Now that the dust has settled, is Mekton Zeta the greatest tabletop RPG/wargame of all time?

Now that the dust has settled, is Mekton Zeta the greatest tabletop RPG/wargame of all time?

Other urls found in this thread:

mediafire.com/file/xi1lrrcziwrcm3z/Mekton Zeta Complete Pack.zip
pastebin.com/9hQ4uC98
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HrqFYexa2QrbEBJi0EeCmK5Fa8B1nD63aLHygAnLVvM/edit#gid=2081447678
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15HoA7laZEhLslI15f60V7ybARbEkUqPzF6lAdPMFNO0/edit#gid=0
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LrmSdiLipjNQIhWdPDHypUIjMv6fbfdMk_d8YToRATY/edit
scribd.com/document/275626250/Gundam-Senki-Notes
pastebin.com/nTGN5si8
discord.gg/fnrq8Dj
youtube.com/watch?v=D32reoeJtos
mediafire.com/file/p492h9ofp7xfm4t/SENKI_SCANS.zip
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

The dust never settles

No, but it works alright and it's fun and it lets me have my 80s animu robot fightan game which is all I need.

>Had my game set for today after nearly a month off due to other issues.
>Some players don't turn up and technical problems plague us.
>People ask me if we can put it off until next week.

I wanted to finally run a neat combat and push the plot forward this session.

Sorry to hear that, bro. My condolences.

>Now that the dust has settled, is Mekton Zeta the greatest tabletop RPG/wargame of all time?
It was fun. I miss having any gaming group though.
I am also hanging in the dim grey world of waiting for that fucking Kickstarter.

>I am also hanging in the dim grey world of waiting for that fucking Kickstarter.
Damn man I feel for you. I just got into Mekton recently so I missed that, and to be honest I'm glad I did.

Same. Fucking Pondsmith.

Mekton kickstarter?
This is the first I'm hearing.
...How bad was it?

We don't know because it's been five or so years and we still don't have any it

OW.
Anything even vaguely like excuses?

We've had this conversation before. No. It's shit.
The best wargame of all time is Infinity, and now there's an RPG you can convert characters to and from, so it beats Pondsmith's clunkfest twice

This is the problem with bad kickstarters.
It makes people think their literally cancerous games are somehow better in comparison.

Nigga I own Mekton Zeta in print, it is the cancer
Never played it due to the mecha construction being GURPS-tier autism and the system itself being a broken mess
At least Infinity does what it intends to do pretty cleanly

But that's the one thing it has going for it, the indepth mech construction that covers pretty much all the bases.

And it's that which makes it a fucking terrible choice for a wargame. Who wants to spend half a goddamn hour at best constructing a single unit?

That and, unless you're using The Movie's streamlined rules the actual combat itself is a fucking clunkfest too.

>
>And it's that which makes it a fucking terrible choice for a wargame. Who wants to spend half a goddamn hour at best constructing a single unit?
>That and, unless you're using The Movie's streamlined rules the actual combat itself is a fucking clunkfest too.


Because rolling up a character for a game is so fast.
I guess if everyone wants a custom mech for the game then it's sorta like that huh?
Or are none of the available mechanical both from the game or third party sources are good enough?

It's perfectly fine if you do it before hand, and instead of making each individual unit a special snowflake, just have a standardized pattern. Though I agree on how shitty the combat is.

>le Mekton is clunky xD

Try playing some easier games, like checkers before you jump into role-playing games, clearly they're too much for you to handle.

The combat is fine. It's as quick as any other system and reflex isn't a problem if you just scale things right. Melting great for portraying 80s robot show style combat. The complaints about robot design are all negated through talking things through with your players to establish tone and not trying to break the game. It's not the best system and the book is edited and laid out poorly, but for robot fighting, I love it.

I dunno, it's pretty garbage because of how swingy I've found it to be, unless you've put so many points into a skill you've invalidated the dice anyways. I've found it's really unfun to play somebody without much skill but a lot of raw stat talent if you're facing anything that can even get close to your roll.

Not if you want to replicate something like the Battle of Odessa, no.
And human chargen for MZ is even worse considering if your GM is a faggot he'll make you roll for how many points you can build a character with.

>I have no argument so I'm going to imply he doesn't play RPGs
My bookshelf is calling you. Calling you a faggot.

Because I've been over this with Mekton Z detractors before: the game isn't clunky if you learn how to run and play it. That's a pretty basic fucking skill when it comes to games like these, so not being able to figure out how to make combat run smoothly only proves that you're a halfwit.

The biggest issue is the book's layout is fucking awful. If there's a rule I know exists, but want to clarify how it works, I'm not going to be able to find it, because it's mentioned in some paragraph at the start of the chapter, instead of at the end with the rules that work off of it.

People play wargames with loads of preptime all the time. Just because you're too lazy doesn't make it a bad game.

This. I love Mekton but holy fuck, Pondsmith, why do you hate indexes so much?

Figure it out beforehand, print out a couple reference sheets, take some notes. I agree that those things are a problem, but the solution is very simple.

>multiple actions per turn
>having fiddly as fuck modifiers for every single fucking attack type you want to make
>THEN rolling for where you're hitting

Nigga I'm looking at the Mekton GM screen and it's a fuckin' mess

>he must be lazy!
Not even shit like Necromunda where you outfit every one of your dudes individually has this much bullshit. Then again you're probably the kind of autist who thinks Starfleet Battles is babby tier.

That's a GM issue; if you're blowing through the enemy, he needs to make things tougher.

Not that guy, but I've never had issues with modifiers and hit locations. All my problems stem from me or my players rolling really high or really low because >1d10+(skill+stat)

It was the opposite actually, the enemy was plenty challenging, if anything they were too strong, but my character was plenty useless because unless the dice were in my favor, I was fucked. I'd say the best character in that game by far was the quadroped mech with a trio crew, by virtue of them having decent skill and multiple actions per turn, their low MR didn't matter as much.

"Things more complicated than Necromunda are for artists."

You heard it here folks, can't make this shit up.

It's not my fault or the game's fault that you can't figure it out; like I said before, keep playing easier stuff and the rest of us will keep enjoying the games we like.

>30 posts
>10 posters
fuck off we had this thread yesterday, mekton is shit.

Two actions. Two. Move and shoot, shhot and shoot. Move and do something. Do something and shoot. So fucking hard.

As for the modifiers, theres about ten or so. Easy to remember it write it down. If you want to simplify it then do so; Mekton is a tool box, you don't have to use every spanner in it. Rolling hit location is fine. I thought you were going to complain about the knockback rules which are the worst part, but the other stuff is fine. It's really not complicated at all and with the screen it's even easier. Takes less than 30 seconds to resolve an attack.

Sounds like a party balance issue. Your GM probably would have been able to accommodate You, but then you guys really would have blown through the enemy thanks to the quadroped mech.

>kitting out nine people in gear is hard
I'm not even but nigga please, you can standardize things if you really want to. Nothing's saying you have to use a different unit for every mech on the field.

>for artists
It's not that I can't understand it, it's that I can't understand the need for this much needless chart-checking. Also I'm running out of laughter macros

LET'S ACTIVE MOTHERFUCKER

This. I was there for that thread. It was cancer. This is cancer. We are all cancer for not letting this thread die.

Necromunda was designed for 12 year olds to be able to play. It's a pretty simple system. Mekton has more options but that's because it's designed to let you do whatever setting robot show wise you want. You don't have to use everything just because it's in the book

I dunno, maybe it was. The game was to be balanced around 1 big enemy vs 3 kinda tough mechs, being a kaiju game and all. But my mecha reflex alone exceeded their skill+MR together if I remember right. They just had way more actions than I did because they had the sniper mech thing going on.

Autocorrect, my man.

You're still not really saying anything besides how hard it is for you to figure out charts, so I'm not sure why you're laughing.

It's an RPG from the 90s based on a wargame from the 80s. Charts and tables were the order of the day. And holy fuck if you think Mekton is chart heavy, stay away from Battletech.

Seriously, I don't remember mekton having many charts in combat outside of hit locations. He'd have a valid point if we were talking about Phoenix Command, but to my memory mekton isn't bad at all. DnD probably has more tables than it.

>stay away from Battletech
I do. It's also shit, even moreso than MZ.

This. The charts are there on tihe GM screen. Just go through them in order. It's literally foolproof.

It's more complicated to deal with in games like Mekton (especially in the sort of style you were playing in), but the GM should work to make sure that balance is maintained.

Is it difficult to live a normal life when you are so stupid?

I just had it rough because she was at the mercy of the dice a lot of the time. Since I was going for a light and fast brawler, I ended up burning my first action on actually getting close, so I was forced to rely on a single roll to hit and hope I hit. I'm also not known for particularly good rolls in my group of friends
>playing vidya
>my much bigger tank shoots my friend's little tank
>round bounces off because it hit the one angled mm part of the armor
>his shot goes right through the driver's view hole and hit my ammo stock and detonates the thing

>not wanting to play barely indexed tables: the tabling means you're stupid

The combat stuff is all there. You're making yourself look silly.

'Not wanting to play' and 'wanting to shitpost about' aren't the same thing user.

This. I'd mix up r enter types giving a blend of weak and strong enemies, or have scenarios where you had to go and do something urgent. Or honestly just ask you if you wanted to shift things around character wise.

Honestly, I had the most potential damage with my beam saber, it was the highest damaging weapon the group had, and we DID go up against weaker enemies in the form of terrorist mecha, they still reamed me because of bad rolls on my part.

Well, nothing you can really do about bad rolls.

and that's what my issue with the game stems from, in my experience the game is entirely reliant on what you roll, and 1d10+(stat+skill) makes it swingy as fuck.

Like a lot of other games, I've found that the best way to get around that is to stack modifiers whenever possible. Attack from behind, aim with a weapon, get the sniper to disable a leg component, etc...

it won't stop you from rolling a one, but it means that a two or a three isn't quite so disastrous.

>tfw did actually manage to get behind a monster, thanks to my SUPERIOR SPEED, for most of a fight and still missed the majority of the time

OP here, I pretty much made this thread and went to bed. Glad to see it resulted in some constructive discussion over the game. I just got it the other day so there is a lot of useful info here for me. Much appreciated.

Never post this fucking thread again

I'm posting it tomorrow

But Mekton is fun.

I love MZ. I've played in two campaigns that died because the GM was a shitty shit shitter, I've run one for two years to completion, and I'm running a giant shared universe game with 4 separate groups in it currently.

MZ has problems, lots of them, both technical and mechanical, but it works well. Your best to play it is to use a (my) auto-calculating Mek sheet, making the GURPS-tier autism null and void.

I fucking love the mecha creation process, and I love churning out homebrew systems to let players make even more accurately what they want.

Have this that I put together.

mediafire.com/file/xi1lrrcziwrcm3z/Mekton Zeta Complete Pack.zip

So, what's going on in your Mekton games? Settings, plot lines, cool things that occured, etc?

Also neglected to mention the 1-on-1 game of it I'm still currently running.

I've got some choice stories from my campaigns. One of my favorites is from the 1-on-1 game I'm running for my gf. Far-off future, Mass Effect style, she's essentially a Spectre-equivalent. She's on a Human mining world being assailed by not!40kOrks. After loading up a few barrels of highly explosive gas onto a makeshift mekton-scale catapult to bombard the out-of-range airship that was attacking the colony, it comes crashing down. She runs up to meet it as it comes down, the not!Orks intending to hop out and bombard the colony from the ground instead.

She spins up a mining drill she borrowed from the colony and giga drill breaks the fucking thing with a sweet as hell crit, cleaving it in twain.

Dude thanks for the link. That'll help out a ton.

Always happy to spread the wealth of this janky-ass delightfully broken system.

Have a few more homebrew weapon multiplier systems that I haven't put into the big link yet.

pastebin.com/9hQ4uC98

Just a quick question, which Instant Mekton Zeta Plug-in do you use? There are two in that zip that aren't dated but appear to have different file sizes. Is one newer than the other?

>Instant Mekton Zeta Plug-in

I have no idea what that is, so it's probably pertaining to the things in that file I don't use. All I really use out of that compilation are the Mekton Zeta core book, MZ Advanced Technical Manual, and the MZ Tactical Screen.

Assuming what you're talking about is something to automatically handle Mekton creation, I use the Google Docs Excel sheet I coded for that.

You can look and copy that from here:

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HrqFYexa2QrbEBJi0EeCmK5Fa8B1nD63aLHygAnLVvM/edit#gid=2081447678

>docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HrqFYexa2QrbEBJi0EeCmK5Fa8B1nD63aLHygAnLVvM/edit#gid=2081447678
Thanks for all these resources dude. I just bought the core book the other day and this will help so fucking much. Much, much appreciated.

Glad to help. While I'm at it, have these two things, as well.
Character Sheet:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15HoA7laZEhLslI15f60V7ybARbEkUqPzF6lAdPMFNO0/edit#gid=0

Animal Sheet:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LrmSdiLipjNQIhWdPDHypUIjMv6fbfdMk_d8YToRATY/edit


I have to make the two weeks of my life I spent coding that mecha sheet out of pure spite for a rule-ignoring GM worth something, right?

I've saved and backed up everything you've posted. I'll make sure to spread it to anyone else I see discussing the game. You did a good job making this stuff man, I've given most of the book a read so far and while clunky it has a great engine at its core and I'm glad there's guys like yourself fixing it up.

Also, if you do end up playing, use the Gundam Senki rules. Do NOT use a 1d10. Roll with 2d6. Keep everything the same otherwise.

2d6 gives better bell curves and less random and equal chance of everything being hard pass or hard fail. Been testing it with my newest campaign and it works wonders.

Cool I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again dude.

I actually bought the core rules and empire yesterday for our group and this is super helpful. Really excited to run this.

>Gundam Senki
Still salty that was never released outside Japan. Would have been the only good thing to come from RTal in years

Same here. I really want to get a look at it. All I ever find are japanese scans with no translations.

The best I got is this:

scribd.com/document/275626250/Gundam-Senki-Notes

So much of this. If you think Mekton is difficult to understand, you sir need to be playing paddycake or shit like that.

Fucking retards...

Scratch that, I see it's locked behind some paywall bullshit.

Just have the full thing.

pastebin.com/nTGN5si8

>hurhur why u so mad about having so many steps to resolve a single attack, u a tard or smthn?
Fucking retards...

Maybe it's just because I'm spoiled by Roll20 macros, all my quick references as images, and my automated sheet, but I don't think there are all that many steps, especially not complicated ones, involved in resolving damage. If anything, it's fairly light considering how chunky the game feels, and is made all the lighter by the fact that the workload is simultaneously split between both parties anyway.

Attacker rolls their skill, Defender rolls their skill. Winner succeeds, obviously. If the Attacker wins, deal damage according to their weapon and its applications: ie, burst value, AP, etc. Roll hit location. Subtract SP from the weapon's damage, apply leftover to Servo's Kills. Done.

The only real bad part comes from missile barrages or ridiculous linked combos and things, where you need to do the above multiple times. It's pretty manageable otherwise.

What is this? Seems to be a translation of Senki.

While this is great and I thank you for it and have downloaded it, it seems heavily unfinished, with big swaths of pages being unfinished or blank. Also having only 20 pages out of Senki's few hundred.

It's not so much a translation so much as it is a kind of fan made expansion.
In any case, it's never gonna get finished.
I did post a scan of senki on /m/, but I haven't seen anyone doing anything with it. Not that I should expect too much, translating it would be a pretty daunting task.

A favorite moment of my "modern"ish campaigns was probably our recurring half-joke, half-terrifying threat villian: the Kung Fruskie.

Originally, he was a mook for the Russia equivalent in-universe. But he kept critting. He crit to dodge, he crit to hit, he was untouchable and he fucked the party up good.

He started when they were attacked on home turf by the Russians, and after dodging a volley of six shots, he suddenly posed, said, "I know Kung-fu," and jumped out a window.

They next found him piloting a bear mekton. After blasting them a few times, he said his catchphrase, "I know Kung-fu," and they collectively shit themselves until luckily managing to take his Mek out. The Russians were not ones for personal safety, however, and their Meks did not have ejection seats.

This didn't stop him from critically passing his eject roll despite the -6 modifier for no e-seat, swan diving out of his exploding mek into a river below.

He showed up a few more times as an enemy, then soon enough becoming a tentative ally to stop the not!Nazis from doing evil genetic clone terrorism world domination stuff.

He's become a living legend among our group, with memes abound.

There's more finished versions I've found since

Here's the most updated version of the Gundam Senki translation I could find. If anyone could contact the guy who made it please do as I do not have a plebbit account.

Forgot PDF, also apparently it's too big of a file size. Just google it, that's how I found it. 0.80 is the most updated one I could find.

The least you could do is link to the reddit page if you can't upload the pdf. I can't seem to find the download, all I can find is the Gundam Origin thing that's already been posted.

>tfw the kickstarter ttrpg is completely finished, and you've got not only your PDF, but a hardcover book coming in August.

I decided on a whim to make a Mekton server on Discord for all creators and players to gather and discuss, since these threads seem to die off fairly quick sometimes.

discord.gg/fnrq8Dj

Do you still have the scan?

youtube.com/watch?v=D32reoeJtos

Yup.
mediafire.com/file/p492h9ofp7xfm4t/SENKI_SCANS.zip

It's in the comments on that page

Bump

Joined

if you are using that as an actual example then it's not the game - it's a shitty GM.
Also just use interlock for Player Characters.

Lisa..............................................

Got BT Aero-Tech and a couple of others here..
The games on the AMIGA were faster.
I still miss playing it and Car Wars though. ...but GEV more.

Lisa Pondsmith again

Mekton Zeta is Interlock you fucking mong