GI Joe: A Real American Hero is one of the classic 80’s memories that a lot of people my age have. Between the animated series and the Marvel Comics, we ate it up. So when a charity bundle sale came up last year for the new GI Joe RPG, I had to pick it up. This is my day 22 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Now I do have to note that there has been a ton of other entries for the GI Joe franchise that included new TV and Movies, additional comics and other media. While I’ve been aware of these, I haven’t really followed them as much as I would have liked. The art on the cover seems to indicate that it’s either their own “universe” or a comic series recently released.
The PDF file is 354 pages long. The character sheet is two pages long. The Character Creation process starts on page 33. This is a cold read as I’ve not had any chance to look at these rules before hand so be warned.
There are eight steps listed ranging from 0-7. 0- Discuss with your GM & Other players, 1- Character Concept, 2- Set Starting Essences, 3- Select Influences, 4- Choose and Origin, 5- Select a Role, 6- Describe your Character, 7- Form your Squad. (OK, I’m really trying to avoid the Teen Girl Squad joke here)
OK for step 0 I tried to talk with the voices in my head about who would GM and who would play what. But I got everything from silence to curses to responses in a language that I didn’t understand. The description for this step did say that the game could be an 80’s GI Joe cartoon or a gritty modern game or one more focused on Snake Eyes and the ninja clans. While that later one is tempting, I’m going to stick with what I know. This will be a character for the 80’s animated series that is an on-site hacking expert. I guess this also takes care of Step 1, character concept.
So, moving to Step 2, Set Starting Essences. this is the core abilities for the characters. They are Strength, Speed (which also covers balance and reflexes), Smarts and Social (confidence, leadership etc.). The book tells me that I have 12 Essence Points to spend between the four attributes. Luckily the descriptions tell us which types of Essences is good for the type of character that I’m trying to create. I scrolled down and read deeper descriptions on the four Essences and spent my points as I saw fit for the character concept.
Step 3 is Selecting Influences. This is what kind of character I want this to be along with some background information. These will provide some benefits and hang-ups for the character. I’m instructed to pick up to three, but each Influence past the first one will cost a hang-up. I looked over the descriptions of the Influences and selected Gearhead for the first since they had some computer experts listed. The background bond can be randomly rolled on a d12 and it came up with “My speech is peppered with jargon that I rarely take the time to explain.” That sound about right for this type of character. I’ve decided that I’m going to take a second Influence of Greenshirt. This is a person who was a regular member of the military before he got called up to the Joe team. The bond that I rolled was “Someday I will turn my time in G.I. Joe into an anonymous biography.” As for the hang-up (since this is not the first influence), the only one listed was “You have trouble seeing yourself as an equal on your team.” Basically other members of the team can’t lend me an assistance on a skill test unless they also have the Greenshirt influence.
Alright, step 4 is choosing an origin. This appears to be what the character did or learn before he became a member of the GI Joe team. It can affect the character’s starting health, movement, Essence and Skills. I selected Army for my unnamed Joe and wrote down the appropriate details.
Step 5 has me selecting a Role. This is the position that the character fulfills on the Joe team. In this Role is a Role Focus that I must select at 1st level. And from that I noted down the Role Perks, Training and Qualifications. There are also additional Essence Points provided for use. The available roles were Commando, Infantry, Officer, Ranger, Renegade, Technician and Vanguard. I read the description for Technician and yea that was the one I was thinking of for this character.
Describing your character is step 6. This can be distinguishing features, personality, etc. It has a list of adjectives that you can use based off of your Essences. But I’m not really sure what these are for. This currently unnamed Joe is quick and attentive I guess. Gear is mentioned here but it just says you don’t have to buy the gear now as it is provided to you before the start of your mission. Handy, I guess. I think I’m going to pick a code name of Spacebar for this character. I was thinking USB, but that wasn’t really used in the 80s.
Step 7 Form A Squad. OK, I can’t resist. If you haven’t been introduced to Teen Girl Squad from Strongbad, here you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Seriously there would have been some discussion with the other players on who is doing what, how your character’s all know each other and the like. And that’s basically it according to the book for character creation. I transferred what I did have over to the sheets and scanned them. There were still a lot of blank spots on the sheet, but I assumed they would have been filled in during game play.
Afterthoughts:
Not really a concern about the character creation process, but I had to download the PDFs that I had purchased in the charity bundle directly from the vendor’s website. While I did get all of the titles I had purchased, they all had weird PDF file names that were just a series of numbers and letters. I’m certain it had to do with fulfilling my order, but I had to go and rename the core rulebook so I could find it easily when it was time to do this challenge. The only other time I’d had issues downloading my purchases came from Paizo’s poorly run download page. I can understand that some publishers want to save a few bucks by not going through another provider like DriveThruRPG, but at least make the download process easy and non-confusing for your customers. Issues like this make me hesitant to pull the trigger on future purchases.
I think I understand the system. The better at a skill you have, the higher of numbered die you roll.
All members of the GI Joe team had the “Yo, Joe!” battlecry that gave them benefits in game. Considering how much this was used on the show, I’m glad to see it here.
While I may play this at a con, I don’t know if I’d run it or homebrew for it. No one that I’m aware of is playing this. There is also a ton of books already out for this game. While I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet, it looks like most bases were already covered. Has anyone played this? How did it play at the table?
Additional Notes:
Stark Maximum (no relation) on BlueSky responded in regards to two of my past challenge entries. This first one was from my recent Star Wars Edge of the Empire entry.
“Hey, we both made Star Wars pilots! Of course, mine is from Age of Rebellion, the book of soldiers, rather than Edge of the Empire, the book of smugglers. But it’s cool how that kinda lined up! Maybe they’d be friends, or perhaps rivals.”
And in response to my Doctors and Daleks entry.
“I am not a Doctor Who fan so my knowledge of the series is limited, but I looked up what a Sontaran looked like for context on this post, and now I have a new favorite species of Doctor Who alien.”
Thanks for reading Stark Maximum.
Coming Up Next:
No Day To Die
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