[Operation Game Collection] Star Wars RPGs Part 1: The D6 Era

  Ahh Star Wars.  The center of my childhood from the age of 3 till 8 or 9, and something that I would always continue to be a fan of to one degree or another.  And what I am about to cover here in this time appropriate post (given both the sad passing of Princess Leia's actress Carrie Fisher and the recent Rogue One prequel to the original 1977 Star Wars movie now known as Episode 4, or A New Hope to the hardcore it seemed a good time to cover a personal favorite game and universe!) is what really kept the fires burning and can in many ways be attributed to WHY Star Wars persists as a massive IP that Disney bought from its' main creator George Lucas for around 5 BILLION DOLLARS.

  THE WEST END GAMES STAR WARS RPG.  (Sometimes referred to as the D6 Star Wars.)

  You see when this game was first released in 1987 Star Wars was pretty much a DEAD brand.  The Marvel comics had recently ended (or was about to) its' long ass run plus the two child friendly spinoff comics in their STAR line, the toys were long off shelves and undesirable, even again the child friendly ones, the two cartoons responsible for said child friendly spinoffs (Droids and Ewoks) were done, and the two live action Ewok TV movies were generally disliked.

  The utter massive childhood and pop culture defining beast that WAS Star Wars had died.  The final film came out in 1983 and what had been a massive seven odd year run as the king of dork stuff was dying out.

  Which is why West End Games was probably able to release an RPG in 1987 and largely seemed to.. do whatever the hell they wanted within limits.  And what they did?  Not only did they create one of the BEST GODDAMNED TABLETOP RPGS EVER BLOODY MADE, but they effectively made the Star Wars universe as we know it today.  While over the years much of the game's lore has been retconned both by the Lucas Prequel Trilogy and the "New Canon" by Disney (which ripped much of what the novelists, animators, comic book people, toy makers, and videogame teams built off of WEG's work out entirely, to join the Marvel Comics in being alternate stories that are no longer official for good and for ill), much of it either remains, or was heavily cribbed to create the New Canon which is currently the six live action movies pre Disney, the two they have currently released, the Clone Wars and Rebels CGI cartoons, and the newer Marvel comics and Del Rey novels.

  To properly cover my Star Wars collection is probably an insane task, even if I just stick to gaming related bits.  This D6 installment ALONE has over 40 photographs in my Click to see bigger yes I took photos, yes there are flashes in there deal with it I am too lazy to use my scanner style.

  So I am gonna do it!  This megapost is devoted to D6/WEG released Star Wars products I own.  I will at the very least do one on the Wizards of the Coast RPGs, and probably videogames, and X Wing Miniatures posts in between my Dougram boardgame thing.

  Let us go to a time that doesn't feel long ago, and wasn't really far away at all!

 The book that started it all!  

 I remember getting this book after seeing it reviewed in Dragon Magazine.  Unlike a seemingly massive part of the Hobby Games audience I am always on the lookout for the new and different.  And to see a massive part of my childhood turned into an RPG?  Well HAD TO BUY IT.  

IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST (albeit heartbreaking) DECISIONS I EVER MADE IN GAMING.

 It was the 80s and thus black and white was the order of the day.  But it was GOOD looking black and white printing!  

 And to add an extra touch of class there were color plates in the book, some of which were like in universe advertisements such as this one.  

 Since this wasn't the days of widespread Internet access (the few people online were paying like 10-25 cents a minute plus possible long distance fees for 1200-2400 baud at best connection speeds.  So around 1200 bits per second, or 150 bytes more or less.  1 kilobyte per 7 seconds roughly.  And that's if you had an EXPENSIVE modem and were getting perfect speeds.  Yeah.) some early enhancements and tweaks to the rules were included as a 4 page sheet in most products.

 This is my GM screen which included a copy of the above.

 Full of goodies and adventure type stuff like all quality GM screens do.

 This one page basically shows you how to make a character using "Templates" as the D6 system calls their quick start prebuilt archetypes.  Just throw some skills in there as the middle right box shows and start adventuring in minutes!  No rolling for stats, no nonsense.  Quick and fun!

 The Rules Companion basically adds in optional rules and is more or less an expansion to the core game the Upgrade is basically a summary of.  The Death Star Technical Companion is pretty much the original canon for the Death Star.  Much of it is now overwritten.  But not all by any means!

 A series of books they did I desperately need more of.  The Galaxy Guides!  Generally written as something in universe by various characters it is both full of outstanding artwork done in a style like the early 80s comic strip Star Wars, stats on almost anything in the subject covered, and a fun bit of fiction!

 Obviously we have to show DARTH FREAKING VADER.  To give you an idea how the core game plays and how his stats and skills fit I shall give a quick and dirty synopsis of the game:

Use either an attribute or a skill connected to the attribute which has gotten higher through XP.  Roll that many dice.  Meet or beat the target difficulty number to succeed.  Looking at the right side of the Rules Upgrade you see a reasonable difficulty is 15.  Tough but not impossible.    Darth Vader has 11D+2 for his Lightsaber, and 8D in both Starship Piloting and Gunnery.  Meaning Vader has a MINIMUM of 13 and a MAXIMUM of 68 in Lightsaber combat actions.  With 8-48 in Starship stuff.  Most Player Characters at best have a 4-5 D6 skill.  (4-24, or 5-30 respectively)

Yes the basic rules of Star Wars are super quick and easy to explain with the rules being excellent and encouraging heroic play as opposed to Fantasy Vietnam Murder Hobos D&D styled gameplay.

(I will probably talk more about why in the Hell D&D wins out over all other RPGs in spite of other games such as this one being a bajillion times better in both gameplay and setting in a later post.)

 And some of the original era adventure modules.  Most featured various bonuses to sell them or cross sell their connected board games to more than just GMs who didn't want to make their own adventures all the time.  (Shocking!)  But WEG did an excellent job in their books of teaching people how to GM the right way and to Star Wars it properly.

 Yeah I know my flash takes some of the text out of action. But look at the back of this and try to tell me you wouldn't want to play this!  Eff your stupid dungeons!  FIGHT STORMTROOPERS AND AT STs IN A RAPIDLY FALLING APART STAR DESTROYER.  That is what COOL gamers want to do.  

 The adventures usually include all sorts of handouts and maps and other fun things.

 Counters for the big end of adventure setpiece and a nifty script to get players stuck in the action at the adventure start.  

 They even made a few solo adventures, although this one isn't a dice based one.

 However this later one did.  

 It is for the Revised 2nd Edition version but outside of a few things both editions are quite compatible.  I honestly prefer the first edition though.  I will get to that later.

 And one of my personal favorite RPG sourcebooks ever, covering the Empire in all of it's Stormtrooper-y glory of Sithiness!  I got this at the Star Tours giftshop at Disney World in Orlando Florida back in 1989 if I recall.  

 One of my personal favorite pages in the book.  A side view size comparison of all Imperial vessels of that time.  Rebels fans will have seen the Interdictor class in an episode.  The Victory class Star Destroyer is sort of a thing not really used in anything these days but was intended to be effectively what the Venator class ships seen in the mostly BLOODY TERRIBLE  2nd prequel film were.  

 It ahh.. takes a few pages to show all of the Super Star Destroyer.  Like six or so.  It is a big ship.

 Later on they made a second edition and then a couple years later a full color Revised version of that.  To me there was one critical flaw.

THE WILD DIE  See you now have one die that is different than the rest of your bucket of D6s.  This one has a 1 and 6 being special.  Rolling a 1 on this die is VERY BAD, and a 6 causes you to basically ROLL MORE DICE.  This can cause some severe nonsense in what is supposed to be a fast paced and heroic game where death for the PCs is quite rare.  Like I saw this die effectively kill off an entire group in a con game once.  Just 1s on Wild Die for Thermal Detonators in hallways.  My PC only survived due to being injured earlier so the old country Doctor was busy preparing our escape vehicle since he wasn't much of a fighter to start with.

Exploding dice are honestly kind of stupid.  The Wild Die worked in the WEG game it came from (Ghostbusters) but I honestly don't think it works at all in Star Wars or other D6 system games.

 I will say the book is absolutely GORGEOUS and does its' darnedest to teach the game to newbies and draw you into the Star Wars universe.  I am just not quite sure I need to read this book that is nearly twice as large as the original to do it.

 And some Second Edition era sourcebooks.  Star Wars fans know all about the Special Editions of the movies and the absolute silly rage they cause, and the mid 90s Shadows of the Empire multimedia extravaganza of GEORGE LUCAS WANTS MORE MONEY BECAUSE STAR WARS IS POPULAR AGAIN.  

See, thanks to the Timothy Zahn novels of the early 1990s Star Wars started to have a big resurgence.  New toys were released, a CCG came out from Decipher, Dark Horse Comics did comic books that continued until Disney bought Star Wars to go with their Marvel purchase.  It came back for a whole new generation.  

(And idiot manchildren like me who never really left Star Wars, not completely.  I bought the RPG in 1988-89.  I read the Marvel comics up until around their cancellation.  I picked up the Dark Horse comics as they were released early on in the super early 90s.  I may have dropped the old Kenner toys for GI Joe and Transformers kind of quickly but I never totally left.)

 The normal 2nd ed Sourcebook on top and the Special Edition Revised era one on the bottom.  Maybe it is just me but.. color doesn't really add all that much to RPG books in my opinion.  But one cool thing is that pretty much every alien race in a Star Wars RPG product has a statline so you can make most of them playable characters.  

 And the two board game products I have from WEG.  Star Warriors is a late 80s styled hex wargame with some Machine Sheet styled flair to it, while Assault on Hoth is more a stand alone board game.

 I really want to see if I cannot get a play session of Hoth with someone sometime.  The odds of getting a D6 RPG campaign going is probably nearly impossible for multiple reasons but... a game to fight for Hoth?  

 The Star Warriors hex map is kind of decent but the chits are pretty simple.  And these days I honestly have many more choices in my Star Wars Starfighter Combat Tabletop needs.

(And they have TIE DEFENDERS which this does not because the computer game series that eventually introduced them didn't appear until late 1992.)

 Some more counters showing Star Destroyers, reference sheets, and the ship sheets.  I haven't really delved deep into this one but I got it for 3 bucks and it was worth it just for the price!  

 Hoth is a bit more of a stand alone game although some of the adventure modules have scenarios and add ons for it.

 Plus it has stuff like custom dice and standee counters.  The vacuum formed tray is pretty classy even now!  Lots of games expect you to buy tons of rubber bands, Zippy Bags, or get foam inserts if you can even fit everything back in the boxes!

 And the Miniatures Battles.  I had a massively negative experience with my one and only play of this game.  Build your own units and no real force organization rules plus that stupid Wild Die equalled a REALLY BAD TIME.  Like I had multiple squads of Bounty Hunters.  The guy I played it against had a single small squad of Wookies.  All armed with medpacks and armor and jacked to the nines.  It was a complete slaughter and the Wild Die decided to roll me lots of 1s making an already unfun situation worse.

Exploding dice and no real force balancing mechanism meant no fun.  No fun at all.

 I suppose the scenarios could probably be tweaked and used in other games.  And it could be a springboard to minis battles in the RPG with a GM.

 A picture showing some of the miniatures they had, and a sell sheet for minis.  Laugh and cry at the prices.

 The bottom left are my only official SW minis.  A bunch of Bounty Hunters glued to pennies as stands.  The black Snowspeeder is the one that came in the Vehicles box.  the Orange Shoulder Stormtrooper is an old Action Fleet scale figure.  All the painted minis are from the WOTC miniatures game for scale comparison.  (WOTC minis are only kind of properly scaled.  Obviously even these long OOP figures aren't really useable with the old WEG ones.  The Action Fleet ones are however.  In the days before WOTC's blind buy boxes Action Fleet was a savior.)

 Yes then WOTC took over and both WEG and the CCG maker Decipher both got the boot from the license.  WEG kind of died making piles of licensed RPGs nobody really wanted.  The company kind of came back and tried to update the D6 system a bit and make it a series of generally compatible generic games.  I have the Deluxe version in a nice slipcase with included GM Screen Kit.

 It did not go very well at all.   It was just too late in a too crowded market that mostly only wants to play D&D or derivatives to the end of time.  I did not remotely pay MSRP for this set.  

 If you want the most updated version of the rules the D6 System version is the way to go.  But honestly even 1st edition is so damned GOOD at what it does you don't really need it.  IIRC there is some "Open Source" version available online.

(Of course there are scans of nearly every D6 Star Wars product and multiple fan source books covering the eras WEG wasn't around for too.  Holocrons are a handy thing!)

 I will say one stupid thing the D6 System edition did was to change a lot of attribute names for no real reason I can see.

 It looks decent enough and there are some good updates and fixes.  Plus it gives Star Wars GMs more goodies to work with for those who want to add a little more to their games.

 Yeah the art and layout took a hit compared to the original WEG glory days but they did the best they could with what they had.

 They even updated the Bloodshadows campaign to the system.

 I am not quite sure if this is readable but the setting is basically Urban Fantasy Noir.  20-40s urban crime drama only with stuff like Vampires and Wizards and stuff in an original world not like our own but.. kind of our own.  COOL.

And a critters book for Fantasy, and the Modern (Adventure) era locations book with ideas, maps, and adventure seeds for places and stuff in the modern era.  The Action Fleet Stormtrooper is covering a booby.  Since it may offend someone stupid somewhere.  The funny part is the Harpy in the book is covered in feathers so no jubblies on display!  

  Whew!  There we have it.  One of my favorite RPGs ever made and one of my favorite universes ever covered.

Hopefully we will see each other again in THE WOTC ERA.

x-Plorers Mecha and Vehicle Rules Part 3 of 3

Well, let's finish this thing!

(New stuff update on Feb 10.  I forgot shields!  Another update on 11 Feb to fix something I missed.)

I will be going back to add in more nifty stuff to our Special Equipment list, this is the last core bit that needs to be done and you too can have some nice rules light generic sci fi mecha and tank rules.

As previously mentioned, Vehicles and Mecha have Weapon Points.  These WPs are generic and not really meant to get into massive detail.  We really don't care much about exactly how many guns or missiles get fired.

The basic setup for a WP weapon is this:  A WP is the cost assumed for an arm & torso (mecha) or turret/sponson mounted weapon that has access to an internal ammunition supply which can run out.  Reducing or improving factors such as Accuracy, Damage, Range, Ammunition, Special Effects (see the first part of my house rules!), and fire arcs can make the weapon cost more or less, but NEVER lower than 1.

With this system you can have high damage but short range siege cannons, hand carried type close combat weapons a mecha can throw down to get into fisticuffs if needed, or anything else.

Like much of my house rules, some GM fiat and a bit of imagination is required to make it all go down smoothly.  This isn't megadetail.  If you want that I recommend GURPS Vehicles.  (Bring a graphing calculator.)

For our purposes there are three weapon types to choose from.
Direct Fire:  Your rifles, cannons, laser beams and other point and shoot type weapons.
Missile:  Rocket propelled death in handy single or multiple missile fun.
Close Combat:  Mainly on Mecha, these are usually low to no ammunition expenditure weapons allowing you to rip things up in a more "civilized" way.  If you mean stabbing a tank with a 1 ton blade is civilized.  I suppose the lack of collateral damage is nice though...

Here is the handy core chart showing what the 1 Weapon Point version of each system costs, plus the costs/bonuses of up and downgrades:
(The #/# tells us what the default is, and the second number is the 1 WP cost/bonus level for downgrading or upgrading. The second number also shows the minimum this can be brought down to outside of Accuracy which can go as low as you want.)

                              Direct Fire Costs
 Damage      Accuracy(To Hit Bonus)    Range(In Meters)     Ammunition   
1d6 / 1d6                      0 / + -1                            200 / 50                  25 /  5

                               Missile Fire Costs
Damage      Accuracy(To Hit Bonus)    Range(In Meters)     Ammunition   
3d3 / 1d3                      0 / + -1                            300 / 50                  10 /  3

                            Close Combat Costs
Damage      Accuracy(To Hit Bonus)    Range(In Meters)     Ammunition   
1d6 / 1d3                     0 / +1-1                              4 / 1                    Unlimited

Special WP Costs:
Mecha Weapons:  A Mecha Direct or Missile Fire weapon made "Hand Held" can be picked up and dropped in exchange for 1 WP.  However it ONLY holds half the ammunition listed (round DOWN).

Vehicle Weapons: A Vehicle Direct or Missile Fire weapon made "Side Sponson" loses its 360 fire arc to a 180 and gains 1 WP.  Or it can only have a 45 arc in whatever direction the weapon is considered to be mounted in as a "Hull Mounted" weapon for 2.

Special Weapon Abilities: The list seen in the original set of X-Plorers house rules by me: X-Plorers Rules By Me For You! each cost a WP to add, except for Neo-Beam, and Anti-Ship which all cost 2 WP instead.  Ordnance costs a point per size.  (1 for Small, 2 for Medium, 3 for Large) Twin Linked costs 1 for the system and not per gun.

Close Combat Weapons: Close Combat Weapons use the Pilot's modified Physique attribute as a base to hit & damage as it is a Close Combat attack.  The Range effect counts for the size and reach of the weapon.  For Mecha the CCW can be made "Hand Held" for a 1 WP bonus, though it becomes a 1d3 Damage base weapon instead.  HOWEVER, if the "Hand Held" weapon is held in BOTH hands (meaning you aren't spending WP on the second hand at all!) it becomes a 2D3+1 Damage weapon.

Now to give an example of making a weapon:  We are making weapons for a Medium Tank.  Its got 4 Weapon Points.  Now I would like to make the guns for my Warhammer 40,000 "Predator" tank.  The model I have has 2 side sponson Laser Cannons, and 2 more turret mounted ones.  At base, we know that the 2 turret mounted guns would give us 2 extra WPs to spend, but the 2 turret mounted ones would cost a WP to be Twin Linked.  In the game it comes from, Laser Cannons are super heavy anti tank weapons with a very long range.  (Though in 40K's game case, its a measly 48", or 96 meters.)

1d6 damage isn't gonna cut it!  I decide to drop each gun's range by 50 meters, making them still longer range then what it has in its home game.  To my knowledge they never listed ammo requirements for the guns, but I decide they will also have 5 less ammo.  I decide not to do any more tinkering, but do choose to upgrade each gun now.

Let's look at what this does to the 2 sponson guns first.  Each gun costs 1 WP.  Dropping to a 180 side sponson makes it 0 WP (which is illegal to BUILD the gun, but its not finished yet!).  Dropping Range and Ammunition by 1 each makes it -2.  I take the 3 points I got and raise the gun's damage to a nasty 4d6.  So a 4d6 Damage gun with no Accuracy bonus and a 150 Meter Range (a nice 75" tabletop range for model based fighting), with 20 shots of ammo costs 1 WP of the 4 my tank has available.

So the 2 sponson guns are done, but now our turret mounted guns have a problem.  As it stands we will have to either make the 2 guns lesser in damage, or give them less ammunition.  I choose the latter, so the turret guns only have 15 shots each.  Now if I want to keep that sweet Twin Linked action I am going to have to go back to my currently designed tank and drop something so I can get an extra Weapons Point.

Shields:   Something many Mecha can carry are shields.  Some are made of metal, others are an electronic form, but either way they give machines a bit of a defensive edge against the more heavily armed tanks they are designed to take out.

Shields can be purchased with either System and/or Weapon points.  Depending on the points spent, the shield may or may not effect any other weapons in the arm(s) equipped.

For each SP or WP spent (up to 5 maximum), the unit gains +1 AC.  1-2 AC shields do not affect a Mecha's ability to use arm or hand weapons with the shield.  3 AC shields penalize weapons in that arm with a -1 To Hit, 4 AC a -2, and 5 AC shields do not allow the arm to use any weapon whatsoever.

Option:  Vehicles may choose to mount a shield on a facing of the tank as well with the same penalties as above.  (Its considered to be things like Bulldozer blades and reinforced armor as opposed to an actual shield.)

And that's it!  Now we have ourselves a nice generic system to make big smashy tanks and robots!

I hope everyone has enjoyed it and can put it into play!

I would like to recommend that any and all designs made using my rules are done by the GM for the campaign he or she is running, or if you allow players to make their own rides and the guns they carry, that you approve them.

Like any point based system, there is always some way one can make an unfairly broken bit of equipment.

X-Plorers Mecha and Vehicle Rules Part 2 of 3

As promised its time for those Mecha and Vehicle rules.  (Though I may not do Psionics now that the game's creators have made their own official ones.  Or it may be in an "Anime" style X Plorers house ruleset from me at a later date.

(UPDATED 3 FEB)

The foundations of both Vehicles and Mecha is this:  There are 5 sizes of each that roughly correspond with each other, using the vehicles in parenthesis as a rough guide to size.
Super Light (Motorcycles)
Light (Automobiles)
Medium (Armored Personnel Carriers)
Heavy (Light Tanks)
Super Heavy (Main Battle Tanks)

It is my thoughts that if there ever are actual combat mecha they won't be of the massive size we see in cartoons and most current mecha hobby games.  They will largely be closer to powered armor, capable of going where tanks can't go, and being more agile.  If your campaign wants BIG ROBOTS, just change the scale of what each is.

Both Vehicles and Mecha have a number of attributes, their own Physique and Agility scores which in Mecha's case are ADDED to that of the pilot's, their Hit (or Hull) Points, their Armor Class which is modified by their Agility score, their Speed which is how fast they move in their Vehicle scale movement phase, their System Points for special equipment, and Weapon Points for how many weapons they can carry.

Look at the chart and meet me at the bottom of it in 5:
(The 2 numbers correspond to Vehicle then Mecha)
(For Physique and Agility scores mentioned for Mecha, a Cybernetic Port increases PHY by 1 and reduces AGI penalties by 1.)
(Mecha Weapon Points list anywhere and arm mounted ones which are either held or replace a normal manipulator arm.)
Unit Size            Physique    Agility     HP      AC     Speed   System Points   Weapon Points
Super Light           12/+3         18/-2      10/5    12/16     20/8                2                    2/0 2 Arm
Light                     14/+5         16/-3      15/9    14/18     18/7                3                    3/1 2 Arm
Medium                15/+7         14/-4     20/13   16/20     16/6                4                    4/2 2 Arm
Heavy                   16/+9         12/-5     25/17   18/22     14/5                5                    5/3 2 Arm
Super Heavy         17/+11       10/-6    30/21    20/24     13/4               6                    6/4  2 Arm

Optional: If a unit wants more System Points or Weapon Points it may DOWNGRADE to a lower level PHY, HP, AC, System, or Weapon Points.   Per level dropped the unit gains 1 additional System/Weapon Point.  No more than 3 downgrades may be done, and a unit can reduce its ratings in these categories down to Super Light if they wish.  Speed may be lowered to the next level as well but only upwards. (Like a Medium tank may wish to be just a really big infantry carrier.  Its already using 3 of its System Points but wants to carry a 9 man squad.  So its designer drops its Physique by 2, and its Weapon Points by 1, making it a Super Light for Physique, and a Light for Weapon Points.  This gives it the 3 System Points it needs to take a 4 point Passenger Compartment.)  (For speed a Super Light may want more WP so it could give itself Medium Vehicle speed (16 instead of 20 for a Super Light) and gain 2 Weapon or System Points.

Explaining the categories:

Physique:  This does not affect the unit's HP in any way, but is used for purposes of close combat damage, usually by ramming in a Vehicle's case.  For Mecha, it is added to the pilot's for the same purposes, but its total PHY score determines its Vehicle scale damage in close combat.  (A burly guy is more manly and thus his awesomeness affects how he can punch through a tank.)

Agility:  This does not affect the unit's AC in any way, but is a rough indicator of its maneuverability and such.  However for Mecha it DOES affect the overall AC.

HP:  The unit's Hit (or Hull) points needed to wreck the vehicle.  For Mecha the machine is still active, but the pilot is then exposed and can be killed.  (Pilot HP is still considered Personal Scale.)  A Vehicle or Mecha may be repaired unless it takes double its total HP when it is then destroyed with no chance of repair.

AC: The unit's armor class.  This takes in account the size and construction of the machine, though remember a Mecha may be penalized if its pilot's effective AGI is low enough.

Option: The AC for the sides of a Vehicle may be considered to be 2 lower, and 4 lower on the rear, and
Mecha may deal with whatever facing AC penalties the group uses in normal X Plorers combat.

Speed: The unit's normal movement rate during a Vehicle scale movement action.  Vehicles and Mecha CAN go flat out and move double speed like a Personal scale "run" type double move.

System Points:  As previously mentioned, System Points let you equip a unit with various upgrades to
improve its performance.

Weapon Points:  Similar to System Points, but is the number of weapon systems a unit can carry. 1 WP is equal to a 1D6 Super Light Weapon System (More detail in the final part!) or 2 Twin Linked Personal Scale weapons.  For Mecha, you may have Arm Mounted weapons that are either carried or replace a normal humanoid hand arm.  Hand carried weapons must have their own ammunition source unless they are a close combat weapon.

Other than this, Vehicles and Mecha fight out just like a normal X Plorers unit, though in this case they are in the Vehicle Scale as opposed to X Plorers' Personal.

Some readers may wonder why the HP is so low for the machines, yet a Super Heavy Tank can carry a 5d6 gun.  Well, have you read many war reports, or watched many Sci Fi shows?  Most of the time machines are killed with 1 or 2 hits from an equivalent sized gun.  Even the M1 Abrams could be taken out by a man carried LAW with a little luck from the firing team.  If a game group wants more Battletech or Palladium styled units double or triple the HP (and remember to do so to any System Point upgrades too!) and you will have more durable drawn out fights with machines.

I also am considering most Vehicles to only require 1 or 2 crew to control, and all mecha to be single pilot controlled.  GMs and their game groups may choose to put more detail in.

Well, all we have left to do is a nice weapons construction chart and my Mecha and Vehicle ruleset is done!

This is why I love mecha!

http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-411742/Tengen-Toppa-Gurren-Lagann-AMV-Be-a-Man.html?h264=1

Just watch this.

(Or try this direct download link if the video gets removed for whatever dumb internet reason: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?v=158077)

This is awesome, not even counting the fact they took yet another stupid song from yet another dumb Disney musical and made it fit perfectly to the beginning parts of this show.

See, this is why mechs rule. Heroic bravery, insane stunts, and just generally UNSTOPPABLE FIGHTING SPIRIT.

Your sword and sorcery RPG campaigns will NEVER reach this level of greatness.

A good mecha campaign could, with the right players.

And as I mentioned, this video only covers the early parts of the show. It gets MORE AWESOME AND MANLY.

Did Drizzt or Raistlin ever get into a fight where they were using ENTIRE GALAXIES as throwing stars?

I didn't think so.

And one day I will run a mecha RPG campaign for the right group of people and it will have this level of unadulterated awesomeness in it.

One day.

My AD&D 1st ed Character: LET ME SHOW YOU HER

Over at Alive and Out of Print . org they are doing a Play By Post game of the classic Against the Giants series. I am joining in, taking one of the pregens and making it my own. I chose the first of the 2 Clerics and turned him into the following:


(She sort of looks like that. The picture is Rally Vincent from Gunsmith Cats)

Sister Marimae Flanaghan (Aka: Sister Mary Facesmasher)
Human Female Cleric of Sigmar
Lawful Good
Age: 31 Height: 5' 8" Weight 143 lbs.

STR 16, INT 10, WIS 18, DEX 12, CON 16, CHA 17
72 HP
AC -2, 0 Shieldless, 10 Unarmored
THACO 14, 12 with +2 Mace
Damage to S or M is 1d6+3 (2 for +2 Mace, +1 for STR 16)

SPELL SLOTS
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 6 5 4 2 1

EQUIPMENT
Mace +2, Plate Mail +2, Shield +2, 2 Potions of Invisibility, Potion of Diminution, 2 Potions of Extra Healing


Backstory: Mary grew up on a different world than that which contains the lands of Greyhawk. A land with endless wars against the Undead, Orks, and the other dimensional forces of Chaos. It is on this world that she became a priestess of Sigmar, a god of justice and warfare, ascended from humanity. She was mostly tasked with teaching orphans and had little chance to go out in the field. However she became infamous for believing in the old adage of "Spare the rod and spoil the child".

Her students tended to be rather well behaved, even for orphans growing up under religious doctrination. (Many will grow up to be Witch Hunters, Inquisitors, or more fantatical Warpriests because of this...) With her reputation one of the senior priests decided he would prefer her to punish him for his sins. Because he was a VERY naughty boy.

Needless to say, Mary ran the hell out of there, collected her meager belongings, and decided to travel the world, which lead her into a portal bringing her to the Free City of Greyhawk. There she found her calling at putting large blunt objects through the faces of monsters, criminals, and anyone else who was an enemy of justice and peace. She became a freelance cleric connected to the St Cuthbert order which she considers to pretty much be Sigmar by another name anyhow.

After a few years of travelling and adventuring she decided it was time to settle down and start up a church of her own in some out of the way town with funds she had collected while cleansing the land of heretics and monsters. Life was fine except for one thing. One of the workers hired to build her church, a half orc named Geal. (LN Commoner) She was enjoying his hard sweaty work a little too much, and jumping into a nearby lake and small waterfall to pray away her feelings was working less and less each day.

Thus with little more than some money left to have her church finished and a note to the workers to finish and how to get some other priests to take care of it, she left to travel again, working out her (in her mind anyhow!) filthy thoughts by hitting more evil things in the face with blunt objects.

Quote: "Evil cannot speak it's blasphemies when it's jaw is crushed."

L1 (5 spells at level 10)
Cure Light Wounds x 4, Detect Magic

L2 (5 spells at level 10)
Silence 15 radius X 2, Find Traps, Slow Poison x 2

L3 (4 Spells at level 10)
Prayer x 2, Dispel Magic, Speak With the Dead

L4 (4 Spells at level 10)
Protection from Evil 10 Radius, Neutralize Poison, Sticks to Snakes x 2

L5 (2 Spells at level 10)
Dispel Evil, Flame Strike

Extra Gear: Silver Holy Symbol, Leather Backpack, Small Silver Mirror, 2 Water Skins, 3 Large Belt Pouches, Basic clothing with cloak, Boots, 2 weeks' Iron Rations, Tinder box, 12 wax candles, 4 flasks of Holy Water, 4 Iron Spikes, 4 flasks of Oil, Bone Scroll Case. (Obviously we have more food and probably mounts in the cave.)

My D6 Character. LET ME SHOW YOU HIM.

Note if you are not the GM of this game you do not know all of these things below.

Name: Davis Wilson
Occupation: Medical Researcher/Grad Student
Human Male, age 26
Height: 5' 8"
Weight: 142
Brown Hair, Grey Eyes, Glasses

Reflexes: 2D
Coordination: 3D
Physique: 2D
Presence: 3D
Command: 4D
Persuasion: 4D
Knowledge: 5D
Business: 6D
Medicine: 6D
Scholar: 6D
Tech: 6D
Perception: 3D
Repair: 4D

Advantages: Wealth (R1), Equipment (R3) (A secret zombie research lab in Northern New Jersey)

Disadvantages: Quirk (R1) "Loves" The dead. (His zombie girlfriend in the basement in THAT sort of way. He is merely fond of dead people in general.) Devotion (R2) To turn the world into a happy smiling land of the dead. Devotion (R1) Penguins.

Body Points: 30

Background, Davis is a brilliant graduate student researcher at NYU focusing on medical science and medical technology. While there he met a brilliant but quirky Chemistry student, Sally Graham. She was a bit gothy and a bit into using her chemistry knowledge to get herself high. He liked Penguins and Disney cartoons. The two became romantically involved, both being on the wierd side of things. One day Sally came up with a new gas. Davis being busy that day, she huffed and she puffed. And eventually fell down and died. Davis arrived at their Jersey home to find her comatose. Not knowing what she had inhaled, he quickly grabbed any restorative chemicals in the house and attempted to revive her. Between what she had taken and what he gave her, she came back to life.

Sort of. While perfectly sapient, she had.. hungers. Hungers for living flesh. Insatiable hungers. Davis has a few missing chunks of flesh to prove it. However with this new unlife she also felt sensations deeper than anything she had ever had before, and an almost continuous high. Together they made up a room for her to keep her from losing control and going out on a murderous hungry rampage. Davis, now a little unhinged, feels that everyone can eventually be as happy as Sally seems to be. Together they are researching and trying to figure out exactly which chemicals made Sally the way she was. Sometimes he brings her home dinners in her room, sometimes he brings home subjects to try replicating Sally's situation.

Currently the unliving he can make are unlike Sally. Generally either biological or with technical bits the zombies are far less human in appearance, and generally far more stupid, only being under Davis' control with technical implants in place. So far none of them including Sally are infectious, but Davis is quickly closing in on the missing pieces to the zombie apocalypse puzzle.

With his known biomedical and biotechnical skills he has been recruited to look into supernatural matters. He does his university work during the day, while working on his darker efforts at night.

Personality: Generally cheerful with a dark sense of humor. Davis has a tendency to break into cartoon music songs while working on things. He keeps his zombie work generaly quiet, and won't even tell Sally what his eventual plans for the world is.

Equipment: Usually Davis carries a field medical kit and a field electronics/hardware repair kit in his van, and a small pocket kit of each on his person alongside a .22 pistol for self defense/emergency zombie termination. He has no problem looting morgues, back alleys, or graveyards for the recently dead or ought to be dead anyhow.

His Home: The top level is a plain small house in a low end area of the Passaic county. The top level seems like a simple college student with a little cash windfall's kind of home, though in Davis' case decorated with a heavy Penguin motif. Downstairs is hidden by a secret trap door and contains his laboratory and Sally's living quarters. The whole of downstairs is generally bathroom tiled, with Sally's section being sectioned off with a clear bulletproof glass wall. Her area has the same sorts of in floor drains and plastic coverings over her property. The ceiling has biohazard and general water sprays in order to clean up after her messier meals. Or failed experiments. Sally quite enjoys her post meal showers. Davis enjoys watching...

Off in another section is another trap door leading to corpse disposal. It is mostly a lye tub, and a small unobtrusive crematory for whatever remains. The smoke merely looks like it is coming out his chimney.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Tuesday Game Reports

With my various life bits, I really have been lax on posting, haven't I?

Last Tuesday we made characters for MagicDrew's D6 Adventure game set as a sort of modern horror thing. I will describe my character later, but I am adventuring with a 250+ year old vampiress (Starfury's character), and 9IN's ex CIA operative.

(Currently as I write this we are playing in this campaign. Its investigative stuff centered around New York City. My character being a bit of a nerdy sort, doesn't belong in Neo Aryan dirtbag clubs and is thus doing his science thing and looking around the college he does his science medical graduate research work isn't there. Thus I can write this as I shouldn't really know what they are doing anyhow.)

We followed up with an introductory AT 43 game, Starfury and MagicDrew using 1500 points of Therians, versus 9IN and myself with the UNA. The Therians won thanks to Omega Tiamat and her ability to come back from the dead took out both our Fire Toads, which gave the Therians the win given our platoon pattern the M.Ind has the flaw of losing the game outright if we lose our walkers. Tiamat made short work of one Fire Toad, got blasted to bits by the UNA's combined close range fire, then used her ability to take the place of a Therian unit with an Overseer and was ready to kill Sgt Borz in his Fire Toad, but a Therian Goliath class infantry unit finished off Borz' Toad, winning them the game. You may expect another battle report comic in the future. Its a tad annoying how Flickr does photos. I take too many and they only keep the 200 newest active.

Wednesday was 40K at Sarge's with a couple games of Magic afterwards. 1000 points of Tyranids (Me) and Space Marines versus Grey Knights and Sisters of Battle. It was one of the first official 5th edition games. It was not pretty. Too many bad things happened to my side and it was a general slaughter. We lost the initiative and got shot up. The Marine Land Raider failed to do much other than get caught on terrain. Spore Mines failed to hit mass clusters of models, or failed to penetrate any armor the few times they were close. Overall I am enjoying the new 5th edition rules even if I won't get my copy till September with the Black Reach set. I do need to shrink the cost of my Genestealers though. 27 points a model is entirely too much caught up on models who can be utterly demolished by Heavy Bolters.

As mentioned, this Tuesday is D6 Adventure. I gave MagicDrew his birthday present. (Cash, a nifty card, and a nice cake. I was gonna get him a Varghoul for his Warhammer Vampire Counts, but forgot, and this seemed a bit nicer overall anyhow.) Soon we go for pizza and continue the adventuring. This pizza was good. I approve of the pizza.