User:Almafeta/Mech A RPG contest reviews

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I am in the middle of ranking the various other entries in the Mech A RPG.

For the sake of curtosey, I automatically place myself at 0 in every category, but to be honest, I didn't enter this contest seriously thinking I'd win it... it was mostly to see whether or not I could design a RPG without a trace of 'furriness' in it. That it's unfinished isn't that important, it's a success in my eyes.

This page is still being written... Almafeta 14:20, 4 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Chargen[edit]

Dreadful Tide: Dreadful Tide is pointgen, on a reasonable budget of 100 points. The 'attributes' are Shadowrun-style dice pools that refresh every round: Combat, Social, Technical, Movement. (Shades of Instant Fuzion!) Skills are the Target Numbers you must roll equal to or less on from dice you spend from those pools. Pools range from 1 to 10, while Skills range from 1 to 9. A nice full list of special abilities follows, including Unkillable (15 points). A number of templates are included.

Extinction: Chargen is point-build attributes (20 points among Prowess, Agility, Endurance, IQ, and Charm) and Palladium-style limited skill selection, as well as selecting a Code, Loyalty, and Quest. Curiously, you also build a 'stronghold'.

Guerilla Earth: Chargen is point-buy, spending 200 points among four percentile attributes (the classic Body/Grace/Mind/Spirit split). Derived attributes include Anima (basically CoC-style sanity), Health (which, curiously, is based on Anima+Health/2), and Power (for espers). Skills are (Mind+Dexterity/10) skill points, with each skill point (up to 5) adding 10% to a base to get your level of skill. (Why not just have Mind+Dexterity skill points, up to +50%?) Specializations are worth 15% per skill point, not 10%. Cybernetics and psi are bought with points. A decent number of templates are included.

Mecha Wars: Odd combination of triangle-number and percentile system (all stats start at 10, cost to improve by 1 is equal to new attribute's tens digit). With 800 (!) points to divide among 9 attributes, that's an average attribute of 47... but you can just roll d% instead, which I strongly suggest. You get INT*10 skill points, and 1 skill point buys +1 in a skill.

  • 4 points: Guerilla Earth
  • 3 points: Mecha Wars
  • 2 points: Dreadful Tide
  • 1 point: Extinction

Combat[edit]

Dreadful Tide: Combat assumes a dot matrix over a map -- creative, I've never seen anything like this before. Humans and mecha take damage in a universal penalty chart; 10 hits destroys anything. Damage is in three scales: 'human' (x1), 'mecha' (x10), and 'starship' (x100).

Extinction: Initiative is creative, with skill checks being used to change your order in battle. Energy points are spent, then it's hit-me-hit-you. Shields subtract damage, then it comes off of Armor, and then stats (lowering Juice makes is less speedy, lowering Payload destroys items on it). Human combat isn't fleshed out.

Guerilla Earth: Standard I-hit-you, you-hit-me combat, with one notable exception: Critical hit rules. 10% of all rolls are criticals; critical successes take the target out of the fight; critical failures take the attacker out of the fight. Defense is rare, with dodges only being allowed if you haven't moved so far in a turn. Interestingly, while in a mecha, Will is used to dodge or defend -- a nice way to keep Dexterity from becoming too powerful.

Mecha Wars: Interestingly, Movement is done in reverse initiative, and attacks are done in normal initiative -- a nice way of showing how important Initiative is. Mecha power up with EP; attacks are 'Weapon Effectiveness Rating' + 1d10 versus 'Armor Factor' + 1d10; essentially, a random armor effectiveness system, adding another roll between the attack roll and damage dealing.

  • 4 points: Dreadful Tide
  • 3 points: Mecha Wars
  • 2 points: Extinction
  • 1 point: Guerilla Earth

Completeness[edit]

Completeness counts double.

Dreadful Tide: Holy cow. Far and away the victor in this category, it's 95 dense pages of stuff -- they made a commercial RPG without telling anyone.

Extinction: Extinction hits the 32-page goal exactly, which is worth a mention. However, it seems a little light on the content.

Guerilla Earth: 60 pages of content. Includes psi, sample mecha...

Mecha Wars: It's very heavy on the fiction and the background (14/37 pages), and it loses for it.

  • 8 points: Dreadful Tide
  • 6 points: Guerilla Earth
  • 4 points: Extinction
  • 2 points: Mecha Wars

Layout and Formatting[edit]

Dreadful Tide: Near-professional layout; some problems with table formatting, and some problems with tables or art going too close to the edge.

Extinction: Professional layout -- shouldn't this guy be working for White Wolf?

Guerilla Earth: Page numbers in the table of contents have nothing to do with the page numbers the information is on. It's formatted in landscape format.

Mecha Wars: Okay layout in the beginning, but the layout becomes more and more unwieldly towards the end.

  • 4 points: Extinction
  • 3 points: Dreadful Tide
  • 2 points: Mecha Wars
  • 1 point: Guerilla Earth

"Mechgen"[edit]

Setting[edit]

Setting counts double.

System Design[edit]

Totals[edit]

1st: Dreadful Tide (17 points) 2nd: Guerilla Earth (15 points) 3rd (tie): Extinction (10 points) 3rd (tie): Mecha Wars (10 points)