Violet knows that everyone else has primarily short to medium range melee intensive Gears, realizing that they're prob-ably going to be torn apart by anything and everything that can shoot them before they get to it, Violet decides her Gear will have decent range coverage.
Her character will ride a Dynamic Chassis with the Experimental Reactor Archetype, tentatively naming Michiko's Gear as Queen Minerva, alluding to her character's wisdom and refined talent for battle.
To cover her Unit's defenses, she considers the ECS Evasive System Upgrade, but since her Mecha is already going to be spending a lot of Energy into her Weapons (because of Experimental Reactor) she increases Evasion and Armor by 1 and 2 points for 7 UP total instead. She also grabs the Resupply Upgrade to help herself out of a pinch or to lend a hand when necessary for another 7 UP.
She has 16 UP left to spend, and she moves on to Minerva’s offensive abilities. She knows that she wants three Weapons at least, and begins by nabbing an Incinerator for 5 UP. Violet decides she also wants a Giant Tomahawk, a custom Melee Weapon, as a flashy finisher. To create it Violet adds +2 to Accuracy and +1 Penetration to the Melee tem-plate for 5 UP. But she wants to strengthen it up, so she gives it an Energy cost of 1 and makes it a Technique, giving her another 7 UP to spend on said Weapon. After some deliberation the points are distributed into five increases to Penetra-tion and another to Accuracy. The final Custom Melee Weapon has a +3 bonus to Accuracy, and a +6 to PenetraPenetra-tion, add-ing up to +5 Accuracy and +10 Penetration with the Mecha’s own Chassis bonuses.
Now Violet has 6 UP left over, five of which go into Anti-Gravity with the last single UP being used to make a last Custom Weapon - this time Eye Beams. She adds an Energy cost of 1 to increase her customization budget to 3 UP, which are spent into a simple increase to Accuracy and Penetration for a total of +3 Accuracy and +5 Penetration.
Now she has to install these Upgrades and Weapons: The Giant Tomahawk and Eye Beams will obviously go to the Arms and Head, respectively, and the Incinerator will be placed in the Torso. Anti-Gravity will take the form of wings placed on the back, thus joining the Incinerator in the Torso Area. Not sure where to place her Resupply unit, she looks at the recommendations within the book and installs them in the Legs.
Ingham looks over to check if everything is going alright, and notices that Violet is in no danger of crippling herself with an unfun, useless Unit. She has three Weapons spread over various parts of the body, and can replenish her En-ergy to continue launching attack after attack. Between the Enhancements and her defensive Genre Powers she won’t be going down easy either. The cosmetic and roleplay features of Queen Minerva are very much like those of General Z, but sleeker and more nimble. Ingham okays Violet’s Unit and begins to plot adding long range enemies to the next battle so she has a chance to shine with a dramatic entrance.
Tips n Tricks
Making your own Mecha is more complicated and has more room for fine-tuning details than the creation of the Character proper, so it is much easier to get confused by all the options when you don’t have a specific concept in mind. Here are a few considerations so you don’t accidentally make mistakes when building your Mecha.
A good place to start is to pick a defensive ability like a Defensive Barrier or a Evasive System that goes well with your Chassis. Remember that because of Tension, each subsequent attack gets harder and harder to evade or to soak.
It is recommended you have at least one Weapon that can always be used reliably and has a decent range coverage - be-tween 0 and 5 is enough. After you’ve got your bread and butter, you can grab utility weapons or big finishers. Bebe-tween 10 and 15 Points worth of Weapons is the usual. Everything else is more situational in its use. Guardian Maneuver, Support Fire and Sacrifice improve team strategies considerably, but do little to nothing without teamwork. Support Upgrades are very powerful but the cost of an Action means they’re at their best when helping others rather than yourself.
Enhancements are a great way to spend leftover UP, since they don’t cost much (at least at first) and increase your performance notably with each boost. A Custom Weapon with a Cost under 5 is also a good idea if you have already used up your three Enhancements.
Assistant is what you want to get to keep yourself healed or well-oiled through a long battle, since half the time you are going to get something good out of it and you have a small chance of getting double the bonus. The other Sub Units let you spread out Upgrades and Weapons around to either keep them in a safe place, or give them a body of their own to use them independently. Support and Aid Another Upgrades work extremely well with Sidekicks.
Combination Upgrades have the most room for mistakes, and Units that want to make use of them should take care not to end up with something that isn’t fun to play. Firstly, a Squad with one or more Components in it should leave Enhancements up to the Components, focusing primarily on Weapons. The Components, meanwhile, should aim for grab-bing Enhancements and abilities that improve their Maneuvering, Micromanaging or uses of Support. Unison Combiners are at their best when they make use of their ability to throw multiple Synchro Attacks per Turn, so all participants want at
The dust had barely settled by the time that Wong stepped out of the VTOL. He took a moment to resist the urge to brush the remaining sticky flecks off of his suit.
Smearing them would only make things worse.
Under different circumstances, the abandoned airbase before him may have been almost pleasant. Those cir-cumstances were called ‘trees’. Without them, the erosion of the soil had turned the whole facility into a dustbowl, and lent it a uniquely solemn air of depression and dis-use. In a way, it was almost genius.
Wong instructed his pilot to listen for any suspi-cious radio chatter during his meeting, and his personal guards to follow him out. Mr. Beats lacked the conven-tional form of respect to come and meet an expected visitor upon arrival, especially one who was as well-known as a Wong.
Even with all of the changes in recent years, basic human needs and urges never change. There was a demand for opium before the invention of electricity, and there would continue to be one long after Gears have been replaced by the next advance in weapons technol-ogy. As ever, the more enjoyable substances were rigor-ously controlled by those in authority. Fascists. But the demand was this there. And Wong met that demand, for a price.
Meeting that demand was not always easy. Traf-ficking his product between zones and across oceans required hardware that attracted attention. Occasion-ally, those with more testosterone than wits thought that they could muscle Wong out of his market. For these things and more, Wong found it necessary to use force.
And when using force, it paid to use it in an overwhelming amount.
That is where Benjamin Beats entered the life story of Jianguo Wong. Walking deeper into the base, Wong and his guards caught sight of a middle aged man walking toward them, out of one of the nearby buildings.
Balding and sweating in the heat, the mechanic’s jumpsuit he worse was halfway unzipped, the sleeves of them tied around his waist rather than letting them dan-gle. The worn grey suit may have been white once.
Wong noted his displeasure at the lack of decorum, but decorum was not Beats’s specialty. Wong could make such allowances for an old partner.
“Afternoon Wong.” Jovial as always, Beats. “I thought we worked out the details on the phone?”
Kong made a show of looking around. “Of the job, yes. But I wish to see your… materials firsthand.”
Beats smiled a toothy grin. “What, you don’t trust me? Me, your only friend in this cruel and terrible world?”
No reaction. Wong was too professional for that during anything official. “I do not trust fortune, Benjamin.”
Benjamin Beats let out a laugh that made him sound twice as big as he was, and waved for Wong and his men to follow. Beats understood the score as well as
Benjamin Beats and the small but loyal team of men who worked for him held a position unique to them on Earth. Building and maintaining a Gear took consider-able money, and even more infrastructure. Without those, fielding a Gear was virtually impossible. But in the age of Gears, who wanted anything else?
Benjamin Beats had Gears, after a fashion. They were dirty, ugly things built from the shattered corpses of Gears that had been destroyed and left to rust on the battlefield. Filled with electronics from planes 15 years out of date, and armed with weapons salvaged from virtu-ally anything. No upstanding organization would allow them to pass even a routine maintenance inspection.
Then again, no upstanding organization would take the sort of jobs that Beats’s boys would.
Wong appreciated the service they provided, and the favors that Beats had done for him in the beginning.
Favors he had long since repaid.
But the peculiar nature of Beats’s operation meant that how many Gears he had, and what those Gears were equipped to handle, varied wildly after any and every job they performed.
Limbs lost, parts salvaged, ammunition used up and weapons destroyed all added up to a constant flux. It was an uncertainty in performance ability that Wong had never brought himself to fully trust.
Beats came to a stop in front of what was origi-nally designed to be an airplane hanger. With the thick dust and some tastefully cosmetic lack of repairs, you would never know it was currently in use for a much more advanced form of weapon. Benjamin whistled.
The door to the hanger slid open, revealing the shockingly clean workshop inside. In the sterile white light beneath them, two vaguely humanoid junkheaps stood tall.
“Only two?” Kong asked.
“It’s not been the best year for us.” Biggs admitted with a shrug. “But I am expecting some extra capital pretty soon. We can put together another one then. Anyway, two is plenty for this job.”
Wong had his doubts, but Beats didn’t make promises he could not keep. “And their condition?”
“Better than they look.” Biggs said. “The one on the left is a Bravery… mostly. More like about 7 Braveries, held together with parts we got out of a Dominion.”
Wong quickly checked what he knew about military hard-ware. “I thought the Dominion was a tank, not a gear?”
“Like I said, not the best year. That other one, though, is a thing of beauty. Somebody took on more than they could handle and ended up on the wrong side of town with a Revolution. One of those fancy ones the Guerillas use. God knows how they got it, but turns out it was a steal. Sucker is built to swap out anything for anything else, let me tell you. In fact…” Beats cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled out to someone in the hanger. “Penny! Bring out Big Red.”
“See that on the back?” Biggs asked Kong, pointing. “Mis-sile Launcher we ripped off a UEF Gunboat. Built to be anti-air, but simple enough to repurpose.”
Wong nodded. “Very impress-”
He was cut off mid-sentence by a sound like the air being set ablaze as a pillar of flame launched from the back of Big Red into the air, before diving toward the ground. The dust at Wong’s feet leapt into the air half-heartedly from the force of the explosion.
“And that,” Beats continued “was your ride out of here.”
Big Red turned toward Wong and raised an arm.
Wong fought to maintain his composure as he looked down the barrel of a gun that he could probably crawl into if he tried. This didn’t make any sense. It had to be a joke. It had to be a mistake.
His guards had already drawn their guns, but even they knew it was a wasted effort. There was nothing they could do to stop even this poor excuse for a Gear, and shooting Benjamin would only guarantee their own deaths.
Wong swallowed, and turned to his only friend in this cruel and terrible world. His eyes asked the question before his words had a chance. At least Benjamin looked torn up about it.
“I don’t have anything against you, Kong. I think you are a heck of a guy. You and me, we did alright by each other. The problem is, we did that a little too often.
Word got out that I am your man. And, well… you have a lot of enemies, Wong.”
Wong went to speak, and realized his mouth was dry. He wanted to blame the dust, but in truth he had not been this terrified since he was a child. The world was falling away beneath his feet. He swallowed again.
“I can pay you double what they-”
“It isn’t about the money. They know my address.
We have history, but they made it a pretty clear choice between you or me. And that is no choice at all.”
A dull roar filled the air. VTOLs. More than one, coming in from the south.
“If it makes you feel any better, I plan on naming the new Gear after you…”
Intermissions
Intermissions consist of a series of Scenes where PCs engage in a myriad of activities seeking to develop their Themes. Despite GGG's most obvious primary feature being the badass giant robots, it is the Intermissions where you will spend the majority of your time as a PC. Mecha are nothing without their Pilot and you need more variety of play than just gunning down enemies and calling each other names to get the most out of a RPG.
GGG's Scenes are much like those from a play.
After the stage has been set by the GM everyone assumes their roles as Characters and set out to play them, with the GM controlling everything but the actions of the PCs.
Scenes take place at a location and usually involve one or more NPCs, generally those will be preestablished Places and People respectively.
Players will have to speak in character. Which is to say, they need to be mouthpieces for their PCs and maybe do some acting or funny accents if they feel like it. Instead of saying what your character does, you should say that you do it whenever possible. And so on.
It is important to note scenes do not necessarily occur in real time. A single scene may take up to an hour of playtime but only consist of ten thrilling, and excruciat-ing minutes for your PCs, or you could summarize hours of hard work for the troupe with just five minutes of real time and a few dice rolls.
Scenes often have a specific purpose in mind, which basically means that everyone has gathered at that specific location to get something done. Maybe the group has gone to the hangar to perform maintenance on their Mecha or they’re trying to get a captured Enemy to talk.
Even if they weren’t trying to do anything in particular, chances are the Scene will require resolution in one form or another, and to conclude the climax of a scene in your favor you have to roll dice and perform Tests.