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Given the image and the fact that it's on its knees, height wise it should be quite similar to a Cheetah: the crew compartment is about the same size, it's not Head-in-Head (as this one)... other than the V-Engine and probably thicker extremities, it's in the same ballpark.

It's even tinier! At least from the official spec sheet, the one that I pictured (the USMC Toad) is 2.856m tall.

https://project-obsolete.com/en/exoframe/

Even the butt-wheels like the Weasel are around 3.5m not including rocket pods and V-engines. If I buy one of the kits, I'm thinking that I'll end up putting a 28mm style figure (40k Guardsmen size) into a custom cockpit. I think the smaller size compared with 1/35 should fit in the same boxed area.

I've been pondering making an off scale 40k tau 15mm army and was wondering how to justify the cost/effort of 3d printing it. One of the reasons I came up with was that I could theoretically use it in HG as a counts as force. The mix of infantry, crisis suits, mechs, and hovertanks seems to best fit a CEF force with Caprice allies (for the bigger suits as mounts). Is there any word on when the army lists will reach a final (for now) status? It's been months and a quick check of the forums still has the mishmash of Microsoft Office files instead of the properly laid out off that was mentioned months ago.

Edit: I've never owned any CEF/Utopia/Caprice models and I'm a bit surprised at some of their relative sizes (especially frames as they look fire support gear size and up!). I'm not sure if frames/flails as crisis/stealth suits is appropriate and caprice mounts as bigger ones like riptides is better or using Utopia as allies instead for armigers/golems as crisis/stealth suits and frames as riptides to better match the devilish as a hovertank. I know there likely is still some sort of Infinity style silhouette system for LOS (I'm still using the 2016 rules) but I'm mainly asking for asthetic/visual reasons.

Here's a picture of some models for size. I have more scale comparison shots of various HG mecha on my site here: https://panther6actual.blogspot.com/search/label/Size%20Comparison%20Shots

Yup, your blog is a goldmine for that stuff! Those are the 1/60 votoms, right?

 warboss wrote:
Yup, your blog is a goldmine for that stuff! Those are the 1/60 votoms, right?

The ones in the picture in my previous post are 1/144th scale. The Arctic Gear VOTOMS below are 1/48th scale, and will work with 28mm or whatever passes for such infantry.

So there's an RPG again? Pre-Alpha 4th edition is up for review by...someone. I'm going to sound the most like a grognard that I ever have, but I don't know who any of these usernames who are apparently making the game now are.

Oh wow... that's definitely news. One of the folks working on it (Vaktathi) is a mod here and occasionally has posted in this thread (most recently IIRC with his RAFM haul). I'd say I'm surprised he didn't pop in to make the annoucement but I wouldn't blame him for thinking that the thread is a bit of a lost cause for excitement.

Oooooookay okay I thought that name might have looked a little familiar. Any thoughts on the others?

No idea who they are (at least via those screen names). Most of the people that I interacted with most in my years aren't active there anymore (whether by choice or not). Since I'm not particularly familiar with the current nublitz iteration, I can't really comment either on the ideas floating around on the official forums.

/wave

sorry it's actually been rather busier than expected between day job and Heavy Gear. If anyone has any Q's, let me know. We are actively soliciting feedback and are still very early in the development stage. We basically started with a whittled down 2E as a base, and have been adapting outward from there based what DP9's looking for (mainly adapting the current Blitz dice mechanic) and feedback we've gotten so far. Current plan is to move the timeline forward to TN1951 (and not restart at Jungle Drums again) and the 2nd CEF invasion, use the RPG to grow the timeline. If there's story stuff/inconsistencies/gaps/etc people want to see addressed, let me know the deets and we'll see about squaring stuff, we'd like to get some of that stuff addressed.

EDIT: Link to DP9 RPG discussions. Take a look at where we're at and what people are talking about.

Well, have you gotten hold of the original writers' notes, or are you coming up with a new "future" for the DP9 timeline ?

 HudsonD wrote:
Well, have you gotten hold of the original writers' notes, or are you coming up with a new "future" for the DP9 timeline ?

Everything is being done according to DP9's metaplot plan. I'm largely focusing on mechanics in my role, so I don't know how much that plan may have deviated over the years (I genuinely haven't asked), but I can tell you we're not making up the metaplot ourselves.

See, the devil is in the details.
When you say "DP9's metaplot plan", what do you mean ?
The original plan was laid out around 1st ed, and fleshed out with 2nd ed, but it got derailed and altered many times since, whether because of mistakes, or a decision to push something new.
The plan got changed to put more emphasis on the Black Talons and the colonies around the time of the HG2 video game release.
The plan got changed again for Blitz, to push a more 40K-esque, volatile, permanent conflict setting. The less said about Nu-Nucoal, the better.
The plan would have been changed again to push landships further if that project had been succesful (I blame the excellent Homeworld SoK game for this), and I could go on.
Poor freelancer management affected the colony concepts and the later storybooks, if you have them, I was told the original story got derailed around book 4.

Likewise, when you say "DP9", it was a team back then, and it's pretty much a one-person company now. Speaking of DP9, if you need a good primer on the company's inner working, just think "SRA".

Anyway, since you're focussing on the mechanics, what are you aiming for ?

Regarding the lore stuff, it's got Black Talons, Nu-Coal, all the Blitz stuff, etc, and will be proceeding from the 2nd CEF invasion, about the time of Perfect Storm/Forged In Fire as far as that goes.

With respect to mechanics, our goals are a narrative focused RPG with some interplay with Blitz (basic dice mechanics, weapon profile structure, stuff like that) that's less strictly simulationist than the original. It will not be using hexmaps. For miniatures/battlemat combat, currently the view is to use a literalist scale of 1"=5M, and have such combat portray CQB engagements in the vein of the original Skirmish scale, with larger scale combat where forces may be exchanging fire over longer combat distances would generally be handled more narratively. We're still exploring a lot of things and figuring out what people want, starting with some modified 2E basics, and are working from there.

 Firebreak wrote:
So there's an RPG again? Pre-Alpha 4th edition is up for review by...someone. I'm going to sound the most like a grognard that I ever have, but I don't know who any of these usernames who are apparently making the game now are.

Oh? Interesting. Does any of the people involved has any actual RPG cred, or is this going to be just a retelling/mish-mash of 2nd edition with current Blitz?


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 Vaktathi wrote:
/wave

sorry it's actually been rather busier than expected between day job and Heavy Gear. If anyone has any Q's, let me know. We are actively soliciting feedback and are still very early in the development stage. We basically started with a whittled down 2E as a base, and have been adapting outward from there based what DP9's looking for (mainly adapting the current Blitz dice mechanic) and feedback we've gotten so far. Current plan is to move the timeline forward to TN1951 (and not restart at Jungle Drums again) and the 2nd CEF invasion, use the RPG to grow the timeline. If there's story stuff/inconsistencies/gaps/etc people want to see addressed, let me know the deets and we'll see about squaring stuff, we'd like to get some of that stuff addressed.

EDIT: Link to DP9 RPG discussions. Take a look at where we're at and what people are talking about.

Ah, thanks, and cheers.

Hm, I was banned from the Pod forums by Dubois, actually, so I won't be saying much there.

I... have big misgivings with the current timeline, TBH, as many of the developments were doing via "magic-wanding" stuff (and even then we apparently got lucky when the landships game tanked), so keeping with the Blitz timeline, which specifically made amends to make it more "wargame friendly" will be actively detrimental for the RPG, I feel.

As to keeping 2e, well... I mean, it was a decent system. For the early 90s. Currently it mostly feels clunky and unwieldy, so I believe you'll probably need to do a bit more than just use a slimmed down version as the core.

Anyways, I'll be looking at this with interest, mild as it might be .


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
With respect to mechanics, our goals are a narrative focused RPG with some interplay with Blitz (basic dice mechanics, weapon profile structure, stuff like that) that's less strictly simulationist than the original. It will not be using hexmaps. For miniatures/battlemat combat, currently the view is to use a literalist scale of 1"=5M, and have such combat portray CQB engagements in the vein of the original Skirmish scale, with larger scale combat where forces may be exchanging fire over longer combat distances would generally be handled more narratively. We're still exploring a lot of things and figuring out what people want, starting with some modified 2E basics, and are working from there.

On the face of it, it sounds like the right direction, at least. That said, what do you mean by "narrative" and "simulationist", in this context? I ask because there are as many meanings for those as people uttering them, so having an idea of what you want out of them would be interesting.

Regarding combat, I feel like having Blitz you probably sould link any "miniatures/battlemat" to those and focus the rules of the RPG on theater of the mind combat, with as much help as possible to arbitrate and develop it. Maybe abstract maps with zones, maybe full TotM, maybe a mix of both.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Regarding the lore stuff, it's got Black Talons, Nu-Coal, all the Blitz stuff, etc, and will be proceeding from the 2nd CEF invasion, about the time of Perfect Storm/Forged In Fire as far as that goes.

That would be... exactly what I was worried about

 HudsonD wrote:

The plan would have been changed again to push landships further if that project had been succesful (I blame the excellent Homeworld SoK game for this), and I could go on.

 Albertorius wrote:
I... have big misgivings with the current timeline, TBH, as many of the developments were doing via "magic-wanding" stuff (and even then we apparently got lucky when the landships game tanked), so keeping with the Blitz timeline, which specifically made amends to make it more "wargame friendly" will be actively detrimental for the RPG, I feel.

Could either of you elaborate on those potential changes due to the aborted landship game? I think I remember people posting changes to the fluff on the tech of the landships but I'm not sure how much that would affect the rpg other than having the default "homebase" for military campaigns being set on a landship (which I'd think would be cool personally).

As for the setting, I think I've posted here in the recent (<1 year) past that I'd have preferred a first CEF invasion setting/timeline but I fully admit that is both entirely biased towards my own preferences and an unrealistic pipedream on my part since it wouldn't drive synergistic sales to 75% of the current minis.

 warboss wrote:

 HudsonD wrote:

The plan would have been changed again to push landships further if that project had been succesful (I blame the excellent Homeworld SoK game for this), and I could go on.

 Albertorius wrote:
I... have big misgivings with the current timeline, TBH, as many of the developments were doing via "magic-wanding" stuff (and even then we apparently got lucky when the landships game tanked), so keeping with the Blitz timeline, which specifically made amends to make it more "wargame friendly" will be actively detrimental for the RPG, I feel.

Could either of you elaborate on those potential changes due to the aborted landship game? I think I remember people posting changes to the fluff on the tech of the landships but I'm not sure how much that would affect the rpg other than having the default "homebase" for military campaigns being set on a landship (which I'd think would be cool personally).

As for the setting, I think I've posted here in the recent (<1 year) past that I'd have preferred a first CEF invasion setting/timeline but I fully admit that is both entirely biased towards my own preferences and an unrealistic pipedream on my part since it wouldn't drive synergistic sales to 75% of the current minis.

Well, for starters it was the physics of the game, as landships were only feasible on Terra Nova due to some very specific conditions. But mainly it was their idea of having landships on every planet, many of them smuggled somehow from Terra Nova via the Black Talons or something... where at that point you really should probably just build spaceships, you know? ^^.

As to the rest of the setting, well, the more it goes down the "all wars all the time", the less space there is for games to be about aything else but the wars. 40k has the advantage of being immensely vast, but Hg's setting is very much not so, so the impact is much bigger there. Kind of like having a game set during WWII, but in a planet of 400m people invaded by about 10 million soldiers.

Thanks. Yeah, I'd prefer to keep the landships native to Terra Nova. That said, I don't think changes to how they work in game/tech will affect the RPG much if the setting is firmly planted there as a baseline.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
/wave

sorry it's actually been rather busier than expected between day job and Heavy Gear.

No worries and thanks for chiming in. Like I said, I wouldn't blame you for not trying to drum up enthusiasm early on here. Regardless, good luck to you and the team on the project!

 warboss wrote:
Oh wow... that's definitely news. One of the folks working on it (Vaktathi) is a mod here and occasionally has posted in this thread (most recently IIRC with his RAFM haul). I'd say I'm surprised he didn't pop in to make the annoucement but I wouldn't blame him for thinking that the thread is a bit of a lost cause for excitement.

But this thread is awesome. No, seriously. So much conversation and tidbits to read. All good, even the bad bits.

AFAIK there are no current plans for landships. That could change, but from what I understand that project is kaput.

While we can't rewrite the bulk of the timeline or rewind everything, if there are specific inconsistencies or unclarified stuff or weird bits you'd like to see addressed or better explained/supported, let me know and I'll bring them up.

We're definitely planning to do much more than just take a stripped down 2E and repackage that (and the old RPG is definitely clunky now), we used that as a framework to start gathering feedback from, but aren't sticking doggedly to much of anything from 2E. With respect to "narrative" vs "simulationist", we're still playing with stuff and figuring out what levels of "crunch" people like and where to draw lines, but one of the changes we made based on feedback, was decoupling Skills from Attributes, in that for any given roll, a GM will tell you which pair to roll together given the circumstances (for example, Athletics+Fitness to run a Marathon, Athletics+Strength to force a door). We're playing with movement rates, initially this started out as a pretty straight adaptation of 2E, I just wrote up a simplified concept based on Blitz movement that should be fairly easy to use narratively without having to care about exact distances if one doesn't want to. Zones were brought up, we just started looking at the idea, it's something that may also get incorporated. If there's anything specific you'd like to chime in on about, let me know.

If anyone's on the HG Discord server, IIRC everyone working on the RPG is also on there from time to time.

Hm... ok, but what do you mean by those words, "narrative" and "simulationist"?

You're speaking about crunch level, and decoupling attributes from skills and movement rates... but that's a different axis of game design, so it doesn't actually tell me much, other than if you're bothering with movement rates at all you're thinking more about task resolution than conflict resolution, maybe. (I mean, do you even need movement rate rules? Or attributes, to give a couple of examples?)

I guess that the first thing to ask would be: what is this game about? What are the players supposed to be doing? What themes are you supposed to be exploring?

For reference, and to cite three relatively recent examples, one of which is actually a direct contender with HG, and two that I am personally involved in:

Legend of the Five Rings 5th edition
Be a samurai in a unhistorical mostly japanese asian pastiche and deal with the opposing pulls of what society expects from you as a member of the samurai caste and what you want as a human being. Live by Bushido, die by the sword; deal with your bursting emotions as a samurai has to (by repressing them), or explode spectacularly and dishonor yourself forever while at the same time doing what needs to be done.

Tenra Bansho Zero
Enter inside a kabuki theater play act progression and see how your characters change over the course of the acts while they deal with the things they care for to avoid accumulating karma and devolve into a buddhist akuma, a human-like demon controlled by their worldy desires. Imerse yourself in melodrama-laden performances from yourself and the rest of the players that will literally fuel your powers and reward the rest of the players for it. Live by Fate, die by Karma.

Lancer
You're a Lancer, the cavalry, the elite of the elite of the mech pilots. Get called when the going gets tough and immerse yourself in an extremely rewarding mecha personalization system and and a detailed and highly customizable tactical mech combat system coupled with light, "fiction first" character RPG rules.

So, what's the game about?

You should combine all three... kabuki samurai demon mechs! Make them angsty horny teenagers and you'll have so many ENnies you won't know where to put them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Paint it Pink wrote:
But this thread is awesome. No, seriously. So much conversation and tidbits to read. All good, even the bad bits.

Thanks. I sometimes wonder how well be walk the line between jaded but useful and RPG Mean Girls the movie.

 warboss wrote:
You should combine all three... kabuki samurai demon mechs! Make them angsty horny teenagers and you'll have so many ENnies you won't know where to put them!

I'm not that certain Evangelion would work that well as a RPG.

 warboss wrote:
You should combine all three... kabuki samurai demon mechs! Make them angsty horny teenagers and you'll have so many ENnies you won't know where to put them!

Oh, TBZ already has that. Only samurai are people surgically altered to hulk out and mecha are piloted by innocent horny teenagers ^^ (because they have not accumulated much karma, being innocents).


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mrondeau wrote:

 warboss wrote:
You should combine all three... kabuki samurai demon mechs! Make them angsty horny teenagers and you'll have so many ENnies you won't know where to put them!

I'm not that certain Evangelion would work that well as a RPG.

Well, Monsterhearts is already a thing, and it could be easily modified for Evangelion mech action...

Also, Bliss Stage has been written for years:

http://www.tao-games.com/bliss-stage/

And a friend of mine wrote another one, Titan Academy, which uses some of the same tropes combined with some others (I playtested that last one and helped write some parts):

http://psilan.net/academiatitan/

Apologies for misunderstanding the question, been in a bunch of back and forth conversations on mechanics recently.

Here's a working concept of the narrative setup, "what it's about", though the official text may end up being different.

"Explore the world of Terra Nova and 62nd century combat on a personal scale through the events of the largest war the planet has ever suffered. As the invaders fall from the skies, will you seek to lead your Badlands clan to safety by securing passage with smugglers out of the desert, or stand and hold your homestead against the purple monsters at the sticks of a salvaged Hunter? As Port Oasis burns, do you speak up in support of reinforcing strategically vital Northern combat zones or do you worry that, even at this dire hour, the archives of Les Temoins remembers all? Conversely, will you reclaim the wayward colony from the cupola of a Hovertank so that it's debt to a dying Mother Earth can be repaid? As the apocalyptic conflict explodes across the planet, make your choice, and give all for victory, for the thrill of it, for revenge, or for mere survival."

Thanks. Still, that is mostly setting, which still doesn't tell me much about themes, or what the game is about (In my examples I specifically tried to give as little setting information as possible to make it clear that at this stage it's not really important).

The only thing I can see from that, so far, is that it's a wartime RPG.

Given that:
- Is the game actually about the different wars on Terra Nova and beyond, which is a great departure from the older editions? Is it a "wargame" RPG in the vein of Twilight 2000 or Deathwatch, for example?
- What themes do you guys expect should be explored?
- What's the expected gameplay experience, and how will the mechanics enforce that experience?

 Albertorius wrote:
Thanks. Still, that is mostly setting, which still doesn't tell me much about themes, or what the game is about (In my examples I specifically tried to give as little setting information as possible to make it clear that at this stage it's not really important).

The only thing I can see from that, so far, is that it's a wartime RPG.

Given that:
- Is the game actually about the different wars on Terra Nova and beyond, which is a great departure from the older editions? Is it a "wargame" RPG in the vein of Twilight 2000 or Deathwatch, for example?
- What themes do you guys expect should be explored?
- What's the expected gameplay experience, and how will the mechanics enforce that experience?

Colour me interested in where you're going with this. I'm not sure I follow what you mean by themes?

Sorry if this feels like a demand for an explanation, but I'm genuinely curious for you to unpack this. What Albortorius said seemed clear enough to me, but you've piqued my interest that I've missed something. I hate missing the point, and curiousity is my one of my defining traits.

 Paint it Pink wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Thanks. Still, that is mostly setting, which still doesn't tell me much about themes, or what the game is about (In my examples I specifically tried to give as little setting information as possible to make it clear that at this stage it's not really important).

The only thing I can see from that, so far, is that it's a wartime RPG.

Given that:
- Is the game actually about the different wars on Terra Nova and beyond, which is a great departure from the older editions? Is it a "wargame" RPG in the vein of Twilight 2000 or Deathwatch, for example?
- What themes do you guys expect should be explored?
- What's the expected gameplay experience, and how will the mechanics enforce that experience?

Colour me interested in where you're going with this. I'm not sure I follow what you mean by themes?

Sorry if this feels like a demand for an explanation, but I'm genuinely curious for you to unpack this. What Albertorius said seemed clear enough to me, but you've piqued my interest that I've missed something. I hate missing the point, and curiousity is my one of my defining traits.

Hm, confused now. Are you asking me (Albertorius) or Vaktathi?

If it is me, the only themes I have been able to see in the blurb is "wartime RPG" in the vein of a WWII RPG or the like, but it actually doesn't tell me much other than that it will deal with the war. That is actually a theme (war stories) but doesn't tell me much about tone or anything else apart of some setting stuff that as a newbie I would probably not be able to really decipher (There are Badlands clans or something, so there's Badlands in the setting; there are homesteads; there are purple monsters; Some place called Port Oasis burns, and something called Les Temoins which is maybe a library...).

As a counterpoint, in the examples I made I tried to avoid setting details as much as possible and tried to focus on what the game is supposed to be about (samurai drama!, Tactical mecha combat and light character RP!). That kind of stuff.