newbie advice on books for a Mecha game

[DaosusLeghki]

I don't own GURPS, but have heard of it by reputation. I want to run a Mecha game similar to the Gundam series, and am considering picking up GURPS to run it. This would be a test of the system to see if I like it. In addition to Characters and Campaigns, what books would I need to run such a game?

Also, the book that inspired me was Jovian Chronicles, but I was turned off by the complicated space maneuvering system (too many things to track). If anyone's played both JC and GURPS, I'd love to hear some commentary on that issue, as well as any general notes you have.

Thank you all in advance,

Daosus

[Brevitt]

Gurps doesn't as yet cover Mecha ever so well though there is a section in one of the starship series I believe. I'd use Cthulhu tech rules for a Mecha game at the moment.

[vierasmarius]

There's a Mecha sourcebook for 3rd edition, but most of the vehicle rules would need to be converted to 4th ed. It does have a lot of interesting stuff to say abut the genre, its themes and characters, as well as a complete campaign setting. Well worth a look.

[lachimba]

I believe the vehicles rules from GURPS Campaigns are sufficent to run a vehicle based game. You will need to stat out the Mechs for yourself though.

[Kuroshima]

Personally, my experience with mecha anime is that every mecha is unique, and it's abilities uniquely suit the pilot, making the use of Allies with Compartmentalized Mind (Controls) the best solution. It's not a route for the faint hearted, and I definitively don't advise it for newcomers.

[Mailanka]

GURPS Spaceships, especially with the Fighters and Carriers addition, will cover your mecha. In addition to covering how to build a mecha, it gives solid "space combat" rules that have an appropriately cinematic feel.

Even so, I'd say just eyeball it. Most mecha aren't particularly realistic anyway, and if you want highly individualized, cinematic, epic mecha, you can just slap down suitably awesome stats and go. It takes a little thought, but no worse than working your way through GURPS Spaceships.

(Or, if you really want to just go quickly, Fighters and Carriers comes with some pre-made mecha. You could just steal those)

[MattStriker]

We ended up generating the mechs as regular (average attribute 10) characters and considering 'mecha scale' and 'infantry scale' completely seperate games for the most part.

So...a close combat mech might have ST 15, but since everything is scaled up, that 15 would represent a massive amount of super strength in infantry scale...

This only works if the players can accept a certain amount of GM handwaving and rules-ignoring, but it does allow combat using the normal GURPS rules...a mecha-sized Storm Rifle technically uses the same stats as the one in UT, but it really represents a 50mm cannon...

[vicky_molokh]

I'd use GURPS SS-based mecha, but it has a very important drawback of making most mechs move at the same speed while running (not flying).

[ed_209a]

Originally Posted by MattStriker

We ended up generating the mechs as regular (average attribute 10) characters and considering 'mecha scale' and 'infantry scale' completely separate games for the most part.

Spaceships has a concept that dovetails perfectly with this: Decade scale. Keep doing exactly what you are doing, just keep in the back of your mind that the light mecha with the 15DR is really 15 dDR, or 150 DR, the 2d6 mecha sidearm is actually 2d6 dDam or 20d6, and if some puny human does find a RPG, your 12 hp is actually 12 dHP, or 120 hits. When you swat that human for his insolence, your ST11 is actually dST11, or ST 110.

That will keep infantry and mecha in the same world, but still give the infantry very good reasons to be somewhere else when the Walkers come stomping in.

When you made the mecha characters, did you just handwave that the robots can use the pilots' IQ, skills, and relevant advantages or are they completely independent of the pilot characters?

[MattStriker]

Originally Posted by ed_209a

When you made the mecha characters, did you just handwave that the robots can use the pilots' IQ, skills, and relevant advantages or are they completely independent of the pilot characters?

IQ was the pilots', the IQ stat of the mechs was only used to determine Perception and Will (as resistance to EWAR attacks) as well as the effective skill levels of certain automatic functions (self-diagnosis, damage control, automatic balance...that kind of thing)...except in the case of the experimental AI-run mech, who was the Ally of one of the PCs.

DX was ruled case-by-case. Usually it was pilot's relative skill level plus the mech's DX.