RAH!
A Risus Action Hero!
The Action Force campaign for Risus, the Anything RPG
Action Force
Action Force is the code name for an an international counter-terrorist military task force with headquarters in Geneva. Comprised of elite soldiers from around the world, Action Force is at the forefront of the battle to defend the world from the forces of Cobra.
Like a lot of other boys who grew up in the USA in the 1980s, I had G.I. Joe action figures, watched the G.I. Joe after-school cartoons, and read the G.I. Joe comic books. It was not until many years later that I discovered that the makers of the G.I. Joe toys and comics had made a stab at selling them overseas.
Of course, the very same American referents that made G.I. Joe a big seller in the US were a hindrance rather than a help in the global market. The toys and comics were stripped of much of their American-ness and reimagined as Action Force.
Although never as popular as the G.I. Joe phenomenon in the US, Action Force had some success abroad, especially in the UK and Canada. (I hasten to add the caveat that my knowledge here is quite limited, and I welcome additional information from those who are better informed than I.)
Recognizing that this truly is a world-wide web, it seems likely that there are those who might prefer role-playing as a member of the international Action Force team to being a "real American hero." And I think there are probably also some Americans out there who, like myself, would like to break some new narrative ground with the comparatively under-explored Action Force team, rather than revisiting the familiar exploits of the G.I. Joe team.
So, for all such, I invite you to adapt the information provided here to build an Action Force roleplaying campaign. And if you are putting together such a campaign, one of the things that you will need to figure out is the place of Action Force relative to the G.I. Joe team.
First, does your Action Force campaign take place in a world with G.I. Joe, or without it? (GMs planning a G.I. Joe campaign should ask themselves if their world is going to have an Action Force team.) Neither of the two sets of comics &c. refers to the existence of the other, and both settings made sense on their own.
If you decide that both G.I. Joe and Action Force exist in your campaign world, the second question is how they relate to each other. Was one created before the other? Was one the inspiration for the other? Is one subservient to the other? How much do the two cooperate? How easy is it for members of one team to participate in or join the other? Different answers to these questions will give your campaign different flavors.
In my own campaign, both organizations exist. The G.I. Joe team was put together in the early 80s, and both its success and its limitations pointed to the value of an international sister organization. Accordingly, Action Force was formed in the middle or late eighties under the auspices of NATO. For the next several years the two teams cooperated, but Action Force was the junior partner, dominated by Americans.
It was not until G.I. Joe was disbanded and the flow of American personnel and resources dried up that Action Force really came into its own. Today, with G.I. Joe struggling to get running again after its hiatus, Action Force sometimes finds itself in the position of the stronger partner. A true partnership of equals, Action Force and G.I. Joe are united in the struggle against Cobra.
Here are a couple of websites that offer more information on Action Force:
http://www.starwars-rpg.net/swfa/jmm/joe/gijissueaf.
html
http://www.oocities.org/mkbip/webpages/actionforce.h
tm
http://www.starwars-rpg.net/swfa/jmm/joe/gijissueaf.
html
http:/
/www.sgtsavage.com/actionforceone.html
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G.I. Joe, A Real American Hero, is Copyright 2004 Hasbro. Risus is Copyright 1993-2000, S. John Ross. All material original to RAH! A Risus American Hero! is Copyright 2003-4, John David Payne.
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