User:Almafeta/Mech A RPG contest reviews

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 02:52, 4 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Chargen

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

Completeness

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. 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

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

Setting

Setting counts double.

Totals

1. Dreadful Tide: 13 points.
2. Guerilla Earth: 11 points.
3. Extinction: 9 points.
4. Mecha Wars: 7 points.