Thoughtful Thursday #18

When I discovered that the makers of CyberPunk had made a Mech game (Mekton II), I had to check it out. Once I learned you could make a mech that was ANY shape, I never went back to BattleTech! This is another one of those watershed moments for me. Up until this point, I had always assumed that tactical systems had to be deep. And that the math of buildng them was a requirement of the system. I had let go of this idea for PCs, but somehow their equipment seemed to still need it in my mind. Especially when that equipment was a big, old honking mech that should take some work to overcome. Mekton II disabused me of these notions. I later went back and checked out the original Mekton. It was OK, but you couldn't build just any Mech. And I was sorely disaponted by Mekton Z, it seemed to be headed more in the direction of Battletech than towards a modern RPG.
Mekton II was a game where the RPG elements and the tactical elements were compatible and overlapped so well. It didn’t take long until I integrated CP2020 into the game and we had a real good time on Mars.