Ramblings, Mecha

INT. DUNGEON. HALL OF THE LUNATIC.

All of the great glowing suns are extinguished. Their light that once calmed the lunatics and pacified their torments is gone. Scraping chains rattle intermittently down a side hallway. Hungry sounds in the dark, the flagstones barely visible through the blood that pools throughout the room. Through the broken ceiling, the moon shines a terrible light on the pile of corpses. Something moves among them. Dimly, in blood written on the wall, a madman's scrawl:

"Kill and eat your darlings. They were not yours to devour. Leave their bones to be kicked up by the mourning sea. BE ASHAMED. Sink the crime into the well, keep it with the moon. In your entrails their viscera will shape a seed that will one day press out from your eye sockets- hands raised to the hungry sun. Your new darling."

CRAB emerges from the pile of corpses, soaked in blood, the broken body of HEARTBREAKER:GRAVITY hanging limply from their mouth.

I want a print for my office to hold staring contests with. I want it perfectly seated behind my chair so when I get up during a video conference or interview the other side is left to stare into saturn's eyes until I return

 

CRAB

 Has this ever happened to you? You want to run a game with mechs but the system you built for the game is trash- and now you don't know which of the many options available suit you? Are you like me, CRAB, one who has this problem? Yes? Yeah me too. There's so many good systems out there, let's do a highlight reel.

LUNATIC CRAB

saturn catches his glimpse in a mirror but the expression is not one of horrible realization but of horrible knowledge and anguish because he knows what he is doing and knows why he must do it and the why is the terrible source of his pale figure misshapen crouched in the dark eyes mad

Two small fish-men in usher uniforms drag a whimpering projector into the room and it screams to life displaying the reel on the bloody wall. 

CRAB

I've been in a mood for mechs as of late. Mecha is a whale I will break a thousand lances tilting at and then a thousand more before I find that two thousand and first lance that, being probably a harpoon, doesn't break- discard it and begin again.

Where was I going again?

Let's take a look at some mecha systems:

 

Mecha Hack: Based on the Black Hack, the Mecha Hack is the most "traditional" of the bunch I have here today as it really is just a reskin of black hack with mecha characteristics applied. It does a good job of it,  

Apocalypse Frame: Powerful combat, tactical choices that make sense, sense of really being an "ace" pilot. Armored Core on paper. Lumen has some very tasty synergies here. I especially like the way advancement is handled in Apocalypse Frame, being shared between Ace Advances, which are slight buffs to the aces themselves and Weapon/Frame improvement and acquisitions. Also damage is a guaranteed value- it's always 1-5 harm etc etc without dice rolls which allows the Aces to turn some battlefields into more of a controlled environment. Also has an expansion with considerations for a mecha hex crawl. MECHA. HEX. CRAWL. 

Celestial Bodies: Gambling your shots, real piece by piece mech construction, crunchy mech building. It has a few neat mechanics such as the main attributes being spent in combat to make enemy attacks less accurate as well as some crazy missile mechanics where you can plop down missiles and direct them independently at targets. The attack rolls combined with the unique gear grid system really feels smooth. Concept-wise too, the setting is fun.

Beam Saber: Is 438 pages long and much more heavily narrative focused. First rpg to teach me what clocks are years ago and it only took like four rereads of the section (in an old version) to actually understand them. I hear it's great, there's like thirty supplements and a bunch of actual plays and podcasts are out there! Still though, not quite what I'm looking for here.

Steel Hearts: I LIKE A LOT. IT'S VERY GOOD. Uses Evangelion typeset because Sandro isn't a coward. Amazing art.  Building a roll will have you rolling a wild amount of dice and construction of a roll is a bit funky. Gravity is a dope concept. Sick vibes, Mekton heritor in style and then some [complimentary]. I dig the setting and all the flare put into it. Also that character sheet? Lovely. The game is generally more focused on fighting monsters than fighting mechs, but also makes room for mech v mech fights- including Trauma From The Consequences Of War! Stratagems are a great way to highlight individual skills/actions, and the tension system for monsters is something I'll be thinking about for awhile. Bezel and resonance though- not present in my campaign.

Mekton Zeta: No one should play Mekton, probably. Does it have a cool lifepath system? Yes. Is it stylistic as all hell to the point of being unreadable? Sort of. Is the best copy I have of it a blurry scan at the best of times? Also yes. Does its professions list include Lawyer, Housewife, and (checks notes) Hello Nurse? Yes. Are its attributes/statistics/skills nonsensical to the point of being willfully malicious? Possibly. Could I spend over 10,000 words of spilled digital ink in lament and praise of this relic? Probably. And does it have one of the most robust mecha construction systems out there? You betcha.

CRAB

Damn. Honestly the more I read Steel Hearts again the more I'm drawn in by the charm alone.

LUNATIC CRAB

you aren't even considering the warhammer40k evangelion hack

CRAB

Of course not, it doesn't Fit My Theme. And also it's warhammer40k and that's a whole different barrel of headless fish to go into the guts of its system. 

LUNATIC CRAB

he walks the abyss, tall as wind

CRAB

Of course I'm not just going to reuse my heartbreaker, it's trash. At one point a player rolled 16 dice to complete an impossible feat. 

LUNATIC CRAB

and was it awesome

CRAB

Fine. But I'm going to chew on it some more. I want something clean and easy, simple with impact and probably only runnable at my table- as all the best heartbreakers and house rules are. Something that bleeds steel and jams its reactor core full of esoterica.

LUNATIC CRAB

the sun resides within me

CRAB

I'm only 40% sure that's a real quote at this point, and honestly you're starting to bug me out.

CRAB scuttles out of the pile of corpses and down the hallway, the fish-men pack the sobbing projector and hurry after. LUNATIC CRAB begins rising up into the moonlight and rotating at a 45 degree angle faster and faster. 

TO BE CONTINUED?