Giant Robots: Recommend me a system.

[Dannyalcatraz]

FWIW, if you can find them, Arsenal and Factory from Perpetrated Press will add this kind of fun to almost any D20 style game.

 

[Jack of Shadows]

Mekton Zeta and Mekton Zeta Plus. Hands Down. This is the system I use for all my homebrew sci-fi games including those with out mecha. The scaling system allows you to create just about any piece of tech you need.

Jack.

 

[Relique du Madde]

I'll also place a vote for Mekton Zeta/Mekton Zeta Plus. Back in 96/97 I used that a home-ruled version of that system for a Tank Police (and Ranma 1/2) inspired game.

 

[Aeric]

I cannot recommend Mekton Zeta highly enough. The mecha construction rules are so universal, you can build anything from a handgun to a Death Star and everything in between. The combat system is derived from Battletech, with it's hit-points-per-hit-location and special effects table, but there are rules for running more fast and furious battles as well. Personally, I used the hit locations for the PCs and the fast and furious rules for the unimportant hordes of enemy mecha. Crunch on the character side of things is fairly light, but that can be easily fixed with the Fuzion/Hero system, which is 100% compatible with Mekton.

And hey, if you've got room in your game, drop me a note! It'd be a bit of a commute, but I haven't played a mecha game in nearly ten years. I'd love to get back in the saddle, er, cockpit again!

 

[Vargo]

Much love for Dream Pod 9's stuff (http://www.dp9.com) - they're the guys who originally wrote Mekton Zeta a long time ago, then moved on to create Heavy Gear and the SilCore rules. I think they have, bar none, the BEST vehicle creation rules in existence, period. More flexibility AND detail than Battletech/Mechwarrior, and yet the rules for combat are fast and furious. You can run a combat with many more units than Battletech in the same amount of time, the rules are simple enough that you aren't constantly looking up charts. The attack roll also resolves damage at the same time, which speeds things up considerably.

I just wish I could find people to play it with.

 

[Silver Moon]

D20 Future has a whole chapter on Mecha, the D20 Future Tech suppliment has additional information.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Much love for Dream Pod 9's stuff (http://www.dp9.com) - they're the guys who originally wrote Mekton Zeta a long time ago, then moved on to create Heavy Gear and the SilCore rules.

Not quite.

THe guys from Dream Pod 9 wrote a couple of great quality adventures for the Mekton system (Jovian Chronicles and Europa Incident).

Mekton Zeta is by Mike Pondsmith, Benjamin Wright and Mike McDonald.

And for my money for Anime based mecha action nothing, I mean NOTHING beats Mekton (II, Zeta, Zeta Plus). My old group in High School had an awesome multi year campaign with this system. Most of were heavily into mecha anime and had most of the mecha art books for varied shows like Zeta Gundam, Dunbine, L-Gaim and Dancougar (our games were closest to Zeta Gundam in flavor and mecha power). We were pretty much able to build ANY mech from any show as long as we had the weapons list and the tonnage.

The mecha creation system was crunchy but its still one of the best. My second choice? Jovian Chonicles from DP9. it's pretty awesome.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

D20 Future has a whole chapter on Mecha, the D20 Future Tech suppliment has additional information.

Yeah but the d20 future rules for Mecha are really screwed up. Better just going with something else. If it's a campaign that features both personal and mecha scale action that change in scale is a perfect fit for the change in systems.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

D20 Future has a whole chapter on Mecha, the D20 Future Tech suppliment has additional information.

Bleh.

If I was doing d20 mecha, I'd go with the Mecha Compendium Deluxe from Dream Pod 9. Much more satisfying crunch I think, and I liked all the options. Plus, it was written by DP9 which already knows mecha from their Heavy Gear + stuff.