Laserburn (also written as "Laser burn" and "Lazerburn" in the book) is a 15mm tabletop War Game made by Bryan Ansell, with art by Tony Yates and published by Tabletop Games (yes, that is literally the company's name) in 1980. The game is meant for skirmish-scale battles and was mostly intended to be a generic system for use in any space game where interpersonal combat was expected, but it did come with its own setting. The game is set in a mostly Standard Sci-Fi Setting in an undisclosed point in the distant future, where humanity has built a vast empire that has seen better days and now descends into human-centric imperialistic barbarianism while at war with both various highly aggressive alien races and a group of human religious fanatics.
If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Bryan Ansell would, soon after releasing the game, become the owner of Games Workshop and would work on various Warhammer related projects, including Warhammer 40,000, where he would import plenty of ideas from Laserburn into this new project. Sharing many things such as concepts for the lore, terminology (for example, the terms "Bolter" and "Flamer" come from here), and the Adeptus Astartes' iconic Power Armor taking a cue from Imperial Armor. Though it has plenty of its own charms that never made it to Warhammer, making it still an interesting game in its own right. So much so, that White Dwarf (1977) for a time tried to rerelease the game in their magazine with a 40000 coat of grim dark paint, the game was called Confrontation, and though it never fully released (as Bryan Ansell left GW before they released the final ruleset), the lore of Confrontation would serve as the base for a new spin off called Necromunda.
The game also had a spinoff in Imperial Commander, which was set in the same setting, but with a focus on larger scale combat.
Compare and contrast Combat 3000, another game that heavily inspired Warhammer 40,000, this time directly by Games Workshop, and Spacefarers, for a Sci Fi game made by GW before Warhammer 40,000.
Laserburn contains examples of:
- Ape Shall Not Kill Ape: The Mrurz aliens refuse to fight their own kind.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The Imperium uses swords for melee combat. They don't seem to have any new technology that makes them that different from a normal sword.
- Armored Collar of Durability: Basic Imperial armor has this. It seems to cover up everything under the eyes. Strangely, the more durable dreadnought armor doesn't have this for some reason.
- Combat Drugs: The game includes rules for using one of three Fantastic Drugs that augment your character's abilities.
- "Sting" lowers your movement by one third its normal amount but increases your chance to hit in melee or with a single fire weapon by "1 and 1/3" its normal amount. It last for 1D10 turns (rolled for by the umpire in secret), but every time it's used, you have a 5% chance to get addicted, which requires you to take another shot of it every 8 hours or your character will suffer withdrawal that halves all stats, go into a coma, then finally die every 8 hours of missing your fix. It's also possible for an addicted character to no longer gain the buff from using sting but still need to take it with the same consequences. Despite all these drawbacks, the book still claims, "Sting is pretty wonderful stuff".
- "Steam" gives your character Bullet Time, where their movement, initiative, reactions, and actions per turn are doubled, but their otherwise counted as normal for calculating when their enemy attacks them. It lasts for "3 to 4" (the book is indeed that wishy-washy) hours, where the character will immediately pass out from exhaustion when it wears off, or on a coin flip when hit by an explosive or in combat, where they are similarly knocked out and the drug will have worn off when they awaken, even if the allotted time didn't pass.
- And "Cringe" which temporarily removes the user's personality and makes them subservient to the first person of authority they come across after taking Cringe; albeit they'll be so dumb from using it that commands have to be simple, like "shoot that target." It halves their reaction and combat rolls and deducts 25 percent off their firing accuracy, and you may only control "a limited number of cringers" (again, exactly how you determine how many you control isn't given, but the Red Redemptionists can control 6 per person through a headset, while the inexperienced can control three, albeit poorly.) It lasts for 3 hours.
- Cyberpunk: The game had one expansion that takes place further into the future, with the Empire more or less completely dead, and replaced with Mega Corps.
- Depending on the Artist: In the book, basic Imperial armor is typically depicted with the Armored Collar of Durability being flush with the chest armor and the wearer's face, while the models tend to make the color stick out more all around, with it most noticeable around the nose.
- Doesn't Like Guns: The Szithks don't like lasers for reasons unexplained. They tend to work with Froogs, who prefer ranged combat, who make up for this though.
- Drugs Are Good: The description of Sting as "pretty cool stuff" gives an air of this attitude. Drugs in general are stated to be common and popular as home entertainment in the game's official setting.
- Game Preferred Gender: One expansion included rules for rolling up your stats. Female characters are basically worse across the board from a male who rolled the same.
- The Empire: The Human Empire, though it's in piss-poor shape, as stated earlier.
- Enemy Mine: Szithks and Froogs both hate each other but can't kill each other off and hate everyone else worse, forcing them into a sort of allyship.
- Energy Weapon: Lasers. There also exist Convertor Beam Projectors which converts air molecules into energy, but moves slowly enough that it's possible to dodge it with relative ease.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The expansions were called Robots and Advanced Laserburn and Aliens. They indeed add robots, advanced rules, and aliens.
- Fanservice: Most every woman depicted in the book tend to wear little clothing (and those that are dressed sensibly tend to have other fanservicey clothing like short shorts), have large breasts, and at least one piece of art shows a woman being attacked by an alien with Naughty Tentacles.
- Loads and Loads of Rules: The core rulebook is about twice as long as the average Warhammer 40,000 rulebook, and it mostly focuses just on gameplay. Expansions exist if that just isn't enough though.
- Pocket Rocket Launcher: Bolters exist in this game and work pretty much the same as Warhammer 40,000 ones. They're more powerful than the premier laser weapons but carry less shots. They come in pistol, assault rifle, and anti-materiél flavours.
- Powered Armor: Imperial Armor, which the game includes a schematic to explain what each part is supposed to do. There also exist "Dreadnought" armor, though in this setting, it's just bulkier armor rather than a Man in the Machine Mini-Mech.
- Proud Warrior Race: Szithks value honor and bravery and don't like lasers.
- Religion of Evil: The main antagonist force is the "Red Redemption" (who, despite the name, aren't always red), which consists of
Middle Eastern and North Africans who worship Allah, the "Lord of the Fiery Hells". This is believed by some to have been a reference to now obscure Science Fantasy books from before this game's release, where Islam, or any foreign culture, was depicted as evil and not a true reflection of Bryan's actual beliefs. - Shout-Out: To put it charitably, one of the robots depicted in the... ''Robots'' expansion was literally just a Judge as a robot.
- Skeleton Motif: Higher ranking Imperial soldiers wear skull medallions on the front of their collars. There also exist Death Warriors who wear Skull for a Head styled helmets.
- Skill Scores and Perks: The game includes a Three-Stat System and perks that give your characters additional skills.
- Spikes of Villainy: Death Warriors, complete with Skull for a Head cause the game wasn't 80s enough.
- Standard Sci-Fi Setting: It's mostly standard, if a bit darker than normal.
- Stripperiffic: Most of the female characters tend to be drawn either kind of under clothed for a setting with power armor.
- Super-Soldier: Averted actually, most of the Imperial Army seem to just consist of normal soldiers, albeit ones equipped with Powered Armor.
- Three-Stat System: The game is built around three stats, Weapon skill (Ranged Accuracy), Combat skill (Melee Accuracy), and Initiative (Speed). An expansion did include rules for other stats, but they came with formulas to truncate them all down to the previous three stats regardless.
- We Will Use Lasers in the Future: The game is named after this trope and laser weapons are fairly common.