Is this Gundam ripoff fun?

Is Jovian Chronicles any good? How is the Silhouette system? How is combat?

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Heck I haven't played this in years!

I'll describe SilCORE and Jovian Chronicles itself
>Fast; one roll usually handles most tests, although you might need to multiply every now and then which annoys some people
>Nicely statted weapons, armour etc. You can quickly make your own home-brew settings
>Better at ranged combat
>Scales nicely, infantry and vehicles all use the same rules and can technically fight in the same instance
>None of that linear probability D20 crap, gives a reasonable result curve
>Is a bit dated, I'd say superseded by beter supported systems
>Has elements which are probably needlessly added, complexity to skills etc which don;t really work
>Getting your hands on it is a pain
>The social rules are an afterthought, but work

Now Jovian Chronicles
>Its basically Gundam meets Buck Rogers
>Its good if you like anime, fine if you don;t
>There is nothing surprising or original about the setting, but it pootles along quite nicely
>The artwork and ship designs (if you can find them) are sweet
>A few anime specific rules

last time we tried a game where we were a salvage crew who got caught up in an Earth vs Jupiter spat. I can't help but think the game would work better with less agency, say for instance, you're an ace fighter wing given SPECHEL jobs

Thanks for the reply.

My players are massive zeonfags so I might have them be part of the earth military and slowly progress through a campaign vs jupiter and/or venus.

How deadly would you say combat is? Could an ace pilot in a standard mech take on a uber prototype with an average pilot?

You'll have to forgive me if I forget the odd bit

The system is very much about ace piloting, if you dump a lot of points into agility (or whatever the stat is called) and piloting, you're very difficult to hit. Consequently you can grind down bigger opponents, with an average weapon.

Legality is entirely dependant upon what's shooting; again if memory serves all vehicles have wounds, limits etc. So if you're hit by a capital ship railgun, instant death. Likewise if you take on infantry with a mech mounted assault rifle, its unpleasant. But mech vs mech I remember fights taking several rounds.

I'd advise building it up slowly; don't throw the best gear at the players immediately build it up. Also usual advice, if you give it to the players, chances are it will be salvaged, and then retrofited to a player unit

I don't remember the rules having any inbuilt style modifiers, so if you want it to be something other than death by dice, you'll need to inject some exciting descriptions and reward people for cunning plans

In spite of its anime influences JC has some pretty hard science in it. (There are no gravity generators, no FTL etc.) Also the lore has lots of (real) info on the solar system.

Generally speaking, if you enjoy looking at source books for inspiration than anything by Dream Pod 9 is worth picking up.

You could also scratch the serials off and just run Gundam using it.

Also posting a quick hack of Jovian Chronicles for d6

I have used SilCORE for personal combat only and So far i have not found a system that surpasses it in giving you a feeling of Simplicity, Complexity (oximoron amirite!), Fast paced action and Lethality. While letting you play the game as Tactically or Narrative as you want to.

Rolls are a d6 dice pool while keeping the highest die so results are allways 1-6 (skipping bonuses and dice explosions which just add 1 to the max die)

combat is basically 2 Contested rolls. if you hit, then you check for the Armor that gives you the Light, Heavy and Overkill stats. Damage is represented as Penalties. Which in my experience does a really good job in making you feel "injured" when you have a -1 or -2 on a 1-6 roll you really start to think about what to do next or how to stack some bonuses before acting. that usually I end up having My NPC surrender before dying, or die horrible overkill deaths. the same goes to the players.

My 2 biggest complaints about SilCORE are these.
1. Its Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles are mor focused on linear militaristic stories so you have to get creative if you are looking for a diferent kind of story on those settings. (the solution is easy since all you have to do is Ignore their story)
2 SilCORE is written in a way that makes the rules hard to understand (poor grammar or something) I recomend the Jovian Chronicles explanation of the rules wich uses some nice graphics to go along with the explanations. It´s space grid combat is supper nice.

>Its basically Gundam meets Buck Rogers
Wait. What part of JC is like Buck Rogers?

I'm curious about this as well.

Ditto

someone please post the PDFs for SilCORE Jovian Chronicles, i've been looking for it, and still haven't found a good link

They're in DA ARCHIVE if memory serves, I've run it before and me and a buddy even will drunkenly play out mecha battles including all the silly things like Vector and thrust rating. Sadly my group is more a bunch of fantasy nerds than gear heads so we never got back around to it.

JC’s setting is nice but the meta plot should only be used as your setup before going completely off the rails.
The “canon” is so fucking boring and tripe it’s not the least bit surprising the property died out. DP9 basically set it up so that nothing could ever happen to shake the “””””””uneasy”””””””” peace of the solar system and any time a huge event happened, up to and including the total destruction of entire colonies and cities, everyone involved would immediately just drop whatever issue and go home peacefully.

My tip for running a JC game? Don’t be like DP9, let the Cold War go hot and take it as far as it logically should.

This, or make it so settling that peace isn't easy. My party basically had to smuggle and then set up the public execution of a Martian Diplomat that had tried to screw over the Venusian Bank.
The next time I run it though they're starting out with no mechs and no ship and have to get off of Mars as the war's breaking out.

That art is pretty great, got anything else like it?

sadly no, I can't even remember where I got it from actually.

I allways google this and i get it

>In return, here's my not-so-small Heavy Gear trove

user who wrote that hack here.

A warning about it, energy weapon damages are ridiculously low due to an anomaly with the conversion math I was using. I suggest either bumping their damage up or using a bonus damage per X margin of success rule.

saucenao reverse image search website

www pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=12493542

Bumpo

It's a Gundam Perfect File illustration of an RMSN-008 Bertigo and a couple RMS-007G Juracg Cold Climate Type both from After War Gundam X.

Gundam Perfect File stuff is a ton of good artwork if you can find stuff from it. Also, because it's my favorite despite it's flaws, I suggest watching Gundam X.

If there’s any Gundam AU I’d like to see get a reboot, it’s Gundam X. Such a great concept ruined by studio and network fuckery, it deserves a second chance.

Can anyone tell me if these probabilities are correct? I tried to do the anydice but I don't know if I did it right.

First you'l just about never have more than 4 or maybe even 5 dice, and most hardened veteran pilots have like 3 each in piloting and gunnery (having 2 dice in a skill is "you do this for a living").

Second, how in the fuck would 7 dice be less likely to succeed than 3-4 dice? In Sil, only if everything is 1 do you fumble. You take the highest, but additional 6s add +1 each to your total. Then you also add your stat (say, +1 perception) and whatever other conditionals you might have.

A veteran gunner probably has 3 gunnery. That's 3 dice. If he's standing still and his fire control's not shit, that's probably +1. Another +1 with an accurate weapon, and +1 perception. So his roll should be 'best of 3d6' +3.

Actually that brings me to the one issue you can have in combat under this system (hey what system doesn't right?): Flukes can fucking end a campaign then and there.

Say 3d+3 guy there fires an x10 weapon at a partymember. Gets a 3, but the partymember fumbles his piloting (since it's opposed). That's 6 vs 0. 60 damage is an overkill on anything with 20 armor or less.

x10 weapons are on the lighter side of sears.

But it's actually a lower result that would be worse: Overkills you may eject from. Heavy damage; Ammo Fuel Hit; Chain Reaction. Gone.

The system is a bit old and used stored XP as "fate burning dice", but I suggest "giving" or 'forcing players to keep at least one' if you'd rather, an exclusive such emergency xp at least, because holy fuck sometimes.

Generally speaking combat is "miss miss plink plink light light heavy heavy Boom", but a fumbled dodge can skip to the last part if the incoming attack was good and strong enough.. Damage is directly your margin of success times the weapon's damage multiplier, so if you hit by 0 you technically hit (this could matter for some things) but did nothing. Damage doesn't stack, you just compare to armor thresholds.

Light damage is generally less bad, but still has evil results if you're not lucky. "crew shaken" isn't bad, "weapon destroyed" can fuck you, and "fuel tank ruptured, all reaction mass lost" means the only way you're getting home is "towed", and depending on which way and how fast you were going when your engine died, you might be impossible to intercept.

Bombing runs against capital vessels generally rely on the negative dodge modifiers to ensure your weapon does like 150 damage, yet unless the enemy zaku fumbles he'd probably just be heavily damaged with 50. Capital weapons work the same way, but chances are "hit you by just 1" is already light damage.

Vehicles are safer the more intact they are; every light damage reduces armor base by 1, every heavy damage by 2. Your thresholds just keep getting worse and worse as shit gets blasted off; guy in pic here could probably have done some real damage to the RX-78 at the very end of the series. As is though, he's portraying what happens most of the time.

Scaling is pretty much direct "x10": an infantry anti-tank missile might be x150, which means a fine pulp to any poor shmuck hit by it, but that's x15 for vehicles (likewise your cheapass light machinegun is an x20 saturation-murder-machine as far as humans are concerned). In fact over in the other setting with the silouhette system, Heavy Gear, infantry bazooka rounds can be fielded by gears; only instead of one in a tube, they stick it in a box magazine with an autofire system and call it a "rapid-fire bazooka"

Emergency Dice and Genre Points are both there specifically to keep that from happening so easily to PCs and major NPCs.

Quads don't lie.

What are the advantages of using SilCore over Silhouette?

SilCore cleans up some stuff here and there and overall runs smoother. HOWEVER:
It ads this completely fucking stupid "Skill Complexity" system to skills which adds nothing to the game and is only a source of endless confusion. Legitimately the devs even have no fucking idea how it was supposed to work and multiple sources from DP9 themselves conflict on what it's even supposed to do. It's better to use old Sil's version where "complex" skills just cost more XP.

SilCore's vehicle construction gets rid of a lot of "redundant" features and aspects and folds them in with similar stats and features. It makes vehicle construction a lot easier and smoother, but also removes some granularity that some enjoyed.
For example Fire Control was a separate stat for vehicles before SilCore, and gave an accuracy bonus to all weapons attached to a vehicle, but SilCore removed Fire Control completely and lumps it with Weapon Accuracy. So if you want a vehicle that's known for having advanced fire control systems in old Silhouette, you could just give it high fire control and that bonus would apply to any weapon you put on it. In SilCore, you have to recalculate every weapon to have higher accuracy bonus.

The system is good but it was made with war games in mind.

Never even heard of the skill complexity will just probably why no one used it.

There is also an (optional?) rule has exploding dice. You roll few d6 six and take the highest die, but for every additional six rolled you added a +1 plus.

So succeeding a maximum minimum difficulty of 10 would involve rolling five sixes on 5d6. Wish the game outright stayes won't happen without divine intervention.

It's a good system that was made for war games in mind. It's not really suited for granularity.

It's background is hard sic fi. Apart from the art style and mechs in closet to the the Expand then anything from Japan in the last 20 years.

Oddly they even tried to expain the anime hair colours as result of genetic tampering.

>Late return to this thread

The comparison just jumped into my head; maybe its the way we played it, but you'd have some drama, overact anime style, then jump into a mech and fly down a launch tube for some heroics

It probably didn't help that the GM set Gundam Zeta as homework before we started, so we tended to be highly emotional, then slap each other

Love me some Silhouette. SilCore is good (except for the Complexity rule), but the book layout is awful. I find the Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles books easier to parse.

The system is pretty lethal, especially on foot. It does have a problem with low granularity. While the low granularity makes it pretty fast it can have problems with room for character growth.

Do you like the mecha designs in the rulebook or the older ones from Mekton: Jovian Chronicles.

Older mecha designs, newer ship designs. No contest.

+1 per extra six is a basic part of the rolling system.

Skill 3? Roll 3d6. Take the highest. If you have two sixes, then you take a six, and add +1 for the second. If you get three sixes, that's a total of 8. If you roll three ones? THAT is 0.

For combat some groups may prefer to make only the roll part a zero, rather than the final total, preventing a rusty light-autocannon from one-bulleting a brand new assault mech.

Anyone tried out jovian wars yet?

Looking through the pdfs, is there a book with a lot of exo-armors statted out? I read that there are prototype mechs, but I can't find them.

They're kinda scattered,the planet sourcebooks are great for mecha though.

I forget the names but there's various army books and ship books. The former has plenty of variants, like 2-3 fighters used by the jovians in addition to more exo armors and exo-suits, same with cega.

So, as someone who's never played Jovian Chronicles, where do I start?

Start with the white book, its got everything to play and enough toys to keep variety, its also got a lot of fluff and tips.

>First you'l just about never have more than 4 or maybe even 5 dice, and most hardened veteran pilots have like 3 each in piloting and gunnery (having 2 dice in a skill is "you do this for a living").
I thought it would be helpful to know since the book said above 5 is rare. I haven't played it yet.
>Second, how in the fuck would 7 dice be less likely to succeed than 3-4 dice?
They don't... the result is just the chance of getting that result. 7 beats all other # of dice at every difficulty tier on chance to beat difficulty.

The best use I can get behind with complexity. Is part of magical spell casting or differing tech levels.

So, anyone make their own shit using silcore?

No

What would be a good fight for four marine wyverns? Can four pathfinders stand up to them?

Pathfinders are a good general purpose exo, they should be adequate though it depends the tavern have ship support?

Also,what sort of skill level these guys got? As that can make a huge difference.

Brand new cinematic pc's vs some generic pilots for the jovians.

They should win though with a little struggle.

Are ships that difficult to fight? Can they hit mechs with their big guns or are they too fast?

They can if the pilots are not paying attention.

And sufficiently armed ships may shot fire off what amounts to flak making it s real pain in the ass to handle

Ships *can* target exos and fighters with their main weaponry so one needs to watch the fire arcs and keep their acceleration high.

However, under normal circumstances the smaller craft will not give it such a chance, at which point it must rely on missiles and its defensive grids (anti-asteroid laser-nets with a 'shield' mode for incoming missile swarms or the like).

However those are plenty dangerous in their own right if you aren't careful and the ships themselves can be very hard nuts to crack, section by section.

One big difference in the silhouette system with Gundam is that "not the mech" actually matters.

Exo-Armors are currently slightly ahead things like fightercraft because of recent budget in JC. Basically the armors make great 'posterboys' and so do their pilots; the cockpit's one of those "strap in and it translates your movements" gyro affairs which is one of the reasons it has to be so large. In other words, you stick some star quarterback in there and local constituents (and therefore their representative) is voting all over this shit.

Most fighters are like half a generation behind - the tech works perfectly well with them but with a bunch of companies using Exo-Armors for their R&D especially since Exos are huge (less miniaturization), they're in need of a modernization update. Contrast this to Gundam where fighters are basically helpless against a Zaku 1 and then get tossed to the side before the 06-F takes its first steps. Plus it's not like you can parry with a plasma-lance anyways.

Ships are in a similar situation. Unlike what happens to them in Gundam, those guns and turrets actually mean something, as does their size and mass. You don't cut them in half helplessly with a heat-axe unless they *let you*. The automated systems alone are a decdent threat even if the rest of the ship decides to ignore you. It isn't impossible, though. Speaking of which, if you do get all the way into melee, your engines, when you leave, are a very nasty finisher.

Tanks you won't see in Jovian, but they're in Heavy Gear - which is more VOTOMS scale than Gundam for the mechs. Average gear is kind of like a one-man fully equipped humvee; they're kept small because biped quickly stops being useful when it gets too heavy or too tall. Easier to armor too. Pound for pound a tank is a boss fight for the bigger gears, and two light tanks versus a typical squad of gears is roughly an even fight if the latter ambush the former, or a massacre the other way around.

There are some tanks and even some exos can go toe to toe with big ass ships such as the dragon striker. Though that's kinda a rarity.

They're also hideously expensive and need as rare a pilot to handle them. Like I said though; it's not impossible, especially if you're very good at what you do, it's just very hard and very very risky.

...

Just here to say that I fucking love Jovian Chronicles and Heavy Gear and that Tribe 8 is my all time favorite RPG of all time.

I have a whole campaign planned out, with the players as CEGA spec-ops pilots who see the worst side of the Jovians during the Odyssey (which I'll be modifying to make the PCs the heroes).

From there, they would start to see Earth's bad side while "8th MS Team"-ing it up on the Asian front.

Eventually, they'd be offered a spot in a revolutionary plot to forcibly reform CEGA, ala OZ from Gundam Wing.

Then, back into space, because those dastardly Jovians are interfering with Martian politics...

Too bad I'll never run it, since my players struggle with even moderately-crunchy systems.

Have a GM with a similar problem, myself. We're both into systems like this, but the other four players are of the "this is too complicated, can't we just houserule pathfinder instead?" variety.

Could try running something on Roll20 And I would love to join you

I'll throw him the idea, might get lucky.

Sounds good. I'll be looking in the book again to brush up on it again.

Question for those interested in Jovian Chronicles:

Would anyone be interested in a game of Giant Guardian Generation? It's free for download from 1d4chan.

Battle Century G is the updated version of GGG, it’s got a free SRD available on the creator’s website.

Could do that too. I forgot I have G and Z (the expansion).

>fuck no. I've done online before.

sorry.

>massive zeonfags
Putting them on the Earth military might lead to them defecting at some point, but I haven't read the rulebooks so I can't say.

I'd be interested in BCZ, silcore, lancer, gurps spaceships, traveller... anything sci-fi that isn't pathfinder to be completely honest.

I would also be interested in a BCG/Z game.

Damn

I, too, would be interested, depending on the time and day. I’m in kind of a bad time zone to coordinate with Americans well, so don’t fret about accommodating this user.

And I just checked, there are no Battle Century G/Z nor Giant Guardian Generation sheets on Roll20 and I do not have a Pro account needed to make one.

Obviously there is a bit of a demand for this but I don't think the game would run smoothly without a sheet. Fuck. Opinions?

Earth is the totally not!zeon in this game it seems.

Uh, easy. Pastebin.
At worst everyone uses whatever ends up being the best template. Roll20's shit for sheets anyways unless you have multiple monitors, given at that point you're going about a window in a window.

Compared to just tabbing around between the entire party on mythweavers or even pastebins and keeping the critical information (energy/health and other basic data) on the tokens?

Plus they don't always work right anyways. The Fragged Empire sheets can't calculate worth shit and double up everything you type in some sections as well.

So they drop colonies on themselves?
Haha only joking, you do not need to explain the full extent of how it actually is in this setting.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B7AdUYyZ3DtWUXBKZ2Rtd3ctaVE/view

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G2a_LK3eKA80pPt1108ZWC427roc56cFxQlh0rPiI5Q/edit#gid=0

mediafire.com/file/8maysg9kw61ud3d/Sheets.pdf

The creator’s website has a google doc spreadsheet version. Just save it to your own drive and anyone with a share link can see eachother’s sheets. The game just uses d10s so it’s super simple to run on roll20

The "biography" section can probably manually be filled out with the required info. BCG also has an online spreadsheet a group could view on google-drive.

Well then, I'll start trying to whip something up then. Give me a short bit.

that gives me time to take out the shower and grab a garbage.

Is there a spreadsheet for the mecha as well?

Derp, nvm, found it. Fuck I'm blind today.

They already want to take a colony and drop it on some jovian moon. We even have a player making his own Char clone.

>We even have a player making his own Char clone.
Read the source material and look at the art, and it's pretty blatant that CEGA are heavily inspired by Zeon and the Jovian Confederation are inspired by the EF. The original green book even all but outright says it's the case.

>We even have a player making his own Char clone.
JC already has one, Ranho Garand. He was reported dead during The Odyssey incident piloting the Dragon Striker, where he turned against his own CEGA forces after he learned they were trying to crash the Jovian capital colony into Jupiter, then later came back with a mask and everything as the new leader of STRIKE, then DP9 FUCKING FORGOT HE EXISTED.

Alright, if I set up this BCG/Z game, what sort of Gundam style game do the players want? Something set in a One Year War analogue? Maybe the players are pilots sent to Earth to act as terrorists/freedom fighters against the oppressive Earth like Gundam Wing? Maybe a post-apocalyptic setting like Turn A or X? Something else? Shoot me ideas everyone.

We could also just go crazy and making it a literal Build Fighters ripoff if wanted.

Hey, while we're on the subject of the Silhouette system:

Heavy Gear was the best. Jovian Chronicles were cool but just felt like a space-oriented Heavy Gear.

Tribe 8 sucked a massive fat cock.

So much so that some aspects of the game were literally about gaining power by sucking cock.

That partly depends on what style you feel most comfortable with. IGLOO was good shit but the GM (or players sometimes) might find it depressing and be better suited to the rigors of the Gundam Fight having been changed to team format.

Maybe a new federation-style government attempting to rise from the ashes of a post-apocalyptic world to end the fractured warlord fuckery we see in X and forced to balance between not turning into the villains yet succeeding in the endeavor?

In the last mecha thread an user made a pretty good point how IBO actually makes a really good RPG setting regardless of the quality of the show itself.

Hmm. That would be interesting. Not sure I'd be able to do that justice readily but I'll look into it.
Haven't seen the series yet. Tried watching it on Hulu but the subs are broken on it and I can't speak Japanese so no chance there. From what I understand there are a bunch of frames that can be kitted out with customized armor and weapons. The Gundam frames are highly powerful frames but only a few are known to still exist, some hiding away in vaults or have been destroyed or otherwise. That is the general gist, yes?

>So much so that some aspects of the game were literally about gaining power by sucking cock
Explain

I liked a lot of the designs, and the fact that they used all sorts of not-mobile-suits in combat too. Plus I actually liked Barbatos. I don't usually like the main machine, more of a fan of customized mass-production units even in pure looks (like the stark jegan an user posted above).

One of the tribes is blatantly described as being all about fucking. Each tribe's behavior is inspired by the fatima they worship, and they in turn get power from that.

Also: The primary antagonists (Z'bri) get power from causing extreme emotions. It's blatantly stated that they employ both torture and titillation to garner these emotions.

That's the gist of it, plus the setting being post-post-apocalyptic solar system with Earth split into economic blocks watched over by a chivalric-order-esque military organization, Mars effectively being the wild west, pirates and mercenaries plaguing everything in between, and space yakuza controlling Jupiter while wheeling and dealing with everybody.

Semi-related fun-fact:
I once ran a Gundam AU setting that was literally the Jovian Chronicles setting where the Prometheus and Dragon Striker were replaced with actual Gundams.

Yeah basically the "gundams" are/were actually just the base systems - twin-drives and all. Each had then been customized for their users most heavily.

In some ways it's far more reasonable than the usual super-prototype; they'd taken *production* into consideration for the original designs and standardized as much as they could from the ground up.

So would something akin to 08th MS team be interesting to people? I'd set it away from Asia and place it more in the US since, well, my game and all.

08th MS team style is pretty much the gold standard for mecha RPGs.