Mannie

Eva's like my favourite thing, got all the shit I love: Alien hypertech, human hybrids, grand conspiracies, magic and tech being interchangable, ramiel, girls that smell.

but how to make it

Gameable

playing as the Fucked Up people getting sent to fight the Fucked Up Monsters is neat but it's all controlled by higher ups. Like, ye, a class design would mean that sure, your berserker mech is indeed a mech that goes sicko mode more often than not. But you're never gonna have the chance to like seek out an S2 engine.

One idea is that players have two characters. One's doing dirtywork and is an emotional wreak, the other is doing dirtywork and an emotional wreak but ALSO, has a measure of influence.

So like, if you're Shinji, you also play Ritsuka.

Something something, you need at least one degree of separation between your characters. So you can't be Shinji AND Misato, or Gendo, but you can be Kaji. To prevent Talking to Yourself moments.

The Angel set up would need some fiddling with. What if the other Eva programs... worked? Competing Evas and design philosophies. American Evas prioritizing ranged combat and slap their pilots into learning how to neutralize AT fields at range real well.

something something, Pieces of Lilith/Adam scattered about. Everyone's trying to reassemble Adam/Lilith. Uh Oh, an American Jet just happened to drop this dummy plugged, berserking Eva RIGHT ON THE GEOFRONT. Oops. Whoopsy. We're sorry. We'll be taking this black box, step back, I have a gun, you can't stop me.

Hey asuka, pop training exercise. If you can take out that [DRONE] then you'll be known as the bestest pilot ever, forever. You'll get to tell shinji this.

could be fun. Reduces the "if we lose once its fucking over" of EVA which blunts the omega-truama from "the world ends" to "you made a WMD because your ass couldn't stop it, get in this borrowed EVA, yes its going to feel weird."

So, to maximise agency in an Eva setup:

Players have two chars, pilot and a NERVous wreak.

These two chars have one degree of seperation from eachother. [maybe someone like misato is like, GM controlled. Caretaker.]

NERVous wreaks harbor some actionable Secret in the agency. [Ritsuka knew Rei was a clone. Gendo knew The Plan. Kaji knew that NERV wasn't what they say they were.] Actionable meaning some leverage can be applied. Letting a pilot know, telling the world/country and getting Spec Ops on your ass, hijacking the operation from Those Above.

Failing a combat is possible but the world doesn't end. maybe some Contingency needs to be popped [Lance of Longinus deployed, need to go in debt to another Superpower], or, a new, worse combat pops up where failure here CAN result in end of the world.

big, big paragraphs in GM section about if the world ends. god, fuckin' imagine, world ending being its own state of play. semi-domain play with restoration being the goal. too ambitious. maybe. maaaybe.

Building off of this amazing article, I have Contributions.

So, the gist of this article is that, for many TTRPGs, you have what's effectively 3 HP. You can take 3 normal hits before getting down. Even in more lethal systems, the math works out to where you just die harder, getting dropped to 1 or 2 HP on a hit. Highrolls might mean you're downed in 2.

And if you're beefy, you take 4 hits to take down.

So, using this, via a bunch of discussions across Discord [Thanks, Bin! and the OMM discord! And RIP Gila Discord!] I've constructed the 9HP hypothesis for damage in a tactical turn based game.

Further meta-analysis reveals that, these HP totals from the post were made, specifically, for 3-4 bodies in a party.

I say bodies, because there's design space for 3-4 people playing as a single entity in a tactical combat game. Some combining mech, or being various aspects within like a psychic, or a possessed person.

So lets say 9HP for 3 peeps each and 12HP for 1 peep.

So a 4 person party with a one person front line has a combined 39 HP.

The Enemy has a Break Threshold of 9.

Break degenerates by 4 on the Enemy turn.

~

Alpha is a Ravager. She deals 3 damage with her spells. She also deals 4 Break with her spells.

Beta is a Commando. He deals 3 damage with his blade. He also reduces Break degeneration by 3.

When an enemy breaks, every player gets a turn, and all damage the Enemy takes is multiplied by 10.

I fuckin' love Worlds Without Number