The Campaign: Letting The Mecha Magic Happen

(Following from this post.)

Putting It Together

Mecha stories use the machine as one part character and one part trope justifier. Neither of those apply to tabletop role-playing games as this is not a narrative medium, but rather a form of old-school wargame in the tradition of Kriegspiel.

How then would a Referee running a fantasy adventure campaign make mecha work? Can you do both Wearables and Driveable?

Yes, you can.

I did it. I did it about 20 years ago, when I ran a three-year long Exalted campaign. It's trivial to do this for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, to make it work, and to make it enjoyable.

Remember What The Machine Does Will Be Enough

The secret to having fantasy mecha in a campaign without it turning into All Stompy Bots All The Time is context.

You are not taking any but the smallest units into a typical dungeon or similar space; the thumb rule is to look for where a giant, dragon, or similar large monster can traverse- that's where your mecha can go.

They need a power source to operate. Those can be run down, or out, and need replacing or recharging. They need to be repaied and maintained; attack forms with ammunition or charges need to be replenished. All of that means additional costs in term of gold and time, wherein the mecha is not available for use- same as with any vessel (be it a chariot or a warship) or siege engine. Upgrades and refits impose those same costs.

In return for these constraints, players get enjoy considerable power against their opposition. That 8th level Fighter and his army are already not to be dismissed. Put him in a Wearable mecha and he goes from an already potent threat to one that can face down great gigantic monsters--yes, I mean that in the plural--by himself with confidence.

The Play Potential Is Plentiful

Guess what all of that means for you, Referee? Opportunities for playable scenarios.

Finding them, using them, keeping them operational- these are the sorts of opportunities one speaks of usually in the context of having cannon or air power when the enemy does not.

Then we can scale this up to Faction Play, where their introduction (as is the case with any technology so game-changing, like firearms) sparks an arms race- either to copy or to counter. A ruler, boss, etc. is going to see the implications of such things being put into the field and be unable to ignore them; he will immediate reassess his plans to account for the new possibilities and recogfigure his faction's organization and infrastructure to exploit that new intelligence.

This is no different than someone figuring out how to impose unbreakable mind control over giants, dragons, etc. and putting them into the field. Figure out how to compel dragons to serve you? The enemy either gets their own or creates a hard countermeasure, like a dragon-slaying lance.

That's a campaign that plays itself. Intelligence operations, sabotage, reverse-engineering, abduction attempts, thefts, assassinations, open battles- it's a campaign scenario full of adventure, excitement, high stakes, glory- and defeat. That's a campaign that demands larger-than-life heroes to prove their worth, seize the controls, and lead their side to victory.

When you let the Paladin and the Cavalier design the mecha.

If you can handle doing BattleTech without the robots dominating play, you can do fantasy mecha just fine.

About Those Mecha Mooks

And if you're wondering about making monsters of them, oh boy do I have plenty to point you to. A sampler:

• Mechanical Beasts (Mazinger Z)
• Warrior Beasts (Great Mazinger)
• Mechasaurus (Getter Robo)
• Hyakki Beasts/Hyakki Robots (Getter Robo G)
• Dolem (RahXephon)
• Haniwa Phantoms (Steel Jeeg S1/New Steel Jeeg)

And that's not accounting for the tokukatsu series that also have plenty of fantasy mecha theme- and, AGAIN, this potential has been there since the beginning.

This is fantastic adventure campaign gaming. Stop whining about "genre lines" that DO NOT EXIST.