Non Gratus Rodentum - Vietnam War Dungeon Crawler

Claustrophobic tunnel systems, lethal traps, animals, and enemy soldiers around every corner. This is the hell that Tunnel Rats need to enter, map out, and destroy. Welcome to Non Gratus (Anus) Rodentum "not worth a rat's ass".

 Preface

Most of my hobby time over the last two weeks has been spent writing up my homebrew GM emulator and painting the minis and terrain for the next Five Parsecs from Home scenario. I didn't have the energy for a complex game, but I still wanted to get some actual play time in.

A few weeks ago, I discovered the printed out rules for the game Non Gratus Rodentum in one of my folders. I planned to play it a long time ago, but it never actually got to the table. I had already read the rules, so this would be the perfect game for a quick and simple session.

Being German, I learned basically nothing about the Vietnam War during my time at school. I only began to scratch the surface by watching a variety of movies and documentaries. When I learned about the concept of Tunnel Rats, it seemed so unbelievably dangerous that I still have trouble fully wrapping my mind around it. Just look at these example tunnels to get a taste of the environment we are talking about here.

The Game

The mechanics are very simple and designed for short game sessions. Everything is a d6 roll with a dice pool depending on your soldier's skill and/or equipment. The theme definitely carries this one, so don't expect a grand campaign or anything like that. There is campaign play, but it basically boils down to surviving the war by doing a set number of tunnels, that slowly grow in difficulty. Your soldiers can rise in rank, get reinforcements, and buy better equipment. Nothing fancy, but enough to get the theme across.

Combat and exploration is heavily abstracted and only has you drawing a few boxes and connecting lines. I really wish the exploration part was more fleshed out, but I understand that that would quickly spiral beyond the scope of such a small game.

During my playthrough, I was extremely lucky (or unlucky in the sense that it was no interesting challenge) and very quickly finished Act 1 by discovering tiny tunnel systems that sometimes had dead ends in the very first room. I originally planned to use one Tunnel Map sheet for every tunnel, but they were so small that I managed to fit all four tunnels of Act 1 on a single sheet.

Good for my soldiers, who survived without a single wound - bad for my enjoyment because it was way too easy. I'm hoping for a more challenging Act 2 and plan to finish the campaign, or play as long as my starting squad survives.

Conclusion

It's a fun little game for a few sessions, but nothing that would keep my interest for multiple playthroughs. The major selling point is the theme, and I would highly recommend that you do further research about Tunnel Rats during the Vietnam War.

That being said, during the writing of this post, I discovered a small PWYW expansion pack which might be a good reason to play another campaign.