Narrative Warfare: All Mecha Games Conform To The True Campaign Model

No one seriously disputes that BattleTech is a wargame, and therefore conforms to the True Campaign model when played as a tabletop RPG.

This means that you can directly implement 1:1 Time and Patron Level Play, as well as already be used to Rules As Written and see immediate effects and benefits for you and your players, and your campaign immediate can expand to the whole of the playable space of the setting.

You'll get a little more pushback with Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, but it's not hard to show naysayers that the game's manuals--rules and setting--play hard into this model and work best when employed in this manner because you can demonstrate the wargame roots and their implicit assumptions and presumptions to the doubting player.

You start running into harder pushback with Robotech and Mekton. Both games, in all their editions, play up the connection to the source material and imply to the reader that the narrative tropes that dominate the source material applies to these adaptations, but the rules manuals have nothing to enforce this. (See below for more on this point.) What you get, instead, is actually Yet Another D&D-Derivative that gives false promises to the prospective user as to what the gameplay experience actually is; it is sold as A but it is really B, where B is done best as the True Campaign model.

When played as such, players will find that they can get something like what they read or watch, but it is not centered around a core cast of pilots and idols. It is a wargame, where players play wargame scenarios at the table and Patrons play the strategic level game of politics and logistics from which those scenarios spawn. You're far more likely to be thinking like the Zentran High Command, Garmlian Empire's Dessler, than you do Sheryl Nome or Walküre. Your table sesions are going to involve a lot more action, personal and mecha, than interpersonal drama. The reason is obvious: no one wants to sit at a table and be bored watching shit improv acting or worse when they could ACTUALLY PLAYING A REAL GAME. Yes, that's exactly what dramatic interpersonal conflict is in gaming terms: really shit improv acting, like you see in Vampire LARPs, and it's boring as fuck.

The game is about objectives--identifying them, pursuing them, resolving obstacles that arise therefrom, and making best use of limited resources at hand--and that's wargaming. How Idol feels about her boyfriend the pilot is irrelevant outside that context, and--believe it or not--most people acknowledge this. That's why RPGs, to date, have downplayed those elements of the source material in favor of action and giant robots.

The problem here is that those prospective players seeking a gameplay experience that recreates a reasonable facsimile of the source material want the experience of the Romantic roots of that source material, which involves characters driven by virtues, vices and passions that at times overwhelm reason and good sense. These people don't want something that is clearly, even at some remove, derived from D&D or ones of its peers (e.g. Traveller); they want Pendragon with giant robots and powered armor, not D&D.

Yeah, you can take that a challenge: design a Pendragon derivative that handles Your Prefered Mecha Property in all its core elements properly. For example: Macross's core elements, by its own admission, is Valkyries, Idol Music, and Love Triangles (Action, Beauty, Romance). You want a truly faithful and playable game? Nail all three or go home. You want to figure out how to do that? Guess what that means?

You're going to have to resort to the True Campaign model to make this work as a proper RPG, albeit using Pendragon as its basis. It's either that or resign yourself to never achieving the promise of recreating the experience of the source material that so many mecha games push on to their prospects and fail deliver upon. Not even Super Robot Wars does; it splices the Visual Novel genre into its wargame to make that work, something you as a tabletop gamer cannot do.