Not Evangelion: Pilot roles

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Hello there, I'm a long-time-lurker first-time-poster.  

My current project is an rpg based off of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

For those that don't know, neon genesis evangelion is an anime series about children piloting giant robots to defend tokyo-3 from giant monsters called angels.  Its rather dark and mysterious and as it happens I don't really like it much.  Or rather I don't like the exectution.  The ideas and concepts behind it I love and I'm making an rpg system to suit them.  I've tried to boil it down to the fundamentals and then provide guidelines on how to develop it from there - hence 'not evangelion' (working title)

The game will focus on the development of the characters whilst more and more about what exactly is going on is set in stone.  Central to the idea is that all of the pilots are a little f*cked up and in a highly stressful situation to boot.  Their personalities and convictions should change during the series.

Play will be very structured, for example the first episode is always going to be the pilots meeting each other in Tokyo-3 as well as fighting as a group for the first time.  The game will be about half acting on a human scale, dealing with social issues and half fighting the angels.  There will be no investigation or discovery aspect as that will be handled by the player's staff character)

During the game the players have two characters.  They act directly through their pilots while using their staff member to exercise authorial control over the setting and plot.  By its very nature, Eva doesn't start with all of its cards on the table and I can see one group having a series where the angels turn out to be cthulhu-style elder-gods, another where they are bio-engineered alien war machines and another where thay are actually god's vengeance against humanity.

What I'm looking for at them moment is help with the pilot roles.  I'm unhappy with a few of the names (especially "Entheusiastic") and would like any ideas for new roles, or how I might condense any that are too similar into one.  I want the roles to be fairly specific - the choice of role is the main choice for the character.

By the way - the 'challenged by' section of the role is details on where the character makes a stress check gainst their conviction stat.  If they fail on the check they lose a point of conviction, if the succeed then they gain a point of stress (just a guage).  At X stress points they snap.  A character who loses it is not retired sorcerer-style but goes through some kind of immediate personal crisis that, if resolved either 'heals' some stress points or removes all stress and gives them a new role.

I considered having a positive coutnerpart to the stress trigger, but decided that it didn't fit the theme - in Eva, characters gain strength by regecting their old viewpoint in favour of a new one.

Finally people familiar with the series will notice that the first five roles are (in order) Rei, Asuka, Shinji, Toji and Kensuke.


PILOT CREATION:

All pilots are children born immediatly after the second impact (14-15 years old) and have no mother.  Pilots start the game in Tokyo 3 - possibly after being moved there.  And have already fought their first angel.  Choose the pilot's role from the list below and decide roughly what happened in their first battle.

PILOT ROLES:

Clone - You were genetically engineered to be a pilot, you've been groomed for it since birth.  Your life has no meaning outside of piloting the eva.
Challenged when you start to care about things other than piloting.

Prodigy - You know that you're the best and you're going to prove it by being the best pilot there is.  Those angels don't stand a chance.
Challenged if anyone defeats you in a fair contest.

Passive - You pilot because thats what everyone expects you to do.  Its the path of least resistance.  You don't like what you do, but you don't want to let everybody down.
Challenged when you go your own way.

Vengeful - The angels took your family from you and now they're going to pay, taking orders from NERV is a small price to pay for a chance to punish them.
Challenged when you start to enjoy life again.

Mecha nut - You have to pilot a giant robot to fight off invading aliens and save the world?  How cool - it's just like a video game!
Challenged when things start going wrong and it isn't fun any more.

Pacifist - You don't want to fight, but they say that if you don't pilot the eva into battle thousands of people will be killed.  Its self defense isn't it?
Challenged when you are forced to solve a problem by violence.

Coerced - NERV has a hold on you and you deren't refuse them.  You have to do what they tell you but you'll fight them all the way.
Challenged whenever you submit to NERV without a fight.

Orphan - You've got nothing left but NERV has taken you in.  Its almost like a new family.  You're eager to please but sometimes you wonder if they're just using you.
Challenged whenever NERV treats you like their employee rather than their child.

Military - Whenever your father received a new posting, you had to follow.  But it turns out you're the one NERV wanted.  Make your father proud.
Challenged when the military way of doing things doesn't work.

Enthusiastic - Your eva is wonderful and you love piloting it.  Being found by the Marduk institute was the best thing that ever happened to you.
Challenged when your Eva acts on its own.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hi, Thomas.

I think first of all, you should be aware that licensed properties aren't supposed to be discussed in Indie Design.  Now, if you're designing a game that takes ideas from Evangelion, but isn't "The Evangelion RPG", then it's fine, but you should clearly state that that's the case. That said, don't worry about it too much in reference to this thread; just take note of it for the future.

That said, I like the idea of Stress and Conviction, but where does Conviction come from and what does it do?

[Enoch]

I believe there are two 'official' NGE RPGs already.  One I believe is a GURPS (I'm not certain about this though) adaption.  The other is actually a card game, with role-playing aspects.

Both are in Japanese unfortunately (and from what I hear, the GURPS version completely misses the mark.

A personal plug, I am working on a super-hero type game inspired by anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Go here.  There's about a page or two of text, not much else at the moment.

-Joshua[/url]

[Thomas Tamblyn]

I wondered about the issue of it being a licensced property, but this wasn't actually meant to be a literal Eva Rpg, but rather an RPG designed so that evangelion might be a series that would result from playing this game.  Just like Schism is not literally the Cronenberg film XX Rpg, but an rpg designed to give rise to Cronenberg-like stories.

Inbcidentaly, my inspiration does run beyond evangelion, I just figured that it is the simplest way to sum up what I'm after.

I'm sorry for not having made this clear, the idea is that the setting starts relatively blank in both the minds of the characters and the players and evolves through play as things are defined by player and Gm narration.

The core starting points are:
1) A post-apocalyptic setting with m,ankind just recovering.
2) Children groomed from birth to pilot war machines.
3) An utterly alien (as in unknowable) threat that can only be defended against by these children.
3) The growth and changes of these children as they fight.
4) Conspiracy and mystery.

The eva-specific terms (evas, angels, NERV, Marduk etc) are there as placeholders, I just find it easier to think in terms of those until I settle on the final ones (at the moment I'm looking at the Beowulf myth as inspiration for some of the 'up-front' symbology to be presented in the game.  To make things a little clearer, I'll put all the eva-=specific terms in brackets from now on to remind that they are only placeholders.

As for where conviction comes from - its one of the pilot's stats along with Synchronisation (how well the (eva) responds to you) and Constitution (General ability on a human scale).  The player's staff character only has one stat, Rank which basically determines the authority of a player's narration through their staff character.

The stats other than conviction and stress shouldn't fluctuate too much.  Synch goes down by one if you pilot a different (eva) to reflect the unfamiliarity of the intertface as well as losing tougch with your original one.  Rank can go down (your staffer loses authority) if you use your narration to remove another player's pilot's ability to act (if your staffer's interfertence hinders completion of the mission).

Hopefully that's helped to show more clearly what I'm aiming for, so I'm open to any ideas - hmm, looking at my original post it looks like I actually pasted in far too much of what I wrote down when I was trying to deconstruct Eva into its fundamental elements - very sorry for the confusion.

I also feel I should mention the idea behind defining the pilot's first battle - rather than detailing the pilot's personality within their role in a standard manner, it's an idea to just say "Your character has defeated an (angel) already.  How did they do it?"  THis way the characters are all immediatly comparable and personality is already focussed on on how it appliues to at least half of the what will be going on in play (not to mention giving the Gm a covert idea of what the players are looking to happen in play).

Joshua - I had a look at you site, but I couldn't really get a clear idea of what the idea of your setting was - so far all I see is a (pretty nifty) rational behind the creation of super-humans.  I'd certainly be interested in seing where that goes.

[Mike Holmes]

The eva-specific terms (evas, angels, NERV, Marduk etc) are there as placeholders, I just find it easier to think in terms of those until I settle on the final ones (at the moment I'm looking at the Beowulf myth as inspiration for some of the 'up-front' symbology to be presented in the game.  To make things a little clearer, I'll put all the eva-=specific terms in brackets from now on to remind that they are only placeholders.

That sounds close to the line, but you may bet away with it. I'm sure the moderators will let you know if you step over the boundaries.

OTOH, you ought to consider changing the terms soon. Because it seems to me that in changing the terms that you have some real opportunity for creativity and expansion. See, instead of just calling angels, say, skysent or somesuch and leaving things identical to the inspiration, take the term that you select and fit the concept to the term in a new way. Like, if you were to drop Tokyo-3, and replace it with Phoenix Tokyo, you could then describe just why it's called that. Perhaps some bio-weaponiod came down and used atomic fury to decimate Tokyo, and simultaneously accidentally caused strange genetic recombinations that caused strange abilities to apear. The point is that in defining your terms you have an opportinity to create somethign unique, and better than the inspiration from which the idea comes.

So I can only say go for it.

As for where conviction comes from - its one of the pilot's stats along with Synchronisation (how well the (eva) responds to you) and Constitution (General ability on a human scale).  The player's staff character only has one stat, Rank which basically determines the authority of a player's narration through their staff character.

Hold on. So the stat is the player's essentially, and they have multiple characters to drive the ability in-game? Interesting. Sounds like it would empower just what you're going for.

So, are staffers something like "Basil Exposition"? They create setting and situation which the characters then attend to? That sounds very neat. Like Paranioa, but you also get to conrol the Computer to an extent (oops, here come the Vulture guards now).

As for the Pilot types, they sound very good to me. Concise now, but you still get the idea. What do you see as the problem? Passive and Pacifist seem a little similar, but the differing Challenged condition makes all the difference.

Does a pilot that's "snapped" get to change types? Like going from Enthusiastic to Vengeful?

Here's a couple of new ones, maybe. Again, some seem similar to other archetypes, but the Challenge thing is what differentiates. Note how Destined is actually the opposite of Prodigy. Hope some of them are useful:

Destined - Everyone just knows that YOU are the one. But you're not so sure. On the other hand, how can you let them down?
Challenged when you succeed and prove that you are "the one".

Black Hearted -  Something happened that made you hate the world. Now you destroy things because it's the only thing that makes sense.
Challenged when you find something to care about.

Cyborg - Half human, half machine, you've been boosted to be an intelligent interface with your machine. Feelings are something from the past to be put aside so you can do your job.
Challenged when human feelings come up.

Patriot - you have a moral obligation to defend humanity. People who are not with the plan are against you.
Challenged when authority figures come up lacking.

Mercenary - you'll fight, but only so long as you get what you want. You're out for you, and only you.
Challenged when you do something for someone else.

Vigilante - you fight, but only on your own terms. You aren't part of the structure, as it limits what you can do.
Challenged when someone helps you successfully.

Crusader - the fight takes on a holy overtone for you. It is a quest that must be accomplished, and which the forces of the universe would not allow you to fail at.
Challenged when setbacks occur.

Bully - you like to beat up on weak things and prove your superiority to them. Other people exist to do what you want them to do, and now you've got the power to make 'em.
Challenged when faced with a foe that doesn't back down.

Sneak - the best way to get things done is by backstabbing, or dealing under the table. People can't be trusted, so why should you be trustworthy.
Challenged when you encounter honest acts.

Supporter - you are a good follower, part of the team. You do what you're told and never try to take center stage leaving that for the real stars.
Challenged when given individually important assignments.

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

Hi Thomas, and welcome to the Forge!

Hey, this is fun.

Elite – You come from a superior class or family; such privilege gives you the ability – and the responsibility – to fight for those less favored.
Challenged when a person of humbler origin bests you or gives you needed assistance.

Salt of the Earth – You're nothing special. You have a job to do and you do it. Anyone else would do the same.
Challenged when others admire you.

Naive – Like many adolescents, you have a very strong sense of what is and is not fair. It's the only way to feel in control over the chaos around you. Subterfuge, rule-breaking, or dishonorable tactics on either side make you indignant, and you'd rather be at a disadvantage than use such tactics yourself.
Challenged when you're harmed by others not playing by the "rules."

Rebel – You don't owe NERV any obedience, and they can't really punish you as long as they need you to help protect the earth. The better you pilot, the more misbehavior you can get away with without fear of being kicked out.
Challenged when others come to harm due to your misbehavior.

Romantic – You're young, hot, and routinely in mortal danger. You expect -- perhaps even intend? -- to die a heroic death in action. In the meantime, there are thrills to experience and hearts to break.
Challenged when you have reason to hope for the future.

Impassive – You've survived by shutting down your emotions, becoming almost as much a machine as the mech you pilot.
Challenged when you become passionate about something in your life, whether it's piloting or anything else.

Scion – Your famous father was one of the best, in his day. You hope to live up to the expectations that come from being his offspring. But you fear that you cannot.
Challenged when you succeed in an unexpected area.
(This one's mandatory for all anime, isn't it?)

Innovator – Training and practice is all well and good, but the enemy has a way of adapting to old established tactics. The only way to win is to always attempt the unexpected, even if your side is sometimes as surprised by them as the enemy. You hate doing the expected or routine, in daily life as well as when piloting.
Challenged when your innovations go wrong.

Rename "Passive" to "Conformist" if you want to distinguish it more clearly from "pacifist."

The "challenged" condition for Enthusiastic suggests that the reason the character loves piloting is the sense of power and control. So you might call it Power Trip or something to that effect.

I agree with Mike that differences in the Challenged condition make all the difference even when there are general similarities (such as between Clone and Impassive). This suggests that it's probably possible to come up with quite a few more roles. Is there some reason you want to limit the number you list in the game text? Have you considered including guidelines for players creating their own Roles?

Also, I notice that many of the Roles listed so far are not mutually exclusive (though of course, many are). Have you considered the possibility of more than one Role for a character, possibly a dominant and a secondary Role?

- Walt

[Andy Kitkowski]

I believe there are two 'official' NGE RPGs already.  One I believe is a GURPS (I'm not certain about this though) adaption.  The other is actually a card game, with role-playing aspects.

Hey, just tossing this out cause I can (not that it contributes to the discussion.  Cool idea, btw- I too like the concepts of Eva and hate the exectuion.  I can't wait to see what you do with it!)

From my Japanese TRPG site at http://www.z-builder.com/trpg

The Evangelion system is decribed at the bottom of this page.

http://www.z-builder.com/trpg/japan/index2.html

Basically it's a game supplement for the "MAGIUS" system. The book's picture there IS representative of its size- about the size of your palm, about 100+ pages.

The MAGIUS system is crap.  I have yet to find anyone who, if they even know about the game, can tolerate it. It's like TFOS with 3 attributes, 6 skills (including "Cooking". Yes, "cooking" is one of SIX possible skills), and not much else.

[Mike Holmes]

I had the same thought about combining different Types before I was half-way through your post, Walt. With just two Types, I'd estimate that there are about 400 different funcitonal combinations (half being unusable in combination with each) with just the ones so far. Add a tertiary one and you get more like 3000. And you can still have 9 characters in the game without any of them having a single overlapping Type with another character. Right now there are 28 Types presented. Even with winnowing out any clinkers, I expect that there could easily be 30 good ones when it's all thought out. Perhaps more. That's lots of combinations.

I see a round-robin selection process, in fact, where a player can only have a Type that's had by another already if they get permission. So, yes you can have Brothers that are both Salt of the Earth, but only if the player who selected it first agrees.

Given that, I'd really suggest that you limit it to the list. It's getting pretty exhaustive, and making players stick to it means easy character generation, and no characters outside of the limit. And if you have 3000 possible combinations (or even just 400), well, how limiting can that be?

Hey, if you allow tertiary (or, dare I suggest it Quarternary), the GM could select one Type held in common and use that for group cohesion. Thus a particular game could have all Elite characters and have that as a common motif. Whoa.

BTW, Walt, Scion is very much what I wanted to cover with Destined. Your Challenged is different, but I'd propose another to make it more clear, and genre specific. Challenged when confronted with the spectre of your ancestor. Y'know, whenever the character has to do some task that the father did in record time or whatever. The quote the GM is trying to get by throwing these in front of the character is, "Damnit! Why does everyone always talk about my father when I'm around!" When the character "snaps" he renounces his father's name.

If it was the rule that you could change types when snapping, then the character switches to Rebel or Vigilante for a while. Then when that snaps, he becomes a Crusader having accepted his father's mantle.

Dude, that's soooo cool. I must play this game!

Mike

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Thanks very much for the pilot roles, the number that you guys have come up with makes me think I'd better just include a dozen or so examples and let players make their own up if they want to.  I thought that within the limits of "Screwed up child mecha pilot in military organisation" there would be a fairly limited set of possibilities but seems you proved me wrong.  Exactly the kind of stuff I was looking for.

I agree with you that the eva-specific terms need to be changed soon, but what to?  The 'angels' are like godzilla but more unreal, they can be any shape (but always huge) and don't have to look at all natural - see what the Neon genesis Evangelio nangels are like here if ou want to know what I mean.  The Pilot's mecha on the other hand sare more human but still derivative of the 'angels' on some level.

As for the city - I see it being on a large island in the middle of the sea (where most of the 'angels' approach from).  Not sure of a name for that - I liek the ring of Phoenix Tokyo though.  Seems very appropriate.  It would probably help if it wasn't a specifically japanese city though.  Hmm - I need to think about that some more.

The 'angels' have to have a name that is implies monstrousness and inhumanity.  The best I can come up with at the moment is dragons, but that has a lot of baggage attached that I don't want.  Giants would be a good term for the mechs except it's too generic.  But like I said, I'm going to read Beowulf and see if I can find any inspiration there, but other people's ideas are always welcome.

What I've turned my attention on at the moment is how to bring across the unusual nature of the mechs.  The point of them is that they are the only defense against the 'angels'.  They are far in advance of any other human technology (if indeed they turn out to be technology at all) and are almost definitely connected to the 'angels' iun some way.  As for why only certain children can pilot them, that's another mystery whose answer will be decided in play as they 'discover' the secrets behind the setting they are creating.

I rather like the idea that the present of the game is definite and set, but the past and the future will vary from group to group.

Anyway - Mechs.  I think i've come up with a system that has the feel of battle between thousand-foot tall creatures, but I need to decide on some system to dictate when the mechs act on their own.  An important part of the game is that the mechs are not JUST machines.  They might be ancient AI constructs that have been salvaged, or reverse-engineered and barely understood alien technology or (as in Eva itself) cyborg angel/human hybrids.

The two main causes of a Mech exerting its own (usually subjucated) will are near-death of the pilot, failure of the control systems or the pilot snapping (htting max stress) whilst in the mech.  

Staffers are the command staff of the organisation that created the mechs and defends the city.  Each player has one of these, for example the doctor, chief technician, tactical officer, command officer etc.  

The idea is that during the mission a player can have their staffer 'reveal' something like "I'm getting some strange energy readings from over there.  My GOD!" or "You've still not quite recovered from that last battle, if you strain yourself now you may go into shock".  Here my main problem is that I'm not sure how to encourage the players to make things harder for themselves as well as just creating new information.

Yes, when a character snaps, they will usually change role, but if they become one of the ones from the list, they're still vulnerable.  The overall goal of a pilot in a certain sense is to escape their flawed role and become a person who accepts their weaknesses.  It may just be best to save this final evolution for the climax of a series since much of the interest during should be provided by the pilot's stress.

Hey, just tossing this out cause I can (not that it contributes to the discussion. Cool idea, btw- I too like the concepts of Eva and hate the exectuion. I can't wait to see what you do with it!)

From my Japanese TRPG site at http://www.z-builder.com/trpg

The Evangelion system is decribed at the bottom of this page.

http://www.z-builder.com/trpg/japan/index2.html

Thanks for the link (and moral support).I've got your site bookmarked but I hadn't noticed that part.  I'll check it out right away.

- Just gone there, yes I have seen that before, I should have remembered the "It recreates the feel of the epic anime in much the same way as a hole in a fence recreates the feel of a woman..."

[Thomas Tamblyn]

Ok, here's the new and improved list of roles, thanks a lot for the input.  I think I'll go back to the 'choose one from the list' type of role creation - right fro mthe start it tells the players "This is the kind of character you're going to have".  I hate being sat down in front of a blank sheet of paper and being told to just 'make a person, any person'.  Secondary roles don't sit right with me I'm afraid, I think their place can be taken by what role the player expects the pilot will change to when they next snap.

The idea behind the pilot roles was to empahsise that every single one of the pilots is dysfunctional.  There is no way to make a perfect character in this game.  They are young kids, trained to fight a war against an unknown alien menace in barely-understood war machines for the sake of the whole of humanity.  They are not going to be normal.  I'm happy with these as they are now.

Blackheart - Something happened to make you hate the world. Now you destroy things because it's the only thing that makes sense, the other pilots just better not get in the way.
   Stress trigger - When you actively help another person.

Bully - You were always the strongest, and now you're a pilot who can say otherwise.  Might makes right and you've got plenty to go around.
   Stress trigger - Someone fighting back, and winning.

   Coerced - (NERV) has a hold on you and you're afraid of what they'll do if you refuse them.  You'll do what they tell you but you'll fight them all the way.
   Tress trigger - Submitting to (NERV)'s demands without a fight.

   Conformist - You pilot because that's what everyone expects you to do.  It's the path of least resistance.  You don't necessarily like what you do, but you can't let everybody down.
   Stress trigger - Going your own way.

   Crusader - The fight takes on holy overtones for you. It is a quest that must be accomplished at all costs and if you put your heart and soul into it, you WILL succeed.
   Stress trigger - Any major setbacks.

   Enthusiastic - Your (eva) is perfect and you won't hear any different from anybody.  Piloting is the best thing in your life and nobody can take it away from you.
   Stress trigger - The monstrous nature of your (eva) becoming evident.

   Joker - Your in a war, but there's still room for laughter.  Make jokes, fool around.  If you take things too seriously, the enemy's already won.
   Stress trigger - Other people coming to harm because of you.

   Loyal - As a citizen you have a moral obligation to defend your city and its people.  (NERV) is the best solution to the problem we're facing and you're proud to help.
   Stress trigger - Authority figures come up lacking.  

   Machine - You were created to be a pilot, you've been groomed for it since birth.  Why should your life have any meaning outside of piloting the (eva).  You're almost as inhuman as the
   Stress trigger - Finding yourself caring about things other than piloting.

   Mecha nut - You have to pilot a giant robot to fight off invading aliens and save the world?  How cool - it's just like a video game!
   Stress trigger - When things start going wrong and it isn't fun any more.

   Military - Whenever your father received a new posting, you had to follow.  But this it turned out you're the one they wanted.  Time for you to do your duty.
   Stress trigger - Any time when the military way of doing things doesn't work.

   Naive - Like many adolescents, you have a very strong sense of what is and is not fair; it's the only way you can feel in control.  Things just work better when everybody follows the rules.
   Stress trigger - Someone succeeding through 'unfair' tactics.

   Orphan - You've got nothing left but (NERV) has taken you in.  It's almost like a new family.  You're eager to please but sometimes you wonder if they're just using you.
   Stress trigger - (N ERV) staff treating you like their employee rather than their child.

   Pessimist - Everyone's out for themselves and you're at the bottom of the pecking order.  Expect the worst from people and you'll never be disappointed.
   Stress trigger - People treating you fairly and honestly.

   Prodigy - You know that you're the best and you're going to prove it by being the best pilot there is.  Those (angels) don't stand a chance.
   Stress trigger - Being defeated in a fair contest.

   Pacifist - You don't want to fight, but they say that if you don't pilot the (eva) into battle thousands of people will be killed.  Its self-defence isn't it?
   Stress trigger - Having to solve a problem by violence.

   Rebel - You don't owe (NERV) anything and they need you.  They get you as a pilot, sure, but that doesn't mean you have to follow orders like a circus animal.
   Stress trigger - Whenever (NERV) proves that they do know best.

   Scion - Your father was a legend and now you've got an opportunity to follow in his footsteps, but how can you possibly compare to a legend.  Everyone's eyes are on you, they expect so much.
   Stress trigger - Facing a challenge that your father once faced.

   The One - Everyone just knows that YOU are their best hope, but you know different. But on the other hand, how could you just abandon them?
   Stress trigger - Any major success that might prove 'them' right.

   Vengeful - The angels took your family from you and now they're going to pay, taking orders from NERV is a small price to pay for a chance to punish them.
   Stress trigger - Having fun outside of your vengeance

I think I'm begining to settle on 'Leviathans' as the name for the MonstersFormerlyKnownAsAngels, since most of them will approach from underwater.  It doesn't immediatly conjure up images of anything specific except for great size.  Now I just need names for the city, the player's mechs and the organisation.  Any suggestions?

I think that the best way to convey the 'otherness' of the leviathans is to have certain ones cause stress checks depending on how bizarre they are.  In such a non-visual medium as rpgs, I think the best way to show the players how alien their enemy is, is to have their characters react to their mere presence.

Stress checks are also called for if a pilot takes a particularly heavy beating during battle - I don't care what yuour philosophy about life is, being beaten to death (the mechs have feedback systems)is stressful.

Next step is formalising the "What was your first battle" part of pilot creation.  I want this to be another pick-from a list step, but with each entrey being less specific than for role.  For example:

   Injured - You defeated the leviathan but you were in hospital for weeks afterward and you're dreading the next fight.

   Walkover - It never stood a chance, do they really need those other pilots?  These critters aren't so tough - bring it on!

   Panic - Your first time in real combat, you froze.  The leviathan was tearing into you when they attacked it with conventional armed forces.  They suffered almost complete losses before they managed to finish it off.

Stuff like that.  I've really got a mental block here so help iwould be much appreciated.

[Mike Holmes]

Leviathans is very cool. I like the aquatic angle. Neat.

I assume that you want to have some sort of mechanicall effect to go along with the first fight resolution trait that' somehow on par with the effects of the Pilot Roles? How about additional stress conditions? Seems straightforward enough. Injured results in stress when injured again or even when njury seems impending. Walkover gets stressed when a leviathan is not a walkover. Panic means stress when you cannot help innocents, or you think that you might panic again.

Too obvious?

Mike

[Lance D. Allen]

I was going to suggest "Grendels", as you twice mentioned Beowulf for symbolism, but Leviathan is good, too, and it makes a certain amount of sense, esp. if you put a little story behind it.

As for other names.. Hm.

How about Seraphim (or Seraph, singular) for the EVAs? It calls forth the image (to me, at least) of guardian angels, with their blazing swords of light. Or maybe just simply Guardians.

As for a new city name.. If Phoenix Tokyo doesn't work for you.. How about Bastion, as in the last bastion of humanity? Or New Phoenix City, though that might make people think of a city in the middle of the Arizona desert...

This does sound like an interesting game. I'd like to see where it goes.

[Walt Freitag]

A pretty thoughtful winnowing down of the Roles list, I think. I'm glad to see you added Joker; I was thinking about that too but my version had the same stress trigger as Rebel so I left it out.

Here are some more possibilities for the first battle:

Hesitated – You fought well against a determined enemy. But at the crucial moment, when you finally had a decisive advantage, you hesitated and missed your chance to finish it off, allowing it to escape.

Overconfident – Your initial exchanges went so well that you thought the fight was won. You left yourself open to an unexpected counterattack that turned the tables. You managed to win in the end, but your mech was badly damaged.

Collateral Damage – You defeated your enemy with little difficulty, but your victory celebration was cut short when you found out that some of your fire missed its target and caused many civilian casualties.

Defensive – The battle was so frightening that you fought on the defensive. You didn't dare press any attacks for fear of giving the enemy an opening. The result was a long protracted battle during which the Leviathan caused massive damage to buildings and facilities (but no civilian casualties, thankfully). The fight only ended when another mech came in to help out.

Rescuer – You entered the fight to save another mech already badly damanged. In a savage fight you beat the Leviathan that had already bested an experienced pilot, but you wonder if that was only because it was already tired or injured when you got there.

Malfunction – It was a close fight, an even match. You were just a little bit better. But at a key moment, a weapon system malfunctioned and left you open to an attack that knocked you almost senseless. You managed to recover enough to defend yourself until help could arrive, but you know you could have won if it wasn't for the malfunction. Now you're not sure how much you can trust your mech.

Defeated – You fought by the book. The Leviathan didn't, and kicked your ass. Only your mech's autonomous mode saved it and you -- that, and the fact that you were out of the fight so quickly that the enemy didn't bother to finish you off.

Of course, some of these might need modification depending on how you envision the conventions of mech-Leviathan combats in your setting, such as whether or not Leviathans ever withdraw rather than fight to the death, or whether or not the mecha pilots get to team up, or whether or not malfunctions can occur.

Is this any help?

- Walt

[ThreeGee]

Hey Thomas,

Speaking to the larger picture of your game, I am unclear whether you mean the setting to be generic fill-in-the-blank or defined, excluding the nature of the others. Right now, I still see it in terms of the singular source NGE. If you are having trouble breaking away from Eva, I would suggest taking a look at Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. The theme is very similar and it may help you open up to other ways of telling the same type of story.

Later,
Grant

[Thomas Tamblyn]

I was totering towards Grendels - especially with the marvelous grendel/grendel's mother thing relating to the evas/adam thing, but in the end beowulf suimply has no jargon that i can (ahem) borrow.  Beowulf.  Grendel.  That's it.  Ah well.

As for the mechs, hmm.  Guardian is good - I like, but I was also toying with Goliath.  It also matches Levaithan by being biblical.  Undecided.

A pretty thoughtful winnowing down of the Roles list, I think. I'm glad to see you added Joker; I was thinking about that too but my version had the same stress trigger as Rebel so I left it out.  

Thank you very much

Those first battle ideas are nice - you've broken my mental block by giving me a springboard for ideas and I'm going to stop this sentence before I mix even more metaphors.

I'm not actually sure what (if indeed any) mechanical effect the first battle has on the game.  I initially envisioned it as just colour and an easy way to make the player decide something about their character.  At one point it was necessary that the first battle involve your stress trigger but I removed that because if you can't come up with a cool use of the stress trigger, why bother?  And if you CAN, then why have it in the backstory when you can play through it?

Speaking to the larger picture of your game, I am unclear whether you mean the setting to be generic fill-in-the-blank or defined, excluding the nature of the others. Right now, I still see it in terms of the singular source NGE. If you are having trouble breaking away from Eva, I would suggest taking a look at Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. The theme is very similar and it may help you open up to other ways of telling the same type of story.

(btw - how do you get it to do the "XX said" quote-thing?)

Really I'm not deliberatly trying to break away from eva.  Enders game was almost totally focussed on Ender's story, whilst the pilots are certainly analogous to Ender (though i hadn't noticed the similarities until you pointed it out) its not just their story.

One of the interesting things about Eva was the background 'mythos' being revealed as the series went on and I also want to duplicate that.  I suppose the key point (outside of the pilots) is that humanity is endangered by alien forces and is forced to harness those same forces to defend themselves.

I fully expect the end product to be very eva-flavoured but I'm fine with that.  I intend to write up a list of example "What could I do  with this game" starting points with suggestions on where those starting points might lead.  One I'm more comfortable with the core of the game and satisfied that it does what I created it to do, I want to work on playing with it to widen its scope so that the leviathans might be replaced by an enemy city and its invasion forces for example and background revelations focussing around politics (for example).

One of the reasons I started work on this is the realisation that in a way Eva is a genre in and of itself.  Since then we've had Dual, Gaseraaki, Brigadoon, Full metal panic, Rah-xephon and plent ymore I'm sure that I don't know of.  All of these play with the "Child pilot, alien invaders" scenario.  I think that something about Eva strikes a chord in the human psyche (I know it does in mine) and I'm trying to work out what.