rvaughn_ffg
First Post
Kesh said:*cough*BESM d20*cough*
Actually, comparing our concept to the existing d20 Mecha books was the big question on whether to go ahead with this Horizon project.
Investigation revealed that nearly every Mecha option has three things in common, none of which lend themselves to the kind of game we want to make:
1) The mechas are equipment, not characters. At best in non-d20 BESM, you make a character that owns a mecha, and that mecha can be controlled via remote control, it can be "semi-autonomous", meaning it can operate without supervision but lacks emotions and desires, or it can be "intelligent", meaning it has self-initiative and creativity but remains loyal to the character who owns it. None of these allow you to play the mecha as your main character, much less advance it as if it were a normal character.
d20 BESM is, as you suggest, much closer. It allows you to play a giant robot with some limited customizing options, but it's essentially a character class. The creature has no Constitution, and generally gets a generic set of advancements like armor, flight, massive damage, etc. Nowhere near as flexible as making your favorite giant transforming robot from cartoon, comic book, or action figure fame. This leads me to . . .
2) Scale. In general, mecha games (and d20 mecha games in particular) use Medium humanoids as a baseline, and work up from there in terms of power scale. This means that trying to play a group of giant robots involves huge amounts of damage, lots of DR, complicated combat rules, and lots of vehicle design buy points. Bleh. We want to be able to make a little guy that turns into a hatchback (1st level), idolizing the hummer or the tank (5th level), all of whom team up against the attack helicopter (10th level). It should be as easy to create and play those characters as it is a 1st, 5th, or 10th level human fighter, elven wizard, or halfling rogue. Our combat rules will look just like d20 humanoid-scale, with some cool weapon and shapeshifting fighting tricks, and we'll probably use the vehicle combat rules from Redline and Dragonstar, both of which have proven themselves as versatile, intuitive, and user-friendly. Meanwhile, since the scale advances, humans will be on a par with toads or rats or other non-attack-capable Tiny creatures in D&D.
3) Advancement and Game Mechanics. The norm for advancing mechs is to upgrade them with mechanical add-ons. How would a mech "advance" following the normal creature class advancement rules, one might ask. As a machine, wouldn't they just put on new parts, rather than going up in level? Using levels, since that's what creatures do, not machines, would seem illogical. At least, that's what some folks might think. Actually, part of the very exciting aspect of this game is that, in fact, d20 isn't logical for anything else! The fact that you can fight to 0 hp without every suffering pain or shock penalties, the fact that armor and dex add up to AC rather than dex being AC and armor being damage reduction, the fact that you somehow miraculously gain more health and hit points every time you increase your prowess and skills . . . none of these aspects of d20 are realistic for any kind of organic creature. They're all abstractions for the sake of simplicity. But conveniently enough, they work perfectly well with characters that are inorganic, mechanical beings. It's simply too good to pass up.
So, there you go. Happy to answer any more questions. One of the key things for making sure this book does well is that A) retailers tend not to re-order softcovers, thinking of them as just another periodical, and B) mecha isn't the best seller ever, so store owners might not know what sets this book apart from the other mecha books. If you're excited about the book, please do let your local game stores know, and encourage them to keep it and the other Horizon books in stock. If they don't know you folks like 'em, they won't keep 'em around.
Thanks,
