Macross Roleplaying Survery

[Roy Focker]

This survery is for anyone who has played or wanted to play Robotech/Macross RPG. I have theories which I like to see data to back up.

What kind of games (setting, theme) interested you? Was their a specific era, a certain type of mecha, a rule system and etc. When you played or if you still do what were your perferences. I for one never got tired of flying Valkyries in the Space War One.

[Cruel Angel's Thesis]

Setting never really was a big issue for me. Any setting will work for me, i usually see what the setting is then craft the chara for that game. However I did have a idea of running a mekton game at DDC for a while now. It would've been pitting a Valkyrie fighter wing (15 fighters) against a entire base that have been run over by Zentran. The premise was stupid and I have been refining so its not as dumb, but the base was one of the few that had a good chance of surviving the bombing. The best one i could think of was AFFTC Det.3, better known as Area 51. I had gotten pretty far with the enemies being faced, need to actually dig it back up and refine it to work as a game. Not to mention i never had to money to go to DDC to run it.

Another one was the one working out with a few guys on MW before my shedule got messed up. The setting was a base after Space War One. So it allowed players dealing with remaining Zentran forces, Anti-UN forces seeing their chance and so forth. I thought up a lot of things for it, but with my work schedule as it is, actually doing it is a dream right now.

The rule system would be Mekton with some of the Gundam Senki ideas. Turn Value for turns, minimium speed rule, ACE Custom (actually worked out the multipliers for it with Tsuneo since he just said a mech had it in Gundam).

Since i have never gotten my ideas off the ground due to real life I can't really said what i would've enjoyed. When i do I'll let you know.

I also think flying valkyries in Space War One would be great too.

Cruel Angel's Thesis

[valk1j]

I've GM'ed 2 Macross RPG's. The first one took place around 2020, and included VF-1, VF-4, and VF-5000. It was based around a Megaroad colony ship looking for a world to settle. The characters ran into an enemy during this journey and had to use diplomacy, fighting and a little bit of singing to get through it. There was a love triangle too. It ran for about a year of about once a week meetings.

The second RPG is on hiatus, and takes place around 2045 on a colony planet. The characters had been dealing with a pirate group who were well armed. That has come to a conclusion and I don't want to say to much about the rest of my plans, as a member here is part of the game. The characters started out in VF-1X's, then to VF-4's, then went into a special ops squad flying VF-11's.

I use the d20 system. Pulling ideas from d20 Star Wars, d20 mecha, and d20 modern. I then came up with some of my own rules to fix some of the problems we ran into during combat.

I do have some ideas to start a Macross Zero based game after this one is over.

[Penguin]

Well, I've run three Macross campaigns to date. The first two both used modified Palladium rules (as I wasn't sick of them as I am now) and leveraged Dave Deitrich's venerable Macross Mecha designs (as I wasn't as Macross-savvy as I am now). The most recent used Dream Pod 9's Silhouette system and my own mecha statistics.

The first campaign was a short one circa 2020 following a group of new recruits through their first couple of postings. It didn't last too long, and was more of a play test for the Palladium rule mods I'd developed.

The second one lasted for quite a while, following a single squadron, the "Black Diamonds" (leading to all manner of jokes since Black Diamond is a brand of cheese here in Canada), through a couple of generations. It began during the UN wars, with a UN Air Force squadron flying F-203s (and, at one point, Commancheros to intercept Anti-UN tanks). Later, the squadron was absorbed into the Spacy, went through some flight training on SF-3s, then got their hands on the VF-1. They were on the SDF-1 throughout the TV series, taking part in the major series battles and a side story or two. In this continuity, the CO of the squadron became CAG of the SDF-1 after Roy's death (while Hikaru still became leader of Skull) and had some notoriously loud "discussions" with Global over fighter deployments. After the end of SW1, the story moved forward 15 years to the newest members of the squadron, now equipped with VF-5000s, while some of the old PCs were promoted and appeared as NPCs. The campaign petered out after the new squadron defeated a terrorist organization on the colony world of New Alexandria.

The third campaign is currently on hiatus, but not dead. It followed another group of recruits as they were asssinged to fly VA-3Ms in a UNS Marines squadron circa 2050, once again on New Alexandria. The campaign built off the story elements of the previous one, and involved an embittered General who hired mercenaries to stage a crisis on the planet in order to increase his own prestige when he defeated the threat. After much subterfuge and furious firefights both in the sky and on the ground, the PCs managed to survive an ambush that killed most of their squadron, uncover the General's duplicity, and pull together the disparate UN units around the colony to overthrow the General and his cronies.

After that, my players expressed dissatisfaction with the character description in Silhouette. They like the mecha rules, but wanted more variety and crunchy bits for the character descriptions. To this end, we decided on d20 Modern for the base system, so I'm enmeshed in creating dogfighting rules for d20 Modern and a mecha system somewhere between Silhouette's and the Guardians of Order d20 Mecha rules.

Edited December 12, 2006 by Penguin

[wldr]

Due to the fact that I am not a big fan of changes to the Macross time line of events, I tend to like a game's time line to take place after space war one, or in a setting that allows more freedom to the GM to create a unique story. This allows the PCs to play a focal role in the completion of the major events without stepping on the toes of the characters that were developed in the original Macross time lines. This I think gives the players more of a sence of pride when they finally manage to come out on top in the end, or get blasted into space dust to the detrement of all those depending on them.

[sketchley]

Penguin, sounds like you had a very good run with those two games. Very interesting plots.

Wldr, don't feel bad about revising the SDF:M/DYRL storylines. The officials do it all the time with them in video games about it.

[wldr]

Penguin, sounds like you had a very good run with those two games. Very interesting plots.

Wldr, don't feel bad about revising the SDF:M/DYRL storylines. The officials do it all the time with them in video games about it.

That's true Sketchley, but that doesn't meen that I have to do it. I didn't say I was against it because changes to the original made me feel bad. I said it because I think making too many changes to the Macross universe could cause problems. If you change the wrong things, it would be the same as playing an RPG of StarWars where you take the Empire completely out of the time line, if you know what I meen.

Edited December 15, 2006 by wldr