Wings Over the Pyre

06:43 am - In Escaflowne, the Mecha Wear Capes

I have committed the cardinal sin of geekdom.

I have crossed the streams.

I have mentioned Capes and Primetime Adventures on rec.games.mecha. On Usenet.

Just to set the stage, someone mentioned that Palladium was thinking of resurrecting the Robotech RPG franchise. Someone else replied that Robotech was just a Macek hack-job. This leads to ...

Devillin wrote:
> Ohhhh.... Okay... Then maybe you don't know... Robotech is being
> revived with a new movie, and possibly new series based off of
> that. Go to Robotech.com for details on the Shadow Chronicles.

Oh dear Hades below. Didn't they learn from *Zoids* that the mingling
of traditional cell animation and 3d CGI is throwing good money after
bad? And I say this as someone who /liked/ *Zoids*. The phrase "No good
can come of this" is frighteningly burned into my mind. With a massive
MAC-II monster laser mount.

(Not that there's much in the way of "news" there; there's not even a
synopsis. I'm wagering that it'll have about as much to do with the
*Robotech* we all know and love as, well, any of the three source anime
that went into the blenderized *Robotech* had with each other. Ie. for
those playing along at home, not a lot.)

> Wasn't telling him not to post. Just warning him from posting a
> "Robotech = Macek hack" umpteen bash. It's an argument that has
> been said and doesn't need to be made again. Those of us who care
> about Robotech, Series and Game, get tired of hearing that lame,
> boring,
> stupid bash everytime a discussion comes up about Robotech.

And some folk that care about *Robotech* actually care that Macek was a
hack. Assertion is not fact, regardless of the side it comes in on.

The original post was pretty content-free, but so has rgm been, for the
past few years.

> While a lot of us would love to see Palladium put out a truly unified
> Megaversal Ruleset that is universal across all Palladium books, the
> closest we will get at this point is an Ultimate Edition, like Rifts
> got.

That'll never happen, since that'd require the system to be rebuilt
from the ground up with consistency in mind, and that just won't work.
The source materials are simply too far out of joint to be rectified
and reified in such a manner. For good or ill, really, Palladium is a
2nd Generation RPG design with all the baggage that implies. We can do
better than that now, on multiple levels.

I actually go into some discussion of using *Capes*
(http://www.museoffire.com/Games/) for space-based SF action in my blog
(http://zamiel.livejournal.com/998094.html for the specific post). I
use *Battlestar Galactica* as my example, but you could just as easily
use *Robotech*, *Gundam*, or *Sol Bianca* as your basis. In fact, I
might make that today's write-up, just because I can and really need to
work on more *Capes* content. You could just as easily use *Primetime
Adventures* (http://www.dog-eared-designs.com/games.html) if you wanted
a less Player-conflict-level, more TV-series-like feel with a somewhat
more traditional GM structure.

The difference between these modern designs and the foregoing ones is
the vastly increased focus on the conflict-as-primary-element and a
concommitant reduction in the idea of mechanic-as-simulation. Mecha
literature doesn't treat things in a simulationist fashion. The fact
that giant metal war-machines can walk bipedally testifies to that
particular fact. So why focus the mechanics on the simulation of things
the story doesn't simulate? What is important is the conflict between
characters and how those conflicts are resolved, and that's what the
bulk of new game design is focusing on.

(Incidentally, damn it's amusing to be posting to rgm again. Its been
years. Nothing's changed here save the almost complete drying up of
content.)

As Eric the .5b says, "WARNING: Post Contains Snark."

I'm an old, old time poster to rgm, back in the days before it was Moderated ... or even rec.games.mecha. Never has it been a particular haven for folks with more than the mildest of Narrativist inclinations, to borrow from the Forge-speak Dictionary. And yet, here I am, crossing the streams of geek-centric motivations. When will I ever learn?

And yet ...

Anime, particularly mecha-centered anime, is never, ever about the simulation. The physicality of the mecha, aside from the fact it's big and roughly humanoid, is simply not important. Much like ammo in the stylized gun-fu combat of modern wuxia, the simulated properties of kinesics, square-cube rule, et alia, are elided from the narrative because they are not what the story is about. If they ever are introduced, it's because the issue is of importance because of what it allows to be said about the characters, not because the characters are saying it about the world. The mecha themselves are cyphers, manifestations of character through which the conflicts between people are enacted. And I don't meant the minor conflict of "Does he hit?" but much bigger ones, such as "Does she realize he loves her?" or "Can the enemy onslaught be stopped?"

To date, none of the major mecha-genre games have really tried tackling this kind of thing, partially because they were all written long before the modern move toward more narrative involvement became central, and partly because the authors have always been writing systems which double as war games under the hood. This applies equally to clunky 2nd generation designs like the Robotech RPG and newer, sleeker, 4th generation systems as embodied in the new DP9 Jovian Chronicles and Heavy Gear. In all cases, the focus is strong, almost exclusively, on Simulation -- and in my experience, to the detriment of the Narrative. (Again, I'm using Forge-speak. This is not because I particularly want to, but because it works, for the moment. And, yes, this should be a footnote. I really wish Semagic let me insert footnotes which link to later in the text. Sigh.)

But this needn't be the case.

Let's use Capes for the sake of argument. I could use PTA, but I don't have the PDF on my system and, frankly, that makes it annoying to try and make rules references anymore without the PDF living in a lovely frame right next to my post. But I digress.

Looking at the field of mecha-literature through a Capes lens, it's worth referring back to my post on space adventure in general, since all those tenets are applicable here, but more so. The big difference is the recognition that the focus in mecha Scenes is generally on the Conflicts between people on a personal level. As such, while, like space adventure, mecha are generally created as separate Characters, they often, even always, have Traits which tie back to the characters which frequently pilot them and their relationships.

As an example, lifting from Robotech, Max Sterling has a relationship with and eventually marries Miriya, a Zentradi combat pilot. As such, their Character sheets will very likely have Abilities like "Love For My {Wife|Husband}," but the mecha they pilot (such as the "Max Type" VF-1J) should definitely have Styles like "Protect My {Wife|Husband}" and should themselves have Exemplar Relationships to said mecha. As a result, when Max and Miriya are in Scenes together, whether it be together in person or fighting side-by-side in combat, Conflicts which take their emotional connections as the core will be frequent, and important.

A focus on the emotional environment of the people is what makes mecha anime different from stories which are just about a war without the intermediary of the iconic human represented by the giant robot. While such stories can be told, they're particularly rare in the genre. The closest to it may be VOTOMS, Even then, the war serves as a particularly stark backdrop for the conflicts between Chirico Cuvie and the desires and expectations of others.

It's getting early. I'm sure I'll come back to this topic later.

Current Mood: thoughtful