Mecha RPGs

Working on something, but extensive customization is really difficult to do and stops being rules light unless it’s CYOA tier like . Instead I’m having players choose their frame and then modifying based on said build. Some ‘Legacy Mecha’ appears that tend to be your heroic or plot centric type mecha that have a specific build with less customization but special rules. The game will be meant to allow for different flavors of mecha with bio and mechanical mecha having different sources from multiple factions and some enemy groups.

On the subject of Mech RPGs, did mekton or any of the other systems ever put out something like an adventure module?

I've been trying to write up an adventure for battle Century G, but I'm having trouble coming up with stuff for the characters to actually do outside of combat, so it'd be nice to have examples to build off of.

Maybe you should go watch or read whatever shitty anime you are basing your bad idea on

I fucking love BCG

Battle Century G/Z is pretty much the only dedicated mech system I could stand so far.

I ran a oneshot in Strike! and that worked out well, but it was more to test Strike! than to play a mech game, would probably go with BCG/Z instead.

Also fuck you, LANCER looks very promising

whats a good one for super robots?

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BCG/Z. I can't stress enough how awesome a system it is.

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Bump

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This. I kinda want to run it again after playing ZoE: Fist of Mars again.

I did my one and only BCG campaign based around this concept. Drop the Live Another Day power for Parting Shot and you're partway there already. Had a great moment where the PCs were fighting an Ogre-themed boss, it took two or three of them down with its Bullet Hell attack (if you damage it enough it spams unavoidable lead up to a certain radius around it), they all immediately Parting Shotted it and took it down with them.

wholeheartedly this. i've been testing builds all week in anticipation for a game starting next month and it fucking blows me away how intense a 1d10+stat game can get with all it's little details.

it's the ultimate Super Robot Wars recreation. the author thoroughly loves dumb robot bullshit so much that he takes no half-measures in capturing the spirit of both the new and old styles.

i agree with . with BCG, look at how gundams and other more recent shows handle the balance between mech action and plot development. Giant robot asskicking every week hasn't been in vogue since the days of classic Mazinger, and even it's contemporaries like Zambot 3 were quick to catch on to the fact that viewers like seeing the characters as much as the mecha.

BCG literally based half of it's shit on Mazinger Z. Fucking play it nigger. the first recommended concept is "Grandpa's Masterpiece Mecha." Rocket Punch is the default "fire a thing that can come back to you" attack. Endgame mech power levels are literally described as Mazinger is. An entire campaign style (Ring of Fire or w/e that first setting is) is wholly intended to recreate the Photonic Research Labs and Atemi being defended against by robotic monstrosities. DO IT.

This. I've looked into all Mecha systems I could find, and BCG/Z still felt better overall. I'm planning to run a Gundam game using it.

Gundam you say?

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The fuck?
Is that a two-faced the o?

Sazabi-O or something, got the image off of /m/ a few days ago

Pretty much. Just like the Reborns Gundam switches between Gundam mode and Guncannon mode, this switches between Nightingale mode and The O mode.

Why does the o mode have cannons?
That bitch better at least 6 lightsabers

I'm trying to convert this to savage worlds. Going well, testing it out tonight.

Post results.

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I'll make a thread about it tomorrow!

Although discounted it, for that specific premise Lancer might be worth a look. The rules are free, and there's a thread discussing it over at

>No love for Pondsmith's autism.
BCG/Z is fucking amazing but if you need something with more crunch Mekton is a solid second choice

mekton 0 when?

They did a thing at the last Gencon where they talked about it. It's way off though since the company is busy working on the Cyberpunk video game right now. So maybe 2020 at the earliest?

At this point it'd be faster to make the game ourselves

Heat death of the universe.

This worked better than I could have expected it to. I don't think it would hold up for more than a one-shot or maybe a couple sessions. We just did all our battles using HG1/144 Gundam models.

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Someone stat The Big O in BCG/Z please.

STATS
>Might: 9
>Guard: 8
>Threshold: 9
>Energy: 4
>Systems: 4
>Speed: 4

INTERNAL UPGRADES
>Duelist Model
>Invincible Alloy
>Defensive Tech
>Master Tech
>Internal Fortification

EXTERNAL/WEAPONS
>Zweihander (Piledrivers)
>Bombardment (Missile attacks)
>Macrowave Cannon or Oblivion Buster (FINAL STAGE!)
>Custom Defense: Melee? Maybe Non-Beam instead?

Not as optimized as it could be, but it works. The idea is to just get into melee range and keep pounding the other guy with overwhelming attacks. The 4 in systems is completely useless except for giving Big O a range bonus when using FINAL STAGE.

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Forgot to mention, that's Power Level 5 with 251xp spent.

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>not using Jackhammer stake and reload
I like Zweihander as much as the next guy but cmon.

It's only fitting as far as the name itself. Beyond that it doesn't fit how brutally strong Big O's attacks are. Mechanically, Jackhammer is only good as a disposable weapon for Grunts. Zweihander is pretty bad too actually, but it's the only basic melee Technique.

Its fitting mechanically too? You can just as easily swap out Master Technician for Reload or do the Commander Type + Supply Delivery if you care for action economy.

Also its Custom Barrier should be beam.

Radiant Fist Could Work for the Jackhammer
then Arm Guardian for Basic melee, Charge Cannon for eye beams/ chrome buster and Reactor Overdrive for Final Stage.

Also possibly Rocket punch or Finger net for the Hip Anchors.

Literally anything is better than that fucking mess, even Genesys. Especially Genesys.

Do you mean BCG or Mekton?

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Is this a Z/Gustav?

It's a Varguil, from Moon Gundam, a non/semi-canon prequel to Char's Counterattack. It didn't quite make it to Char's standards so it was passed off to someone else.

Sounds like its time for some jovian chronicles

Jesus
How much shit did they make?
Was this before or after the hyaku shiki?
Even that was half baked and couldn't even transform

Post-ZZ, pre-CCA, user.

Silly me, I thought you said char's secret affair
Tell me, have they introduced more characters with 4-related names?

I'm not a perfect Gundam scholar, I honestly do not know.

I’d just use an established mecha war game like battletech or Heavy Gear and bolt on whatever rpg system you want for non combat anime bullshit. Fusing everything other than armored combat into mech game has always been sort of a bug bear for me.

Bummer
I just read the original, z and zz as a kid
i'd completely forgotten about it until /mo/ and now I just like the aesthetic

Mekton. BCG is beautiful.

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Heavy gear literally has an entire rpg system backing it. And has multiple settings including one which is mechless.

If you do it for him he'll never learn himself.

Good

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True, but I think we were just looking for a chance to talk about Big O.

Jovian Chronicles is fun, it's also scaled to be setting specific despite using the same system as other DP9 game. Which solves my main gripe with most mecha systems in that they try to hard to be 'universal' and as a result end up a bland soup like BCG or actual clunky trash like Mekton. Universal mecha systems are simply bad.

>BCG
>bland/bad
Well we can see someone who has no taste is here.

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Just calling it like I see it, Not only does it not even capture what makes Super Robot Wars so entertaining in the first place, it's so divorced from the concept of driving a vehicle that you can drop it into any other setting and have it function the same. Fuck, I've used it for a magical girl game in the past. Really, it's just bad.

As someone who has played and ran the system, it's eloquent and fun. Players have 2 fairly slim books that covers all of their bases for character generation and mech construction and we only had to stop the game once in any session so I could look up a rule relating to one ability. It's fast and it can scale from doing a Patlabor game to a Mazinger Z game and more without resorting to massive numbers crunching like what Mekton Z does.

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>use system for thing it isn't even intended for
>"it's just bad"

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>so divorced from the concept of driving a vehicle
What the fuck man, would you rather we made Mecha Piloting skill checks all the time or some shit?
Go back to your autistic delta-v spergery, we're having actual fun

OR COME BACK HERE

bizarrely, fourth edition D&D does mecha really well

...you cant just leave us hanging like that user.

HOW does it do that?

How do you GM for Battle Century G?
how do you decide what kind of story to make? I'd love to run a Gundam game but wouldn't know where to begin with the campaign.

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Dream Pod 9 put out:
Jovian Chronicles: The Chaos Principle
store.dp9.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=91_90&product_id=247
Heavy Gear: many
store.dp9.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=91_81

The newer Dream Pod 9 main setting books (JC, HG, Gear Kreig) have random adventure generators.

Gear Krieg's Wargaming Companion has a scenario generator.
store.dp9.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=89_104&product_id=304

quick question for Mekton Zeta Plus.

Do i just need MZP to play the game or do I also need Mekton Zeta? I have a book called the advanced technical manual but it has no rules for making pilots.

MZP is the book for in depth mech spergin. You'll need mekton zeta for the other stuff

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH. TY

got bored and rolled up the life path of a Mekton Zeta character. here's what my GF wrote down in response to my rolls;

>worker middle class
>both parents are alive - GOOD END - Family doin' 'aight
>Holy shit why does she have 8 kids
>child unit 1 - older, male, they like us
>child unit 2 - older, girl, meh, you so-so
>child unit 3 - younger, girl, you cool with us
>child unit 4 - older, male, they hate ur stanky guts
>child unit 5 - older, girl, they don't like ur stanky guts
>child unit 6 - older, male, they like ur stanky guts
>child unit 7 - younder, girl, meh, ur guts are so-so
>Friend 1 - old school buddy, girl
>Friend 2 - foster-mom friend, girl
>Friend 3 - older-sister friend, girl
>Friend 4 - foster-dad friend, male
>Friend 5 - childhood friend, male
>Friend 6 - childhood friend, male
>No Enemy
>Tragic Love Affair - SOCIETY HATES ROMANCE
>Black Hair - Long and Straight
>Eyes - Dark Brown
>Mood, Brash and Headstrong
>FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC
>Get Smoked hat ur girlfriend got u
>u love ur mom

What did I just roll? heres a robot

forgot to clip it

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use to play it but the stat blocks made little sense to me as it didn't have much crunch, like how much HP a mech would have per Dura block.

Refluff. 4e powers are divorced from fluff, so a power that's "shoot a bunch of arrows" can easily be a rocket barrage.

Strike! does it a bit more cleanly, since it's fluff neutral to begin with, but doesn't have d20 level of granularity.

where does one find this mecha RPG?

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It's a Google away, but here:

img.fireden.net/tg/image/1452/97/1452977493860.pdf

>img.fireden.net/tg/image/1452/97/1452977493860.pdf
many thanks, mysterious stranger

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If you're more concerned with running robot/-on-robot/robot-on-kaiju fights than the fiddly modular customization of your mech, refluffed 4e unironically works really well.... arguably even better than it works for dungeon crawling. Just replace "short-rest" with "time to reload/cool-down-heat-synch" and "long-rest" with "time in a well stocked mech garage/hangar" and refluff your class as your chassis.

Then again, lots of people really enjoy the character/mech optimization/building process, and there's less of that, and a lot of people are really turned off by your pilot's stats and you mech's stats being rolled into one for combat, rather than being separate modular objects, and that's okay.

However, if what you're looking to do is get together with friends and have a ball of a time going on mission beating up Kaiju in your giant robots, it can't be beat... at-least not by anything I've tried so far.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

Strike! is a perfectly serviceable system, not perfect mind you, but it works fine for what it is

This. Only played it a few times but it works well enough. But for mecha action I would still use BCG/Z over it.

So. Me and my gf were theorycrafting mechs and what wed come up with the following;

American Muscle & Cannibal Werewolf

American Muscle
A bunch of Gearheads designed this on a dare and after getting shipped a bunch of surplus mech parts by accident. Three Forms; Humanoid Walker armed with gundam style laser rifle w/chainsaw bayonet, Jet Flyer armed with missles and autoguns, Hovertank w/missle pods and railgun. Candy Apple Red paintjob with equivalent blue highlights and white star detailing. I think this might be expensive for what i want. But I want it.

Cannibal Werewolf
"Organic" looking prototype mech like late Metal Gears or EVA Units. Sleek and shit. Can shift from quadrapedal form to bipedal walker. Eats and absorbs other mechs. Essentially becoming a piecemeal mech. Fights like Blade Wolf, and whatever its recently eaten.

Doable? What do yiu guys think?

Those sound pretty cool, user. What system were you thinking of using?

Mekton Zeta

How is damage calculated in BCG

Player rolls an Awareness check +5 while the opponent rolls a Guard check +5. If the check surpasses the Difficulty Number (DN) of the Guard check, damage dealt is equal to the number it exceeded.

Each mech and pilot have "plot armor" (called "Threshold for the mechs though) recorded in layers. The Pilot has a number of points per layer equal to their Willpower score while the mech is equal to it's Threshold score. Pilots have 3 layers of plot armor and mecha have 4.

For each layer lost, something happens. For pilots when they lose a layer they must roll a willpower test vs a DN depending on which layer they lost (DN 10 for layer 1, 15 for 2 and 20 for 3). A fail of any of those test means you are defeated. For mechs, when they lose a layer they lose limbs. If the damage dealt to the mech that removed a layer was odd (1, 3, 5 etc) then the defender can choose which limb is maimed while if the damage was even (2, 4, 6 etc) then the attacker gets to choose. Anything equipped to those limbs fails and cannot be used until the layers are restored once more.

I just wish there's a hack that makes BCG gridless. It's perfect otherwise.

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You can run it gridless - just record each square/hex as 1 inch and use a ruler.

Potatoes!

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I thought that the game was designed to be run without exact distance measurements, isn’t movement done by moving between zones?or is a zone just a one inch square/hex?

People like using grids for measurement for each zone or whatever but it is just as easy to run it in theater of the mind as it is on grid.

This. It's always eady to just disregard that shit

Honestly I don't get the grid craze I much prefer hex maps.

Grids can be okay and it tends to be easier to map for things like dungeons since graph paper is so ubiquitous. For a game using big ass mecha though, yeah, hex maps are awesome.

I will agree there though really its not as bad if you can find hex paper and are willing to just color hexes in.

Depends on your priorities. Strike! leans more heavily on being a tactical system, while BCG is a good mech system. But both are very simple and transparent, so you could just frankenstein them if you wanted.