Quote from: Omega on December 15, 2024, 09:14:11 PMHow does Heavy Gear compare to Mekton? One of my players had it but I never really got far into the book on a glance. The TV series was... not good...

I've not had the chance to RP in Heavy Gear, but I own a bunch of the books.

It's more western than Anime.  The lore revolves around the nations rather than a specific team of angst ridden teens who can't figure out their love life while managing their PTSD.  And you don't win wars by singing a song to your enemy ace girlfriend and killing the REAL cause of war: the old guys who want power/land.

Heavy Gear is more like a World War II "Axis vs Allies" without the war crimes.  The North pole is an alliance of three nations, one cowboy, one tech, and one conservative religious vs the South Pole of Arrogant French, a nation of Muslims (dominated by the French), one genetically engineered society (dominated by the French), and one jungly Vietnam nation (dominated by the French).  Really, the motive for war is, "We're right, so let's spread the love and liberate everyone whether they want it or not."

Add in a failed invasion from Earth super soldiers without Gears, but with hover tanks, and who left behind enough soldiers and tanks for them to form a minor state of their own in the giant equatorial desert. 

The mechs are less powerful than tanks, but more agile.  Paper cannons.  One or two good hits can end a Gear.  But Gears are more versatile, go more places, and fight more variety of enemies than tanks. 

Quote from: Omega on December 15, 2024, 09:14:11 PMHow does Heavy Gear compare to Mekton? One of my players had it but I never really got far into the book on a glance. The TV series was... not good...

I love the setting and I love the art in the books.
I am not fond of the system. It's a D6 dice pool, take the highest, apply mods. The D6 meant that modifiers had a huge effect, and the margin of success system magnified the effect of those modifiers. I found it really unsatisfying and unfun to play.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on December 15, 2024, 10:02:12 PM

Quote from: Omega on December 15, 2024, 09:14:11 PMHow does Heavy Gear compare to Mekton? One of my players had it but I never really got far into the book on a glance. The TV series was... not good...

I've not had the chance to RP in Heavy Gear, but I own a bunch of the books.

It's more western than Anime.  The lore revolves around the nations rather than a specific team of angst ridden teens who can't figure out their love life while managing their PTSD.  And you don't win wars by singing a song to your enemy ace girlfriend and killing the REAL cause of war: the old guys who want power/land.

Heavy Gear is more like a World War II "Axis vs Allies" without the war crimes.  The North pole is an alliance of three nations, one cowboy, one tech, and one conservative religious vs the South Pole of Arrogant French, a nation of Muslims (dominated by the French), one genetically engineered society (dominated by the French), and one jungly Vietnam nation (dominated by the French).  Really, the motive for war is, "We're right, so let's spread the love and liberate everyone whether they want it or not."

Add in a failed invasion from Earth super soldiers without Gears, but with hover tanks, and who left behind enough soldiers and tanks for them to form a minor state of their own in the giant equatorial desert. 

The mechs are less powerful than tanks, but more agile.  Paper cannons.  One or two good hits can end a Gear.  But Gears are more versatile, go more places, and fight more variety of enemies than tanks. 

You forgot the maglev land battleships but other then that you are pretty on point.

I forgot I still had Zeta and Plus on my shelf...if anyone in this thread is interested in them, pay for shipping and maybe a beer.

I think I played every version of Mekton aside from the first. Loved the game. What totally amazed me is that people on the mailing list and newsgroup had created stats for just about every Anime mecha series out there. I think it plays better as a traditional RPG, i.e. a GM and players rather than player versus player. The latter tended to encourage players to find the weak spots in the construction rules. (See the The Mekton Technical System ABUSE Catalogue.)

Reflex being a god stat either bothered you or it didn't. The character system in Mekton really isn't that complex and can be played with easily. I think I was last using a version kind of like Heavy Gear where 0 was the base with similar costs but still used d10s. I think someone else pointed out that stats had too much of an effect on a d6 roll. 

Some resources some of you might be interested in:

Mekton Discord: https://discord.gg/eXEU4xQm
The Mekton Technical System ABUSE Catalogue: https://virtualmekton.tripod.com/mtsac.html
Mekton Downloads from R.Talsorian Games: https://rtalsoriangames.com/downloadable-content/
Mekton Zeta Mailing List (MZML): Opps. I thought I had this archived somewhere...

Heavy Gear was interesting. You can see its origins in the Mekton Cinematic System that was in the Mekton GM screen. I didn't really like Heavy Gear or at least the first two editions. You could go from "I'm okay" to "I'm dead" very, very quickly.

For some ancient MZ goodness... Motoslave Archive

Quote from: zend0g on December 16, 2024, 11:30:24 PMI think I played every version of Mekton aside from the first. Loved the game. What totally amazed me is that people on the mailing list and newsgroup had created stats for just about every Anime mecha series out there. I think it plays better as a traditional RPG, i.e. a GM and players rather than player versus player. The latter tended to encourage players to find the weak spots in the construction rules. (See the The Mekton Technical System ABUSE Catalogue.)

I did a campaign I called "Mekton Mercenaries" where the player could use the techbook to design their own mechs.
Never again. I got introduced to such wonders as the MultiBeam Deathshower where a player put like a bunch of small beam guns on a mech and overwhelmed the defender with low damage high volume attacks.
It was fun in a "how can we break the system" way, but didn't last long as a campaign.

Gotta say I've never really understood mech RPGs. Isn't the mech combat more suited for a wargame? Do people like the non-combat parts of mecha anime that much?

Quote from: Bubu on December 17, 2024, 09:59:04 AMGotta say I've never really understood mech RPGs. Isn't the mech combat more suited for a wargame? Do people like the non-combat parts of mecha anime that much?

I ran a Mechwarrior campaign that used Battletech for the combat, until I didn't anymore because holy fuck it took forever to do anything. Heavy Gear has an excellent set of skirmish rules, however, and you can run battles in 30 minutes. Outside of Silhouette, mech battles do seem better suited to specific wargames (like Battletech). That said, I was obsessed with Robotech when I was a kid and we played the hell out of that RPG, although the reason it worked is because the GM was very very good at describing the scene and allowing us to roll some dice and see what happened; it was much more "narrative" than BT, fast, and evocative. Also, if you know anything about Robotech, the whole non-combat part is like 99% of the show.

OOPS

I've played MZ as a wargame and I thought it went well.  I liked the flexibility of action compared to BTech.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on December 17, 2024, 06:38:27 AMI did a campaign I called "Mekton Mercenaries" where the player could use the techbook to design their own mechs.
Never again. I got introduced to such wonders as the MultiBeam Deathshower where a player put like a bunch of small beam guns on a mech and overwhelmed the defender with low damage high volume attacks.
It was fun in a "how can we break the system" way, but didn't last long as a campaign.

Oh yeah, I think I usually changed the MZ+ damage coefficient from "equal to or greater than" to "greater than". This kind of assigns those 1-2 kill weapons to the role of anti-material, anti-personnel and anti-missile weapons. 

Quote from: Bubu on December 17, 2024, 09:59:04 AMGotta say I've never really understood mech RPGs. Isn't the mech combat more suited for a wargame? Do people like the non-combat parts of mecha anime that much?

The old Robotech/Macross RPG handled it well. A mech combat played out much like a dungeouncrawl combat,  just with everyone effectively a ranger. Combats in that could move along pretty well really and it is no different with Mekton.

Quote from: Omega on December 17, 2024, 09:03:58 PM

Quote from: Bubu on December 17, 2024, 09:59:04 AMGotta say I've never really understood mech RPGs. Isn't the mech combat more suited for a wargame? Do people like the non-combat parts of mecha anime that much?

The old Robotech/Macross RPG handled it well. A mech combat played out much like a dungeouncrawl combat,  just with everyone effectively a ranger. Combats in that could move along pretty well really and it is no different with Mekton.

I disagree. I've never had a ranger be able to use point defense fire to shoot down incoming missiles.

Quote from: jeff37923 on December 17, 2024, 10:40:36 PM

Quote from: Omega on December 17, 2024, 09:03:58 PM

Quote from: Bubu on December 17, 2024, 09:59:04 AMGotta say I've never really understood mech RPGs. Isn't the mech combat more suited for a wargame? Do people like the non-combat parts of mecha anime that much?

The old Robotech/Macross RPG handled it well. A mech combat played out much like a dungeouncrawl combat,  just with everyone effectively a ranger. Combats in that could move along pretty well really and it is no different with Mekton.

I disagree. I've never had a ranger be able to use point defense fire to shoot down incoming missiles.

That's because you didn't take the Legolas subclass.