BCZ Retrospective XVI: New Support Upgrades

Support Upgrades were a little on the underpowered side in BCG, however this wasn't so much because the Upgrades themselves were bad, rather it was because the Action economy didn't favor them. The bulk of the work in improving them was from General Upgrades which meant I had to be careful not to make the next set of Support Upgrades too powerful - or else they'd go from slightly underpowered to flat-out overpowered. That's why the six new Support Upgrades in BCZ provide utility value instead of doing, preventing or amplifying Damage.

Dividing Field
One of my favorite things about the expansion was that it opened the floodgates to many new abilities using all sorts of wacky space tech that might as well be magic. The Dividing Field is inspired by the Dividing Driver from GaoGaiGar, it is more or less what the flavor text describes. The big difference between the Dividing Driver and the Dividing Field is that the former was used to create a battlefield where the mechs can go wild without causing collateral damage while the latter is used to get rid of annoying Terrain properties. It is useful, but not too powerful due to its reactive nature.

Remote Hotfix
I believe this was a Restoration back in an early BCG draft, but it was a very lackluster one - for reasons that should be obvious considering it is now back as a 5 MP Support Upgrade. It's not an efficient Antimaim by any stretch of the imagination but it's a nice option to have as part of a Support suite. You really want to have 4-6 Support Upgrades, and if you're not going for a build with a secondary tank or healer role, this could come in handy.

Targeting Disruption
Speaking of secondary roles, this lets you do work as the party's off-tank! You can now let the main tank breathe while they heal or defend by tanking yourself! From a long distance too! With that said, 5 Energy (or your whole Action) for just a -4 attack penalty to a single target isn't really all that punishing and the Enemy might as well ignore you just because you got the worse part of the trade. Maybe the penalty should be equal to your Systems? Or should this have instead been able to target multiple enemies? It is a little underpowered, but it is not terrible.

Blue Screen Virus
Speaking of trades that aren't very good, trading one of your Actions for that of a Grunt is, on paper, a terrible idea. However, depending on the specific kind of Grunt this can turn a battle by shutting down a Guardian of Steel, Jury-Rigger or another key Unit. It's not amazing, but it's a solid pick if you expect to fight intelligent Grunts often.

Cryogenic Blast
This is one of the few ways for PCs to create Withering Terrain and it comes with a patch of Difficult Terrain to make it stick. It's not amazing, but it is very annoying. Anything that can drain Energy is, in general, very good. The area effect is simultaneously a good and bad thing, because it can hit multiple enemies but you also have to be careful not to hit your allies as well. This is probably the worst result you can get with Transpatial Randomizer if your Systems stat is low, as it will hit you... And probably hit your friends as well.

Gravity Manipulators
There are many abilities that let you push people around as a secondary effect, but this is the only one whose entire point is repositioning Enemies. It can also reposition Allies or even yourself if your team is desperate for movement. It used to cost 5 MP but that made Support users the absolute rulers of battlefield positioning and let them do a bunch of free Damage every Round by knocking Enemies into walls or each other, so it got a cost increase. It is a lot less useful now, as moving someone 1-5 Zones is rarely worth an Action, so I'm not super happy about the change. I'd be less happy with the overpowered version, though.

That's all! Support users are amazing now and the new Upgrades give them some additional utility without bumping up their raw power to obnoxious degrees. The one thing I'm not entirely satisfied with about Support Upgrades is that most of their value comes from spamming 5 MP Supports to the point where some builds ignore the 10 MP Supports entirely. I wonder if the more expensive ones could have instead been cheaper so that they would be compatible with EWAC. For Upgrades like Electromagnetic Detonator or Fire at Will some tweaking would've probably done the trick, but for Blue Screen Virus and Gravity Manipulators it would be a lot harder to figure out how to rework them.

Next: New Combination Upgrades.

Gimmick Out.

BCZ Retrospective XV: New Mobility Upgrades.

This entry also has just another two Upgrades and they're honestly pretty basic. They have a shared history in that I knew I was going to make them from the first day of making BCG, but figured their niche nature should keep them to an expansion book. And that's 

Maritime Module

The underwater version of Antigravity, for those times when Terrain Specialist (Underwater) isn't enough. Maritime Module is secretly one of the most powerful Upgrades in the game because it makes you immune to deep sea pressure and also to phase through underwater walls. The wording is the same as Antigravity except for it only working underwater, and Antigravity can fly over Impassable Terrain, so... Yeah, another thing to keep in mind for the future. It turns out that making a deliberate effort to keep text the same (I thought it would help people memorize it easier and minimize confusion) for abilities that work in very different contexts isn't the best idea.

Zero-G Module

It's Antigravity but in spaaace. The things I pointed out with MM above also apply to Zero-G Module, except it is even stronger because (unlike underwater) space settings are expected to have space stations and asteroid fields and weaponized meteors. Hell, you can even no-sell a black hole with this thing, if you go by the rules as written. What was I even thinking? Obviously, these things won't happen in a remotely serious game and the GM will raise an eyebrow anytime someone even brings them up, but the purpose of good rules is to minimize the amount of rulings that GMs have to make. I'd be embarrassed but, frankly, the sheer absurdity of what this Upgrade enables is way too funny to me.

And that's both Mobility Upgrades! I knew there weren't going to be many of them in the expansion, as they are basically "General Upgrades that I want to be Maimable for balance reasons (and themed around making you more mobile)" and the list of things that apply to that criteria is quite tiny.

Next: Support Upgrades

Gimmick Out

BCZ Retrospective XIV: New Restoration Upgrades.

There are only two Restoration Upgrades in BCZ and they come with a sidebar that explains their function: They're mostly meant for Combiner Subpilots. Combiners in BCG were already very powerful, but the Subpilots of the 3rd Component and beyond didn't have many options to use. The lead would attack, one of the subs would Maneuver, and everyone else would, like, maybe Boost or use a Support? It wasn't an exciting job to have. Now they have two more options which, while not particularly powerful, do succeed at making them more versatile.

G-Charger
The G-Charger was originally either a Restoration in the core book or a Support Upgrade, I forget which, and it was extremely niche. Cranking up your Energy output is, as I've pointed out last time, very exploitable. The part that wasn't good at all about the G-Charger was that it used up your Turn to do so, making it largely useless to anyone except Subpilots. Worse, it was confusing, people would pick it and expect to get an Energy boost for one Turn, then be disappointed when they learned that wasn't the case and scratch their heads or fume at what a waste of points this thing was. I brought it back for the expansion because A) Extremely niche and potentially confusing abilities are the expansion's thing. B) I realized I could write sidebars to explain the purpose of particularly quirky things. Anyway, the G-Charger is ok. It's not amazing, because there aren't that many ways to abuse having tons of Energy, but it's very handy with Boost Powers and against Energy debuffs.

Reload
The Resupply Upgrade used to be cheaper, had a Range of 1 and only spent one use at a time. Much like G-Charger, that wasn't very good. Though at least it did something for single-pilot Units, unlike G-Charger. When Resupply was made more powerful (and also more expensive), I figured that the expansion could have a weaker Resupply exclusively for Subpilots that had the old functionality. Like G-Charger, this is the kind of ability that was saved by the expansion being much more okay with extremely niche abilities that need their own sidebar to explain them. Again, like G-Charger, it's not super duper good or anything, but it is almost always better than Resupply for the purposes of a Combiner and that's all it needs to be.

And that's all for today! A part of me wanted to have more Restoration Upgrades in BCZ, but there wasn't a lot of design space left for them (G-Charger is already pushing it, to be honest) and if I was only going to come up with mediocre abilities then I figured it would be better to not force more into the game at all.

Next: A similar story for Mobility Upgrades!

Gimmick Out.

BCZ Retrospective XIII: New Active Defenses.

The Active Defenses (ADs) in the core book are good enough to cover the needs of most PCs. That meant I had to come up with new niches for them to explore in the expansion. I sat down and took note of things that they were good or not great at, both from a conceptual and mechanics standpoint, and made a conscious effort to shore up those weaknesses. The results are below:

Learning Computer
When I was writing BCG I knew that I didn't want an Active Defense that denied Tension. Tension is the backbone of many of the game's coolest mechanics and denying Tension would make the game less fun for everyone. With that said, the idea of an AD that got better with time stuck with me, so instead of denying Tension I figured I could make Tension be the Defense bonus in the expansion. The result is Learning Computer, an Upgrade that is probably a little underpowered (spending 2 Energy as a reaction without the ability to cut down the cost to 1 for a weaker version is harsh). It sits in the awkward place where it would be too good at 1 Energy but at 2 Energy it takes way too long to get better than Custom Defense. It is a good idea, just needs some tweaking and fine-tuning.

Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field
When I first wrote Custom Defense, it let you choose between Melee and Shooting and Absorbing Armor was for Beams and non-Beams. They got changed to let you choose between all four options for gameplay reasons. I wasn't able to come up with a good Beam/non-Beam AD for the expansion, but I had some ideas for Anti-Melee and Anti-Shooting ADs. Both of these are a bit lacking on the defensive side, but the utility value is pretty great. Repulsion Field is generally more useful, but spending 1 Energy to do 3 Damage is a very good deal.

Attack Absorbers
This was the last of the ADs in the expansion that I wrote. I was short on ideas for defensive abilities, so I flipped the idea on its head and thought of making an AD that granted an offensive benefit instead. It doesn't have much of a story because it... Was always okay. It does what it sets out to do. I think it could afford to be a little more generous and make it grant an Advantage against all Enemies. There's the possibility of stacking Advantages for an absurdly strong attack after surviving a round of focus fire, but it's quite expensive in Energy terms and the mediocre Defense bonus it gives doesn't help you actually survive that round of focus fire, so it should be okay.

Dispersion Aura
The first version of this Upgrade was called Aegis Barrier, costed a flat 5 Energy and provided a 10 Damage shield like that of Absolute Barrier in a Range equal to your Systems. The idea was that it was an Absolute Barrier that you could share with the team but was less flexible due to the static Energy cost. You know, because Absolute Barrier is a totally balanced ability that everyone should have access to at all times. As you may be able to guess from the previous sentence, this was extremely broken. One playtester made a graph showing how you could space out units in a defense matrix formation to make all participants provide 10 extra HP to each other, basically giving all of them 40 HP on demand and it made me scream on the inside. Now, I'll admit was actually trying to add some counters for artillery and artillery + technique builds in the expansion, but this was the wrong kind of counter - the kind that made the game unplayable. The new Dispersion Aura grants a powerful, effective Defense boost against multitarget attacks and lets a designated shieldbearer unit protect its allies with it, but doesn't do anything about the other 75% of Weapons. It is a perfect partner to ECS from the core book as well.

Organic Barrier
I like this, it provides great utility value for healers and other support-oriented units, even if it is a very dangerous design. Organic Barrier lets you stockpile your resources from one turn towards the next, which is extremely exploitable in the majority of games that have such mechanics. If I was aware of this, why did it go to print, then? Well, I thought I'd keep it in check by not having any energy sinks that could be used offensively in the game. What were people going to do, put up an Absolute Barrier for 30 bonus HP every other Turn? Psshhh. It was a good idea, except that I forgot Chain Explosion was a thing in the game... Ooops! To be honest, I still think the problem here is Chain Explosion rather than Organic Barrier, and would rather do away with the former than the latter.

I quite like the new ADs in general, the worst thing I can say about them is that Learning Computer is underpowered and Organic Barrier lets people pull off crazy Chain Explosion combos. Reflecting Barrier and Repulsion Field are some of my favorite AD designs and the kind of thing I'd like to do more of in the future. Organic Barrier is another one I'm very fond of, but I understand better now just how careful I have to be with that kind of mechanic.

Next: New Restoration Upgrades

Gimmick Out!

Introducing Dai-2-Ji Battle Century.

Join the Evolution!

In November of 2014, I launched a Kickstarter to fund Battle Century G and Battle Century Z, aimed at creating a universal mecha system that had cinematic action, fast combat and depth of gameplay. Since then, more than 5,000 gamers just like you joined in the fun by playing the new Battle Century G and Battle Century Z rules and providing feedback, and the rest is gaming history. Now, almost 4 years later, it's time to put the lessons of the last almost 4 years to use and evolve the game once again. It's time for Dai-2-Ji Battle Century!

Dai-2-Ji Battle Century, or "2nd Battle Century", is the evolution of the game. It combines Battle Century G and Battle Century Z and steals ideas from many better games made in the past 5 years to move the game forward in new and exciting ways. As we count down the days to the 2nd Battle Century Kickstarter, I'll be revealing more information on the following topics (and more!) on the Gimmick Labs blog:

• Power Levels 6 to 10, to accurately let you represent the likes of Demonbane, Getter Emperor, Ideon, Doraemon and Ginguiser.
• Remote Weapons with their own turns and stat blocks.
• Ten pages of Design Flaws to squeeze every bit of MP you can for your death machine.
• Deathblow users gain a bonus to saves vs Fear, Transpatial Randomizer now has three new possible results called: Limited Wish, Wish and Yuzurenai Negai.
• Official One Year War sidestory campaign setting with ten unique Gundam prototypes meant for Amuro that your PC can use.
• Compatible with your GGG and BCG books (GGG and BCG adaptation rules modules sold separately).
• An innovative "GM May I" system to let players come up with their own Improvised Weapons and Genre Powers on the fly.
• Designed to make you feel the way you did when you were twelve and Gundam Wing was on TV.
• Four hundred pages of rules to memorize if you want to make a character that doesn't suck.
• Pink fuzzy mascot Player Characters with adorable speech quirks.
• Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry(tm) series.
• PCs make three dice rolls every time they get hit to avoid death and have to keep track of every drop of fuel, bullet fired and grain of sand clogging their joints.
• Instead of rolling Initiative, Rounds are divided into PC and NPC Turns.
• A houserules chapter full of blank white pages so you can truly make the game your own.
• A random character generator with the Lifepath(tm) system to create PCs with as little as forty dice rolls, deciding everything from how many family members have died of dysentery to whether they speak in anime references, bad puns or internet memes, leaving nothing to the imagination.
• A competitive PvP BattleCenPla tournament scene to find the best BattleCenPla builder and pilot.
• Stock art plus repeated art pieces from previous books.
• Scanned PDFs without bookmarks and with the printing, copy and paste functions disabled.
• Designed for exploration and roleplaying unlike all those other games centered around combat in which roleplaying is impossible. 
• Seven Actions per turn: Offensive, Move, Utility, Setup, Power, Reaction and Interrupt.
• Pilot stats tied to Mecha stats.
• A constant trickle of new books with a handful of worthwhile additions to the game in each every few months, ensuring you have to buy all of them.
• True to Super Robot Wars.
• Character designs by Tetsuya Nomura to ensure a pleasing ratio of belts and zippers to every other piece of clothing.

2nd Battle Century Products

All 2nd Battle Century Playtest PDFs will be released as FREE downloads exclusively at this blog. But because I really like money, I'll also release limited-edition print versions of the 2nd Battle Century Playtest System Reference Documents, 2nd Battle Century Playtest Mini-Campaign, and 2nd Battle Century Playtest Battlemap Pack for players and Genre Masters seeking the ultimate playtest experience. These print editions can be preordered from the usual avenues and all preorders will receive a 5% discount because I just love you all so much. These products will be available in softcover and hardcover formats, and TRUE FANS (like you!) will buy both.

2nd Battle Century Playtest System Reference Document
The evolution of Mecha RPGs begins here! This 420-page rulebook contains everything you need to create and advance your 2nd Battle Century character from level 1 to 10, as well as hundreds of new and updated traits, upgrades, weapons, powers, and Genre Master rules necessary to run a complete 2nd Battle Century Playtest season! Explore the farthest reaches of the galaxy with a brand-new deep space robot unsuited for doing anything else, or convert your favorite existing characters to the new system using rules that are clearly not meant to work together! With little to nothing in the way of interior art, the books are full of text walls on nearly every page, making the 2nd Battle Century Playtest Rulebook your gateway to the future of Mecha RPGs. The only thing missing is your money playtest feedback!

2nd Battle Century Playtest System Reference Document Special Edition
This is the exact same thing from the paragraph above but given its own entry to make it seem more special! This deluxe special edition is bound in faux leather with metallic deboss cover elements and a bound-in cloth bookmark. The perfect way to prove that you are a TRUE FAN of GGG and Battle Century G!

2nd Battle Century Playtest Mini-Campaign
This book consists of a series of mad libs anime plots you've seen a hundred times already! You can recycle scenarios until the end of time with none of your players ever noticing! This Mini-Campaign also includes prewritten enemies and operations you've already seen in Battle Century Z, except some of the descriptions are different so it's totally new! You will have hours and hours of fun with your group, doing the same thing you've been doing for years with a new coat of paint in this 42-page softcover collection of five scenarios designed to introduce the 2nd Battle Century Playtest rules in a guided shared playtest experience coinciding with regular surveys and feedback from players just like you, which I'm going to ignore because I already was going to do whatever I wanted anyway!

2nd Battle Century Playtest Battlemap Pack
Playtest the new 2nd Battle Century rules in style with this collection of battlemaps with hex grids and square grids (the latter of which uses brand new mapping technology compatible with 1:1 diagonals, 1:1.5 diagonals and 1:2 diagonals) featuring five key operation areas from the 2nd Battle Century Playtest Mini-Campaign! Featured setpieces include a colony drop for the Gundam fans, a space Vietnam trench battle for the Votoms fans and an empty map with nothing but fog of war that was really cheap and easy for me to make! These portable, affordable maps measure 24" x 30" unfolded and 8" x 10" folded, because I'm a dinosaur who refuses to adapt to the infinitely superior metric system.

Next: Introducing Battle Century H, the 18+ splatbook for mature audiences only.

Gimmick Out.