System Rebuilding - Mekton Zeta Part II

Welcome to part two of my rebuilding Mekton Zeta, part one can be found here. After finishing part one I went back to review the system. The life path and career path systems are going to need tables to go in to detail on the changes which blogger isn't the best platform for.

I will go over the general changes to the systems I plan to make. For the life path system I have found that it suffers from two large problems. First off it is geared for one vary specific type of campaign, specifically one where there are two or more opposing factions in a state of war or cold war. This is useful for a lot of campaigns, but for my recent Mech Combat League game it gave results that made no sense with the setting. To fix this I am going to make a series of interchangeable tables for the life path generator. There will be at least three different tables for that can be used for more setting focused parts of the life path, though some will remain unchanged. 

The other problem we have found is the sheer number of NPCs that the life path system can generate. The simplest way to fix this is to change the type of die rolled to determine the number of siblings and number of friends. For siblings 1d6-2 works, giving you between 0 and 4 siblings (Treat a result of -1 as a 0), and for friends roll 1d3. Why make this change? Because Mekton is a system where statting out a character is quick enough that any living character from your background can probably be statted quickly, but a lot of NPCs becomes tedious.

For the Career path system there are three changes that need to be made. First the Careers will need to be redone, there are several redundant ones and several obvious careers that need to be added, as well as revisions that need to be made to make up for the changes I have made to the skill system. The second change is that the Boons and Accidents need to be rebalanced, as currently none of the boons are very good and the effects of several accidents can completely cripple a  character.

Finally the third problem with the career path system is that characters aren't really limited in how many they can start with. I'm going to fix this the same way I'm going to fix the Rookie-Career character discrepancy. I'm going to change it so that all characters start with a set number of career paths, Rookie characters start with 2 careers plus an archetype, while Career characters start with four career paths. This allows Career Characters to start with 3 extra skill points over rookies, a bonus to make up for missing out on the Archetype.

Archetypes are going to be revised to give each character a unique ability tied to the archetype, the Kid archetype is going to be removed, and then I'm adding in a few new ones to bring the total number of Archetypes to 10.

I am going to add a Talent system to the game. Talents will be abilities you can purchase with IP. To keep them balanced I am giving them the following restrictions: They must require at least one action to activate, They must involve a skill roll to use that will determine their effectiveness, and they must give you an ability that is otherwise unobtainable in the system.

For every two career paths you take in a single field you will be able to take a talent from a limited list for free. This is to reward characters for having more cohesive backgrounds. It also helps players customize their characters beyond just their attributes, skills, and gear as they will all start to look similar in a long enough campaign.

After going over the life path system I decided to take a look at how luck worked, and it turns out that the book doesn't actually tell you how to use it. I'm assuming that it lets you spend 1 luck to add +1 to a roll, but its not made clear anywhere in the book. Additionally there are a few places where it lets you spend 1 luck to reduce a roll by 1, usually where you want to roll under a number. Additionally if you have a decent Mech Piloting skill you gain what is called a Maneuver Pool, which you can spend points from to increase your roll while piloting a mech and they refresh each combat. This is what I meant when I mentioned the two luck systems.

The biggest problem is that the two systems function identically while have different refresh methods. I'm going to change Luck to be spend a luck point to reroll a die and they refresh at the start of each session, this way it gives a large boon for being a more limited resource. 

Next since I added Fortune last article I am also having it add a pool of points you can spend, called your Fortune pool, you gain 2 fortune points for each rank you have in fortune. You can spend 1 Fortune point to roll a d12 instead of a d10 on your next roll, refreshing after the character has had a long rest (At least 4 hours, enough time to cover a sleep cycle). This will change how exploding dice work, instead of only exploding on a 10 you roll another die of the same type on a roll of 10 or higher. I have been trying to get this mechanic into a game for a while and this feels like a good place for it, It gives you a resource to save for when you need a boost desperately, and increasing the odds of exploding the die from 10% to 25% is a great bonus but not a guarantee of success.

Finally your Maneuver Pool is changed to be equal to your ranks in Mech Piloting, you can spend 1 point to modify a roll you make while piloting a mech by 1, refreshing at the start of combat. Maneuver Points can increase or decrease the roll as you wish, depending on if its an additive roll or a roll under situation. Additionally characters get 1 additional action on their turn for every 5 points in their maneuver pool. This is a modification from a variant rule in the original game. I changed it to be simpler to calculate, and so that when you reach 5 and 10 in Mech Piloting you feel a sense of accomplishment. 

That covered most of my problems with the core system, now on to mech construction.

In part one I briefly touched upon two problems with the system, first the space requirements of equipment being ridiculous, and the mass of equipment relying only on damage. In addition to those problems I have a few more, first the land speed of a vehicle is based on mass and can only be changed one way, secondly power plant upgrades are extremely strangely handled, and finally there is the problem of how mass is calculated.

I'll start with the space issue. Different types of equipment take up different amounts of space, most of the time it is based on the cost of the item. While more complex systems should take up more space this leads to a 4 damage gun taking up more space then the mech has to start with because of how weapons are costed. This ties in to how you calculate the mass of a weapon, where no matter how complex it is it's mass is determined by its damage value. The solution I have come up with to fix this is to switch the calculations. A Weapon takes up as much space as its Kill value, while its mass is half of its cost. This means that more complex weapons don't take up more space, but I can rationalize that as them being constructed in a compact fashion to fit onto existing designs.

The land speed issue is harder to figure out. The Wheels upgrade for a mech increases its ground speed by 2 for 1 point times the size category of the mech but only works on certain terrains. To allow a mech to increase its land speed I think a new upgrade will be needed. Call it Improved engine and have it cost 0.015 points times the upgrade to speed times the mass of the mech. This allows you to move faster on the ground and makes the change fall in line with the other propulsion systems.

On to power plant upgrades. The weirdness here is that there are two versions of each upgrade, normal and hot. The difference being that a hot power plant also increases your maneuver pool and has a 50% chance of exploding on a power plant hit instead of a 10%. There is no cost difference and the benefit is rarely worth the risk. Additionally the normal benefits of upgrading your power plant aren't great. To solve this I think the easiest thing to do is have all power plants give the MP upgrade and have Hot power plants reduce the multiplier by 0.1.

Mass is a problem in every mech game I have ever encountered, and several anime (Gundam Wing stands out). Specifically the mass given for a Mech of the size is tiny. The best way to cover this is to just change it arbitrarily after construction is finished, and because so much of the system is built around mass of the mech there is no easy way to fix this. So I'm not going to change anything about it and just let it continue to bug me.

That is enough for part two. In part three I will be revising the rules for ships in combat.

System Rebuilding - Mekton Zeta Part I

Today I'm starting a new series of articles on game design, focusing on older systems and how to improve them. To start with I'll be taking a look at one of my groups favorite systems, Mekton Zeta. I chose this system because we have been using it fairly often and many of its flaws have become quite apparent.

To start with here are what the system does well:
- Fast paced combat, I have never played another system where we could play out a fight with seven or more combatants on a side and have it take less then an hour.
- I have never encountered a better system for constructing vehicles and weapons.
- The life path system makes character creation a game in itself
- It captures the feel of Mecha anime

Now to list its flaws:
- Character attributes are extremely unbalanced, Reflexes and Luck and extremely useful while Attractiveness and Education are almost completely useless.
- There are a lot of skills that never come up and many of the careers give you ranks in them.
- There is a major disparity between Career characters and Rookie characters, Career characters start out stronger while rookie characters gain experience faster. This makes it a horrible decision to play a Career character unless they take a ridiculous number of careers. There is also the problem of characters having no set limit to the number of starting careers they can have, just their age.
- Equipment on Mechs usually takes up space equal to its cost, this means that you will have to spend a ridiculous number of points when building your mech just to fit interesting weapons on board, often more then the cost of the rest of the mech.
- Weapon's weight is a function of how much damage it does, which means more complex weapons weigh the same a smaller, simpler weapons that deal the same damage.
- Character's attributes cannot be increased after character creation.
- Practice IP is either useless, or takes forever to assign.
- Training IP rarely comes up.
- There are two separate mechanics for luck.

Those are good enough lists to start from, I'm sure I'll remember other flaws and strengths as I work on the system.

The core system is roll a d10 add your Attribute and your Skill that applies to the roll and compare to the target number or opposed roll. This is a simple and elegant system but on its own it would have a problem of after a certain point it becomes impossible for a character with a low attack value to hit an enemy with a high defense skill. To avoid this it has critical success and critical fumbles, on a roll of 10 you roll another die and add it to your total, if that die comes up a 10 you get to add another die, and so on until you stop rolling 10's, meanwhile if you roll a 1 you roll another d10 and subtract that from your total.

I cannot see a reason to change this system on its own, though I might make small changes to the system if I feel another mechanic needs it altered.

Looking at my list of flaws I'm going to start going over the experience figure first, then cover Attributes and end with skills.

Mekton Zeta uses three types of experience, Direct IP, Practice IP, and Training IP. Direct IP is earned in play and by defaults to having no restrictions. Practice IP is gained by spending 2 hours alone working on the skill per IP, and cannot be gained on a skill you have 2 or more ranks in. Finally Training IP is gained by practicing with a teacher, and you can use it to gain IP in the skill until your rank would equal the limitation of your teacher.

Direct IP has no problems, being nice and simple. Practice IP is a great idea but it has the problem of being useless if you have 2 or more ranks in the skill, and Training IP is intended to work as a mentor teaching a younger character and it works, but it is campaign specific. I think I'd change the restrictions on Practice IP to be 5 ranks in the skill, and have Training IP have a maximum of 7, or the teachers rank in that skill whichever is higher.

Characters spend IP to increase skills in Mekton, and you could expand this to affect attributes as well. To increase a skill you spend 10 IP times the current rank in the skill, for an Attribute I think it needs to be at least 50 IP times the rank, but it needs to be play tested. This solves the lack of advancement to attributes as well as give players an additional use for IP.

Moving on to Attributes there are 10 in the game, Attractiveness, Body Type, Cool, Empathy, Intelligence, Education, Luck, Movement Allowance, Reflexes, and Technical Ability.

Attractiveness covers two skills, Personal Grooming and Wardrobe, it is pretty much useless as the two skills it covers pretty much never come up.
Body Type determines your health, carrying capacity, melee damage, and a few other things.
Cool is your willpower and charisma, it covers the Interrogation, Intimidate, Leadership, Persuasion, Fast Talk, Resist Torture, and Streetwise skills, with the exception of Streetwise these are all skills that often come up in the genre.
Empathy covers Acting, Human Perception, Interview, Leadership, Seduction, and Social skills, these vary in usefulness.
Intelligence covers Awareness, Write, Disguise, Electronic Warfare, Expert, Gamble, Languages, Programming, Shadowing, Survival, and Teaching, this is a larger list than it looks like as Expert and Languages are taken once for each area they apply to. It also determines starting skill points.
Education once again covers your starting skill points.
Luck determines your starting luck points and can be applied to your ejection rolls.
Movement Allowance determines how far your character can move, run, or jump in a turn.
Reflexes covers all combat skills, Athletics, Dance, Driving, Stealth, Swimming, Zero Gee, and Aircraft/Shuttle Pilot. This makes it the most valuable stat as combat is the focus of the game.
Technical Ability covers Basic Repair, First Aid, Jury Rig, Mecha Design, Mecha Tech, Medical, Play Instrument, Paint or Draw, Photography & Film, Pick Lock, and Pickpocket. Once again this is a good list but some only exist to add flavor.

Looking over this list I think you can merge Attractiveness, Empathy, and Cool into a single Attribute, call it Charisma. Then merge Body Type and Movement Allowance together and call it Physical Ability. Education can be dropped all together, I'll just change skill points to be 10+2 times your intelligence score. That leaves us with Charisma, Physical Ability, Intelligence, Luck, Reflexes, and Technical Ability.

While this leaves Luck and Reflexes as the most valuable attributes, I think the skills need to be gone over and possibly reassigned. Rather then cover them as they are there are enough that I will go over the refined versions.
- As Attractiveness is now part of Charisma I'm merging Personal Grooming and Wardrobe into a single skill called Appearance. While it won't come up often in combat it can provide advantages in social situations and on disguise checks.
- I'm going to merge Interrogation and Intimidate into a single skill, called Intimidate. It is rolled against the targets Stability or an opposed Resist Torture roll depending on the situation.
- Persuasion and Fast Talk will be merged into a single skill called Persuasion, as the book seemed to treat them as two uses of the same skill but list them separately.
- Resist Torture, Acting, Human Perception, Interview, Leadership, Seduction, and Social are staying the same, just being governed by Charisma instead of their original attributes.
- Streetwise will be removed.
- The Intelligence and Technical Ability skills will not be changed.
- Automatic Weapons, Rifle, and Handguns will be merged into a single skill called Firearms, out of mech combat is to rare for three separate weapon skills to make sense.
- Dodge, Blade, and Hand to Hand are going to remain unchanged.
- Aircraft/Shuttle Pilot, Dance, Driving, and Stealth, will remain unchanged.
- For the Mecha combat skills I am changing it to be the lowest of your Reflexes and Intelligence attributes. The main reason for this is that it takes both knowledge and reflexes to operate complex deices like mechs.
- I'm changing Athletics, Swimming, and Zero Gee to be tied to Physical Ability instead of Reflexes.
- I'm going to give Luck a skill, called Fortune, taken from the Cyberpunk 2020 game from the same creators. I will give details of how fortune works when I get to revising the Luck systems next week.

I think I have worked out the changes to the skill system that needed to be made. The lifepath system needs a major change now as the skills have changed, meaning that the careers will have to change to reflect this.

I'm going to end Part I here as this has been a long post, Part II will be posted next Monday.