Exploits of the San Francisco Knights (spoilers)

Art by Diane Hamil

The back cover of San Francisco Knights, the first CYBORG COMMANDO™ game accessory, reads in part:

This module contains three separate adventures, all leading to the common goal of establishing a new CC base near Big Sur, California.  In Adventure #1, you ride shotgun up the Pacific Coast Highway, escorting a shipment of critical supplies to the new location.  Adventure #2 takes you to San Francisco to recover a lost comrade from amidst the ruins, the survivors, and the enemy.  Finally, in Adventure #3, you must obtain a supply of rare earth minerals needed to create a CYBORG COMMANDO™ character from a remote location in the Mojave Desert.  But the mine and processing plant are now threatened by an unexpected infestation of alien Xenoborgs!

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had endured severe exposition and spent almost a week walking across one-and-a-half continents.  At the Primary base in Mazatlan, Mexico, they are greeted by the acting base commander, Captain Sanchez.  San Francisco Knights employs the convention of using boxed text to indicate sections that should be read aloud by the Game Master.  One such section is Sanchez' instructions to the player characters.  However, prior to this, we are treated to a description of Sanchez' office:  “a small room decorated with sequined sombreros...”  The only characterization afforded to a Mexican NPC is that his office has “sequined sombreros.”  Really?  Why not begin his soliloquy with, “¡ Hola, mis amigos! ”?  Why not have him whistle “La Cucaracha”?  This is from 1987, so I'm not calling it out for cultural insensitivity.  Instead, I'm calling it out for being astoundingly stupid.  If you want to assign a cultural identifier to Sanchez (and this does not seem to have been the original intent), put a Frida Kahlo print in his office or something.  ¡Dios mío!

Anyway, the action for the first adventure begins at the Malibu “home of movie star Cliff Hamlin.”  There are three supply trucks that the players must accompany and “run interference for.”  Before the convoy begins, a young man – disguised as an old drunk – steals one of the trucks.  Meanwhile, his six compatriots (or maybe only five compatriots – the text is inconsistent) fire rifles at any pursuers.  Are they stealing a truck because a bunch of orphans and wounded people are in desperate need of supplies?  Nope.  They just want a ride to Santa Maria and think that the best way to accomplish this is by attacking cyborgs.

In the second adventure, the player characters go into what's left of San Francisco to salvage equipment from the (now partially submerged) Cyborg Commando base.  More to the point, the player characters are supposed to retrieve an older-model Cyborg Commando with whom contact was lost at the time of the invasion.  Since every Cyborg Commando “is an expensive piece of equipment,” it makes sense that a tracking mechanism would be installed.  Of course, there is no tracking mechanism; such a thing would invalidate the purpose of the adventure.

The adventure is set-up as an urban, post-apocalyptic sandbox.  Various San Francisco locales are described in detail; so are several groups of survivors.  According to page 16:

Each survivor leader can direct the characters to two to four others, who may or may not have the information desired.  This gives the characters several options from which to choose, rather than forcing them along a particular path.  A diagram of the information network is given below.

Ultimately, the player characters find that the lost Cyborg Commando is following the orders of the last commander of San Francisco's Cyborg Commando base.  However, said commander has become unbalanced and has assumed the identity of the second Emperor Norton.  Artist Diane Hamil's depiction of Norton II takes up an entire page of the San Francisco Knights book.  No matter what, a battle must occur against Xenoborgs and a group of humans who have turned traitor.  In this battle, the found Cyborg Commando
loses his hands in an explosion.  These events are inviolable.  So, the adventure does not force the players “along a particular path,” but it does require a specific ending.

The third adventure transpires a month or so after the invasion.  A “mine and processing plant” for rare earth minerals remained functioning after the invasion.  Now, however, shipments have stopped and xenoborg activity is suspected.  Contrary to the back cover text, the xenoborgs are hardly “unexpected.”  So, the player characters must defeat the xenoborgs plaguing the facility.  The plot is straightforward and there are no instances of nonsense.  A significant amount of detail is spent on the conditions of towns and roadways between Big Sur and the facility.  Also, unnecessary detail is provided about extracting rare earth minerals from raw ore.  For instance, “During this process, soluble trivalent cerium is converted to insoluble tetravalent CeO₂.”  This information serves no purpose in the adventure.