Because RPGs traditionally are about personal power and growth, which can't be reflected well when all your power comes from an external source you can be separated from.
Scifi in general has always been way less popular than fantasy genres in tabletop RPG, because DnD set the pace for the industry.
On top of that, mecha is a pretty niche genre of science fiction, and the first few mecha RPGs that filled in the gap there were just very good. They typically made the same mistakes of getting way too nitty gritty with mech cutomization and loadout, presenting the idea that mecha games were by nature tied to being autistic spreadsheet simulators requiring you to do your taxes as part of character creation and you'd have to do it again if you ever got an upgrade.
As an outside observer i think there's a lot of potential in mecha as a genre. The concept of upgrading a fighting machine and doing some tactical enemy of the week bullshit in space sounds pretty fun. The problem is most of what i actually see from mecha is >sparkle twink does the omega gorillion beam attack from his magic robot thats really just a DBZ character with extra steps
Which is gay and moronic. As someone not into mecha if i wanted to play or god forbid write a mecha game id have to go in and covergently design and entirely new homologous genre and cop a lot of flak from shit taste anime fans for gentrifying it which really isnt worth the effort.
Also that whole family of freedom gundams look like total shit, pointless spikes and fins and paperthin plates over a bunch of primary colours designed for children and autistics. I like zakus
Its worth keeping in mind that not every mecha is Gundam. Adeptus Evangelion, despite being a homebrew, is weirdly one of the more succesful mecha games (you even see it being discussed outside of /tg/, despite it originating here) and in that game you only have a robot fight like once every 3-4 sessions, the rest of the playtime is pilot drama and conspiracy shit.
Ive heard good things about adeva, id like to try it one day. The problem isnt that there's no good mecha, i know there's plenty of stuff out there id probably like a lot. The issue is id have to go sort through the entire genre essentially blind to find it instead of doing anything else, and then probably still build a system from the ground up
Ive heard good things about adeva, id like to try it one day. The problem isnt that there's no good mecha, i know there's plenty of stuff out there id probably like a lot. The issue is id have to go sort through the entire genre essentially blind to find it instead of doing anything else, and then probably still build a system from the ground up
I am running an AdEva Game right now. We're averaging an angel fight every 4-5 sessions. They just began Angel Fight 3.
>Cool, are you having fun?
I am having a great deal of fun. It hits the right level of drama and the systems really help support game feel that emulates EVA. I would however not recommend it to everyone because PCs are really not very strong.
Outside the robot they are just teenagers and are restricted in what they can do. Because they are in the thrall of NERV or the NERV Stand-in they don't have a lot of personal agency. Plus because of the overall 'fight every few sessions' style you need to be ok as a GM with drama because drama is what the game is sort of about.
>Would you recommend it?
I would if it fits the kind of game you want. It does what it does pretty well.
>Is it able to handle non-eva games?
I run it in my own setting that takes large inspirations from EVA. You can stop away the branding and have it be other mecha games, but it will always be about teenagers slowly going insane because of the horrors of what they face.
>but it will always be about teenagers slowly going insane because of the horrors of what they face.
Which, it should be said, doesn't inherently have to be depressing. No one goes through what these kids go through and comes out the other side mentally sound. But you do get something of a choice: do you end up as the kind of crazy that curls up into the fetal position, or do you end up as the kind of crazy that gets shit done?
One of my favorite AdEva characters developed delusions of grandeur as the recurring theme of his traumas, culminating in him being convinced that he was as invulnerable outside of an Eva as he was inside of it. As in, he acted like he just always had an AT Field on him that could stop a nuke. He very much did not, and he eventually died because he set off an explosion to take out a kill squad trying to remove the threat the pilots that he was 100% convinced that he would survive unharmed. Andy blew himself up, but saved the result of the PCs in the process and bought them the time they needed to get to their Evas.
It never caught on with westoids in general because they're all too obsessed with proving they're mature adults to sincerely enjoy giant robots, ironically very childish of them.
>I'm too much of a grown adult to be playing with your stupid robot toys, thank you. >OMG IS THAT THE LATEST COMIC BOOK FILM ADAPTATION OF MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO FROM WHEN I WAS 10????
I really will never understand people.
It was less that it never really caught on and more that the sub-genre suffers heavily from the multiple scales issue that most modern and sci-fi games suffer from.
Most fantasy games work primary off a single "Individual" scale with the occasional dip into "mass battle" scale.
Modern and Sci-fi usual need to consider multiple of the following scales: >Individual >Vehicle (Automotive) >Vehicle (Aerial or Space) >Unit Battle >Warship (Sea or Space)
Mecha have a tendency to cross multiple scales and it can be near impossible to balance stats between multiple scales.
There are no deep or interesting stories about mecha. People point to Gundam or even Transformers because of their childhood nostalgia, but the creators of both think they're just a toy commercial.
i understand that whatever works i post you will dismiss out of hand, but for anyone who wants interesting mecha stories; >Escaflowne - Fantasy take on mecha featuring an Antichthon Earth aligned with modern day Earth >Xenogears/Xenosaga - Generational story about universal intelligence and human evolution beyond the bounds of mortality and individuality >Armored Core franchise - Fast paced action games revolving around stories of dehumanization to facilitate survival >Gottlos - Novel about the definition of humanity and featuring autonomous tank mechs with sadistic tendencies. >Armored Trooper VOTOMS - Wartime survival epic that segues into a story about creating and then seizing one's destiny against proscribed fates. >Gunbuster/Diebuster - A reflection on the inevitability, utility, and necessity of sacrifice set to a coming of age story that explores injustice and duty. >Zone of the Enders - Far future hard sci-fi take on the development of post-human intelligences. >Martian Successor Nadesico - Comedic deconstruction of the mecha genre that serves as a poignant assault on escapism and the value of life - Even flawed life. >Macross and its novelizations - Speculative sci-fi story about panspermia and convergent evolution, culture as a concept, and love >Bokurano - Mass extinction story where children exchange their lives for a chance to power a giant robot to protect earth from invaders. >Bubblegum Crisis, Patlabor - Grouped together due to shared themes of human augmentation and forced mechanical evolution, the creation of new intelligences, and the devaluation of old life in the face of new frontiers. >Ɐ/Turn A Gundam - Post apocalyptic turn of the century mecha story in an idyllic world about the reignition of an ancient war between Earth and the Moon due the difficulties of disparate cultures meeting.
The genre is fantastic. So many I didn't list, like Eva.
Captain America was pretty open about how killing israelites is kind of in bad taste, like letting one rip during a car trip, but building UFOs and laser guns is literally the worst thing ever.
>but the creators of both think they're just a toy commercial
While Transformers was originally conceived of for that purpose, it took on new life and meaning as more writers came in and told stories using the worlds and characters originally envisioned as little more than advertisements. I recommend the Dreamwave Transformers comic run.
As for Gundam, Tomino was never shy about the fact that it was a story about the horrors of war, technology advancing faster than the sense to make use of it, and the evolution of mankind as they begin to step beyond the cradle they were born into. Selling merchandise kept it on the air, but Gundam was never purely meant as a toy commercial and always had a message and a story to tell it through. It was a passion project turned titanic franchise through the power of advertising, but that does not negate the value it held and still holds.
>why did naval warfare never really catch on for RPGs >why did line infantry never really catch on for RPGs
Some things are just better and easier to represent as wargames.
We've been playing Battletch/Mechwarrior for decades. We've never had any problem getting new players, on the contrary.
Rifts is basically a Mecha game at this point.
Mekton is still pretty popular, but nowhere near as Robotech/Rifts and Battletech/Mechwarrior.
For me, it never caught on because Mecha and anime in general is such a visual medium. It was hard to get engaged with it without the constant influx of visuals.
Also game systems rarely enabled the same kind of combat that I'd see in anime. Robotech was a good example. In the anime, one robot would die after a quick burst of fire, but in the TTRPG it took a lot of work.
Because RPGs traditionally are about personal power and growth, which can't be reflected well when all your power comes from an external source you can be separated from.
It's because only one genre really exists in TTRPGs, and that's kitchen sink fantasy. Anything else is peripheral because it doesn't say D&D.
The Man and the Machine being in concert or two of the same soul is a huge theme is tons of Mecha anime/games/etc.
Scifi in general has always been way less popular than fantasy genres in tabletop RPG, because DnD set the pace for the industry.
On top of that, mecha is a pretty niche genre of science fiction, and the first few mecha RPGs that filled in the gap there were just very good. They typically made the same mistakes of getting way too nitty gritty with mech cutomization and loadout, presenting the idea that mecha games were by nature tied to being autistic spreadsheet simulators requiring you to do your taxes as part of character creation and you'd have to do it again if you ever got an upgrade.
Mecha isn't sci-fi to any degree.
I'm confused how you ever came to that conclusion?
Have you only ever seen Rayearth and decided that it's fantasy instead?
They've been Isekai'd into a videya, so it's technically the same kinda shit as Ready Player One.
As an outside observer i think there's a lot of potential in mecha as a genre. The concept of upgrading a fighting machine and doing some tactical enemy of the week bullshit in space sounds pretty fun. The problem is most of what i actually see from mecha is
>sparkle twink does the omega gorillion beam attack from his magic robot thats really just a DBZ character with extra steps
Which is gay and moronic. As someone not into mecha if i wanted to play or god forbid write a mecha game id have to go in and covergently design and entirely new homologous genre and cop a lot of flak from shit taste anime fans for gentrifying it which really isnt worth the effort.
Also that whole family of freedom gundams look like total shit, pointless spikes and fins and paperthin plates over a bunch of primary colours designed for children and autistics. I like zakus
Its worth keeping in mind that not every mecha is Gundam. Adeptus Evangelion, despite being a homebrew, is weirdly one of the more succesful mecha games (you even see it being discussed outside of /tg/, despite it originating here) and in that game you only have a robot fight like once every 3-4 sessions, the rest of the playtime is pilot drama and conspiracy shit.
Ive heard good things about adeva, id like to try it one day. The problem isnt that there's no good mecha, i know there's plenty of stuff out there id probably like a lot. The issue is id have to go sort through the entire genre essentially blind to find it instead of doing anything else, and then probably still build a system from the ground up
I am running an AdEva Game right now. We're averaging an angel fight every 4-5 sessions. They just began Angel Fight 3.
Cool, are you having fun? Would you reccomend it? Is it able to handle non-eva games?
>Cool, are you having fun?
I am having a great deal of fun. It hits the right level of drama and the systems really help support game feel that emulates EVA. I would however not recommend it to everyone because PCs are really not very strong.
Outside the robot they are just teenagers and are restricted in what they can do. Because they are in the thrall of NERV or the NERV Stand-in they don't have a lot of personal agency. Plus because of the overall 'fight every few sessions' style you need to be ok as a GM with drama because drama is what the game is sort of about.
>Would you recommend it?
I would if it fits the kind of game you want. It does what it does pretty well.
>Is it able to handle non-eva games?
I run it in my own setting that takes large inspirations from EVA. You can stop away the branding and have it be other mecha games, but it will always be about teenagers slowly going insane because of the horrors of what they face.
>but it will always be about teenagers slowly going insane because of the horrors of what they face.
Which, it should be said, doesn't inherently have to be depressing. No one goes through what these kids go through and comes out the other side mentally sound. But you do get something of a choice: do you end up as the kind of crazy that curls up into the fetal position, or do you end up as the kind of crazy that gets shit done?
One of my favorite AdEva characters developed delusions of grandeur as the recurring theme of his traumas, culminating in him being convinced that he was as invulnerable outside of an Eva as he was inside of it. As in, he acted like he just always had an AT Field on him that could stop a nuke. He very much did not, and he eventually died because he set off an explosion to take out a kill squad trying to remove the threat the pilots that he was 100% convinced that he would survive unharmed. Andy blew himself up, but saved the result of the PCs in the process and bought them the time they needed to get to their Evas.
>Why did mecha as a genre never really catch on for RPGs?
Almost every sci-fi RPG contains mecha
I’ve run a dozen mecha different games for my group, nerd.
What system(s)? What did you find worked well, and what didn't?
It did. Just wait for tomorrow's Mecha Monday post.
It never caught on with westoids in general because they're all too obsessed with proving they're mature adults to sincerely enjoy giant robots, ironically very childish of them.
>I'm too much of a grown adult to be playing with your stupid robot toys, thank you.
>OMG IS THAT THE LATEST COMIC BOOK FILM ADAPTATION OF MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO FROM WHEN I WAS 10????
I really will never understand people.
It was less that it never really caught on and more that the sub-genre suffers heavily from the multiple scales issue that most modern and sci-fi games suffer from.
Most fantasy games work primary off a single "Individual" scale with the occasional dip into "mass battle" scale.
Modern and Sci-fi usual need to consider multiple of the following scales:
>Individual
>Vehicle (Automotive)
>Vehicle (Aerial or Space)
>Unit Battle
>Warship (Sea or Space)
Mecha have a tendency to cross multiple scales and it can be near impossible to balance stats between multiple scales.
Crunchwise mecha RPGs, as a rule, fricking suck. You essentially need two entirely separate systems and designing one that works is hard enough.
There are no deep or interesting stories about mecha. People point to Gundam or even Transformers because of their childhood nostalgia, but the creators of both think they're just a toy commercial.
i understand that whatever works i post you will dismiss out of hand, but for anyone who wants interesting mecha stories;
>Escaflowne - Fantasy take on mecha featuring an Antichthon Earth aligned with modern day Earth
>Xenogears/Xenosaga - Generational story about universal intelligence and human evolution beyond the bounds of mortality and individuality
>Armored Core franchise - Fast paced action games revolving around stories of dehumanization to facilitate survival
>Gottlos - Novel about the definition of humanity and featuring autonomous tank mechs with sadistic tendencies.
>Armored Trooper VOTOMS - Wartime survival epic that segues into a story about creating and then seizing one's destiny against proscribed fates.
>Gunbuster/Diebuster - A reflection on the inevitability, utility, and necessity of sacrifice set to a coming of age story that explores injustice and duty.
>Zone of the Enders - Far future hard sci-fi take on the development of post-human intelligences.
>Martian Successor Nadesico - Comedic deconstruction of the mecha genre that serves as a poignant assault on escapism and the value of life - Even flawed life.
>Macross and its novelizations - Speculative sci-fi story about panspermia and convergent evolution, culture as a concept, and love
>Bokurano - Mass extinction story where children exchange their lives for a chance to power a giant robot to protect earth from invaders.
>Bubblegum Crisis, Patlabor - Grouped together due to shared themes of human augmentation and forced mechanical evolution, the creation of new intelligences, and the devaluation of old life in the face of new frontiers.
>Ɐ/Turn A Gundam - Post apocalyptic turn of the century mecha story in an idyllic world about the reignition of an ancient war between Earth and the Moon due the difficulties of disparate cultures meeting.
The genre is fantastic. So many I didn't list, like Eva.
this read like that meme about how marvel movies are all deep philosophical films
Captain America was pretty open about how killing israelites is kind of in bad taste, like letting one rip during a car trip, but building UFOs and laser guns is literally the worst thing ever.
I don't care.
>but the creators of both think they're just a toy commercial
While Transformers was originally conceived of for that purpose, it took on new life and meaning as more writers came in and told stories using the worlds and characters originally envisioned as little more than advertisements. I recommend the Dreamwave Transformers comic run.
As for Gundam, Tomino was never shy about the fact that it was a story about the horrors of war, technology advancing faster than the sense to make use of it, and the evolution of mankind as they begin to step beyond the cradle they were born into. Selling merchandise kept it on the air, but Gundam was never purely meant as a toy commercial and always had a message and a story to tell it through. It was a passion project turned titanic franchise through the power of advertising, but that does not negate the value it held and still holds.
>why did naval warfare never really catch on for RPGs
>why did line infantry never really catch on for RPGs
Some things are just better and easier to represent as wargames.
You don't include wargame rules into your campaigns?
I run Traveller, so no.
No player wants to get a sword to learn about themselves, they want a sword to kill gobbos.
moron. It did.
We've been playing Battletch/Mechwarrior for decades. We've never had any problem getting new players, on the contrary.
Rifts is basically a Mecha game at this point.
Mekton is still pretty popular, but nowhere near as Robotech/Rifts and Battletech/Mechwarrior.
You made this thread last week and I already told you how fricking wrong you were, butthole.
For me, it never caught on because Mecha and anime in general is such a visual medium. It was hard to get engaged with it without the constant influx of visuals.
Also game systems rarely enabled the same kind of combat that I'd see in anime. Robotech was a good example. In the anime, one robot would die after a quick burst of fire, but in the TTRPG it took a lot of work.