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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8475240" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 81: March 1993part 4/5Of Mechs And Manga: The gap between roleplayers and anime fans was never particularly wide, but it definitely got a lot narrower over the course of the 90's. Karen Boomgarden does her part to promote cultural crossover by talking about some of the popular giant mecha series out at the time. The perennially popular Gundam series in it's many incarnations. The slightly less successful, but still well-remembered Bubblegum Crisis. Plus Project Hades Zeroymer and Shurato: Legend of the Heavenly Sphere, which I've never heard of before, but she describes them interestingly enough that I'm definitely inclined to check them out. This replaces the usual movie reviews, which are absent this month for whatever reason. Another curious little look at the wider world surrounding them, reminding us that you can draw inspiration from all sorts of places. Giant mecha might not fit too well in D&D, but there are plenty of other RPGs that do support them mechanically and in setting, and you might want to try some of them out, maybe even in a tournament adventure, as it's a perfect situation for breaking out the battlemap & minis so you can see just how big and devastating your mecha (probably represented by a Transformer) is compared to the regular 15 or 25mm scale minis. Letting players go really big has all the more impact after a few meatgrinder dungeon crawls where one dumb move costs you your PC. The Living Galaxy: Roger devotes another lengthy column to the idea of advanced spacefaring cultures coming into contact with less developed ones. Unsurprisingly, this involves exploitation more often than not. There's no point in crossing the vast voids of space unless there's something out there you want, or you're in love with the idea of endless expansion on an ideological level. Whether it's resources, cheap labor, freedom from all those inconvenient laws, taxes and health & safety regulations, strategic position in conflict with another interstellar power, or genuine desire to make the universe a better place and uplift everyone to being equals in the galactic federation, you're probably going to break a few eggs and cause a few extinctions in the pursuit of your goals. Things become more interesting if they aren't completely lopsided. There are plenty of stories where sci-fi meets magic, including some D&D adventures, or they could have made different advances along independent tech trees like in The High Crusade. As usual, he cites a wide range of sources, both RPG and literary, many of which I haven't heard of and really ought to check out sometime. Even 30 years later, it's surprising how many once popular books have fallen out of being regularly referenced. It's a vast world and an even vaster universe, and there are people out there who've forgotten more than you've ever learned. If you're arriving in a new place, it would make sense to pay attention to the people already there instead of stomping everywhere trying to impose your values & technology without checking if it'll work as expected & without messing the surroundings up. Even from a purely mercenary point of view it's not the way to maximum long-term profits.</blockquote>

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