Robotech RPG

I recently started rewatching the remastered Robotech series on my plane rides for work. That made me remember the Palladium RPG for Robotech. Did anyone else play this? Anyone else familiar with the universe and interested in it? I'll admit that I'm a little over-extended right now so even if there's a lot of interest I wouldn't kick off something /now/ but it'd be good to see if people were interested in playing in that universe.

Robotech RPG on Wikipedia

Looks like there's an update to my old source material...

Palladium's Website

Haven't play, not familiar, interested yes... Also there was a Transformer RPG interest thread too... >3>

I have long wondered what a Robotech game would be like, but have never explored it. I have also never played any of the Palladium games. Borderline interested, maybe?

I played Rifts from Palladium but that was a long time ago. If Robotech is similar then it should be a good run. Not too familiar with the setting aside from seeing an episode here and there.

I'll pick up the latest set of rules and see what gives and see if it looks like it could work on PbP.

So -- I picked up the rulebook.

I gotta say, Palladium have some work to do to build a reasonable CRB. But that said, I'm suspicious that while the setting is awesome, the gameplay won't be great for PbP. By way of example, during combat each round is ~15 seconds and players might get 5 attacks in a round. They use those attacks for things like attacking or dodging and the game uses an "attacker vs. defender" mechanic to determine if there's a hit. What this means is that every attack roll is countered by a defense roll (or most are) and that there's a lot of back and forth in combat.

In PbP given the fact that the die roller is its own agent, it's possible people could roll a d20 for attack & defense and narrate the outcome -- but sometimes the choice of defense is a /choice/. E.g. if someone doesn't choose to dodge, then rolling for them isn't appropriate -- or more, if someone saw they'd fail their dodge roll, they could opt not to dodge (saving the attack they would to do so for another attack or a later dodge).

I'll continue to nudge around on the ruleset a bit and see if I can figure something out. As it stands though, I'm suspicious it's a PbP bust.

Messy. Maybe it plays fast at the table, but sounds pretty involved for PBP, as you note.

Yah.. I've been hunting around the internets to see if there are PbP games and how they run. I found one where during combat, as an example, players post their actions with alternatives:

e.g.

Action 1: fires a volley of 4 short range missile (high Explosive)
Action 2: she targets the first ghost with a volley of three medium range missiles (armor piercing)
Action 3: fires her destabilizer cannon (5 round burst) at the ghost.
Action 4: Dodge incoming fire, or fires her destabilizer cannon (5 round Burst) at the ghost
Action 5: Dodge incoming fire, or fires her destabilizer cannon (5 round Burst) at the ghost

In this way people queue up what they're doing. In the case of something like a dodge, if there was no reason to dodge, the alternate action would provide a way forward. If there was a need for a dodge it could either be done in order rolled, from best result to worst result, or matched with the most appropriate attack result.

Never played and I'm not familiar with the ruleset but good lord I love robotech and am definitely interested if it turns out to be viable for pbp. I actually started watching again recently as well.

I'd be interested if it comes at a time where I'm less overcommitted

I played this a lot of other Palladium systems way back when (still have my Rifts, Heroes Unlimited, TMNT, and Ninjas & Superspies books).

I gotta say, compared with modern games, they feel archaic and excessively complex. If you like Shadowrun 5e, you'd probably like the Palladium system. Maybe the update has made things better. I wouldn't know.

In short: I love their settings and concepts, but it is not a game system I am interested in at this time.

Yah -- I'm not loving the character sheet -- lots and lots of numbers. I'm going to dig into the rules to the extent that I can and see if there's some streamlining I can do -- or if I can maybe adapt it to OGL or Cypher. I'd really enjoy playing in the setting if I can figure out a way to do that well.

I've done some more poking around -- some internets people suggest Savage Worlds with the Sci-fi module might be a good place to start. I need some new reading material so I picked that up and should get it from Amazon on Wednesday. I'll start poking around and see if it seems less fiddly and capable of working with the universe.

In the case of Cypher, I could imagine having a separate phrase for the mecha vs. the character and using power shifts as a way to designate relative power, and move the power shifts around based on the mode the mecha was in...

I'm a big fan of Savage Worlds.

You should take a look at Savage Rifts. Rifts was another Palladium system, and Savage Rifts converts a lot of the signature mechanics into Savage World equivalents. Also, power armor. Also, Mega Damage weapons (I can't remember if Robotech had SDC/MDC, but Rifts did for sure).

I'll add it to the list. Yah, Robotech had SDC/MDC.

I'm not sure mechanically SDC vs. MDC matter (e.g. we don't have separate damage types for star ships and people in FFG and it doesn't cause a problem).

It mattered in those systems big time. SDC weapons couldn't even scratch MDC objects, monsters or armor. And MDC weapons would make paste out of any SDC creatures or objects on a single successful hit. The differentiation was part of the "balance" (I use the term loosely here) in those systems.

I'm not saying you have to have that differentiation in order to run a cool Robotech inspired game in another system. Just saying those were important in the source material mechanics.

I guess that's my point -- you don't need a separate hitpoint system with other guidelines in place. A blaster pistol doesn't dent a starship in FFG either, but we don't have a different concept for 'wound threshold' because of it. It's easy enough for me to say "huh, that little pistol isn't going to scratch a Veritech" without needing to have a different concept of damage hitpoints or damage type. Or "well, that Zentraedi battle pod just hit an unarmored human with its lasers -- ugh, they're dead."

These seem a little more common sense to me, even though it was built into that ruleset.

Also a big fan of savage worlds. It's great at abstracting things so that you don't have to get bogged down in details.