A few weeks ago I re-watched Neon Genesis Evangelion. It came to me that this would be awesome material for a deep roleplaying game: Every player being a board-member of a society tasked with defending mankind against an unknowable and almost godlike foe. Everyone having their own secret agenda. Dealing with the stupid shenanigans of your immature pilots who keep fucking up and making things worse whenever not in the cockpit.
So I started making that game for myself. It's going to be a journalling experience for solo players when it's done – I simply do not have the free time or mental capacity left to make a campaign like that as a pen&paper-RPG for my friends. Thus far I've been testing the combat system and the balancing of the Evas Titans that NERV the Kaijuu Boueigun (Kaiju Defense Force – KDF) fields. Kaiju and Titans alike have an ATP PMS-Field, the Projection Manifestation Simulacrum, which makes things of that size work by de facto magic. The Titans may not be fuelled by anyone's mother's souls (a concept that even my seven-year-old derided as stupid when I explainde Evangelion to him), but they are actually the twin of the pilot (but changed). This is a handy concept because it also explains why the Kaijuu Boueigun sends 14-year-olds to war – that's how long the technology has been around and that's how long it takes for a Titan to reach maturity.
Unlike in Evangelion, conventional weapons can be of some help in my game. Thus, whenever the Titans are damaged or insufficiently armed, the JSDF can be asked to provide support in the form of tanks, air strikes, attack helicopters or tactical nuclear weaponry. These use favour-points though and should thus be fielded very sparingly. Also: These things are weak. A group of 12 tanks has 1 HP, some minor chance of surviving a hit and deal 1 damage. Most Angels Kaiju will soak like 5 damage per round of combat or be completely immune to conventional weaponry.
I've so far played through six encounters with angels Kaiju. Combat seems to work (but I will keep going with that campaign in order to test more Kaiju as I make them up). I'm also working on the social system that is going to be much of the game: The pilots causing trouble, having difficult relationships with one another and then traitorous adults in your ranks like military liaisons pushing for more conventional warfare, industrialists wanting robots instead of Titans and of course the crazy dude who just wants to liquefy all of mankind.
It's actually great fun to journal this sort of thing. Might acutally finish this one and put it up on Itch. Definetly doing to do some play-reports here.
Any further thoughts on this?
ReplyDeleteThere are indeed many further thoughts on this: I intend to make this a releasable journalling game by the end of the year. It has gained a lot of features and is being playtested (in a very loose sense of the term) by friends of mine.
DeleteCool new features that I hadn't thought of in this blog post (god, it's been almost two years?!):
-A lot of the gameplay is not combat but upkeep and conspiracy: Every turn (a month in game-time) someone from the board of directors (a group of NPCs/numbers on a random table) will plot (with you or against you - there are many different outcomes). Also every turn the teens under your control will stress each other out and they also get character traits, being bags of hormonal problems and psychological issues (just like in Evangelion). Also there are now 16 Kaiju to defeat, some with special scenarios that limit how you can engage them. I'm working on it and, seeing that someone is actually interested, will soon write a blog post updating on the situation.