Renegade Legion

"Renegade Legion" is a series of science fiction games that were designed by Sam Lewis, produced by FASA, and published from 1987 to 1995. The line was then licensed to Nightshift games, a spin-off of the garage company Crunchy Frog Enterprises by Paul Arden Lidberg, which published one scenario book, a gaming aid, and three issues of a fanzine-quality periodical before reverting the license.

Set in the 69th Century, the series allowed gamers to play out the battles between the "Terran Overlord Government (TOG)", a corrupt galactic empire (which had patterned itself after the Roman Empire on ancient earth), and the "Commonwealth", a "rebel alliance" of humans and aliens making a valiant last stand at the edge of the galaxy. The "Renegade Legion" of the title was the name of a defecting TOG military unit that joins the Commonwealth forces and helps spark the rebellion.

During a panel at RedCon95, FASA President Sam Lewis stated that the "Renegade Legion" series of games were originally designed for use with the Star Wars license. Since the license was awarded to West End Games, FASA chose to use the systems with their own setting.Fact|date=February 2007

The "Renegade Legion" series was made up of five board games, a role-playing game, a war game, two computer games, with another board game and computer game announced but never published.Fact|date=July 2007 With the exception of one of the board games and the two computer games, the "Renegade Legion" series was compatible on all levels.

Board games

"Interceptor" was the first game of the "Renegade Legion" series, and covered ship-to-ship starfighter combat. Playing pieces were boxes that showed the fighter ships from front, back, sides and top. Lead miniatures of the most popular ships from the game were produced by [http://www.pfc-cinc.com/page/page/301637.htm CinC Soft Metal Casting] . A second Edition of the game was announced, but never saw publishing. "Interceptor" is famed for its method for determining internal damageFact|date=July 2007: every vessel has a flow chart diagram that leads to the damaged systems, thus making it difficult to use as well as adding the flavor of having a complex system where it is difficult to anticipate what will crash. This feature was persiflaged in "Renegade Nuns on Wheels", a book for the "Macho Women with Guns" satirical RPG by Blacksburg Tactical Research Center (BTRC); it was dropped in the proposed 2nd Edition of "Interceptor".

"Centurion", the second in the "Renegade Legion" series, covered ground combat between companies of individual (anti-)grav Tanks, with support from conventional vehicles and "bounce" infantry (soldiers with anti-gravity propulsion backpacks) platoons. The spacefighters from "Interceptor" could also be used as air support. Like "Interceptor", the first edition of "Centurion" used boxes that showed all sides of the vehicles for playing pieces. As with "Interceptor", lead miniatures were produced by CinC. The 2nd edition of the game replaced these with detailed plastic miniatures of the tanks.

Both "Interceptor" and "Centurion" used a unique game mechanic to determine combat damage. Players used different templates to simulate different weapon effects, allowing for differentiation between weapons beyond simple numbers; an armor-piercing weapon might do less total damage but penetrate more deeply into the armor than a high-explosive warhead. Depending on where shots landed and how the templates overlapped, a vehicle could sometimes be taken out with a single volley, and other times absorb large amounts of damage and continue fighting.

"Leviathan" covered capital ship combat in deep space, and each player could command a fleet of a dozen ships or more. The "Interceptor" spacefighters were represented not as individual units, but as whole squadrons launched from massive starships. Again, as with the other board games in the series, "Leviathan" 's playing pieces were 3-D boxes which showed the starships from front, back, top and profile.

"Prefect" was a more traditional wargame with large fold-out maps and hundreds of small cardboard counters, that shifted the action from the tactical level to the operational and involved the invasion of an entire star system. The player of "Prefect" was a high-level commander in either the TOG or Commonwealth forces and controlled thousands of ships, tanks and soldiers fighting over multiple worlds and millions of miles of space. "Prefect" also provided a setting (and conversion rules) for integrating the other titles in the series into an ongoing campaign game.

"Circus Imperium" was the fifth of the "Renegade Legion" board games published by FASA, but unlike the others in the series, this tongue-in-cheek game of chariot racing was played strictly for laughs. The game involved anti-grav chariots being pulled by carnivorous beasts, with the object of the game to defeat the other racers, usually by knocking them out of the race or getting them eaten by the monsters. Outcomes of player actions were often random and unpredictable, and players could get points for eliciting laughs or the loudest cheers from other gamers. Ral Partha produced a series of lead figures for the game, including chariots, senators and imperial guards. Older catalogs have had these figures present as items available to order but in the exchange of "BattleTech" figures the Identifiers have changed. There were 3 variants under the old Ral Partha banner dependent on country of purchase.

Other games

Role-playing Game

"Legionnaire" was the name of the role-playing game set in the "Renegade Legion" universe. While designed primarily as a stand-alone game, it could be integrated into the board games in the series, with stat conversions and guidelines for players who wished to do so.

Computer Game

In addition to the board games and the role-playing game, two computer games set in this universe where published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. "Renegade Legion: Interceptor" was a straight translation of the turned-based board game of the same name, and allowed two players to fight each other with a squadron of starfighters. The "Interceptor" computer game also contained a ship creation generator, providing players the ability to produce custom ships.

The second game was called "Renegade: the Battle for Jacob's Star". This game deviated from the "Interceptor" game system by becoming a space dogfighting simulator, very similar to "Wing Commander". It was released around the same time as '. However, its graphics were originally designed in VGA and hastily converted to higher-resolution Super VGA, and were decidedly inferior to "Wing Commander IIIs (which were designed for SVGA from the beginning), and compared to the marketing blitz for "WCIII" (similar in nature to a movie marketing campaign), it was very poorly advertised.fact|date=July 2007 "Renegade", therefore, along with a number of other relatively hastily-programmed space simulators marketed at the time hoping to catch "Wing Commander"'s coattails, performed very poorly in the market. Part of its failure in the market can also be attributed to the perilous finances of SSI at the time, and the company was absorbed by MindScape later in the year.fact|date=July 2007

Games development

Nightshift games had given Don Gallagher the task of evolving the background as well as revising "Interceptor" into the long-announced 2nd Edition and creating the announced "Phalanx" board game.

In his proposal for the background, "TOG" collapsed and a new human ./. Kess Rith-conflict ensued. In Fan circles, this was received with mixed emotions, and many fans continue to play in the old storyline.

"Interceptor, 2nd Edition" abolished the flow chart-like internal damage system, in effect making it to "Centurion in Space". The rules are published and have a certain following.

"Phalanx" was to be the game of individual combat, like "Battletroops" in "Battletech" or "DMZ" in "Shadowrun". Luc Nadon and Dallen Masters did a playtest version that differed heavily from the "Battletroops" rules, in effect making "Phalanx" a tabletop game. No more than a HTML-ed playtest version exists. There is talk on the fanbase to merge the existing "Phalanx" and Sam Lewis' "Battletroops" into a "Centurion"-compatible game;fact|date=July 2007 the realisation status of this is unknown.

Novels and modules

FASA published a number of titles in support of their "Renegade Legion" games. "Interceptor", "Centurion" and "Leviathan" each had a number of modules that provided interlinking scenarios for gamers, and each had one technical sourcebook that provided additional ship and vehicle designs. In addition, FASA published "Shannedam County", a sourcebook which profiled dozen of planets and star systems where adventures and battles could be set.

There were several paperback novels that used the "Renegade Legion" setting: "Renegade's Honor" by William H. Keith, Jr.; and "Damned If We Do …", "Frost Death", and "Monsoon", all by Peter L. Rice.

Notes

"Renegade Legion"'s "Leviathan" module was used as the base for FASA's Battletech new aerospace rules known at the time as BattleSpace. Much of Leviathan's movement & damage system rules were used to make it. The "Leviathan" rules have continued to be used, updated and revised for Battletech's newer aerospace rules known as Aerotech.

2006 Catalyst Game Labs revised & enhance the Aerotech rules. They were split up between Total Warfare/Techmanual. Large naval ships, spacestation rule are included 2008 rulebook known as "Strategic Operations".

External links

*bgg|2520|"Renegade Legion:Interceptor"
* [http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/renleg/ "Renegade Legion" Yahoo Group/Mailing List]
* [http://madcoyote.com/renleg/ Kannik's Fansite]
* [http://madcoyote.com/renleg/int/int.html "Interceptor 2nd Edition" PDF]
* [http://madcoyote.com/renleg/phalanx.html "Phalanx" HTML playtest rules]