Kannik
Legend
Which books I’d recommend would depend on which era, or style of play if you’re making your own universe, you want to ply in, and/or the mecha you want to include:
Macross is the “one ship against the universe” campaign
Southern Cross is if you want to play a body of planetary (land-based) defenders
Invid Invasion is for your ragtag group of freedom fighters
Sentinels is your fleet-based exploratory and/or attack force
The REF field manual contains some duplicate info from the Sentinels book, but also little bits about uniforms, shovels, sidearms, more views of the enemy, and I think deck plans of the IFC-7000 command ship (which can be useful). It’s interesting as it fills out some of the littler details about the equipment and etc of the REF, which provides a bit of a ‘feel’ of the force without giving specifically any game or world information.
Macross II, being from the alternate Macross universe (so twice removed from Robotech) is very useful for the mecha designs (a logical continuation of the VF-1 series rather than going the Alpha/Beta route – I’m also partial to the VF-XX). The campaign style around it is, amusingly, somewhat akin to a Southern Cross style defending the homeworld (if you take the Marduk as Robotech Masters it’s actually really close to Southern Cross). The Dream Pod 9 produced deck plans can be very useful if you anticipate romps in either friendly or foe ships.
Natch, and I would still say that getting the tone of it (and also getting a good sense of what elevated the series above and beyond the usual mecha romp fare) is still valuable. Plus, of course, we get to watch a great series. }
Doing your own universe is great idea and lets you pull your favourite mecha from different sources while merging it with the type of campaign that will best suit your group. The fleet based game, whether exploratory or militarily oriented, I say offers the greatest flexibility, as you can actually incorporate the themes of either Macross/SC/II along with the bits from Sentinels and other famous exploratory series.
Myself I started to run a campaign that was two generations beyond the Sentinels (the intervening unseen generation was a war involving the Mechanoids) that incorporated material and themes from the Renegade Legion game/universe. I used the base books to crib mecha from, grabbed some more out of others' alternate timelines, and went the fleet-based route.
It also is worth mentioning that you can tweak the mecha stats and/or port the game to a different mecha rule system. This site The Unofficial ROBOTECH: Reference Guide - 2066 has a pretty darn detailed and researched set of hard statistics (and images) for the things from the basic Robotech universe.
Very cool that you want to create your own universe, I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with. }
"Ok Daedalus, commence firing,"
Kannik
