weapons and launch a counter-inva- the lion stalks alone,” he said. sion which exterminates the Martians. (If Wells ever read Lowell quickly became convinced that the “canali” seen it, he must have appreciated the irony of giving the Mar- by Schiaparelli were real, that they were artificial irriga- tians the Tasmanian treatment.) tion canals, and that they were the work of intelligent be- In 1938, Orson Welles (no relation to H. G.) produced ings. In his books, Lowell described Mars as an old world, a radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds for his Mer- 3 T cury Theatre on the Air. To give the story some imme- even the possibility of biological warfare. In later novels diacy, Welles and his co-author Howard Koch moved the he considered the possibility of weapons using atomic en- h action to New Jersey and told the story through a series of ergy.