IT ALL BEGAN WITH A BRAINFART
I had an idea this morning driving through muddled traffic on the way to my office.   It's no surprise driving through traffic would conjure images of playing a badass hero with a tank, but today was something different.  Here's the idea.   Tell me if this is cool or a sure sign of crack smoking insanity!

TANKS: the RPG
You play a tank commander...who lives in his tank.   Your crew does your bidding and you hire your services out to causes and patrons.  You gather with squad of other tanks and delve into gigantic ancient ruins, blast monstrous aliens and enemy tanks, and then loot the area for wondrous tank weaponry of the past.   And you get paid so you can further upgrade or repair your tank...or learn new magic tank spells.

CORE IDEA: Tanks + Classic D&D tropes

You would roll 3D6 for the Tanks attributes.   Then pick a Class of Tank - it could be Support, Combat, Artillery or Stealth and probably a couple of Alien designs as well.   And then you would buy Gear for your tank with your base amount of money.  

As you achieved more kills, your tank would be eligible for higher level upgrades and somehow morph (or be engineered) into more and more powerful versions.  

Adventuring would be at the vehicle level.   In this setting, infantry is meaningless due to the foes on the battlefields and in the ruins.  Roleplay would exist almost entirely in non-combat situations where your 3D holographic avatar would interact with NPCs for the talky-bits of the game.

The look of the game would be akin to Chaos and Ork vehicles in 40k - aka, highly customized and each an individual piece of murderous art.  

And some tanks can cast Magic!  But it won't be called magic.   It will be some kind of techno-wizardry doodadia that lets tanks cast spells.  Vancian tanks baby!  And tank spells will be limited by tank class.  Woot!  No, I'm not kidding.

My brain stopped here...probably to protect what was left of my sanity...but all day I have been flipping back to the idea.   Is there coolness here?  Is there a kernel of fun?  Is it too weird to be playable?

Sounds odd and fun, albeit I might go with small sentient tanks used for Urban combat (i.e outside dungeons), and then have each tanks specialty focus down. Albeit without arms and legs you have some problems, and I suspect it will become a bit more miniature game than rpg in many aspects.

It's not quite the scale of swinging on ropes, climbing walls, snarking at an enemy before using the environment against them that D&D used to be...

After all, what do tanks do? Shoot and move. Well that'...uhm...alright. Oh and shoot and move and scan!

Need a bit more material in there. (Small robot tanks hunting evil mutant creatures to return civilization in a PA world, with class like abilities including Gadgeteers aka magic users? That might be cool.)

sounds strangely entertaining!  kinda video game'y, but still...there's something there.

reminds me of fusing OGRE/Rivets on various War Worlds (like 3:16).  might be a better boardgame than rpg, but regardless it's a cool idea.  also fusing the TC with the tank (like the Dreadnought in 40K, i think?) might be a cool idea as well.

i agree with Silverlion though...odd and fun!

The idea of rolling attributes and choosing a "class" for a tank...yech.

But give players a budget to build starting tanks, and we're starting to get somewhere. See: Metagaming's old Helltank game, or the Armored Core series of videogames. The latter is kind of like Battletech but with highly customizable mechs.

Sounds cool to me!

I like the idea of classes for tanks, or more appropriately, classes OF tanks that can be customised a little.  Rolled attributes, though, not so much.

I love the idea of magic tanks casting spells like shrink, fly, teleport or polymorph on themselves!

It's a good, hilarious idea. Make it.

Also, I'm very tired. For the love of sanity, don't make it.

Sounds like you have been listening to too much ELP and Tarkus!

I think the question is what do you get to do other then fight? Because if the answer is "not much", then to me it's not really a roleplaying game. Even such an originally combat-oriented system as D&D (up to and excluding the WotC editions) allows you to do lots of non-combat stuff, and that stuff very often crops up in actual play.

I thought it was going to be that your character was the tank.

Wouldn't your idea just be like a role-playing game in the Car Wars world?

Tank: Whippoorwill
Class: Surveillance Tank
Commander: "Poor" Will Randal (Cdr Bonus +2 to hit, +4 comms)
Level 1
HP: 40

Armor: 12
Treads: 15
Comms: 16
Assault: 10


Main Gun: Sonic Cannon I (+6 to hit, 1d10+8 damage)
Gear: Sonic Cannon I, Creek-Crawler Treads (+2 to move in difficult terrain), Radar-Targeter (provides +2 to hit to 1 ally within range), laser antipersonnel turret I

I would totally play this, haha.

Quote from: Silverlion;285684I suspect it will become a bit more miniature game than rpg in many aspects.

That is my initial design problem.   My goal (that coalesced in the haze of the brainfart) is the game must be an RPG that can be played without minis.   Everything beyond paper and dice would be optional.

Quote from: Silverlion;285684It's not quite the scale of swinging on ropes, climbing walls, snarking at an enemy before using the environment against them that D&D used to be...

Very true.   I have to figure out what the equivalent of these things would be...for tanks.

Quote from: C.Jay;285840I love the idea of magic tanks casting spells like shrink, fly, teleport or polymorph on themselves!

These are the words of a crazy person!!!

And yes, the "magic-user" tanks will absolutely will be doing that!

Quote from: Lawbag;285862Sounds like you have been listening to too much ELP and Tarkus!

I never heard of Tarkus!   I just googled it and I will definitely check it out.  I suspect part of my vision comes from Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society.  There is some crazy art in the Blessed Hellride CD book...including tanks with faces and Doomsday Jesus.

Quote from: Premier;285866I think the question is what do you get to do other then fight? Because if the answer is "not much", then to me it's not really a roleplaying game.

Yes, very true.   I must pulp many brain cells to figure out why and how the non-combat aspect would be interesting and fun.

Quote from: Age of Fable;285920Wouldn't your idea just be like a role-playing game in the Car Wars world?

Kinda.   Except in Tanks, you never get out of your vehicle.   I keep getting images that flip between being trapped inside versus you being the tank itself.   I am unsure.   Hopefully copious amounts of tequila this weekend will solve this dilemma!

Quote from: Spinachcat;285980Kinda.   Except in Tanks, you never get out of your vehicle.   I keep getting images that flip between being trapped inside versus you being the tank itself.   I am unsure.   Hopefully copious amounts of tequila this weekend will solve this dilemma!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no2GNY4GHDE

Just take a look at it.

'They offered me a way out. A way out, they said. Trapped. I was trapped. The doctors, they said that. Trapped. Maybe not in so many words, but trapped. Trapped in scale of "Q-u-a-d-r-e-p-a-l-g-i-c".

So they offered me a way out. Trapped. Move again. Move again, they said. They said I'd move again.

And I can move. I can move, I can thunder, I can roam. Nothing can stop me. Nothing but another. Trapped.

Trapped in a tank.

Trapped as a tank.

Trapped.'

I forgot about Tiny Tank!   He's the cutest little killing machine!  Too bad the game wasn't as cool as the commercial clips.

I am working on reasons why humans or at least their consciousness would be trapped within machines and their only social interactions would be via holographic avatars.

Much of dungeon exploration is tactile, so every tank will have micro-drones to go out an touch/feel/smell the world.   However in OD&D, often touching the "bad thing" would have repercussions...so many you only have XYZ drones and losing them is bad.  Or maybe the world sends direct damaging feedback to the tank body.

The main combat in fantasy is melee and tank combat is mainly ranged.   However, my favorite thing to do in OGRE/GEV was ramming and overruns.   Thus there will be lots of that.   Also, in the case of monsters, many of them will be hand to hand...or claw to tread in this case.

In my fevered brain, I have images Tyranids charging a party of Mechanized Imperial Guard, Eldar Hovercraft and a few red painted Orc Wagons.   The Orc goes close combat with grindas and choppas while the IG tanks unload first long range and then steamroll bugs under their threads and the Eldar zip about laying down weird weapon effects and using Psi-F/X to change the battlefield.  

Remember that level in Halo when you drive the Warthog down into the underground Covenant base and you drive down ramp after ramp into the darkness?   Yeah, that's Tank Dungeon Crawling.

For variety,  I am going to let players choose manuever type - aka Hover, Wheels, Legs or Treads...but treads will be the default because I want there to be options, but most should be in the classic WW2 mode of the armored crawler.  'Cuz how else are you gonna fight the Giant Centipede?

If you STILL want it to be a group of adventurers inside a "Tank"  - then why not make it a really big and long tank-like vehicle ?

...change the setting to post-apocalyptic and you either have the Landmastrer vehicle from DAMNATION ALLEY or a reall violent version of the Ark from "Ark II".

Or hell - MERGE the two. Your vehicle has really nasty weapons that can blow up just about anything , but it alsoi has a decent scientific lab built inside of it and rations that last a really long time.


- Ed C.

"Ark II" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujpmM1qQcAI

Damnation Alley scene featuring TWO Landmasters:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tI4InQ7fZE

Landmaster/The LEGO Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ssLae4ETc