G-System? Fumoffu - The Humongous Mecha RPG

[Attilargh]

The Oddly Named Sequel to the original thread.

So, yeah. I'm back from the army and I'm working on this again. Judging from a grand total of one playtest sessions with the current draft, the game works pretty well, and is, surprisingly enough, actually fun to play. Hoooowever, one game isn't exactly a very rigorous test, so I'd appreciate it if you guys could lend me a hand and tell me if it does actually work, and more importantly, where it falls apart.

You can find the new version here.

Changes from the last draft:

• Increased the amount of stat points from 20 to 25. This was because the one playtest battle I managed to run with the old draft indicated that the characters were, to put it bluntly, incompetent.
• Reworked dodging attacks. While it seemed like a decent idea on paper, it quickly turned out not to work as intended: Rolling under both your own skill and the enemy attack roll had the unwanted consequence of actually taking your skill out of the equation against lucky enemies.
  
  • As a side-effect of the reworking, attacking feels now even more Super Robot Wars -esque, which I think is pretty neat.

Possible issues:

• The attack penalty from a successful dodge might or might not be too small.
• Moving seems rather problematic, as it seems to have a high chance of devolving into a mindless circle of "You retreat, I follow".
• Pooling your points into one attack that does everything might still be more effective than spreading them out across multiple attacks. But hey, aren't all point-buy systems like that?

[Nerd-o-rama]

And where might this new version be? Or at the very least a copy of the reworked dodge mechanic?

[Attilargh]

That's a, uh, very good question!

Get the new draft here.

[Fri]

you know what we need now? A playtest right here!

[Attilargh]

I don't think it'd work all that well, to be honest. The tick system is a bit of a hassle to begin with (although a hassle made of Fun), and the three steps of making an attack (declaring your attack, declaring and rolling defence, resolving attack) would bog the combat down like you wouldn't believe.

But hey, if you're volunteering to run it, sure, I'll play.


Ædit: So, yesterday much earlier today I stayed up 'til three in the morning, and my overly-inspirable brain was hit with a bolt of inspiration that made me palm face: Players take on the roles of Nanohaesque magical girls, and find themselves battling against monsters of the week, cyborg assassins and the resident Dark Magical Girl in an effort to protect... Some important dude.

And because all fighting is boring, they're also said dude's maids. Shouldn't be too hard to tie the two systems' Willpower and Stress mechanics together somehow.

[Attilargh]

Shameless bump. Come on guys, I can't have managed to make the perfect giant robot game out there.

[Sintanan]

Tried it for a couple hours last Saturday with a pair of friends... took them a bit to get the hang of the mechanics (they're not pen & paper folk), but they had fun... a lot of fun.

Chances are if we play this Friday/Saturday/Sunday, they will come up with some way to break the mechanics... One of em is a lawyer-in-training, and the other is hard-core WoW fan to the point where he will crunch numbers for hours before hunting down the next item to make him "uber".

I'll get back to you on this.


EDIT: And curse you for the TVTropes link... that website eats my soul!

[Attilargh]

Yosh! Another one falls victim to my trope snare!

Great to hear you guys had fun. I've been a bit worried that the system would be too simple, but I guess I might be wrong. Now I can concentrate on worrying about how easy this thing is to break.

Thinking about it, there's one more thing that might prove problematic: Really big things plain can not hit small things, although I guess that's thematically appropriate. If you happen to stumble upon this issue, try the following fix:

New weapon attribute: Point Defense - The weapon ignores any attack penalties from a difference in Size. Costs four points.

Also, I have a hunch that small, fast units with equally fast Tactical range attacks might be real killers in this game, since they can just run away and plink the opposition to death. Might need to work on that.

[Mercenary Pen]

Might be worth adding a selection of Example mecha and pilots to show people what can be done with the system. Other than that, looks fairly straightforward, even if it does seem like it'll get somewhat iterative after a while (or possibly fairly early on, depending on the group).

[Attilargh]

Good idea, I'll be sure to add a few examples once I find out if the system's any good. I'll try to add some more advantages and disadvantages (focusing on the pilot) at the same time as well, and do a bit of editing. One thing I've noticed about the fights I've managed to run is that the rules are pretty unclear.

Also, Reinforced Armour 4 is hax and probably should cost some more.

[BisectedBrioche]

I'd like to join in, but I'm unlikely to be able to d/l a file from megaupload any time soon (I'm in halls with a connection I share with all the first years, as well as a few other 2nd years, so someone's always d/ling something. Particularly since some media studies student's been showing off some idiotic WMM project).

[Attilargh]

Hm, that's a bummer. How about a Google Docs version, then? (I hope that one works, I haven't figured this thing out quite yet.)

[BisectedBrioche]

Hm, that's a bummer. How about a Google Docs version, then? (I hope that one works, I haven't figured this thing out quite yet.)

Yeah, that works.

I've got a couple of hours of lectures in a moment or two so I guess I'll give my £0.02 this evening.

[Attilargh]

Another test fight! Turns out my worries about insanely fast attacks (one or two ticks) may have been unfounded. Ticks cost so much that the attack won't have very much damage, which makes counter-attacking a viable option. Need to move away from duels and into proper group battle territory with the tests, everything seems to be working decently.

Also had a discussion with a friend about how there really is nothing in the rules that actually encourage one to make robots with multiple attacks. I've been struggling with the problem since the first draft, and I think he's pointed me in the right direction: D&D 3.5 magic weapons. Giving all aspects of an attack a scaling cost would be a major hassle, so adding a sort of an unified enhancement bonus -esque system might be the key to victory. Need to think about this.