The Campaign: When The Cathedral Marches To War

(Following from this post.)

Introduction

Yesterday I talked of mecha as something you wear. Today we look at the far more common paradigm where it is something you drive.

Most mecha anime, manga, etc. use the robot-as-vehicle paradigm; this includes BattleTech some units in ExoSquad. While most of these are single-user machines, some take advantage of the fact that vehicles can have crews; we see this most often in the Super Robot shows that do the Combiner trope- starting with Getter Robo in 1974.

Making such automata is going to be, like the wearing sort, more complex than just making a golem. It's going to be more expensive, in both time and materials (abstracted in terms of Gold Piece terms). It can also become more complex by adding additional operators to the machine, much like how training the crew of a war elephant or chariot is more costly and complex than a single knight.

For the purpose of clarity, I shall refer to robot-you-drive as a Drivable or Vehicle sort here.

The Walking Siege Engine

With few exceptions, the truly giant-sized robots of fantasy mecha are Drivable sorts. As the Panzer World Galient clip shows, most units put their cockpit in the chest and not the head. In a fantasy adventure context, what you see in that clip is how they are often deployed: as siege engines and anti-giant/anti-dragon weapons. Typically there is just one pilot, but that is not a hard limit (see the SpaceMace 39K picture above for a well-known example of a crewed Drivable). Some ranged attacks are common in the source material, but they are not required; being giant-sized is sufficient if they are also well-protected against a defender's attempts at demolition.

There is one other thing to note about Drivable mecha: they need not be humanoid.

There is no reason for why the legends of a powerful dragon in the mountains couldn't be the lair of a dragon-shaped fantasy Drivable mecha. We already have "Ancient Aliens" as a backstory in a lot of classic series (e.g. Steel Jeeg, Raideen, Grendizer) and there is a short hop between "Ancient Aliens" and "Fallen Civilization" so far as a justification for magics otherwise unseen in a campaign milieu- again, we have Blackmoor and Greyhawk as precedent.

They are meant to deal with threats that ordinary men-at-arms or magicians are ill-fated or unable to address- including enemy mecha, obviously, which will become evident as soon as the secrets to their construction escape containment.

That's Nice. About That Making Thing.

The Referee should start with adding together the costs--in time and gold--for a comparable siege engine, structure, or vessel with that of an iron or stone golem. If the mecha is to wield weapons or other attack forms, those need to be built into the design and thus add to the time and gold costs. In this respect, a Drivable is similar to a Wearable.

What is not is that, as a thing that you drive, making it something capable of allowing spell-casting is nigh-impossible. It also, being something that can have a crew, can do more than one thing in a round of combat provided that command and control is maintained.

And, unlike Wearables, Drivables can be as simple as a pair of legs with a control box. Imagine a Battering Ram or Sow mounted on robot legs--two or four--with a man on top driving it like it was a wagon; that's entirely within the capacity of a Magic-User and his team of expert hirelings.

And it is a short step from "robot animal" to "reanimated animal skeleton"; necromantic mecha are definitely on the table.

And At The Table

The Drivable is far more likely to be found as an encounter than as treasure; the means to make them--specifically, a Manual--could be found as treasure by being added as an option for what a Golem Manual could be.

Note: Many mecha series, in whatever media, have specific terms for their mecha. Being as we're basing, in rules terms, our creations off the Golem rules I suggest we call them such or a derivative thereof until someone comes up with something better. (Oh, and if you think they have to be inorganic, they don't; Attack On Titan is all about organic mecha and automata.

Tomorrow we finish the topic off.