Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

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Chiiro
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Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Chiiro »

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Right. So, for a while now I've been enjoying myself grandly together with the people participating in Anna' Exalted campaigns.
Lately though, I've felt like trying something new. Exalted's a nice setting, but I want to bite into something different, and I'd like to pull the strings.

So that's why I've been thinking of running my own campaign, in a different system and a different setting. This is something I've been tossing back and forth on the #Exalted IRC channel and occasionally on #BSF as well, so some people there already have an idea of what I was planning. Figured I'd share my musings with the forum today, as well as see if anyone is actually interested.


SYSTEM

The system I've decided on giving a try is Mekton Z, a system that lends itself well to anime-esque mecha settings with extensive rules for creating your own vehicles of different kinds. In case you're really curious about the rules you can hop on #WyrdysmMZ on Rizon. (In case you're not used to IRC there's the Rizon webchat for easy access)

In case you're only mildly interested, I'll give you a quick rundown~

Statistics and skills in Mekton Z are pretty simple, there are only nine stats and one sub-stat however there are tons of skills.
Stats range from 2 to 10, skills range from 0 to 10. Skills can go as high as 15 by spending Improvement Points.
Whenever you need to roll something, you pick the stat and skill most appropriate for the attempted action and add them, and finally you roll 1D10 and add that. Contested rolls against other players are resolved by both players following the rolling procedure and the one with the higher result wins the contest. When not rolling against another player you simply rolls against a difficulty, ranging from 10 to 30. (Tasks under a difficulty of 10 would be so easy there'd be no need to roll it)

Improvement Points are Mekton Z's measure of experience, you can spend these on points in skills. IP can be earned in three ways, studying, being taught, and Direct Experience. IP from studying and being taught is given by the GM when you do things in character that warrant learning things, while Direct Experience is awarded to you by the GM for doing awesome shit. There are two kinds of characters, Rookies and Veterans. Rookies get double IP from 'direct experience'. Veteran's get a bunch of other advantages, like a higher number of starting skills if I'm recalling things correctly.

The rules for movement and combat are a little tricky, I won't go into them. You move in a hex grid, though and I think I'll be using a program called gametable to keep track of things. There are facings and fire arcs, generally this means you can only shoot in front of you and would have to turn around to fire behind you.

The mecha creation rules? Oh they're extensive. I'm not going to go into detail on them because it'd take all day, but I'll give you a quick rundown. First, you build the frame from 'Servos', these are arms and legs and heads and things. Then you apply armor, auxiliary components like escape pods etc, weapons, and when you're done calculating the whole weight you can add thrusters. It's not all that likely that you'd be designing your own mecha when we start the campaign, but eventually you'll be allowed.

There's a ton more, but most of it are for special circumstances and won't be important to the players. It looks pretty nice, all in all.



SETTING

The setting is something I've built myself over the last few weeks.

It's a world, much similar to earth, with plants and animals much like earth, inhabited with humans much like earth. This is mostly for simplicity, I imagine most of you know how humans act and how to react to earthly animals and plants.
The geography isn't that of earth, because this really isn't the same planet just a very similar one. The whole solar system it's in is different, although the sun is pretty much like our Sol. Not much of note about the solar system, we've got two moons circling around our 'earth' but they're mostly rock.
There's one planet, the next planet away from the sun, which is capable of supporting life. It's got some flora and fauna, but most of it is sparse and the whole planet is a bit colder than our 'earth'.

Technology is more advanced than what we have. There's a pretty extensive network similar to the internet, but its sadly not available everywhere.
Space travel is possible, even relatively common and safe, but nobody ever really goes further than the outmost moon. Satellites are a common thing, spy satellites, comm satellites, even one giant solar powerplant attached to the planet by orbital elevator.
Tanks, fighter jets, naval ships and such are all more formidable than what we have on earth, though the real difference is the most flexible weapon available to man; the mecha.

Mecha in the setting come in tons of varieties, models, variations and brands.
Some nations manufacture mecha and sell them to others, these are typically rather cheap compared to the more high-end mecha used and manufactured by powerful nations.
Mecha are most commonly used in the southern parts of the world, especially in the Southern State Coalition where every yahoo with a bit of cash can make a living on fighting off bandits as a mercenary.

In contrast to the cheaper kinds of mecha, there's the Chevalier and the Cuélebre.
The Chevalier is a type of mecha developed, manufactured and employed by the Kingdom of Rouel, a faux-monarchy in the northwest regions of the planet. Tradition, honor and ceremony has long been the backbone of Rouel society, and this is mirrored in the knightly appearances of their mecha. The Chevalier has more than just aesthetical differences from typical mecha however, they pack higher tech and material quality overall with a control system that has some base in neural interfacing.
The Cuélebre is the modern day pinnacle of mecha engineering. Half machine, half living creature, it is the result of extensive R&D by the Holy Empire of Hamatep. A giant mechanical frame, more articulate and flexible than a human being, set in motion by artificial muscles and controlled directly by the pilots nervous system.

Those three factions mentioned up above are the 'main players' of the setting.
SSC, Rouel and the Holy Empire. They're all different, vastly different, both in military design philosophy, culture, and societal structure.
In the SSC, cash is king. Corporates more or less run the smaller nations that make up the Coalition, and their armies consist of mercenaries and company-owned militias.
In Rouel, the king is king. Though he's not really in charge, he's still the biggest public figure on the planet. Ceremony and honor are big with these guys, they even have knightly orders still, those shiny little bastards.
In the Holy Empire, Science is GOD. Seriously, there's a whole church devoted to the worship of man and his elevation above all through science. Oh yeah, this church rules the whole empire, scientist families are priests and statesmen and the emperors bloodline is always schooled in the sciences as well as different social studies from the age of three, the emperor is more of a shadow-figure than the king is. The figureheads of the empire are teh high priests, these are five guys each from one of the highest scientist houses as well as one elected leader making them six in total.
I'll be updating this post with more in-depth details on the factions as I smoothen out my notes into decent files.

The world is in conflict anyway, natural resources are starting to draw a little thin and everyone wants everything for themselves. You know how people are. Also, there are rumors of the empire messing around with some really sketchy science that nobody likes hearing about, the whole world's sorta glaring at them right now.



CONCLUSION

What I want to do here, is to see if there's any interest in doing this at all. I hope I didn't bore you with all that text up there, but I felt like it was neccesary.
So I've got two questions to ask you.
Would you be interested? Don't worry I'm not asking you to commit just yet, just checking for interest.
And if you are interested, what faction do you think you'd prefer playing in? The SSC low-tech zerg faction, Rouel mid-tech royal knight faction, or the science zealots of the Holy Empire? Please note that there will be pros and cons to each faction.

That's pretty much it. Sessions would probably be held once to twice a week on a flexible schedule. Also if there's enough interest, I could considere running two smaller parties, fighting on opposite factions.
Also feel free to ask questions, I don't bite. Not hard anyway.



TL;DR

Making an RPG setting, need players. You up for it? You can play as mercs, knights or zealots, let me know which one's your favorite!
Last edited by Chiiro on Tue Jun 22, 2010 10:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Arcalane »

A vote for the SSC/Rouel here.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Silverware »

Personally I like the idea of the Science Zealots, but for sheer fun factor, the merc's of the SSC.
Im sure there are salvaging rules, that either exist or could be created, to allow us to improve our Mecha past factory standard. Maybe manage to scavenge a Neural interfacing system =P
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Latooni »

Oh man, I can't decide between the Empire and Rouel.

I really, really like the possibilities offered by both.

I'm not sure which I'd rather pick, honestly.

I guess I'll put Empire first and Kingdom second, but if it ends up being SSC vs Kingdom, definitely choose Kingdom.

Also, interested in playing and probably going to choose Rookie, since I've usually gone Vet in the past. Most interested in either ECM/ECCM role (Dragonar-3ish) or mechanic-pilot. But I'm willing to change roles if the team has a gap.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Cynsye »

I like the idea of the SSC, like the asthetic.. but have to say would prefer the Empire to actually play. A mechanic-pilot sounds fun, though I would have to play as a "professional" type.. damn kids playing with giant robots :D.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Preacher »

the empire would have to be my fave here everyone loves to be a zealot! but this seems pretty popular so SSC would do nicely.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Chiiro »

Silverware wrote:Personally I like the idea of the Science Zealots, but for sheer fun factor, the merc's of the SSC.
Im sure there are salvaging rules, that either exist or could be created, to allow us to improve our Mecha past factory standard. Maybe manage to scavenge a Neural interfacing system =P
There aren't really any scavenging rules in the core book, as fas as I'm aware of. Regardless of if there were, I don't think I'd be going with them since I have my own plans for scavenging.
It takes a whole bit of R&D to reverse engineer high-tech equipment, something the SSC likely won't have enough resources to do on any grander scale. Learning from enemy tech, though, definitely possible.

Technical advancement will be ticking along as the campaign goes on, salvaging enemy tech will put you at an advantage later on.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Droid »

Yes, interested.
Voting for SCC/Rouel.

Favouring SCC cause it seems more...gritty.


After reading rulebook, have to go with Rouel/Empire.
Last edited by Droid on Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:59 am, edited 2 times in total.
Chiiro
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Chiiro »

Updated with a poll. Also for all interested, I am working on a couple of more detailed faction descriptions. I'll try having them here within the next 12 hours. (Possibly sooner depending on how hard I can work :V)
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by AidanAdv »

I'm definitely interested.

I'm for Empire or Rouel.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Verminator »

Rouel for sure. This sounds like the sort of thing I can use to fill the huge amounts of spare time I've suddenly been cursed with, so as long as this gets running fairly soon count me in.
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Imaillusion »

Since I'm a greedy bastard, I'm going for SSC. If that fails, Rouel
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by AlphaDetisMegas »

I'm certainly interested, SCC sounds the most interesting, otherwise, Rouel sounds interesting.
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Chiiro
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Chiiro »

Well those "12 hours" didn't really happen. I misjudged the amount of notes I had, the amount of sleep I'd need and how distracted I'd get.
Here's the first file though. It covers most basic things about the empire. If things are unclear, ask questions. Also, the Gametable server is running more or less constantly at the moment in case you want to try out combat rules. Drop by #WyrdysmMZ on Rizon and I'll toss you the IP.

Finally, I'm working on a list of houserules to fix some things mekton Z does that could probably be exploited pretty badly.

EDIT: Here's a .rtf version of the file, in case you can't read .doc
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Chiiro
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Re: Interest Check - Potential System and Setting

Post by Chiiro »

Just to bump with a quick update. The file for Rouel are shaping up, the SSC one is a bit away from being done.
Also, we have a wikia. Right here.
That should get updated with any information, such as the faction files as well as important people, places and mecha schematics.
Fly me to the moon, so I can play among the stars~
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars~
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