What Robotech era do You Play in?

[gaby]

Tell Me What Robotech era do you Play in and Why?



What Palladium books,s setting do you make Crossovers with?

[Seto Kaiba]

Tell Me What Robotech era do you Play in and Why?

Well... I've only ever run one Robotech game, and that was in the general timeframe of the Macross Saga. It only lasted about four sessions before we ended up dropping it in favor of the Macross II RPG. Since then, we've run games in the universe(s) of the original Macross metaseries instead. We did do a short-lived MOSPEADA game using heavily edited versions of what's been printed for the New Generation hardware last year though. The game I'm currently running is set in the Macross universe, circa 2065 (after Macross Frontier and Macross 30, but before Macross Delta).

All told, I think we ended up going with the Macross Saga for that first (and only) Robotech game because it was the one which offered the greatest narrative freedom and had the most versatile (and stylish) mechanical designs. The Zentradi in particular are a foe with a lot more personality than the other antagonists in Robotech, which makes for a more diverse and engaging enemy to pit players against. The Robotech Masters are emotionally extinct for most of their arc, and the Invid are a faceless, voiceless, and utterly inscrutable foe... which makes them boring once the novelty of their inhumanity wears off.

[Jefffar]

I tend to run intra-era. So, for example, a game set in the late 2010s, early 2020s with a mix of Macross and Master's Saga characters, equipment and options. Or a game starting just after the Master's saga and moving into the New Generation era.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I like the New Generations Setting. Though I would dare say Sentinels and Shadow Chronicles fits into this era as well. Its just a matter of perception.
As for Role Playing in setting I see this era as the only true way for any open ended campaign. Since both the Macross and Masters role into this era. And while yes The Shadow Chronicles added to the time line, I highly doubt we shall see anything else to continue it.

[torjones]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha. Those who have gamed with me will likely know just how much I dislike Carl Macek and the hatchet job he did on three different and totally unrelated anime.

Personally, I prefer Macross and its successors, and I still remember the arguments on the net when some of the games had the VB-6 Mothra and how it 'wasn't canon' and then in Frontier when it flew on screen it was a thing of beauty! and thousand meter long ships turning into giant robots, and even cruiser sized ships can do it now with the SDF Quarter. The Macross story line develops not just the story that's going on in the now, but also explores the story that happened in the distant past. It's that meta-plot that I love about Japanese story telling that is so rare to find in American storytelling. Babylon 5 had it, and I loved the hell out of that as well.

So, yeah, while I love seeing new stuff from Robotech, it's mainly because I can use most of it in Macross games. I still look forward to the day when we really do get to go to a concert as mind-blowing as a Sharon Apple concert.

Macross is a love story set to a war movie mixed with a rock and roll concert, and people don't complain about the love story being in the middle of the war flick like the tragedy of Pearl Harbor (2001). So, yeah. Even though we know next to nothing about Delta, I EAGERLY await its release.

(and, yes, the license plate on my truck is SDF1)

Sorry for rambling a bit...

[Lt Gargoyle]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha. Those who have gamed with me will likely know just how much I dislike Carl Macek and the hatchet job he did on three different and totally unrelated anime.

I agree Here. I treat it purely as a fuel source for the Majority of the universe. And a food and Energy source for one Race.

[Seto Kaiba]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha.

So... you'd probably be pretty happy to know that one of the things Tommy Yune did when he rebooted Robotech was to scrap the pseudo-magical stuff? Like petroleum, it has diverse uses, but it no longer causes psychic powers or a mind-link to your mecha.

The Macross story line develops not just the story that's going on in the now, but also explores the story that happened in the distant past. It's that meta-plot that I love about Japanese story telling that is so rare to find in American storytelling. Babylon 5 had it, and I loved the hell out of that as well.

It's all fun and games until you're the one translating it... then you face the uncomfortable realization of exactly how much of it there really is.

[torjones]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha. Those who have gamed with me will likely know just how much I dislike Carl Macek and the hatchet job he did on three different and totally unrelated anime.

I agree Here. I treat it purely as a fuel source for the Majority of the universe. And a food and Energy source for one Race.

Yeah, see, that's the thing. I get that the flowers could be a food and energy source. Wierd stuff happens in nature every day. There's a bacteria that poo's gold. So I get that the flower itself could be doing something funky and can be turned into some really high-test fuel and an alien species eats the damn thing as their primary diet. That's cool and all, but they should have just stuck with the name "Flower of Life" or something similar instead of calling it "Protoculture" which is an anthropological term meaning "the passing of behaviors from one generation to another among non-human primates. These cultures are very rudimentary, and do not exhibit complex cultural technology." I mean, what Robotech calls Protoculture, EVERYONE ELSE calls Overtechnology (or some other similar name to the same effect).

In Macross, The Protoculture (being a proper noun) is the name given by Earth Humans to the Culture that came before (Proto) all the current cultures in the universe. Kinda like the Progenitors or the Alterans. http://macross.wikia.com/wiki/Protoculture for the ancient history of the Macross universe.

So, yeah, I stick with Nuclear Fusion reactors powering everything, and (As seen in Frontier) Heavy Quantum Destabilization Beam(s) for main gun type "I Destroy Everything In My Path" blasts. It makes sense too, if you're destabilizing matter at the quantum level, NOTHING is going to survive it without A LOT of help. Previous to Frontier, it was just called "The Macross Cannon" I would guess because it took them 50 years to figure out how the thing actually worked.

When I run "Robotech" games, it's strictly Macross units and terminology. Yeah, you can have your "Cyclone" or "Mospeda" units, it's just power armor given the transformation treatment after all. It works because it's advanced technology, not magical flower power. If you really want an Alpha/Beta rather than a VF-1MS or a VF-2 SS-SAP, I don't really have a problem with it, just ignore any references to aforementioned psychedelic mecha tripping. I've even tinkered with the Rifts setting a bit so that the forces in orbit are really Macross Fleet units forming the "Earth Containment Fleet" protecting the galaxy from the horrors unleashed by The Coming of the Rifts. (replace NEMA with UNS Post Rain of Death) At the time, I used Macross 7 units. If I revisited that campaign today, I'd use Macross Frontier based units. Forum rules of course prohibit me from telling you *where* I got the source material from, but it's out there on the interwebs and pretty easy to find really... Far more advanced than anything else in Rifts? Um, sure, why not? In Macross they figured that stuff out in 25 years. Rifts can't figure it out in 300? I really don't see why, I mean, Rifts has been around for 25 years itself now (well, this coming August anyway). Our own technology has advanced quite a bit in those years, and what we see as advanced now is vastly different from what we saw 25 years ago. If you had the technology to do so, why WOULDN'T you use a powered exoskeleton as part of your pilot's flight suit and have it highly integrated into the controls of your mecha? Half the time your star fighter looks like a giant robot anyway, so use the exoskeleton as a waldo suit to control the thing. Perfectly natural thing to do. It's still only evolutionary technology, not revolutionary technology. I figure that's why the Luftwaffe of Triax 2 got the borg to merge with their aircraft like that. It's really just a very big borg shell for them... again, evolutionary, not revolutionary. Mechamorphosis itself? Yeah, Revolutionary. lets apply this new technology to EVERYTHING and see just how much cool stuff we can build now! Using everything we already know how to do (and have for 300 years) together, not so much. More surprising that it didn't happen sooner. Then again, it sometimes feels like Palladium's publishing schedule should be measured in geologic time.

[Seto Kaiba]

In Macross, The Protoculture (being a proper noun) is the name given by Earth Humans to the Culture that came before (Proto) all the current cultures in the universe.

Well, the Zentradi call them that too (sort of)... but that's a linguistic coincidence.

So, yeah, I stick with Nuclear Fusion reactors powering everything, [...]

More of a "like nuclear fusion, but with higher dimensional physics involved" situation in Macross. Robotech (post-reboot) powers its first two generations of mecha with conventional nuclear fusion.

and (As seen in Frontier) Heavy Quantum Destabilization Beam(s) for main gun type "I Destroy Everything In My Path" blasts. It makes sense too, if you're destabilizing matter at the quantum level, NOTHING is going to survive it without A LOT of help. Previous to Frontier, it was just called "The Macross Cannon" I would guess because it took them 50 years to figure out how the thing actually worked.

Aaaaactually... it's not a quantum destabilization beam. It's what's called a Dimension Weapon. The long and short of it is that the "heavy quantum" actually refers to a type of exotic, super-massive form of matter that exists in super dimension space, which has applications in many different forms of overtechnology including fold systems. Most of the beam weapons that use it belong to the "fusion beam" type, which pull heavy quantum into realspace and let its own gravity crush it past the fusion point, releasing it as a massively powerful, exotic heavy-element fusion plasma beam. The Macross Quarter's gun is a different type, which fires a heavy quantum "bullet" that warps the space it passes through like a low-level fold effect.

They've actually had an explanation for a good long time, it's just that (as always) they go into increasingly deeper detail every time it comes up.


Source is the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle, Technology Sheet 13A "Dimension Weapons.

[gaby]

Look like No-bodie likes to see games in the Robotech Masters era.
How would you re-imagend it,so it can be better,then canon?

[torjones]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha.

So... you'd probably be pretty happy to know that one of the things Tommy Yune did when he rebooted Robotech was to scrap the pseudo-magical stuff? Like petroleum, it has diverse uses, but it no longer causes psychic powers or a mind-link to your mecha.

The Macross story line develops not just the story that's going on in the now, but also explores the story that happened in the distant past. It's that meta-plot that I love about Japanese story telling that is so rare to find in American storytelling. Babylon 5 had it, and I loved the hell out of that as well.

It's all fun and games until you're the one translating it... then you face the uncomfortable realization of exactly how much of it there really is.

I do like Tommy Yune's work. I've also gotta give props to Jason Marker for his work in purging idiocy from Macross. Too bad they didn't manage to completely purge The Shadow Chronicles. Still, we ever meet in real life, they won't be paying their own bar tab that night.

As for Translation, if you're mistaking **** bunka for Deculture or Gijutsu-jō, you've got to be the worst translator in the history of "They're shooting at us now, what did you tell them I said?" If you're doing a fan-translation, a few mistakes are expected as you're translating off of the sound track, not from a script, unless you got really lucky. If you're a professional translator, those kinds of mistakes are more often caused by executive decisions, not the translator, though, there have been some REALLY crummy translations out there...

[Lt Gargoyle]

while I love the characters and mecha from Shadow Chronicles, I ***REALLY*** don't like the way robotech portrays 'protoculture' as some pseduo-scientific magical marajuana trip for mecha. Those who have gamed with me will likely know just how much I dislike Carl Macek and the hatchet job he did on three different and totally unrelated anime.

I agree Here. I treat it purely as a fuel source for the Majority of the universe. And a food and Energy source for one Race.

Yeah, see, that's the thing. I get that the flowers could be a food and energy source. Wierd stuff happens in nature every day. There's a bacteria that poo's gold. So I get that the flower itself could be doing something funky and can be turned into some really high-test fuel and an alien species eats the damn thing as their primary diet. That's cool and all, but they should have just stuck with the name "Flower of Life" or something similar instead of calling it "Protoculture" which is an anthropological term meaning "the passing of behaviors from one generation to another among non-human primates. These cultures are very rudimentary, and do not exhibit complex cultural technology." I mean, what Robotech calls Protoculture, EVERYONE ELSE calls Overtechnology (or some other similar name to the same effect).

In Macross, The Protoculture (being a proper noun) is the name given by Earth Humans to the Culture that came before (Proto) all the current cultures in the universe. Kinda like the Progenitors or the Alterans. http://macross.wikia.com/wiki/Protoculture for the ancient history of the Macross universe.

So, yeah, I stick with Nuclear Fusion reactors powering everything, and (As seen in Frontier) Heavy Quantum Destabilization Beam(s) for main gun type "I Destroy Everything In My Path" blasts. It makes sense too, if you're destabilizing matter at the quantum level, NOTHING is going to survive it without A LOT of help. Previous to Frontier, it was just called "The Macross Cannon" I would guess because it took them 50 years to figure out how the thing actually worked.

When I run "Robotech" games, it's strictly Macross units and terminology. Yeah, you can have your "Cyclone" or "Mospeda" units, it's just power armor given the transformation treatment after all. It works because it's advanced technology, not magical flower power. If you really want an Alpha/Beta rather than a VF-1MS or a VF-2 SS-SAP, I don't really have a problem with it, just ignore any references to aforementioned psychedelic mecha tripping. I've even tinkered with the Rifts setting a bit so that the forces in orbit are really Macross Fleet units forming the "Earth Containment Fleet" protecting the galaxy from the horrors unleashed by The Coming of the Rifts. (replace NEMA with UNS Post Rain of Death) At the time, I used Macross 7 units. If I revisited that campaign today, I'd use Macross Frontier based units. Forum rules of course prohibit me from telling you *where* I got the source material from, but it's out there on the interwebs and pretty easy to find really... Far more advanced than anything else in Rifts? Um, sure, why not? In Macross they figured that stuff out in 25 years. Rifts can't figure it out in 300? I really don't see why, I mean, Rifts has been around for 25 years itself now (well, this coming August anyway). Our own technology has advanced quite a bit in those years, and what we see as advanced now is vastly different from what we saw 25 years ago. If you had the technology to do so, why WOULDN'T you use a powered exoskeleton as part of your pilot's flight suit and have it highly integrated into the controls of your mecha? Half the time your star fighter looks like a giant robot anyway, so use the exoskeleton as a waldo suit to control the thing. Perfectly natural thing to do. It's still only evolutionary technology, not revolutionary technology. I figure that's why the Luftwaffe of Triax 2 got the borg to merge with their aircraft like that. It's really just a very big borg shell for them... again, evolutionary, not revolutionary. Mechamorphosis itself? Yeah, Revolutionary. lets apply this new technology to EVERYTHING and see just how much cool stuff we can build now! Using everything we already know how to do (and have for 300 years) together, not so much. More surprising that it didn't happen sooner. Then again, it sometimes feels like Palladium's publishing schedule should be measured in geologic time.

I cannot really go far into the Macross World settings. I do not know enough about them.

As for Protoculture, i can see your point. I understand your point. For me the Robotech mecha could easily be switched over to nuke if desired. If the southern cross stuff runs on it I do not see why non of the rest could. I see protoculture as the ultra clean fuel. And the reference to the flower of life is simple to explain as it has not been yet turned into fuel, much like oil and gas. the oil has to go through the refining process to become the fuel we all enjoy so much.

[Lt Gargoyle]

Look like No-bodie likes to see games in the Robotech Masters era.
How would you re-imagend it,so it can be better,then canon?

Its not a image thing for me. Its I like the openness of the New Generation/shadow chronicles. though not a fan of the haydonite crap either. But i think it would help if they gave it some much needed love. Even in first edition they did not give it one source book, and there are so many idea they could expand upon.

[Seto Kaiba]

As for Translation, if you're mistaking **** bunka for Deculture or Gijutsu-jō, you've got to be the worst translator in the history of "They're shooting at us now, what did you tell them I said?" If you're doing a fan-translation, a few mistakes are expected as you're translating off of the sound track, not from a script, unless you got really lucky. If you're a professional translator, those kinds of mistakes are more often caused by executive decisions, not the translator, though, there have been some REALLY crummy translations out there...

Nah, you do know there's actually a (fairly minimal) official Zentradi-to-Japanese glossary of terms that's been published in a couple different Macross references, right? Its most recent reprinting was on the Zentradi worldguide sheet (Worldguide 10B) for the Macross Chronicle official encyclopedia. In Zentradi, "Purotokaaruchuun"* is "[the] Ancient Civilization".


* Their spelling, not mine!

[Jefffar]

All this stuff about the original Macross terminology is nice and all, but it has little relevance to the discussion of which era of Robotech one prefers to play in. Please move it out of this thread and to a more appropriate discussion space.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I d like to see some source material given for the Southern Cross. Maybe the In between stuff leading up to the return of the 10th Mars division. So we had fresh material for that time period.

[Seto Kaiba]

Look like No-bodie likes to see games in the Robotech Masters era.

I'm sure there are some... give it time.

How would you re-imagend it,so it can be better,then canon?

Back about 12 years ago, a couple of my friends were running their own Robotech games online... and from what I remember, there were two main reasons that there were almost no Masters Saga games being run.

The first was that the Army of the Southern Cross mecha and equipment was very polarizing among Robotech fans, with many finding them ugly, very badly flawed, or both. That HG's creative staff included several of those complaints in the official stats they came up with for the mecha probably didn't help there.

The second, and more relevant (IMO), reason is that unless you completely go off the rails and leave Robotech's story, human player-characters are on the losing side of the war. They nearly get wiped out by the Masters when the gloves come off, and before the dust has had a chance to finish settling, the survivors get blitzed by the Invid with few survivors.

I don't think you can really fix either of those without jettisoning the entire Masters Saga plot...

[eliakon]

One issue that comes up a lot in gaming Robotech is that its very easy to get caught up in the idea of "Canon Railroad"
Just because the show has events X then Y then Z happen doesn't mean that they have to happen that way in a game. Followed to extremes this leads to 'games' that are really nothing more than collaborative (at best) Fan-Fic. The idea of a game is that the characters actions actually matter. Thus while the Masters may steamroll everyone in the show, maybe in your game your players will come up with the right plan to save the day. Maybe your player wont miss the shot at the weak spot and thus the shot down masters ship wont be saved. Maybe your team will figure out the secret of the matrix early enough to save it.....that's the beauty of the game, that in this version of the world things might go differently.
This is one reason why when I play I don't look at the books from later in the time line. Sure the Invid are scheduled to come in and wipe everyone out soon....but that doesn't meant that I have to do that. Maybe this time we beat the masters, save the matrix and spend the next thirty years deprograming clones and integrating the races.....

[glitterboy2098]

that's one of the reasons i like the master's and new generation periods more myself.. macross era has awesome mecha, but the later era's have more flexibility.

in macross era, half of it is based on the SDF-1 in interplanetary space.. not a lot of options for creative battles against the zentraedi because of the limitations of the space enviroment and the zentraedi goals (in the words of the Duke of Wellington.. "They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way" ), and on the human side there is limited options for intrigue or conflict.
the other half is on earth, before the survivors really got their act together.. so your main opponents are bands of human and zentraedi renegades.

Master's era though.. you have human nations, not all of which like the UEG. you have organized bandit groups (both human and zent), that pose a serious threat. you even have intrigue and conflict with the UEG itself. and then you have the master's arriving at the end of it.. the master's were actually fairly clever in how they approached fighting the forces of earth.. always trying new aprpoaches, gambits, and tactics to make the most of their limited resources. i mean, sneaking landing party's down? infiltration? coming up with new mecha upgrades and designs? and the ASC had to be just as sneaky to match.

New Generation.. you've got all the freedom of a post apocalyptic setting, able to include everything from Mad Max to the Postman in feel n regards to human foes and intruige. you have zentraedi, tyrolians, and humans all in a mix, communities of various sizes and levels of intact technology, and since it's canon was not focused on one part of the planet (the way macross was focused on the SDF-1, and masters was focused around monument city) there is more canon details on the setting you can borrow without having to shadow the canon character's the whole time. that wider scale also means that you don;t have to stretch things as much to have it occur elsewhere in the world.. the way you sometimes have to for macross or southern cross during the wars. plus you can use just about any mecha in the game.. VF-1's and Bioroids and alpha's and battlepods.. even if the characters normally wouldn't use such mecha because of their faction of origin.

and while the invid are kinda limited in the "mecha on mecha" aspect, the invid race as a whole has a ton of options for adventures. genesis pits and the weird critters in them. experiments of all kinds on humans (and most likely the ecology of earth as well.) flower of life farms with slave labor. alliances with human agents (like the exampels of jonathan wolfe and norristown), etc. when the Simulagents get added in, you get even more options thanks to the whole "is he/she really human or not" angle, as well as the "simulagent exploring their new humanity" angle.

[torjones]

and (As seen in Frontier) Heavy Quantum Destabilization Beam(s) for main gun type "I Destroy Everything In My Path" blasts. It makes sense too, if you're destabilizing matter at the quantum level, NOTHING is going to survive it without A LOT of help. Previous to Frontier, it was just called "The Macross Cannon" I would guess because it took them 50 years to figure out how the thing actually worked.

Aaaaactually... it's not a quantum destabilization beam. It's what's called a Dimension Weapon. The long and short of it is that the "heavy quantum" actually refers to a type of exotic, super-massive form of matter that exists in super dimension space, which has applications in many different forms of overtechnology including fold systems. Most of the beam weapons that use it belong to the "fusion beam" type, which pull heavy quantum into realspace and let its own gravity crush it past the fusion point, releasing it as a massively powerful, exotic heavy-element fusion plasma beam. The Macross Quarter's gun is a different type, which fires a heavy quantum "bullet" that warps the space it passes through like a low-level fold effect.

They've actually had an explanation for a good long time, it's just that (as always) they go into increasingly deeper detail every time it comes up.


Source is the official Macross encyclopedia Macross Chronicle, Technology Sheet 13A "Dimension Weapons.

I've never seen a copy of the Macross Chronicle as I live in North America. I have of course seen Sketchley's Translations on his website. It is technically a back-stage resource type material, and not, strictly speaking, canon. Given that I don't believe Sketchley is a professional translator, and that most of it reads like he didn't quite get the Japanese when they went into the science of the technology, I can't bring myself to take it as gospel. If it was ever released in English officially, my position on it may change, but as it stands, that's the way I feel about it. I can see what they are trying to say about the technology, and in some aspects it does make some sense, but in others, well, if you haven't been confused by quantum physics, you clearly haven't understood the material yet...

Still, in my games, I run the Macross Cannons as I stated previously because even the physics majors I've gamed with "Get It" and don't argue the point with me. If I gave them the explanation from the Macross Chronicle (even with the caveat that it's a translation) I'd loose an entire gaming session as the gamers argued about just how bad the science was, and then we could get back to gaming. And if you think about it, a weapon that destabilizes the quantum bonds in all matter is pretty much the ultimate weapon as nothing physical could withstand it. You might be able to shield against it with an energy field, but that would be the only protection possible.

So, yeah, it's officially called a "Heavy Quantum Reaction Beam" weapon, and of course you've got the Reaction missiles and bombs and what not. I haven't really figured out the DE weapons yet, maybe after Delta if they explain them more, or I watch Frontier a couple more times (Oh woe is me! ).

[torjones]

Look like nobody likes to see games in the Robotech Masters era.
How would you re-imagine it, so it can be better than canon?

(sorry, had to do some spell-checking on your post Gaby.)
Unfortunately, I don't think there's anything to re-imagine for SDC Southern Cross. The biggest problems with it are integral to the story that is Southern Cross. You are destined to loose, and VERY likely die in doing so.

Also, the romance from Macross is missing, as is the music. There really is only the plot between the Humans and Masters. The only significant plot between characters is the antagonism between Dana and Nova. (unless people are claiming that as UST, I'm not seeing any significant romantic entanglement for the main characters.) I also think that the character development was far weaker than Macross or Mospeda.

I think that with the built-in flaws that Seto Kaiba mentioned combined with the above, pretty much means that people will prefer to game in the other settings, not that there aren't plenty of opportunities for gaming with the Southern Cross setting.

[Seto Kaiba]

Just because the show has events X then Y then Z happen doesn't mean that they have to happen that way in a game.

Very true, though I've noticed a LOT of people who run the Robotech RPG like to carry over from one saga to the next once the story reaches its endgame... often with the same characters. The Masters Saga could be problematic for those type of games, since having the ASC get nearly wiped out twice in short order makes it difficult to convincingly let the PCs survive from saga to saga.

[SRoss]

Look like No-bodie likes to see games in the Robotech Masters era.
How would you re-imagend it,so it can be better,then canon?

Think it's not that anyone dislikes it, it's just the middle sequel curse.

The Fight with the Masters is a relatively short siege. If you set it before the arrival of the Masters, your dealing with basically Late Reconstruction period with ASC mecha and weapons verses surviving Zentreadi mecha and a growing number of IMUs. After the Masters period and its basically "So, what do we do till the Invid show up and kick our asses?"

[camk4evr]

I don't, currently play in a Robotech campaign (I do play in a couple of Macross pbp ones though), but the two times I did one was a Macross Saga one that lasted only one session and the other one was a pbp that took place between Masters and New Gen.

So, yeah, it's officially called a "Heavy Quantum Reaction Beam" weapon, and of course you've got the Reaction missiles and bombs and what not. I haven't really figured out the DE weapons yet, maybe after Delta if they explain them more, or I watch Frontier a couple more times (Oh woe is me! ).

DE weapons? That's the "Dimension Eater" weapons right? I tend to think of them as weaponized fold drives that don't put up a protective barrier to protect whatever is being folded from the high energy Super Dimension like a regular fold drive does. Whether or not that's the actual in universe desriction, I've no idea.

[Lt Gargoyle]

Just because the show has events X then Y then Z happen doesn't mean that they have to happen that way in a game.

Very true, though I've noticed a LOT of people who run the Robotech RPG like to carry over from one saga to the next once the story reaches its endgame... often with the same characters. The Masters Saga could be problematic for those type of games, since having the ASC get nearly wiped out twice in short order makes it difficult to convincingly let the PCs survive from saga to saga.

This is so untrue. In fact because they are the PC is the reason they survive and still have mecha. The PC are the 1 in 5 million. they are the lotto winners in the game world. They could easily be explained to have survived in the back ground of one war era to another.

[tobefrnk]

I voted for Master's Saga as I like playing in the era with the exptrapilated idea of rival human nations. Honestly though, I like running games in all the eras (the only one I haven't touched yet is Shadow Chronicles).

As for Palladium Cross-Overs, I'm currently rewriting my own version of the Sentinels and I'm borrowing a lot of tech from Phase World/Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Splicers, and Macross II.

[Sgt Anjay]

Masters Saga.

So many things to be: from "Platoon" type intra-unit drama in the jungles of some remote locale, to old-style special forces going "Metal Gear" or "Ghost Recon" on anti-UEG terrorists, to hotshot "Top Gun" style fighter pilots, to the old standby of playing with giant robots stomping or strafing across a battlefield, to launching from spaceships to clean up space pirates.

So many toys: various veritechs, various battloids, various power armors, various combat armors, various small arms both conventional and energy (there's a lightning gun!). Kit out your trooper *just so*.

And of course the story potentials. Starting early with the rise of an isolated force high in the Andes fighting for desperate survival of themselves and refugees, to a newborn fighting force taking the fight to the enemy, to the large-scale reclamation of the South American continent and fighting in the fabled Zentraedi Control Zone, to the consolidation of the Southern Cross as a worldwide power securing the UEG against those who would fracture humanity into irrevocably tiny pieces incapable of defending their world, the drama of inter-faction political machinations and trying to prevent small-scale skirmish from rising to international crisis, possible colonial missions and tag-alongs with interstellar transport squadrons or visits to Space Station Liberty, to of course renewed interstellar war with the Robotech Masters and the inherent triumph mixed with tragedy of that Pyrrhic victory, the weird inter-period dealing with refugee Tirolians pocked across Earth and reinforcing Expeditionary Troops, to the bittersweet contraction into founding of resistance cells with the coming of the Invid...

Years and years and years of games in all of that, campaigns that could take place at the same time and never even need to see each other...

Masters Saga.

[ilexgarodan]

Technically, my first campaign was during the reconstruction period, around the year 2018. I don't know whether it would be classified as Macross or Masters.

To be honest, though, I take a cue from Spoony, and I set any game that's based on an already established franchise in an alternate universe. This gives me the freedom to change whatever aspects I want to in the campaign, without having the players who are more familiar with the original canon from crying foul.

[SolCannibal]

Only Robotech campaign i seriously played was in the SDF-1 era, but that was mostly due to simple familiarity - damn, Robotech Masters was still being aired when our campagin came to a close, so it was all too natural.

Though we tried to overall stick close to the events of that era, though with liberties, like:
- the travel from Pluto back to Earth becomes a Battlestar Galactica inspired cat-&-mouse game of twists and turns across the solar system and taking more than two years.

- the "aliens" or "the giants" - no such word as Zentraedi or Meltraedi before Rick, Lisa & co's capture and later escape. We even dedicated some game time to trying to translate or decrypt alien communications and any data from captured remnants of battlepods, ships and other stuff.

- resources were far from infinite and the SDF-1's original complement of veritechs and destroids far from sufficient for its problems, what led pilots and technicians to propose and set up "cannibal runs" where a group of pilots and ships would return to certain battlefields to scavenge it out of anything, be it friend or enemy carcass, that might used or reverse-enginered into spare parts for repairs or new mecha construction. Thanks to this hellish experiment and learning period it was that the ship could provide itself with enough reserves to train and actually equip a whole host of civilians with veritechs to spare.

- the SDF-1 was unable to make any contact with RDF command on Earth, what lead to all sorts of doubts and wild theories: Had the aliens "glassed" the rest of Earth after macross island was destroyed? Or were they still besieging the planet and blocking all our communications somehow? Had the bases in Mars or the Moon (totally made up this one, i know) been attacked too, or gone into radio silence for security reasons? Had high command abandoned the SDF-1 to its own luck, hoping to buy time to reinforce and upgrade the RDF's military capacities with its sacrifice? If they were doing so, wouldn't Earth actually be better safer if the SDF-1 left the solar system once and for all, and tried to find another home among the stars, with or without the enemy on their tracks? Basically, we had lots of "in-game fanwank as roleplaying", bouts of weird, somber, fanciful and rambling bar & cantina talk between pilots, mechanics, bridge bunnies and the occasional civilian. This resulted in a climate of insecurity, tension and occasional ebbs of morale among the personnel and lead to propaganda moves like Miss Macross and Min May career as a way to provide distraction but also sparked the occasional mission set around "breaking the silence" or continued existence of humanity on Earth or the space bases.

- Gloval had a short romance of his own with a young female (PC) pilot, though age and authority issues complicated things a bit. Our SDF-1 had a little more gender variety in most functions, not much but a little, as a personal conceit of ours.

- It wasn't only the civilians who were disatisfied when, after finally ending the whole damned journey through space, high command forbid any contact with the outside world. Many among the pilots and crew, who were not military back when the alien attack happened (and technically still weren't) felt quite disgruntled over this, specially because their families would still be in danger with them in the ship, leading to a more threatening version of the incident after Rick, Lisa & Min May's return.

Except things took a pretty unexpected turn from there, with all those past discussions about our isolation in space, more than a year of radio silence, resentment over high command and grief over the losses in Mars and the Moon came back to haunt us, turn everything upside down and instead of difusing the problem the players ended up leading an actual, organized mutiny, making part of the SDF-1's bridge hostage (with help of the other part) and parading the (officially destroyed) spaceship all across the Indic and Pacific seashores', while blearing on all radio channels we could about our return and what we had gone through in that time, as a world-sized middle finger to High Command's order, who desperately tried to block or censor all transmissions (what they mostly managed to) and try to reassert command over the ship by force (what they failed very badly at - trying to send hundreds of pilots with little real combat experience against thousands of veterans of two years of space battles? really?). In the end Gloval, Lisa and others managed to, eventually, defuse the whole situation and make the PCs relinquish control of the bridge, my character - as senior officer and mutiny leader - "was sent to psychological rehabilitation" by High Command to get him out of the SDF-1 (and because putting him through prison and a court martial could only make things worse for them) and try to smooth things out as much as possible. Things with him separated in the clinic were fun too, as the RDF intelligence division found out how migraine-inducing it can be to deal with a man whose last two years of life falls under "classified", "top secret" or "what the hell were those people doing in space?!?" Overall, it ended up being one of the most fun arcs in the campaign and the most drama-charged one by far.

Anyway the canon deviations were overall for the sake of drama, others to cover up - or lampshade - what we felt were plot holes, but overall we went with what let us add our own chapters and twists to the core story, beside some system changes of convenience, like using just one pilot OCC for veritech and destroids both with just a few package/specialty differences and compressing all the non-pilot roles in a "technical support specialist" that could cover for them all depending on skill options used.

Also tried a "Invid Era" game once, promising but it didn't go very far, half a dozen sessions at most...

[Zer0 Kay]

You need a vote for other. I play shadow chronicles x.
Sentinels did happen
End of the Circle has been happening, except something happened this iteration.
After the defeat of the Regent a new coalition of aliens appeared pleading for help.
It was decided that the whole fleet could not detour and had to meet with the rest of the RDF to assault Reflex point
A small group was allowed to go. Several ships and a Marine Battle station. This group was invading a tyrants system with no plans of diplomacy, so were dubbed the RIF.
They faught, they routed the enemy who just happened to retreat to destroy the human home world.
All Regis Experiments had some of the Regis' DNA put in them to make her mutations at whim possible.
If two experiments have a child the offspring is a Regis Hybrid with random Regis traits and powers.
My character was the first RH, she left to try to use diplomacy on the Regis to ally again the shadow.
Only hours after the humans survived the Haydonite attack. They returned as if they had already been gone. This time they had other ships with them from another alien race, the one determined to destroy humanity.
The war had raged on for months, all seemed lost. Then ghost unknown organic ships appeared launching missiles that passed through the hull of the enemy before detonating and without an explosion made parts of the ship disappear. One of the larger ships had one giant Invid eye that produced lances of plasma and cut through some ships, out of its mouth spewed dozens of Horizont shuttle like craft which immediately start firing reflex like energy beams at ships, while others sprayed the enemies small fighter craft. Some ships jumped in directly over their prey and cut them apart with several beams. Then hundreds hundreds of fold signatures appeared and thousand of small craft appeared followed by a few organic looking legios fighters as if launched from some carrier still in fold space. All the while the larger ships continually fired lasers which went straight up from their hull and redirected to their target a few meters away as if deflected from some sort of invisible mirror.

That is the era I play in. I follow the RT formula of last era's enemies is this Era's allies.

[SolCannibal]

You need a vote for other. I play shadow chronicles x.

I agree that an "other" option would be a fine addition.

Crossovers.... do other eras of Robotech count? Because though we had little to no familiarity with the other eras back then, we had little to no scruple about mining tidbits from the modules and throwing them upon the SDF-1 and the PCs in different context: the Robotech Masters and Marduk from Macross II as "fallen prercursors" and a rogue splinter army of the Zentraedi host respectively that tried to both destroy and ally with the SDF-1 crew during their explorations beyond the solar system, making a blind fold into the stars that leads the ship to a besieged alien world razed by Zentraedi and Invid both beside a bunch of other funky adapted stuff that entered our games.

But on actual crossover terrain i would put the occasional the "exploration/ghost ship/horror/space dungeon crawl" scenarios inspired by Alien, the Black Hole, Space Hulk (warp/fold, anyone?) and Call of Cthulhu, because some people's jokes about indestructible inhuman titans in derelict alien citadels of mutable architecture and stuff got a little too much milleage... Some Enemy Mine inspired episodes too, but considering how thematic for Robotech or Macross both that can be, i wouldn't really count as crossover except when space lizards are involved.

Outside of this.... well, in my personal version of HU's Earth "Century Station" is basically the SDF-1's husk adrift in orbit and turned into hideout/beachhead for alien exiles & criminals in the solar system and watchpost, battlezone and research center for supers and special forces of ONU's security council for decades. Ah, and special prison too, because sending them down to Earth would be troublesome and there's always some little tidbit of info about the damned space fortress one or other weirdo or another might be keeping secret for future use or negotiation. A most awful and entertaining place that i have occasionally used in HU and Rifts games.

edit: Oh yeah, something i nearly forgot - Minmay, thanks to her family's restaurant becoming the most popular rest stop for a lot of pilots developed quite a strong rapport with the grunts and was a major factor behind her unexpected victory in the Miss Macross Competition, but also resulted in her first song being a somber, almost goth piece called "Iron Skies" that was censored and scrapped but ended up in a smuggled demo out of studio and copied to destruction by dozens of pilots that kept it as their personal angry unofficial anthem. A couple of players made mock-up lyrics and tape recorded it, just for fun with props and it ended up making a cameo in the "Invid Era" game as something among the possessions of someone's grandfather, who actually served in the Macross.

[Kagashi]

I prefer Sentinels

[SolCannibal]

I prefer Sentinels

Funny thing - i thought i knew Sentinels as just a name and had never seen or read any related material, just yesterday saw a cover and recognized it as a "Robotech II" a friend caught once in a video store years ago but we had no idea if it was really part of the franchise or just self-serving brand renaming. Going to try to find that cartoon again i guess.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I prefer Sentinels

Funny thing - i thought i knew Sentinels as just a name and had never seen or read any related material, just yesterday saw a cover and recognized it as a "Robotech II" a friend caught once in a video store years ago but we had no idea if it was really part of the franchise or just self-serving brand renaming. Going to try to find that cartoon again i guess.

the 3 episode come with the ultimate collectors edition. it does not show much. but its still cool to have.

I Love the Sentinels, and simply consider them part of the Generation era, same with shadow Chronicles, though i thought this one was kinda week in plot.

[SolCannibal]

I prefer Sentinels

Funny thing - i thought i knew Sentinels as just a name and had never seen or read any related material, just yesterday saw a cover and recognized it as a "Robotech II" a friend caught once in a video store years ago but we had no idea if it was really part of the franchise or just self-serving brand renaming. Going to try to find that cartoon again i guess.

the 3 episode come with the ultimate collectors edition. it does not show much. but its still cool to have.

I Love the Sentinels, and simply consider them part of the Generation era, same with shadow Chronicles, though i thought this one was kinda weak in plot.

Honestly, something i would really like to see (though i don't see it happening anytime soon) is a remake of the series, something to present the universe anew to fans & (hopefully) a whole new generation or two and clear up & streamline continuity and visuals along the way. Maybe take the first era out of Macross' shadow if we are very lucky.

The matter of New Generation/Sentinels/Shadow Chronicles as separate storylines in the same era or close but different periods as i (don't quite) understand it, for example, is one where this kind of revamp could be helpful in fact, i guess.

[torjones]

I prefer Sentinels

Funny thing - i thought i knew Sentinels as just a name and had never seen or read any related material, just yesterday saw a cover and recognized it as a "Robotech II" a friend caught once in a video store years ago but we had no idea if it was really part of the franchise or just self-serving brand renaming. Going to try to find that cartoon again i guess.

the 3 episode come with the ultimate collectors edition. it does not show much. but its still cool to have.

I Love the Sentinels, and simply consider them part of the Generation era, same with shadow Chronicles, though i thought this one was kinda week in plot.

The Pioneer Expedition was a mission to confront alien forces in space to prevent interplanetary war on Earth. It took place concurrently with the 2nd and 3rd Robotech wars. The expedition was led by Lisa Hayes aboard the SDF-3, which was launched in 2022 in search of the Robotech Masters. The mission soon became preoccupied with the liberation of worlds under the control of the Invid Regent. In June 2030, the final battle of the Second Robotech War caused a release of the spores of the Invid flower of life across Earth, which soon attracted the Invid. In 2031, the Invid, under the control of the Regis, invaded Earth. The United Earth Forces (including the elite Army of the Southern Cross) had been severely weakened by the Second Robotech War and were only able to offer limited resistance. In less than a week, the Invid seized control of the planet and began utilizing the human population for slave labour and scientific experiments. In 2038 and 2042, the REF sent the 10th and 21st Mars divisions to try to retake the planet, but both ended in complete failure. It was only with the third attempt in 2044, which involved all available REF forces (now equipped with new technology obtained from the Haydonites) that the Invid were dislodged from Earth.

Technically, Rick, Lisa, and the rest of the gang from the Macross saga were off liberating the Sentinels territory from the Invid and returning control back to the Sentinel races, so this happens during the Southern Cross Era and the Mospeda Era. Then again, most of the Sentinels story line technology, like the Cyclone, is already available on Earth before the start of the Mospeda Era, so clearly it's had at least a couple of years to spread on Occupied Earth. If Cyclones hadn't made it back to Earth, how would (nearly) everyone in the adventuring party that is the Mospeda story line have one? Especially in all those variants, which were developed (IIRC) later in the Sentinels saga. (sorry, it's been a VERY long time since I read the Sentinels novels...)
The Shadow Chronicles is really just the tail end (last episode or three) of the Mospeda series. It's the liberation fleet that shows up just as the Regis chooses to leave Earth, and give it back to the humans.

[SolCannibal]

Well, that does help with clearing things up a bit - i did have the impression that some series were parallel than sequential to the "core three ears" but had not much to show in favor or against it due to a lack of overall familiarity.

[Kagashi]

I prefer Sentinels

Funny thing - i thought i knew Sentinels as just a name and had never seen or read any related material, just yesterday saw a cover and recognized it as a "Robotech II" a friend caught once in a video store years ago but we had no idea if it was really part of the franchise or just self-serving brand renaming. Going to try to find that cartoon again i guess.

the 3 episode come with the ultimate collectors edition. it does not show much. but its still cool to have.

I Love the Sentinels, and simply consider them part of the Generation era, same with shadow Chronicles, though i thought this one was kinda week in plot.

The Pioneer Expedition was a mission to confront alien forces in space to prevent interplanetary war on Earth. It took place concurrently with the 2nd and 3rd Robotech wars. The expedition was led by Lisa Hayes aboard the SDF-3, which was launched in 2022 in search of the Robotech Masters. The mission soon became preoccupied with the liberation of worlds under the control of the Invid Regent. In June 2030, the final battle of the Second Robotech War caused a release of the spores of the Invid flower of life across Earth, which soon attracted the Invid. In 2031, the Invid, under the control of the Regis, invaded Earth. The United Earth Forces (including the elite Army of the Southern Cross) had been severely weakened by the Second Robotech War and were only able to offer limited resistance. In less than a week, the Invid seized control of the planet and began utilizing the human population for slave labour and scientific experiments. In 2038 and 2042, the REF sent the 10th and 21st Mars divisions to try to retake the planet, but both ended in complete failure. It was only with the third attempt in 2044, which involved all available REF forces (now equipped with new technology obtained from the Haydonites) that the Invid were dislodged from Earth.

Technically, Rick, Lisa, and the rest of the gang from the Macross saga were off liberating the Sentinels territory from the Invid and returning control back to the Sentinel races, so this happens during the Southern Cross Era and the Mospeda Era. Then again, most of the Sentinels story line technology, like the Cyclone, is already available on Earth before the start of the Mospeda Era, so clearly it's had at least a couple of years to spread on Occupied Earth. If Cyclones hadn't made it back to Earth, how would (nearly) everyone in the adventuring party that is the Mospeda story line have one? Especially in all those variants, which were developed (IIRC) later in the Sentinels saga. (sorry, it's been a VERY long time since I read the Sentinels novels...)
The Shadow Chronicles is really just the tail end (last episode or three) of the Mospeda series. It's the liberation fleet that shows up just as the Regis chooses to leave Earth, and give it back to the humans.

They acquired them from the remains of the 10th and 21st Mars Divisions. Just like Rand says in the first episode where it literally shows him finding one. "Oh cool, this must be technology used to fight the Robotech Masters" (Or something like that). Clearly, he had not seen one up until that point. Cyclones are a product of the Pioneer Mission. Even in the now decanonized Sentinels animation, Cyclones did not exist when Pioneer was about to leave Earth after Rick and Lisa's wedding in 2022. The UEEF had 20 years to develop the cyclones we see in New Generation, and that all happened in the Sentinels era.

[Lt Gargoyle]

I would love to see the series refreshed and given it a truly fresh feel and more up to date with the modern world. Also It be nice to have it free of the Macross shadow with a streamlined story.

Yea I love the Sentinels and As Kagashi said it is a parallel event in the time line. But the OSM, the UEEF was from mars and fighting to free earth of the alien invaders so their tech was on par with their mars base.

While i am not expecting much, it is my hope we will get some new destroid mecha and marine style mecha with the Marine book that fits with the feel of a marine force fighting on the many different worlds.

[Kagashi]

totally. There is plenty of destroid art that was not used yet. Id love to see the Tiger get stats. Especially since it saw print in the Wildstorm comics as the 15th left Earth (only to be replaced by a MAC III in LLA).

[Colonel Wolfe]

I like the middle chapter.
The Master's era has access to the majority of the tech in the later 2 eras, and enemy that is a real threat the the planet.
Play with the fact the Invid invasion within hours of the defeat of the Masters and you can fight in a 3 way conflict that leaves pretty much everyone screwed...

[SolCannibal]

Honestly, something i would really like to see (though i don't see it happening anytime soon) is a remake of the series, something to present the universe anew to fans & (hopefully) a whole new generation or two and clear up & streamline continuity and visuals along the way. Maybe take the first era out of Macross' shadow if we are very lucky.

The matter of New Generation/Sentinels/Shadow Chronicles as separate storylines in the same era or close but different periods as i (don't quite) understand it, for example, is one where this kind of revamp could be helpful in fact, i guess.

Ok, it looks like i may get my wish sometime in the future.

[Lt Gargoyle]

yea, i ll not hold my breath on this. Also How many movies do you think their gonna get? you need a good dozen to pull it off right and tell the story. otherwise you ll get the same effect of The last air bender and become a huge disappointment.

[SolCannibal]

yea, i ll not hold my breath on this. Also How many movies do you think their gonna get? you need a good dozen to pull it off right and tell the story. otherwise you ll get the same effect of The last air bender and become a huge disappointment.

True, but does sony only works with movies? There are many venues to explore a franchise once you get it. Films, tv, games.... it's all in what you have and Sony has certainly a presence in all of those areas and them some. So, let's wait and see for sure what comes out. It may amount to much ado about nothing in the end? Yes, but things have definitely moved out of limbo at least.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ok, it looks like i may get my wish sometime in the future.

Don't hold your breath on that one, my friend... if you fancy ever breathing again.

(This is, after all, the second time the grandiose promises of a big-budget multi-film franchise have been made... and let's not forget how that worked out the first time. We are firmly past "shame on you" and into "shame on me" territory.)

If Harmony Gold's comments about the license under WB are anything to go by, a live action movie (if made) will likely not be under the scope of Palladium's license. Before WB let the license go, Harmony Gold indicated that it had included merchandising rights for the movie as well.

[Lt Gargoyle]

Ok, it looks like i may get my wish sometime in the future.

Don't hold your breath on that one, my friend... if you fancy ever breathing again.

(This is, after all, the second time the grandiose promises of a big-budget multi-film franchise have been made... and let's not forget how that worked out the first time. We are firmly past "shame on you" and into "shame on me" territory.)

If Harmony Gold's comments about the license under WB are anything to go by, a live action movie (if made) will likely not be under the scope of Palladium's license. Before WB let the license go, Harmony Gold indicated that it had included merchandising rights for the movie as well.

Well at least we have some gaming materials to work with when PB loses it gaming rights

[Jerell]

They should forget the live action stuff, and redo the animated series. Like SB Yamato did with Yamato 2199 or Gundam is doing with origin. I hope it's only a matter or time until they get around to giving the same teatment to SDF Macross. Then maybe, somehow we could get Southern Cross and New Gen redone... Oh well, I can dream.

[SolCannibal]

They should forget the live action stuff, and redo the animated series. Like SB Yamato did with Yamato 2199 or Gundam is doing with origin. I hope it's only a matter or time until they get around to giving the same teatment to SDF Macross. Then maybe, somehow we could get Southern Cross and New Gen redone... Oh well, I can dream.

Let's wait and see - if things hit it off with a filme, one can certainly hope for an animated series, that yeah, could be far more beneficial to reworking the whole continuity.

[Seto Kaiba]

Gettin' ready to give a homebrew MOSPEADA game based on RT2E this weekend... gonna be real interesting.

They should forget the live action stuff, and redo the animated series. Like SB Yamato did with Yamato 2199 or Gundam is doing with origin.

For Robotech, that's never going to happen because of the copyright obstacles involved... and because of the show's obscurity.

I hope it's only a matter or time until they get around to giving the same teatment to SDF Macross.

Um... well, good news late is better than no news, right? The original character designer for Macross, Haruhiko Mikimoto, started doing Macross's answer to the Gundam: the Origin manga (Macross the First) five-and-a-half years ago. Volume 6 goes on sale the day after tomorrow, IIRC.

[Zer0 Kay]

They should forget the live action stuff, and redo the animated series. Like SB Yamato did with Yamato 2199 or Gundam is doing with origin. I hope it's only a matter or time until they get around to giving the same teatment to SDF Macross. Then maybe, somehow we could get Southern Cross and New Gen redone... Oh well, I can dream.

Or the New Harlock movie