Help me brainstorm a grounded military mecha campaign set in the year 2050

[RangerWickett]

I've been bit by the BattleTech bug.

I got back into the game 9 months ago. I painted some minis, played in a tourney, read some of the cringey old novels (and one good one). And now I want to do my own mech thing, not in the BattleTech universe, but more a near-future techno-thriller with mech combat action scenes.

Care to help me out?

The elevator pitch is that it's the year 2050, there's a war on, armored walking combat mechs are newly introduced on the battlefield, and an arms company's propaganda AI has been tasked with persuading the public to think mechs are cool and effective so the company can rich selling them to the military. The AI becomes obsessed with the player characters' squad of mech pilots and works to make them famous heroes, even at the expense of the broader military objectives. Throughout a series of missions that become increasingly bizarre, the group will work out what's going on and have to use the very tools it gave them so they can destroy it.

Think Phantom of the Opera crossed with the novel Daemon.

I need to do a lot of work to flesh the idea out. What am I saying the setting is like in 2050? Where's the war? I know I want the arms company to be called Rampant, which is a nod to the Bungie game Marathon, where AI that starts to go crazy is called 'rampant.'

Player characters are really a big thing I need to figure out. I think it'll be boring if they're all just soldiers who all get along and obey the chain of command, but how do you justify in a war having multiple people from different organizations each showing up with multi-billion-dollar combat vehicles and working together? I can maybe make it work by starting the campaign when some disastrous battle gone wrong results in the chain of command breaking down and units from multiple loosely-allied factions have to team up. But then why would they stay together afterward? Just for the sake of war PR, after they have a great victory?

Who are they: soldiers, test pilots, stars of an arena mech combat league, etc? Do I want any anime-style tropes of people bonding with their mechs, feeling like they are a chosen one (even if that is later revealed to be a narrative created by the AI (named ERIK, after the Phantom: Exalting Rampant's Ingenuity Kinetically)?

What are the opposing factions? I would want some sort of recurring villain - maybe an enemy commander, or even the strategic AI that coordinates the opposing army's strategy. And there'd need to be characters within Rampant whom the party can work with or see as enemies.

The combat scenarios I think are comparably easy for me to come up with. I've got a ton of ideas that I think would be fun and let the players use their mech's tech in novel ways, so the fights are less about dealing damage and more about solving puzzles and outwitting the other side.

But what are they doing out of combat? Do they get swept up in spycraft? Do they have to go on press junkets? Is there some R&R time between big military operations when they can maybe even go to peace summits (which will fail), which give them a chance to meet NPCs on the opposing side, and get slipped information that hints that ERIK is up to no good?

Any ideas will be appreciated. Even if I don't use them, they can get some juices flowing. What would you want to see in a mech campaign?

 

[Kannik]

Woohoo for getting bit by the BT bug once again! That's happened to me as well, though my opportunity to play has been mostly nonexistent. I did at least buy a proper case to store my minis, after housing them in a shoebox, with self-cut slabs of foam from some unknown source, for the past 30 years.

Who are the PCs? One possible addition to your list are mercenaries. Yeah, that sounds very BT, but it could be more of a Soldier of Fortune magazine kind of deal, actual professional (and often individual, but could be a band of) mercenaries hired by the manufacturers, or maybe by the AI itself, or maybe by the military as they're not yet sure if these walking tanks are a good idea and they don't want to risk their soldiers/bad PR/the parliament's wrath if things go south. They might have been fighting in that region already, or maybe they got a better offer to transfer to this new warzone.

After that, soldiers and test pilots both sound quite plausible. A super sports league (where the idea of a mech was developed, perhaps?) also could work, though why would those celebs choose to go to the front. Unless they were tricked... "I was told this was going to be a movie role!"

As you say, the classic mix of origins might be the best way forward, as it can make for some interesting interpersonal interactions as different intentions and different views of the situation (duty, patriotism, excitement, money, etc) come to the fore. But why stay together? Stuck deep within hostile territory and all being bright enough to understand that sticking together will give them the greatest chance of survival is one (and could give rise to them forming "friendships" over time).

Bonding with the mecha might work. Zoids Chaotic Century/Guardian Force definitively fits within many anime tropes (the genius kid pilot who saves the world being 13, for example), but to me it comfortably stradles the line between "hard" mechs and "soft" mecha (more like Macross and some of the other Zoids series) or "fantasy" mecha (combiners, etc). While most treat their Zoids as machines (despite them originating from actual metalic lifeforms), a few recognize them as living beings and do form connections with them that lead to heightened ability. It might be depenent on your group whether they find this detracting from the "hard" military feel or not. And if not, it might be another interesting difference between characters (some who believe it, some who don't, and/or some who manage to achieve said bonding while others don't) that could lead to some cool RP.

Opposing Factions? There is the classic 'twist' where the same AI ends up being the one controlling both sides... and is the real villain at the end. Too clasic that the trope has become cliché? Maybe... but then you've noted the group is already being dropped hints that their is an AI controlling them/their orders, and making things theatrical rather than tactical. What better way to be theatrical than to be sure you're controlling both sides of the conflict? (The enemy commander was just an AI hologram all along! And only shown to us/broadcast to our social internet! The opposing country never saw it at all/saw different footage!) Could also lead to the group teaming up with the "opposing" force in order to take down the AI, and lead to themes of unity and shared humanity that is present in many of the mecha based animes.

Out of Combat time? Spycraft is always a good bet, as could be puff pieces for the media ("day in the life of", "going to the beach") since the AI is about marketing/crafting a particular narrative. Might be worthwhile to check in with the group to see if they're commited to mecha action or more to a conflict story that has mecha in it. If the former they may chafe at too much out-of-mech action. If the former, especially if the AI is pulling the strings, it could very well lean into Bond-like storytelling where far-flung locales and mission types feel completely legit.

Also might be good to see what kind of gameplay loop you want to set up, ie, go with something more meta-driven (like many Fate in the Dark games) where each session/adventure explicitly beings as being part of an assigned mission, or more "realtime" flow between sessions. The latter might more easily allow characters to investigate their own actions/investigations... but then if you have a GM turn/Player turn kind of structure from Mouse Guard (and other Burning Wheel games?) or The One Ring, then that also gives them explicit opportunity and authority to instigate things (while also allowing them to develop their characters in non-mission related ways as well).

What would I want to see in a mech campaign? Two types of campaign come to mind: One is tight-knit small unit action/focus. It may be newly formed, or a mix of old and newcomers, or whatever, and it doesn't have to be "important" as a unit, but this kind of baseline "we're already commited to the bit and will support each other because it's who we have and it's what we do" can pay a lot of dividends at the gaming table. I've done campaigns like this in Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, and it's not entirely dissimilar to a Star Trek kind of situation (though the crews and context there are larger). The unit also acts like it's own kind of PC inside the larger unit of the army/conflict, with all the "interpersonal" (again if we view each unit as an individual) opportunities that can happen there as well as the machinations of the war machine vs the people (and the broader context of what's behind the conflict)

The other is almost the exact opposite starting point, with a band of pilots and experts whose paths cross and who end up forming a band of friends in the midst of the conflict but also outside of the direct influence of any of the players in the conflict. This allows the group both atonomy but also some level of "objectiveness" to see the roots of and to affectuate the end of the conflict. They may end up allying with those on each side who wishes to bring things to a resolution. Maybe there is a big baddie that is forcing the conflict. Or there was a misunderstanding.

I think both of these could work for your AI driven campaign idea; different avenues for the PCs to operate and uncover things,
and different focus for the relationships, both in-unit and external.

Clearly this has piqued my interest...

 

[RangerWickett]

One game that I'm hoping to draw inspiration from is Night Witches. In it, you play women from the USSR who fly night missions in WW2 - you're pilots, so you're useful, but you're women, so the military treats you as kinda expendable.

And between missions you have to scrape and scheme to keep your commanders happy, to feed your families back home, to get enough supplies for the next mission, to fend off patrols of Nazis, etc.

I was thinking the player characters could, in addition to their personal mech skills, have a 'character sheet' of sorts of their Crew: the people who support their mech, and their various allies on base and around the world, whom they can call upon to do stuff. Make the players more expansive than just whatever they can do in their immediate vicinity.

 

[Tonguez]

I'm imagining multiple global flashpoints triggered by environmental disasters (earthquakes, global warming, tsunami and flooding), the entire global map is reshaped. The mecha are first deployed to assist the humanitarian crisis as global populations are displaced. But its not long before politics and capitalism leads to conflict over rights to salvage the collapsed megacities, ownership of infrastructure, and rights to newly strategic coastlines.

PC Mecha pilots may have Humanitarian, Military, Corporate, Resistance, Environmental, Academic or Recreational motivations - some to help restore the cities, others for profit or territory and some for more bizarre reasons.

So Flood Megacities -
TOKYO - After a catastrophic quake rock not only the city but the nation Nippon nationalists, corporate contractors, and UN peacekeepers vie for control of high-tech salvage.

SHANGHAI - After the wall defences fail and the central authority is weakened, a war between pirates, corporate warlords and the old authority begins for tech and port access in a flooded vertical city.

JAKARTA - The old city is partially submerged, while the jungle has started to reclaim the remaining dry zones. Refugees, Corps and the old regime battle for control

ROTTERDAM (Europes biggest port) - partially flooded but some districts survive on elevated platforms. Pirates, Corporates and Nations battle for salvage.

LONDON - Despite the Thames Barrier, sea-level rise and storm surges overwhelm London's defences forcing the city to retreat to the Old London financial centre. The Royals and Corps now battle Ecofocussed Reclaimers

NEW YORK - Sea levels and storm surges breach all defences and Manhattan south of Central Park is underwater. Corporate towers are vertical islands while the subways are lakes. Rampant stages heroic Liberty Missions with Mecha battling between skyscraper or in flooded subways
BOSTON - Survives behind floodgates and the MIT-Havard zone has become a much-coveted research hub.

NEW ORLEANS - another Katrina-scale disaster, the central city is corporate controlled, outer parishes the poor survive in a brutal swamp-ridden ruins

HOUSTON - Energy Barons and Christian Nationalist now control the Refineries.

CALIFORNIA ISLAND - The Big One hit, splitting California into islands, flooding from the Pacific combined submerged LA, but inland areas survived. San Francisco is a series of islands, Hollywood is a warzone.

CAIRO - Flooding of the Nile brings both calamity and opportunity, especially when combined with Desertification. Rampant sees the chance to leverage the glory of Ancient Egypt and own the Middle East/North Africa narrative through Desert Warfare and water wars on the Aswan Dam..

LAGOS - Africas largest city is comprised of High-tech vertical arcologies built on sunken ground. But population crisis has put a strain on infrastructure leading to cyber-tribal resistance, new warlords and corporate battles for control of spires.

NAIROBI - a tech hub, and seat of the African Union. It maintains official neutrality but is heavy on surveillance. Its a fortified smart city surrounded by displaced populations

 

[RangerWickett]

I like the energy.

Not sure about the accuracy of the geography, but I can work with this.

Mechs as humanitarian relief tech that then gets militarized is a neat turn.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Random musing - the AI doesn't want soldiers. That's part of its point. I'm thinking it either recruits an existing group of hapless b or c list actors who think they've got a really good job offer (shades of Tropic Thunder) or it selects a squad of video gamers through sabre metric nonsense from a video game with non-coincidental similarities to piloting a real mech. Possibly an already existing team. Either way before the PCs start to unravel their patron you've excuses for sponsored nonsense in downtime. And the military of course doesn't really want these amateurs.

And what is the mech's pseudorealistic reason for existing on the battlefield? Simple. Drone denial. For some reason any enemy drones within LoS of our mech squad overheat/go berserk/crash/get hacked/whatever. (Something to do with the AI? The silhouette giving far more profile for ECM?). Either way mechs can not be hit except by accident by guided munitions, only ballistic ones. Most of which are hopelessly obsolete. (Which means that the best anti-mech weapons are tanks from tank museums because no one's made tanks in quarter of a century)