I'm with the crowd on the powered armor vs. giant walker issue in mecha, but I'm a man who likes his powersuits. I don't find a lot of appeal in hard or even semi-firm sci-fi (when did we get it and tofu confused, anyway?) unless it's the backdrop for doing something interesting, at least as far as gaming is concerned.

There are times I'm trying to expand my mind, and there are times I'm rolling dice. I keep these two pretty far apart.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalIsn't that true of most mech games?  I always got the impression that they're a bit like Knightrider; sure people get out of their mechs and go and do stuff but the whole point of the game is long drawn out combat between silly tanks.

  I actually disagree that running a tank crew wouldn't be fun.  Taking part in tank battles would be dull but being a tank caught behind enemy lines and having to find your way back to HQ with limited ammo and fuel could be quite cool.

I would suggest that the temptation to turn mech gaming in RPGs into wargames stems from two things:  prior example, and inherent design.

Prior example because one of the first and biggest names representing the concept in RPGs got it's start as a wargame, and a number of other games followed similar developments in their history, like Heavy Gear for instance.

Inherent design because, well, it's a goddamn military vehicle.  You're going to run into the same "problem" regarding the focus of a game with a tank, or a fighter, or a carrier, or any other random piece of military hardware, because war is what it's supposed to be used for.  

As a plot device for a game, the appeal to me of a mech is sort of comparable to that of Iron Man:  It's a cool suit you stick your guy in and suddenly he's as agile as a man with the firepower of a tank.  One of the writers on GameSetWatch commented in a recent article that in mecha anime and manga, the story is about the pilot, the mech is just a reflection of his character, a purpose a deliberately humanoid design serves very well and in a way a fighter plane or a tank can't do.

I would note to, that comments like Mr. A's and Ned's seem to stem primarily from what I would suggest are bad examples of the concept being generalized to cover the whole.

Battletech's a shitty example.  I get it.  I agree.  We need not however, pretend that it covers the whole of every application of the concept ever implemented or it's potential.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalI actually disagree that running a tank crew wouldn't be fun.  Taking part in tank battles would be dull but being a tank caught behind enemy lines and having to find your way back to HQ with limited ammo and fuel could be quite cool.

There were at least two long-running "Battle" comic strips focused on the crew of a tank.  From memory, one was about the crew of a Sherman caught behind lines as a result of Rommels advance in the North African desert and the other was about the crew of a Russian infantry support tank (forget the name, but it was attached to an infantry platoon) during the race to Berlin.  Both make great campaign premises because each PC would have a role within the party and there's a built-in excuse to keep them together

Quote from: J ArcaneOne of the writers on GameSetWatch commented in a recent article that in mecha anime and manga, the story is about the pilot, the mech is just a reflection of his character, a purpose a deliberately humanoid design serves very well and in a way a fighter plane or a tank can't do.

This is a good point, but how does one reflect that in an rpg? How does one make that mechanically interesting?

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyThis is a good point, but how does one reflect that in an rpg? How does one make that mechanically interesting?

Ned

Mechanically?  I would say the way many games which cover the subject have been doing for years:  Design-your-own mech rules.

Even without that sort of customization, offer a number of different options for available units, so the players can hopefully find something that suits their personal style.

In my admittedly limited experience, thought, DIY mech just becomes a min/maxing exercise. It's nothing at all to do with reflecting the character, and everything to do with milking every last drop of mega-damage from the system.

Ned

Quote from: Ned the Lonely DonkeyIn my admittedly limited experience, thought, DIY mech just becomes a min/maxing exercise. It's nothing at all to do with reflecting the character, and everything to do with milking every last drop of mega-damage from the system.

Ned

You can say the exact same thing about most character creation systems too.

I hear it's even possible to powergame Risus.

Quote from: J ArcaneI hear it's even possible to powergame Risus.

Ultimate Badass (6) will do it, though a good GM will just give the character a terminal case of hemorrhoids

Quote from: J ArcaneThere's nothing overtly wrong with the concept, and by reason of it's similarities to the human form, has cetain advantages.  We've even made a number of strides in recent years towards tech that could actually make this feasible within my lifetime.

Yeah, but groundside something the size of an exo-armor in JC (it's 15m tall) is just going to be dead no matter what strides we make. It doesn't mean that they're not cool and, in the setting, the primary use is space-based where it doesn't matter what form factor it uses anyway.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThe problem is that essentially the inclusion of mechas adds nothing to any story that includes them.  They're just humanoid tanks.

However, despite this there are people who go out of their way to seek out things that include mecha.

Mecha fans are essentially like furries.  They get really excited about something that leaves everyone else completely cold.

I would posit that there are a lot more mecha fans out there than furries. The difference, I think, is that there are a lot of mecha fans out there who will go overboard into trying to justify mecha even when they're pretty ridiculous.

In the case of Jovian Chronicles, fighters have distinct advantages over exo-armors. The exo-armors evolved in a very specific and thought out manner to reach the current "giant robot form". The setting was designed to emulate Gundam with a slightly harder science twist - so it's not a matter of randomly including mecha for the sake of it.

Either way, they can be removed and replaced with something else if it bugs anyone that much.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalIsn't that true of most mech games?  I always got the impression that they're a bit like Knightrider; sure people get out of their mechs and go and do stuff but the whole point of the game is long drawn out combat between silly tanks.

Unless you're playing something like SilCore where the combat is over in a few minutes and using the Dramatic Tactical System where you don't need a map. My last Jovian Chronicles game didn't even have an exo-suit it in it...

Quote from: WilI would posit that there are a lot more mecha fans out there than furries. The difference, I think, is that there are a lot of mecha fans out there who will go overboard into trying to justify mecha even when they're pretty ridiculous.

  Besides which, being a furry strikes me as loads more fun than being into mecha.  I mean, if you're a furry chances are you'll wind up having kinky sex but as a mech fan the most you can hope for are early Evangellion designs that were never used.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalBesides which, being a furry strikes me as loads more fun than being into mecha.  I mean, if you're a furry chances are you'll wind up having kinky sex but as a mech fan the most you can hope for are early Evangellion designs that were never used.

Considering that most mecha designers are grown men living with their moms and may have never had sex, and many furries probably grew up watching lions screwing on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom that does make some amount of sense...

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThe problem is that essentially the inclusion of mechas adds nothing to any story that includes them.  They're just humanoid tanks.

I think J Arcane nailed it here. At least in a visual medium, mecha provide a way of personalizing the depiction of combat, in a way that's not really possible for actual tanks. It's sort of like how nobody wore helmets in Branagh's Henry V.

This isn't to say they don't have a "cool" factor for fans, that carries over to games (a medium that doesn't need the visual personalization like cartoons do). However, while, I haven't played any mecha games, I suspect that the humanoid form of mecha can help overcome a different limitation of tanks & planes: it somehow makes sense to have mecha degrade partwise and ablatively, just like characters in an RPG with hit locations. Whereas with tanks (for me at least) it's difficult to justify much other than an all-or-nothing damage system. (Well, most tactical tank wargames allow for immobilization, destruction of the main gun, and destruction of the tank as a whole, each as a binary result. But that's not enough to make control of a single unit tactically interesting.) Add in the way that many mecha carry multiple "magic items" with "charges" (i.e., 1-2 types of gun and 1-2 types of missiles) and you can see that they're like PCs writ large.

Quote from: WilConsidering that most mecha designers are grown men living with their moms and may have never had sex, and many furries probably grew up watching lions screwing on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom that does make some amount of sense...

How utterly juvenile . . .