Despite being a huge fan of anime, I'm a total newbie to the Mecha genre, even though that is one of the more popular anime genres out there. My only real experiences with it are the timeless classics of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gundam Wing,the latter of which I recently began to rewatch on Hulu.
See, overall, I know very little of the genre and its conventions and tropes.
However, a good friend of mine has introduced me to a tabletop role-playing game called Battle Century G and I've skimmed through the System Reference Document and I like what I see. Thanks to this friend, I have even got a chance to talk to the creator of Battle Century G, who has since given me free PDF copies of the full version of his game, which I will be giving a full and in-depth review of in a later post. For now, I will be discussing the base system and my first impressions of it.
The SRD is just the core mechanics and does not contain the setting fluff of the main game itself, but that is fine with me because I generally prefer to make my own settings anyway. From the first impressions of the game, it seems that Battle Century G is primarily focused on Mecha, but can be used for nearly any form of Military Sci-Fi. You could use the system not just for Mecha battles, but also for infantry, tanks, vehicles, and the like. Overall, I like that sort of potential.
The system itself is a point-buy system that has provisions for both pilot characters and the giant robots that they pilot. According to the game's creator, the goal of Battle Century G was to create a rules-medium system that had enough crunch to be a decent combat simulator and not just some story-game, but not be so heavy that the game becomes needlessly complicated.
In that regard, I'd say that he succeeded in creating a solid rules-medium system. Now, I have not gotten a chance to actually test the rules out myself, but based on what I have read, it seems good enough for me.
I'd personally love to use Battle Century G's mechanics for something along the lines of either a general Military Sci-Fi game involving an Alternate History where the Cold War never ended, or use it for an Army Men-themed campaign where the PC's are sapient toy soldiers, complete with tanks, vehicles, helicopters, and even more sci-fi stuff like robots and Mecha. I'm picturing something along the lines of a cross between Small Soldiers and Gundam Build Fighters in terms of style and theme.
While I currently have no plans for a Military Sci-Fi or Mecha themed campaign for the time being, if I ever get that urge to run something along those lines, then I would definitely use Battle Century G as my main system for such a thing.
Once I do an in-depth read of the full book and play the rules for myself, I will make more in-depth posts for both of those things.
Have you heard of Adeptus Evangelion?
ReplyDeleteIt is (well, was I think...) a rather heavy, fan-made overhaul of the Dark Heresy system to run Evangelion games. While its development history is a clusterfuck and it presumably no longer has a community (as the old playerbase got tired/left and general interest in NGE has died down to the point we likely will never see new players or games of it) it at one time had a thriving community and many complete campaigns of alternate universe (from merely slight alterations to canon to entirely new settings) were ran.
I'd like to try Mekton
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