Inner City
A Modern Day Role-Playing Game
in the Big City

Game Review

Review by Kerry Lloyd


Designed by Chris Clark
Inner City Games Designs PO. Box 345, Grayslake, IL 60030
Released: December, 1984
Catalog No. 1001
Price: $12.95
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: Good
*

Inner City is a role-playing game set in the environment of a modern big city. Billed as a "somewhat lighthearted" game, Inner City is aimed at being the view of modern U.S. urban life a visitor from another planet might receive from watching several days of prime-time television. As satire, it is quite interesting. As a game, it has a ways to go.

Inner City comes in an 8 1/2 x 11 inch box, only 1/2 inch thick, with cover art designed to grab the eye; it actually succeeds, on a sort of "Whuzzat?" reaction. Inside can be found a 40-page rule book, a 4-color map of the city area, and a supply of money printed on parchnient paper in different denominations and perforated for easy separation. overall, the components are not of the highest quality; the rule book does, however, contain a fair number of puns and allusions which can be groaned at, at least half appreciatively.

The game features two basic classes of character, Citizen (law-abiding) and Crook (not-so-law-abiding), with a number of interesting subclasses available to players at assorted advanced levels--cop, politician, vigilante, FBI agent, private investigator, and hood. Only the cop and the FBI agent are restricted to the Citizen (good) class, while the hood is restricted to the Crook (bad) class; the other subclasses may be of either major class. The game does not use any physical or mental attributes to define the characters; all characters are simply rated for hit points and defensive classification (DC).

The game begins with specified basic percentages in a number of unusual, criminally oriented skill fields for the Crook only. The Citizen starts with only his wits and a chance to find a job. Progression through various levels is by accumulating wisdom points gained through conquering encounters and cash gained either through work or crime. As levels increase, so do ratings in the various skill areas, according to predefined charts for the character classes and subclasses.

Combat is handled by rolling a D20, adjusting for the type of weapon used, and comparing the adjusted die roll to the target's defensive classification. If the adjusted roll is equal to or greater than the DC, the target is hit and damaged, a one-die random roll according to the weapon type. Unfortunately, no basic DC appears to have been provided for beginning characters, although all of the encountered character types have rather high DCs. Filthy Harry, one of the special cop types possibly encountered, has a DC of 26 and apparently can only be injured by a bazooka, a flamethrower, or TNT.

Armor (leathers) is available, but is too expensive for a beginning character to acquire. Even weapons are expensive and hard for a beginning character to acquire--a knife costs $20.

During the testing sessions of Inner City, we created a number of characters and ran a number of encounters. The game appears to be admirably suited to solitaire or referee-less play because there is a wealth of charts for encounters, treasure, etc., but there are numerous glitches which even an experienced Gamemaster (GM) will have problems ironing out. For instance, in an encounter of four Class 1 Crooks (the players) with a lone hooker with 8 hit points (their first encounter of play), the players were unable to afford the girl's services, so she attacked with a switchblade. During the ensuing combat, it required a roll of 14 for the one Crook with a pistol and rolls of 16 and 17 for the remaining to hit her at all. Five of the six available shots in the pistol were expended, and it required seven total rounds of combat to off this one little gal-and she took two of the Crooks with her!

Various activities are available for the players such as car theft, armed robbery, mugging, chasing crooks, and political grafting; lower level Citizens are reduced to looking for work and just walking the streets waiting to be attacked. Auto theft and all its ramifications are rather thoroughly covered, but many other components of life in the big city are less than adequately handled (meals, for instance, and normal clothing--and its DC).

Inner City is a brave attempt at a role- playing game, and attempt is the proper term. With a bit of extra work, this could have been an excellent and fairly enjoyable game; in its present form, it's a curiosity. If you are a serious collector of games and a completist, you might want to get this one. If not, don't bother-it has little new to offer GMs, and has fallen far short of any sort of mark in terms of playability.

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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