A Half-Cooked Narrativist Giant Robo Battle Mechanic

[AJ_Flowers]

So, though I haven't had one in ages, here is a crackpot design idea from me that may or may not go somewhere. 

A lot of my peer group is interested in giant robot type anime.  I like it too, but any time I see an RP system that involves giant robots in specific, they tend to get bogged down in a lot of game strategy or simulationist details. An example is something like Battletech that feels very number-crunchy to me.

Inspired by a conversation with a friend, I'm thinking about how someone would design a "giant robot combat" system with a narrativist agenda. Instead of being about "whose robot is tougher," it would be about writing an interesting story starring human or alien characters that happen to pilot giant fighting robots.  Think about a setting like Gundam or Evangelion.  A lot of times, the core of these stories is very emotionally driven from the characters, rather than statistically driven from the machines, even if technology is the cloak for what is happening in the fight. I think this poses an interesting challenge. This combat system is inspired a little by my experiences with the Poison'd RPG, and combat escalation in that system, and I'm trying to buck the trend of games in the robo genre, and envoke something story-heavy and rules-light.

So this is my potential design: The combat of the game is all about what you are willing to risk.

At character creation, choose 7 basic things that you are willing to risk.  These can be examples of physical things like "the arm of my mech" or "my mech's gun", or they can be less tangible things like "my reputation as a badass" or "suffering traumatic flashbacks."  One popular choice may be "minor injury to myself."  "Minor injury to my mech" is not an acceptable risk - it's a given. If you risk parts of the mech you must risk parts specifically, not generic cosmetic damage.

If you can't think of 7 seperate things, you can have some risks count for double.  When you toss down that risk, it means a lot more to you than a standard risk, but also gives you a better bonus. So, for example, if keeping your mecha's head is very important to you, then "the head of my mech" is a good double-risk.

In addition to that, there are three special risks.
The first special risk is "total destruction of my mech." If you risk this, your mech is forever destroyed and removed from play. You can get a different mech, though it should be significantly different. Some people with special mech will never want to take this risk.

The second special risk is "crippling injury to myself."  Crippling injury may mean emotional or physical injury. If it's a physical injury, it's something that you can survive, but which isn't easily reversed. Perhaps your character loses a limb, and has to get it replaced with a cybernetic one. If you decide to take a crippling emotional injury, that's OK too - the loss may drive you to depression and attempted suicide as a result of this battle.  However you choose to portray the crippling injury, it is a life-changing scenario that happens to your character and is not something totally reversable.  (If the GM for example decides that in this particular theme, limbs are easily vat-grown and reattached within a day, then using a limb as a crippling injury is no longer an acceptable risk.)

The final special risk is "everything." "Everything" includes the life of your character. If you make this risk, but lose the fight, you will die. If you make this risk, but win the fight, you may still die. See rules for special risks below.

This is a total of ten things you can risk.

To describe your mech: come up with a few adjectives that describe it.  For example, your mech might be "Well-Armored" or "Fast" or "Shooty."  You can't choose too generic of an adjective, like "Powerful" because that is somewhat meaningless. I'm thinking about special bonuses that different adjectives might give a mech, from a list, but right now I am trying to keep the flow very narrative and simple instead of bogging down in details about the machines themselves. You might also come up with adjectives about your pilot ("Stubborn," "Level-headed," etc) that would influence narration.

When all is said and done, each mech has just one numerical combat stat to describe it.  We'll call it Power.  A very crappy mech has only one Power. A typical heroic mech has five Power.  A world-destroying mech has ten Power.  This describes the mech very broadly, but combines with your adjective descriptions. So, for example, a very Agile mech may have the same Power as a very Heavy mech, but their attacks and methods are described differently. Or this number might be derived from a combination of the traits selected above, to make it more descriptive.

When the fight begins, initial risks are declared. Only standard risks, not special risks, may be declared in the opening phase. (You can only escalate in to the special risks, but everyone has the ability to choose those later if they desire.)  You would want to risk more if you thought the other mecha had a lot more power than you, or, if the fight is very meaningful to you. If the fight is not important, or you think you can defeat the other mecha easily, you don't tend to risk much to beat it.

To initiate a battle, create a die pool of D6 (Fudge dice may also work, but I'll assume the easy D6 for now), one die for each die of Power of your mech.  Add an additional die, of a different color, for everything you are willing to risk.  Roll against the opponent's pool of dice. Each roll will be referred to as a Clash.

The opponent with the highest total roll removes the lowest die from his pool. If that die was a Power die, this represents the damage to your mech (minor, cosmetic).  If that die was a risk die, rather than a power die, you lose the Risk, and it resolves. (If you have a tie on your lowest die, it's up to you which color you remove.)

Narrate what happens during this round of combat. This is usually initiated by the clash winner telling what he did, and the clash loser telling what he does in response.

Next round, the clash loser may choose to roll again with the same die pools and hope for a better result.  The system will tend toward the initial loser, or the one with the lowest power, being beaten down more quickly.  However, if the person who has lost adds an additional risk, or multiple risks, he can add those dice in to the pool as well.  This means an underdog can come from behind as long as he is willing to risk more to stay in the fight. Only the loser of a clash may add an additional risk to their next roll. The winner of a clash may not add dice.

Victory conditions I'm considering, but still unsure about: A loser of a clash may back off from a clash at any time without adding additional dice. At that point, the player with the most dice is considered the winner.  In this case, you do not have to have the least dice total to back off from the battle; you only have to have lost that particular clash.  If a villanous character did not risk much in a fight, and wants to save face, he can back off from a clash while he still has more dice than the other character, AND still declare himself "the victor."  Of course, if no one risked anything, this is somewhat meaningless, so it's probably smarter for a villain to declare the fight over after the hero has lost something important to him in a previous clash.

Since I'm still uncertain about the above, an easier solution is simply to say, you lose the fight when you run totally out of dice.  All of your risks resolve.  If you didn't take any special risks, you do not die, lose your mech, or get cripplingly injured.

Special risks: only happen if a player is down to his/her last die in the pool.

Once you are down to one die in your pool, you may keep rolling, back down, or, you may choose to invoke a special risk.  If you invoke "Crippling Injury" or "Loss of my mech," add your /entire Power stat/ back in to your combat pool.  All of these dice are added as Risk dice, not power dice. If even one of these dice is lost in further clashes, the Risk resolves.  You either destroy your mech, or are cripplingly injured, even if you actually win the final result of the battle.

If you risk Everything, add 10 Risk dice to your combat pool.  If any of these Risk dice are lost in further clashes, your character will die.  Note that, if you risk Everything, win OR lose, it's likely that your character is going to die, unless there was no reason to risk that in the first place.

To me, a special risk is only interesting to put in play if it is likely to happen, so, once one is tossed in, it's pretty likely to go down even if the character 'wins' his fight.

Allies should be able to pool their dice together to defeat tougher foes.  Still not sure how to handle it, however, since just combining pools at the scale I'm using doubles power very quickly.

Another special rule I'm thinking about after the main combat is balanced: there are two special types of characters, the Hero and the Heel.  A Hero is the protagonist of the story. Most stories only have one protagonist, but some have two or more or are considered ensamble casts.  The Heel is a main bad guy, or direct henchman of a main bad guy.  Characters who are not Heroes or Heels get no special type of flag, but should be the most common characters in the setting.

A Heel has a bonus to defeat an unflagged character. A Hero has a bonus to defeat a Heel. Possible variations: a bonus as long as that Hero has made at least two risks. Or, who is the Hero today may vary from session to session ('episode to episode') but there aren't more than one or two Heroes at a time.

I'm thinking this might work if I could cobble together some testers, but there might be something glaring about the idea that I am missing.  There would probably be social situations in the game requiring resolution as well, but generally, in a giant robo story, everything worth having a conflict over is worth having a conflict over in a giant robot.

[whiteknife]

I really, really like the way that system works. I think a little bit of trait incorporation/add dice for narration could do wonders to help make it feel more like your mech matters (even if the mechanics are the same).

While having specific mechanics for each kind of adjective (fast works different than tons o' guns) is a good idea, you don't necessarily need to go down that road if you make a good generic system for incorporating adjectives. An idea: make a small static bonus for incorporating your adjectives into the description, or allow for a bigger bonus if you risk the adjective as well. For example, I might incorporate my super-fast adjective a lot, but I can risk it (say by attempting a hyper-rush that might burn out my thrusters) for a bigger bonus. Anyway, just a thought.

A comment on the hero/heel idea: it's great too, and I could easily see it expand into a kind of class-esque system, where you pick your narrative role from the standard shonen anime archetypes (the hero, the support/love interest character, the knowledgeable friend/mentor, the anti-hero) and it gives you a different style of fighting/interacting with the story.

Other than that, I like it a lot. Not quite a full game (needs a little bit more meat) but overall it looks like a very solid foundation for a game.

I'm very interested to see where this goes!

[AJ_Flowers]

Thanks for your comments! I'm going to keep plugging away at this.  Now that I've slept on it, I think going "all in" might be too powerful as written, since it's supposed to be something used in dire emergencies only. I might revise it to read "take up to ten dice; if any of those dice comes up a 1, you will die (usually at the end of the fight)".  To discourage people from grabbing 10 dice casually.

The adjective incorporation is a good idea; I do think I need to work them in somehow so the machine matters but don't want to do it in a crunchy-stat way, since that's what I'm trying to get away from. Perhaps like you mention, if you risk a mecha's 'trait,' it gives you two dice, but then at the end of the round you lose an extra die regardless of how well it worked because you burned that thing out.

[Wordman]

The opponent with the highest total roll removes the lowest die from his pool...The system will tend toward the initial loser, or the one with the lowest power, being beaten down more quickly.

I'm missing something here. Though you don't say so, since higher power and adding risk give more dice, I assume the highest roll is the winner if the Clash. The bit above says, therefore, that the winner loses a die from his pool, but the loser doesn't. If the next Clash is done without any other pool alteration, doesn't that tend to equalize the fight, rather then put the loser on a downward spiral?

Maybe it's the opponent with the lowest total that loses their lowest die? Or am I missing something else?

[AJ_Flowers]

Ack! Silly typo. I did mean, lowest total removes the lowest die.

[whoknowswhynot]

I am not a fan of anime, but love big robots (I mean, come on!) and I don't like crunchy ultra realistic systems, especially when giant robot battles should be fast and deadly.  This system makes the concept of combat a more personal thing~not players versus game system versus characters.  I am not knowledgable of a lot of indie RPG designs through the years (I have been too preoccupied with my own) but I have to say that I have not seen one like this before and I love it so much I would adopt it for the system of task resolution in my own game had I not already commited to my current system.  Kudos!