I'm not going to try to find a solution to "have everyone feel like they contribute when not everyone is a vehicle combat specialist."
However, I will say that games where
everyone is a vehicle combat specialist can be a lot of fun, whether it's Robotech, Heavy Gear or a newer game specifically designed around the experience.
There are three which stand out for dealing with the obvious problem you get in games like Heavy Gear when you max out your AGI and PER to ensure that you're great at piloting and aiming, and lousy at everything else, and everyone else makes a more balanced character who doesn't shine as much in the cockpit. They all assume you're gonna be a pilot first, plus some other skills outside the cockpit.
Warbirds by Steve and Cait Bergeron is built on the Rapidfire system, which uses d6 rolls and could be described as "Dream Pod 9's Silhouette, done right." It has an abstract but reasonably detailed air combat system (no maps, but an initiative positioning track to indicate who has the drop on whom), nice simple aircraft mechanics (prop planes, with expansions for jets and space fighters), and most importantly,
Dexterity is not the god stat - instead, everyone has the same starting Situational Awareness (the killer stat for air combat) which is averaged from their other stats (Body, Mind, Spirit) and everyone gets the same pool of points for buying air combat skills (Piloting, Strafing, Gunnery, Ordnance) so that they can choose to specialise in fighting duels or blowing up bases and skyships. Where you differ is in your out-of-cockpit activities, where you could be a brawler, a spy, an outrageous socialite or anything else - and again, the out-of-cockpit character is built with a
separate pool of points, and your Mind, Body and Spirit stats affect your rolls in all these things but rarely affect air combat. In other words,
there is no way to min-max by being lousy outside the cockpit and great in the cockpit, or vice-versa. Bonus points for a cool alt-history setting where the Caribbean Islands (and chunks of Mexico and Florida) get sucked into a world of floating islands and skyships, and rebuild a Crimson Skies-esque civilization based on prop planes and pulp tropes.
I and my friends have played multiple campaigns of this game, and it's quite good.
www.drivethrurpg.com
Flying Circus by Erika Chappell had a successful Kickstarter, and the digital version is now out on both Drivethru and Itch. It's about mercenary biplane pilots in a Miyazaki-esque post-apocalyptic setting with magic, monsters and industrial war machines. Technically it was built on Powered by the Apocalypse but has been hacked so much that you would hardly recognise it. There are 2d10 rolls; a detailed plane dashboard sheet that tracks altitude, speed and fuel; and loads of aircraft stats (more detailed than the other two games I'm talking about).
Every one of the four attributes makes you better at air combat in some way (social rolls are governed by Calm, which is also used to land a plane safely, for example). And there's a huge amount of variety in the character playbooks (which represent social backgrounds and how you manage relationships, and whether you get certain types of magic), as well as four different air combat Masteries which provide styles of fighting: Bushwack (ambush and first strike), Dogfighter (turning and manoeuvres), Slipstream (defensive fighting and waiting for the enemy to slip up) and Sharpshooter (long-range marksmanship). These are like different groups of Feats in D&D, and you start with access to only one style, but can gain more eventually. There are plenty of personal Moves that make each character distinctive in a similar way to other PbtA games, like "One in a Million" for the Farmer (Young Luke Skywalker archetype) or "Stiff Upper Lip" for the Soldier.
Flying Circus, like the other two "ace pilot" games I'm talking about, has a typical gameplay cycle of: Combat Mission -> Downtime -> Combat Mission, which it inherits from its predecessor Night Witches. Erika adds an experience mechanic that I find quite nifty: Accumulate Stress in combat, go to the bar or indulge in various other vices to get rid of Stress during Downtime
and Stress that you clear turns into XP. It's a virtuous cycle that drives each phase of gameplay, much like the Stress and Downtime in Forged in the Dark games!
An RPG of Aviation Fantasy
opensketch.itch.io
Beam Saber, by Austin Ramsay (of the
You Don't Meet In An Inn podcast), also had a successful Kickstarter just before the pandemic. This is a Forged in the Dark game about playing a squad of mecha pilots in a massive war, and it's been development for years. The structure will be familiar to Blades in the Dark players, but instead of playing a gang in a haunted industrial city, you're a specialised mech squad trying to survive and achieve personal goals in a war that's much bigger than you, in which many factions battle around a ruined planet that may have once been known as Earth, cradle of humanity.
There are a wide range of playbooks, each of which has the same number of points to spend on personal stats and vehicle stats (except the Ace, who has a couple more points to make their vehicle stats just plain better). The Envoy uses deception and influence, the Hacker uses brains and digital intrusion, the Infiltrator sneaks, the Soldier fights in close quarters, the Scout snipes from afar, and so on. But they all get their own vehicles with specialty gear befitting their role, kind of like the ensemble cast in the old cartoon Exo-Squad. Vehicles are treated like an extra layer of six player character stats, with Quirks instead of Stress to help escape consequences of bad rolls.
And the Squad gets its own Playbook, keeping track of shared upgrades and abilities that everyone has, like a Crew in Blades. Different Squads will have different special abilities and goals - the Frontline gets abilities to help it in straight-up fights, while the R&D gets experimental tech to test. Beam Saber expands on the gang and faction system of Blades by having multiple Squads serving each Faction, and a Forward Operating Base instead of a Lair. During Downtime between missions, Supply rolls provide Materiel and Personnel points with which to repair and upgrade vehicles and characters respectively. And there are interesting, subtle additions to the Blades system, like employers forcing the Squad to follow certain Rules of Engagement during missions.
Artwork is still being done, but you can get in on the digital Beta version on itch.io and there is also a Backerkit pre-order available.
A TTRPG about pilots and their massive war machines.
austin-ramsay.itch.io
A Forged In The Dark table top role playing game about pilots and their massive war machines.
beamsaber.backerkit.com
