Take two. Had one typed up. Cohost threw an error. Lost the post. This is not great for the mindset, but I'm dedicated to trying to put SOMETHING up after failing hard at writing what I wanted to write. Depression sucks. Right, typing it up again.
If you know me, you may know that I really love the three-way intersection of cyberpunk, mecha, and girls with guns that is the Hardsuit Heroine anime. Which is mostly Bubblegum Crisis. If you know examples of the genre that AREN'T AD Police, Bubblegum Crisis, Bubblegum Crash, or Bubblegum Crisis 2040, lemme know? Yeah Gunsmith Cats is adjacent, Burst Angel is adjacent, even Appleseed is adjacent but I could always use more in the vein of a favorite series.
It may shock no one to know that I do have the fuzion/interlock BGC RPG and expansion, but at the same time it may also shock no one to know that it doesn't really scratch a lot of my itches, so here are some notes on a thing I'm designing in fits and starts when a malfunctioning brain will allow me.
Principle One: players will all have a hardsuit heroine character. One of the places where the bulk of the Cool Rules hit is the mech-adjacent action. If you don't have someone on the team that does the action, you're going to feel left out. Maybe it's not your Main Character - source material is full of examples where one of the Main Characters (or a fan favorite) is adjacent to the team in some way, but doesn't actually participate in the Team Combat, and that's okay. Players may also have additional characters, I'm not sure on the implementation of that, but I really don't see any inherent reason that a player should be restricted to "no you only ever have One Avatar period", it's just a matter of balance and framing, you know? Troupes are good, when they're not one player dominating the table's attention by creating and recruiting dozens of expendable characters.
Principle Two: the girls are in a group and on a team. By default assumptions, this is an independent Vigilante Team which has its own "cause" of sorts, but also has to make decisions like 'do we pursue our goals, or do we take this offer of side jobs / heist scores / etc for the funds we need to keep going' and the like. It's possible that the girls might start off as a corp or military or secret ops team. It's possible that the girls might start off as a crime team. It's possible that the girls might start off, IDK, as a racing team? but you start with a unified identity which plays into what kind of game you're playing.
Principle Three: a driving factor is game currency. There are 5 group currencies, and a 6'th personal currency.
- Research is spent to unlock tech tree upgrades and other part upgrades. You can spend a big sum to unlock a new "node" set of options, a smaller sum to unlock "sub-node" improvements, and a different sum to unlock an upgrade for "this specific upgradeable part I have right here, but I can't transfer that upgrade to other parts". This applies to hardsuits, personal weapons/gear, base upgrades, and transport upgrades. The idea of a tech tree in a tabletop RPG is cool to me.
- Artifacts are blanket useful to every group because they can be traded for Research or Resources to most organizations, and for Reputation to some organizations. Think of them like a transferrable bank option currency in a way? Also, with the right group composition, including science- or tech-brained girls, you may be able to turn them into one of a kind, powerful upgrades, as an added bonus.
- Salvage is the only currency you can guarantee access to. You get salvage by either sticking around a fight when it's over, or revisiting a fight scene, or visiting a junkyard or another place where you can find, y'know, salvage. Salvage comes in Repair Points, Rearm Points, and Recovered Gear. You can't control what you get, but you can kind of control getting it.
- Resources is a combination of money, logistics and connections. You can spend Resources to get anything on the open market, or any market you have access to. You can sometimes spend MORE resources to get upgraded gear you haven't unlocked yet. You can spend MORE resources to get pre-customized gear. You can buy repair and rearm points. This is generally a good currency to have.
- Reputation unlocks general scenario rewards and faction rewards, can be spent to counter negative faction effects, and can be gambled for improved rewards
There's also the surprise 6'th currency of STRESS, which is a personal track, it's gained when you do something stressful or are put in a stressful situation, or have to deal with something bad happening to an important connection when you're elsewhere or the like. You can gamble it to get extra downtime actions at the cost of things like "spending time with your girlfriend who isn't a vigilante and doesn't unerstand where you go at night", etc, etc! But when you cap out on stress, you're taken out and have to fix it somehow because you're just too stressed out to fight corporate crime today.
Reducing Stress means doing things like "spending downtime activities patching things up with the girls" and "going home for dinner with your partner" and "maybe visit the aquarium together!" and that's great! But it's also time not spent "fixing your hardsuit" and "upgrading your combat capabilities" so it's a tradeoff even there.
Basically I am BIG FOND of reward currencies driving and affecting gameplay, can you tell?
Principle Four: most currencies can only be obtained via "mission rewards" or connection with a Faction. The girls probably have day jobs or independent wealth of some sort, and might even have had enough for seed money for the vigilante group, but that's not enough to pay for hardsuit repairs and the like. You need to get the currency from somewhere. I don't have a reward structure figured out yet, but basically the idea is "each story arc or sub-arc is a Mission, whether formally or informally, and completing the Mission gets you Rewards". Some of them are just general "oh as a windfall for this thing you did independently", some of them are actually specific "so you did this Job for this Faction and so you get..." and sometimes it's specific sub-objectives like "in this mission, make sure the phone booth in fight 3 is not destroyed" or whatever, little side things to add spice to a fight.
At certain affinity levels, factions will unlock constant bonuses. Get in good with a crime syndicate or a corp and they might be like "well at this affinity level, at the start of a downtime sequence, if you have less than X Resources refill to X" which is nice but not huge, and then at higher affinity they'd be like "oh, at the start of a downtime sequence gain +X resources as long as you maintain this affinity level" which is rather big, but there would be drawbacks of "so you're in bed with the mob..." and the like. Again, super sketchy so far.
Part Five: Other stuff
- I'm not sure how much randomness I want and where it is. I'm tempted to just go "actually, no randomness at all" because that turns the combat side into a pure tactical puzzle and I like that, but at the same time the stress of setting up tactical puzzles and the difficulty of writing enough pieces and pre-designed options to be USEFUL to people without the spoons to do/learn the intricacies is a LOT. Also, I like both the tactile reward of rolling dice, and more importantly, the tension of "ok, this is the shot we're taking, let's see if it connects.." and so forth. Like yeah big misses at big moments is frustrating sometimes, and missing a lot in a row is frustrating and so there'd be something in there to mitigate frustration, but a miss is DRAMA when handled right and uncertainty is DRAMA and I like that.
- Currently I'm thinking that enemies will be laid out and move around on an X by X grid, along with objectives and the like, but players will be kind of arranged classic finalfantasy style just in the "player zone", and get tags from their actions and outcomes. Want to cover someone? Cool, you cover them and they get the appropriate "behind" or "covered" tag. Want to get out in front because you're the tanker suit? Cool, you have the IN FRONT tag and are now a target priority for enemies that have position-based priorities, and so on.
- This is because I really do like weird blast patterns for weapons, and moving enemies around on the battlefield is a super cool effect and fun.
- I think players are going to have an Action Points system where the girls all take their turns in whatever mixed sequence they want, until all action points are spent, and then the enemies don't have an Action Points system but rather have a priority system and a Speed number and they act from fastest to slowest and follow their priorities? I'm tired so expressing this is hard but it's like "Do 2 damage to the NEAREST player, players' choice if tie. Then MOVE 2 spaces according to X pattern. Then do 3 damage to an Armor Corroded player. Then Armor Corrode a random player" or what have you. Obviously this is super sketchy.
- Suit damage is a thing. Both from the source material and because it's part of setting up a dramatic "hungry" loop - not a punishing failure death spiral, but like... yeah you're going to have parts blasted off your suit a lot, or heavy damage a lot, and need repairs, which cost resources, so you'll have to start compromising to get resources one way or another. This also leads to the juicy drama of "so you're out of resources but need repairs... would you consider a devil's bargain with this evil woman...?"
Anyway there's more but I am so out of gas it's not even funny. Here, a posted thing.