thread: 2007-12-13 : Mechaton rules questions?
On 2008-07-08, David Artman wrote:
"Rooting" is a common MMORPG term for effects which hinder or prevent movement. For Mecha, that could be a net, some kind of goo gun, effector technology, or whatever would prevent movement by the target for N turns (or until some action is taken, like cutting free).
Fine on the "no new chassis." I kind of was on the fence about that myself: on the one hand, attachment points provide alternative "leg" configurations; on the other hand, there's something to be said for "light" mecha (two APs) and "heavy" mecha (six APs) and their associated limitations (or, just a new rule that a team's APs must add up to N). Little, piddly stuff like that could even just be Optional Rules, not vanilla RAW.
"Named pilots" is news to me—do they somehow convey a bonus or plus, to certain actions or situations, from "Traits"? Could work fine; could become a min-max game breaker.
I, too, would be curious to know what is the stomach achiness of campaign play. I imagined it mainly as "loot battlefield for 'credits,' spend credits to get non-standard powers/attachments, repeat." Yes, this could cause a sort of arms race... but so does any game with advancement, when you get down to it. I didn't even really see "story" aspects to such campaign play—more like an interesting way to, say, run a tournament, with escalating power levels and maybe even team sizes, to really make a "Big Event" of a final. In the end, though, the rules might be so light as to not easily handle scaling (ex: after a few buff ups, every mecha is rolling d8s for every action, making everything effectively "the same" challenge level as a starting game, but inflated numerically).
Hell, at the least, compile all the cool rule variants others have come up with, to offer "advanced" rules or variations. Sure, we can easily do such a compilation ourselves... but it looks like folks like to pay you to use your judgment and to have a fine artifact (a rule book) in their grubby hands. :)
