Artifacts: Micronauts RPG

Micronauts certainly weren’t the greatest action figures, but they had a bit more articulation than the Star Wars figures of the time. The vehicles and sets didn’t smoothly accommodate the figures, but that was fairly typically of the time. What the Micronauts had was a certain enigmatic mystique. The toys themselves came with virtually no backstory, just an eye-catching design and some imaginative naming.

The comic book that Marvel produced later was somewhat interesting, but likely had little in common with most kid’s imaginings about the toys. I only owned a couple of Time Traveler figures, a Photon Sled, a Giant Acroyear, and a Pharoid (out of all the figures, that one was truly thematically whimsical). I had a lucky friend who owned a Battle Cruiser. And I’ve never seen one in person, but I’ve always had a toy-lust for that Astro Station. I also bought the first issue of the comic and still think that it’s gorgeous to look at, along with a few other issues.

Little wonder I one day in High School decided to try and make up an RPG about the Micronauts. As far as I got was a listing of the figures and vehicles. It’s a curious mixing of various toy, comic book, and original elements. The next step would have been to have actually put stats to the weapons and armor. I’m not sure what derailed this. It might have been the setting. I only ever had a handful of issues, and the later ones had seriously soured me on the concept. Who knows?

I thought about trying to re-start it, since nobody else seems to have done a Micronauts game, but I’m not that into it. Shoot, I couldn’t even motivate myself to type out the pages. Further, I’d really want to re-do the setting into something more evocative, more like the toys themselves than the comic book. Maybe somebody else would like to pick this up and run with it.

KFN Man mentioned at the top of page one is a reference to another rules set I had made up called, “Kung Fu Ninja Man.” You can guess what that game was about. Nothing survives of it today. No loss. The bizarre Hamster Vice note refers to a Black & White comic from the 80’s. Weird fun stuff. And there at the bottom of page two are the names of the Micronauts characters that never got rolled up: Battler the Acroyear, Zap the Time Traveler, Shaft the Galactic Warrior, and Argus the Space Glider.