HellHound
ENnies winner and NOT Scrappy Doo
I first discovered Robotech during Saturday morning cartoons. The Macross Saga captured the imaginations of both my brother and myself, even if it was a thinly veiled soap opera at heart. We followed the saga through to Northern Cross and then Mospeada (the Invid invasion), and then found the RPG from Palladium Games.
The Robotech RPG follows the same system as the Palladium RPG and just about every other RPG they’ve released (except for Recon possibly, and I have quite the Recon story for another thread). The big new item in Robotech was the introduction of Mega Damage (MDC) which acts as 100 ‘hit points’ (actually SDC) per point of MDC, and you cannot hurt an MDC item using SDC weapons (so a submachine gun or a long sword can never penetrate tank armor, no matter how long you hack at it). With that exception and a very tidy clean-up of the autofire weapons rules, Robotech basically runs like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes with huge-ass mecha, minus the teenagers, mutations, ninjas… and turtles. But with sweet mecha.
I’m not going to go into detail on the Robotech universe here, for those unfamiliar with these “giant robots”, I recommend the Wikipedia entry of regarding the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech
I played Robotech with three different gaming groups over the years. Most of these games were Macross-era games because that was the series with the most variety of mecha to choose from and a setting we were most familiar with. The first group was a bunch of my brother’s friends and my brother – because everyone wanted to be different, they generally played destroid pilots, each with a different destroid (the giant walking mechas, typical of the mecha genre). Our games were usually short, stuffed into a free hour or two, so were mostly quick “defend the fort” or “seek and destroy” missions that used the game as a giant robot combat system more than an RPG. We defended everything from protoculture production facilities, mine entrances and military bases to the United Nations HQ and the ruins of the CN Tower (after the destruction of Toronto in the TV series).
The other game I ran around the same era was a traditional post-war story in the setting after the return of the SDF-1 – dealing with people trying to rebuild in the ruins after the Zentreadi attacks, handling insurgencies, and running routine patrols. This game featured a primarily Veritech-piloting team (being the mecha that transform into jet fighters) so patrols were quick and the game felt more like the TV series. There was also a lot more role-playing in these games – handling interactions with the survivors, supporters and insurgents, as well as trying to talk Zentraedi survivors and refugees into accepting micronization to human size instead of a life of raiding human farms to try to procure enough food to feed a team of 20 50-foot tall giants.
Our final Macross game was the annual “too many people around the Robotech table” game hosted by my very close friend Darcy. These games would be launched whenever he was grounded (he wasn’t allowed out of the house, but he was still allowed to have friends over). The first game was about 16 players running a big expedition to capture a derelict Zentraedi space ship. Needless to say, the game didn’t involve much actual role-played interaction with NPCs, but there was a tonne of radio chatter between the various mecha on the team as we all role-played with each other and shot the heck out of various bad-guys. But we learned from that game – the next session, nearly a year later, had Darcy as GM again, but with Glenn and I (from of our core gaming group) as co-GMs who would run a third of the major combat scenes each. Effectively, we would break up a fight into three parts, and players would interact with the Game Master in charge with that part of the fighting on their turn. Of course, with such an ‘efficient’ setup, Darcy went all-out and we ran a game for 30 players who were leading a special operations team to find a Zentraedi stronghold in the Amazon. It worked fine for a while, but then Glenn and I got the clever idea of concentrating our fire instead of attacking one-on-one… 15 battlepods shooting at a single mecha make very short work of it.
Sometime around then, we were also involved in a few abortive Invid Invasion campaigns. This was the setting that Darcy enjoyed best because it was the TV series that introduced him to Robotech. However, there were always issues when the huge old-school Macross mecha turned out to have about the same damage capacity as the form-fitting transforming motorcycle body armor of the returning REF crews.
Our final forays into the game was a joint venture to create an REF-based setting that was fairly balanced between the eras of mecha that had to jointly defend and rebuild earth in the aftermath of the Invid invasion. We reduced the damage capacity of the cyclone body armor, increased the damage dealing power of the older mecha weapons, and actually launched the “return of the masters” campaign published around the end of the Robotech license from Palladium games at the time. But it never really went beyond character generation and a love for the giant robot bloodsport of Mecha-SuDai introduced in that mega-module.
My final dabbling with Robotech was a few years later, when I converted all the mecha from the various incarnations of the game and setting into mecha for the MECHA! Wargame. I enjoyed MECHA! Because it was a very simple mecha combat game – not as ornate and complex as Battletech, not built around a supposed RPG like Robotech, and not as oversimplified as the new Battletech Clix games.
When I think Giant Robots, I think of Macross.
The Robotech RPG follows the same system as the Palladium RPG and just about every other RPG they’ve released (except for Recon possibly, and I have quite the Recon story for another thread). The big new item in Robotech was the introduction of Mega Damage (MDC) which acts as 100 ‘hit points’ (actually SDC) per point of MDC, and you cannot hurt an MDC item using SDC weapons (so a submachine gun or a long sword can never penetrate tank armor, no matter how long you hack at it). With that exception and a very tidy clean-up of the autofire weapons rules, Robotech basically runs like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes with huge-ass mecha, minus the teenagers, mutations, ninjas… and turtles. But with sweet mecha.
I’m not going to go into detail on the Robotech universe here, for those unfamiliar with these “giant robots”, I recommend the Wikipedia entry of regarding the series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech
I played Robotech with three different gaming groups over the years. Most of these games were Macross-era games because that was the series with the most variety of mecha to choose from and a setting we were most familiar with. The first group was a bunch of my brother’s friends and my brother – because everyone wanted to be different, they generally played destroid pilots, each with a different destroid (the giant walking mechas, typical of the mecha genre). Our games were usually short, stuffed into a free hour or two, so were mostly quick “defend the fort” or “seek and destroy” missions that used the game as a giant robot combat system more than an RPG. We defended everything from protoculture production facilities, mine entrances and military bases to the United Nations HQ and the ruins of the CN Tower (after the destruction of Toronto in the TV series).
The other game I ran around the same era was a traditional post-war story in the setting after the return of the SDF-1 – dealing with people trying to rebuild in the ruins after the Zentreadi attacks, handling insurgencies, and running routine patrols. This game featured a primarily Veritech-piloting team (being the mecha that transform into jet fighters) so patrols were quick and the game felt more like the TV series. There was also a lot more role-playing in these games – handling interactions with the survivors, supporters and insurgents, as well as trying to talk Zentraedi survivors and refugees into accepting micronization to human size instead of a life of raiding human farms to try to procure enough food to feed a team of 20 50-foot tall giants.
Our final Macross game was the annual “too many people around the Robotech table” game hosted by my very close friend Darcy. These games would be launched whenever he was grounded (he wasn’t allowed out of the house, but he was still allowed to have friends over). The first game was about 16 players running a big expedition to capture a derelict Zentraedi space ship. Needless to say, the game didn’t involve much actual role-played interaction with NPCs, but there was a tonne of radio chatter between the various mecha on the team as we all role-played with each other and shot the heck out of various bad-guys. But we learned from that game – the next session, nearly a year later, had Darcy as GM again, but with Glenn and I (from of our core gaming group) as co-GMs who would run a third of the major combat scenes each. Effectively, we would break up a fight into three parts, and players would interact with the Game Master in charge with that part of the fighting on their turn. Of course, with such an ‘efficient’ setup, Darcy went all-out and we ran a game for 30 players who were leading a special operations team to find a Zentraedi stronghold in the Amazon. It worked fine for a while, but then Glenn and I got the clever idea of concentrating our fire instead of attacking one-on-one… 15 battlepods shooting at a single mecha make very short work of it.
Sometime around then, we were also involved in a few abortive Invid Invasion campaigns. This was the setting that Darcy enjoyed best because it was the TV series that introduced him to Robotech. However, there were always issues when the huge old-school Macross mecha turned out to have about the same damage capacity as the form-fitting transforming motorcycle body armor of the returning REF crews.
Our final forays into the game was a joint venture to create an REF-based setting that was fairly balanced between the eras of mecha that had to jointly defend and rebuild earth in the aftermath of the Invid invasion. We reduced the damage capacity of the cyclone body armor, increased the damage dealing power of the older mecha weapons, and actually launched the “return of the masters” campaign published around the end of the Robotech license from Palladium games at the time. But it never really went beyond character generation and a love for the giant robot bloodsport of Mecha-SuDai introduced in that mega-module.
My final dabbling with Robotech was a few years later, when I converted all the mecha from the various incarnations of the game and setting into mecha for the MECHA! Wargame. I enjoyed MECHA! Because it was a very simple mecha combat game – not as ornate and complex as Battletech, not built around a supposed RPG like Robotech, and not as oversimplified as the new Battletech Clix games.
When I think Giant Robots, I think of Macross.
