One of my goals is to have rules that let people build the mech they want, but not get bogged down in points buy hell. Jeremy Keller's excellent Tech Noir is a great example. Cyberpunk games have a distinct "designer weapon" feel to them. It's not a handgun, it's a Ares Predator. I want to capture that feeling with this design.
Each mech has five equipment slots. They correspond to a body part on the mech. For most knights, since the mechs are controlled by a neuralhelm, these parts correspond to the human body - head, front torso, back torso, arms and legs. For the designs of the Emergent, the evil robot barbarians threatening Arthur's realm, these designs allow for non-human shapes. For example, the MerGN-B "Boar" armor is head, torso, torso, leg, leg.
You can choose either an internal system or external system for the slot. Sure, your armor has lots of cool gadgets, but the equipment highlighted in the slot is the best feature. It's like buying a car. A buyer cares more about the horsepower or the soundsytem rather than power doorlocks or the adjustable seats.
Internal systems give you a higher Skill level while in your mech. This replaces your characters Skill, so if you have a Fair Shooting and the internal system is an Average Shooting, you are better off with your natural skill. Each slot offers a spread of skills ranging from getting one skill at Great to four skills at Average.
External systems work like stunts. They give you a +2 for a skill in a narrow circumstance, let you swap out one skill for another, or otherwise break the rules. These do stack with internal systems, so if you pick up a mech with a Good Shooting and give it a weapon that adds +2 at long range, that's a Legendary +6 when that mech shoots at you at long range.
To counter those big numbers, the mecha can absorb stress like consequences. Shutting down a system absorbs 2 stress. Shutting down either all internal or all external systems absorbs 4 stress. Shutting down all systems absorbs 6 stress. Bringing these systems back online requires a Smithy roll, with the difficulty set as the number of systems shut down.
We'll see how well these rules handle contact with the players. If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment below or tweet @robowieland. And one final tease: one of the test mechs I built. I give you: The Broadsword!
- Head: Death’s Head (Use Piloting for Intimidate)
- Front: Kiloton Breastplate (+2 Fighting vs. Physique defense)
- Back: Self-Repair Pack (Spend a Fate Point to bring a system back online)
- Legs: Stabilization Spurs (+2 Physique when on solid footing)
- Arms: Energy Gunblade (Use Fighting for Shooting attacks)
I am very curious to hear about the mechs your group build. To be honest I can already see what some of my players probably would make, starting with a gundam deathscythe rip-off.
ReplyDeleteHeck if your at all familiar with that I would love to know how you would stat that with this set-up.
grtz,
Tim
XXXG-01D Gundam Deathscythe
DeleteHead: Vulcan Guns (Fair Fighting, Fair Shooting)
Front: Sinister Appearance (Good Intimidation, Average Will)
Back: Hyper Jammer ECM (Great Stealth)
Arms: Beam Scythe (If opponent is Taken Out, may spend a Fate Point to make another Fighting attack)
Legs: Swift Rockets (Use Stealth instead of Fighting on first attack)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Rob. It starts to look very cool indeed. I played an RPG campaign in Mechwarrior / Battletech universe lately and I liked it a lot. Do you think that your system is going to be compatible with Battletech in the end? I would like to play similar campaign in Fate Core and I have a weak spot for these classical mech designs.
ReplyDeleteSome notes about the rules: I kind of feel that internal systems replacing pilot's skills will encourage designing mechs which will fill pilot's "weeks spots". This feels weird to me. It would make sense to take for example pilot who is good with sensors and scouting and give him assault mech to use skills he is good with by himself and use mech's "skills" which he is not good at at all. Am I reading it wrong?
I also did not really get the part about absorbing stress by shutting down systems. Having them broken, hit, damaged, would make more sense to me. Shutting down feels more like coping with traditional heat or for example power problems. Which brings the question: how about heat stress track?
Either way, these are my chaotic thoughts :-) and I am looking forward whatever is coming from you and your playtest group.
I want the mecha stuff to be portable enough so that folks can tweak it to fit their needs. CAMELOT Trigger is a bit more on the anime side of mecha, but Battletech is the standard bearer of the "walking tank" school.
DeleteThe internal systems do shore up weak spots. But they also offer broad bonuses too. there's plenty of adventure that's going to happen outside the Armour and I don't want people to feel like they have to build a character with Armour, Melee and Archery as their top skills to be cool when they hop in their robot. External systems stack with skills regardless if the skill is used from the mech or the pilot. A scout mech is a good scout mech even if the pilot sucks. But a good scout pilot in a good scout mech will be legendary.
Rather than get into a more granular system that Shooting score will cover it. I could go into light lasers being worth Average damage and PPCs being Good damage and so on, but I'd rather leave that open so we can roll with it during play. If you roll ---+ on your attack roll, you can say your lasers missed while your PPC caught the target with a glancing blow instead of taking up game time by rolling separate for everything.
You could conceivably have a mech that's all Great internal skill systems - in fact, that's probably how I'm building Arthur's Caliburn - but that gives you less options for using the mech to soak damage.
Using systems to absorb damage is meant to simulate the mech taking damage. I'm following FATE Core's directive of not giving extra stress to vehicles. All the stress hits the pilot because that's the important character in the story. But the pilot and his player can choose to have the stress hit the mech instead and lose options in the battle.
The heat stress track is an interesting idea. It may show up in some of the rules variants I have planned.
Hey rob, I have to say I was unsure of the whole skills from mech thing at first as well. But not that you pointed out that a it allows characters to be good pilots and not need to be good warriors on foot, and b it's actually a weakness because you can loose those skills as consequences which is a big blow, rather then loosing a weapon bonus which is not nearly as bad.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that thinking about it this system is beginning to grow on me. I might start writing up some mechs of my own and see how they do in a mock combat.
There is something I do feel perhaps lacking in this system tough. The mechs do lack aspects which I feel really is a pity. A basic description of the things function or perhaps a common nickname with associated image would go a long way in giving mechs personality I think. For instance lets take the broadsword example you posted earlier, its good with defence and it can intimidate with piloting. You could give it the "stalwart defence" model aspect which I think has obvious ways to be used. On the other hand with that death's head thing going on perhaps its more a "Executioner's custom" model. Which would give the same suit a very different feel and could be used in different ways.
Finally I was wondering if your considering transformable suits? I could imagine something like a transformable stunt that does nothing for that slot but allows one or two other slots to have two different stunts for different modes. Perhaps have two aspects to switch between even?
As an afterthought, perhaps even ad a "weakness" aspect (like a trouble aspect) I always find that flaws give more character then strengths and discovering the weakness aspect of your opponent trough clever observation is a staple of the genre as well. And like always the fate system balances itself, big flaws give a lot of fate points, small unused weaknesses don't provide them.
DeleteTransformation could be a cool idea. Also, mech mounts?
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty curious about more setting elements. Next post? Merlin as a predictive ai? Other characters from the myth coming back? Supernatural elements to tie the timelines together?
@Tim: Aspects are my favorite part of FATE's design. I'm hesitant to add them to the mechs because a lot of other designs drown in aspects. Between character Aspects, scene Aspects and created Aspects,, another set of mech Aspects might be too much to manage properly. But it's not completely off the table yet until after my game this week.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, the full setting will have detail about the mechs designed for CAMELOT Trigger as well as rules for combiner/transformer mechs.
@Narrator: My next post will be my initial outline. The outline has already changed a few times, like they do, but there will be some setting teases in there. You are on the right track about Merlin, or should I say, MerLN.
Rob, I completely agree with you that the number of aspects at the table is a delicate balancing act. I for one found the number in spirit of the century to be ridiculously high, for instance.
DeleteIt might not be a bad idea to have the mech aspect be one of the five character aspects. I would imagine the characters personal mech being quite a defining aspect of the character. (designer gear, like you said)
To completely switch topic, minor gripe, the energy gunblade stunt on the broadswords arms seems a bit to powerful to me. I think I would balance that with a drawback like; "when used cant use fighting to defend until next turn"
Sorry about the fanboy'ish level of posts from me. Please don't think I am trying to tell you how do write this book, its just that the basics your laying down sparked quite a creative brew with me, like all evocative systems do.
I'd rather let the players define if their mech is central to their character. If the player wants "My Father's Armour" as an Aspect, that's awesome. But if they're rather have that Aspect for something else that's okay too.
DeleteWe'll see how Energy Gunblade works in play. But that's also one of the reasons it's heavy armour.
(Armour is the in-world name for the mecha. I think it's also probably going to be the name of the Skill that you use instead of Piloting.)
Don't worry about posting. That's the cool part of this open development idea. Your enthusiasm feeds my enthusiasm. It also helps challenge my assumptions.