This month's update has more of the usual corrections, a couple pieces of new art, and a teeny little bit of extra content. My three highlights of choice would be:
Naturally, the SRD has also been updated.
Gimmick Out.
I've just put out an update to BCG R and its SRD. This will be the first of (hopefully) many more. What's the purpose of these updates, you ask? Glad you asked! I'll be making updates for the following two reasons:
Short one this month. Two things to announce:
1) I ended up compiling all the previous changelogs together with the new ones for a full list of the changess through all 5 major updates. Its a gdoc because it is 12 pages long.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14CVpdGdqrVIR2l0iOcMNIXr4WoMB-iMGcM38o3chrqU
2) I'm compiling a list of errors and confusing wordings. The errata update will be, most likely, sometime next month.
That's all. Cheers.
Gimmick Out.
It is done.
At this point I think I've said enough things about the Remaster, I should simply let you see it for yourselves.
You can get the SRD here.
You can get the full version from DTRPG if you want a discount on a physical version when that gets made.
You can also get the full version from itch.io if you are a digital gamer and want me to get a bigger cut (the widget to the right uses this store).
I wonder how many misspellings, grammatical errors and confusingly worded sentences will have been reported by next month? Find out next month, same gimmick-time, same gimmick-channel.
Gimmick Out.
With the Remaster due to come out during the 2nd half of this month, I should make one last preview post during the 1st half.
First of all, here's the rules Changelog for v1.7:
Last time I showed you the rewrite of one of the optional rules in the Remaster. Now it's time to show one of the new optional rules. There are several of those, but I think the one that will be of most interest to people as a whole will be the Custom Weapon Creation system.
Custom Weapons are something that's been requested intermittently over the years and was very close to getting made multiple times. This is for good reason, because while BCG+Z provide enough weapons for a wide variety of niches, some important niches (most notably beam weapons with specific energy costs) remain empty. Custom Weapons address this problem.
The way Custom Weapon Creation works is very simple. When you create a Custom Weapon, it has a number of Weapon Points that you spend on Advantages (conditional or innate) and Keyword abilities. Additionally, you can also add drawback Keywords to increase the number of Weapon Points your creation has. It's nothing revolutionary and if you've played GGG or any of the classes with custom techs in MP it should be familiar to you. The most interesting thing about it, on a mechanical level, is the sidebar full of suggestions and examples for coming up with your own conditional Advantages.
Having said that, there are some caveats to this system. First, not all Keywords are supported. You can't make your own Techniques or Bursts because balancing those two would be impossible. Second, most unkeyworded recurring abilities cannot be replicated. That means no adding Tension to Damage, destroying whole Levels of Threshold, debuffs or any other fancy properties. The third is that you cannot use this system to customize the existing Weapons in the game. It might sound obvious but it's a real thing people will try to do and then they'll wonder how come their unlimited Bombardments break the game.
An additional thing I want to point out is that, going by the Custom Weapons rules as written, several of the existing Weapons in the SRD are unbalanced. This is the result of years of doing consistent buffs to Weapons that were underperforming. I tried to keep the numbers consistent with how most Weapons are costed these days, but a few Weapons will be better than any equivalents you try to craft with the system. That's not great, but I think most of us will agree that the older versions of many of the Weapons buffed in these past few years were, frankly, rarely worth using. If the price to pay to have all those Weapons be viable is to make some of the math inconsistent, then I'll pay it.
Now in theory I could redo all the Weapons until all of them have consistent math, but I don't want to be rocking the boat that much when we're one month away from release. There's a significant chance that I make a mistake in doing that resulting in some weapons becoming unviable again. I would rather have a handful of Weapons that cannot be replicated yet do their jobs than a perfectly consistent Custom Weapons system in which some Weapons aren't viable.
Having said that, some of the disparities between what can be made with the Custom Weapon rules and the premades are... Notorious. In particular two Weapons (Shocking Swordship and Charge Cannon) are still underpowered to the point that they're weaker than Custom Weapons made in their style so I'll be giving them minor boosts to ensure they can keep up with the competition.
I know I said two months ago that the rules for the SRD were already locked down and there wouldn't be any more changes, but I think this is important enough that it merits going back on my word. More importantly, the main reason to not want to change the rules late in development is to avoid disrupting games that are already using the rules or to not potentially break the game in accidental ways. I don't think two niche Weapons getting minor is going to break anything or bother anyone.
I'm less sure what to do concerning other Weapons that the system shows are clearly overpowered. These are: Finger Net, Bombardment, Lockdown Missile and Radiation Bomb. I would rather not nerf anything, but honestly these Weapons have radiuses so big and effects so powerful that I probably should give them a relatively small debuff so they don't feel too imbalanced.
I might reduce the Blast size from (2) to (1) for the sake of simplicity, give them all a Disadvantage to attacks, or a combination of those two. I still haven't decided. I'll let you know closer to release. Which, fingers crossed, should be next month.
Gimmick Out.
With the Remaster being very close to finished, I figure it's time to talk about some of the changes that aren't in the SRD. First thing I want to talk about is that, in addition to updating all the Alternate Rules Modules from BCZ, I gave a complete makeover to some of them. The most notable of these is, I think, Corruption, which is the new name for the system that replaces the so-called Insanity Rules.
To summarize how the rules work: Every PC has at least one Corruption Theme, an ailment born from humanity tinkering with forces it doesn’t understand let alone control. PCs gain Corruption Points when using Corruptive abilities themselves or when NPCs use Corruptive abilities against them. The accumulation of Corruption Points makes life harder for a PC, to the point that it can make participating in Intermissions impossible, but it still allows them to participate in Operations.
There are three reasons Corruption works this way. Thematically, it’s because only the "weak" and peaceful human side of the PC can no longer function normally, the part of them that is a replaceable cog in a war machine feels fine. Mechanically, it’s because PCs do not die or are retired from the narrative unless their owner wants to do so. Narratively, it’s something to decide between the PC’s owner and the GM whether the PC should be removed from play or not—if you can’t justify them staying as part of the game, then they are in fact retired.
Integrated Pilot
Corruption 1-3 (Mild): Your Mecha sometimes feels like a better version of yourself. While you do admit those thoughts seem silly, you can never really shake them off. You might’ve even found yourself saying “I am Gear.” or something along those lines once or twice.
Corruption 4-6 (Moderate): You have begun to feel very insecure about yourself when out of the cockpit. Sometimes when you’re stressed you climb the cockpit, the one place where you’re both safe and powerful.
Corruption 7-9 (Severe): You can barely leave your Mecha without feeling sick, your limbs feel sluggish and some of your senses are diminished when you’re not in the cockpit. You may even feel a gross sense of dysphoria, wishing it was your real body.
Corruption 10 (Extreme): You have become another component piece of your Mecha. Your physical body could have partially or fully merged with the cockpit, perhaps you depend on the robot’s life support systems to live, or maybe your consciousness is stuck in the computer system.
This is the iconic Corruption Theme in my opinion, as it symbolizes the kind of consequences they have in a PC's life while also giving them an out of being forced to retire but still affecting their role in the game. It is also one of a handful of Corruption Themes that can be spun into a positive, as a PC who fully embraces their new self can simply just roll with it and say "Yeah, I'm a robot now, it's pretty cool actually". Corruption Themes aren't necessarily about losing who or what you are, but about transformation and pain, which can heal and make you stronger over time. It is not the most obvious difference between both rules, but it is an important one.
As for the ways in which PCs gain Corruption, I'll show the most important one
Victory at Any Cost
Reaction Power
Effect: You increase the result of a Test you just rolled by 5 or restore 5 points to your Threshold. At the Operation’s end, you gain a Corruption Point. You can use this Power once per Operation.
Ryo knew his Gear’s regular weaponry wasn’t going to be enough to destroy the giant lizard known as the G-Tyrant before it could regenerate. With a grim chuckle, he released the limiter on the Synchronizer and let the mech draw power directly from his own life force. As the fiery green light of his reactor blinded the whole of the battlefield, he yelled his iconic battlecry: “FUCK. DINOSAAAUUURS!“
Listening to Yuusou while using this Power is optional but recommended. Oh and, by the way? This is a Default Genre Power for games using the Corruption rules. That's right, everybody gets to have just enough rope to hang themselves with, for free!
NPCs can also cause Corruption, but to do so they must have a corresponding Feature or Trait and also must Defeat that PC in combat and also the PC must have not used Live Another Day. Doing Damage, or even reducing Threshold to 0, is not enough. The result is a system that puts the pace of Corruption largely in the hands of the Players, making it a much better way to tell stories of loss, trauma, change and all that jazz as the story is no longer 100% at the whims of the dice gods. It is, almost paradoxically (but entirely intentionally), a very empowering system and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out.
That's all for now. Next update, I will show not a remade old system, but a new one.
Gimmick Out.
