When I saw Mekton II on the shelf at King’s Hobby Shop I was immediately intrigued. I flipped it open, and saw “Danger! Romance! Giant Robot Combat!” You had me at hello, Mekton II. The cover art was credited to Ben Dunn and Shulaf Tam, and Ben Dunn was an artist I knew from comics, as were the Waltrip brothers who did some of the interior art. The game was designed to emulate mecha anime, and it was the late 80s, I’d watched a lot of mecha anime. Well, at least as much as the rental shelf at Hasting’s had to offer under the name “Japanimation.”
Mekton II was so-named because it followed a Mekton boxed set that I have never owned. This book came out in 1987 and uses the same Interlock system used in the original Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2020 games. It’s very simple, rolls are Stat+Skill+1D10 versus a target number. This does make stats, particularly the Reflex stat, very important. This is a common complaint about the Interlock system, since Reflex governs initiative and most combat skills. Cyberpunk Red fixes this somewhat 33 years later, but I digress.
Mekton’s game system scales from the human scale to giant robot scale by using “Hits” and “Kills.” People have Hits. Mecha have Kills. 10 Hits=1 Kill. This would later be revised into 25:1 in Mekton Zeta. Mecha behaved more or less just like humans, and took damage in the same way. This made the integration of big stompy robots a breeze.
But it wasn’t just about giant robots. The Algol campaign world presented by Mike Pondsmith was cool -literally. An ice age was threatening to destroy human civilization. There were spinner colonies, giant sun mirrors, two warring Kingdoms with an ocean between them populated by mostly peaceful traders. Giant fauna. Terrorists bent on destroying the world-saving satellites. Ancient mystery knights with long-forgotten technology. This. Was. Cool.
Add to that R. Talsorian’s lifepath system for character creation, and you’ve got a lot of story fodder not tied to any big media IP. If you had the Roadstriker II sourcebook, you could build all kinds of vehicle-scale mecha and do cyclones from Robotech, or Autobots and Decepticons. There were even rules for combiners. Form Voltron! Mekton Empire brought in Aliens, Psionics, and massive starships with the look of the Yamato. Also - it was a book full of NPCs, planets, and story ideas.Time to dive in, and see what kind of character we can create in Mekton II.
Character Creation
The first thing to do is determine Character Points, these will be allocated to the Stats, or basic attributes. These are Intelligence, Reflexes, Cool, Technical Ability, Luck, Attractiveness, Movement Allowance, Body Type, Education, and Money & Family. So, we roll 10d10 to determine initial Character Points. 1+6+5+2+5+3+2+8+9+2=43. Pretty below average, but we play ‘em like we roll ‘em. A chart on page 7 shows us what the various levels of the different Stats represent. I can’t even give this character average stats across the board. So let’s work with that. We’ll create this character as a crusty veteran who was injured in the Mekton Wars, resulting in a low Body, Attractiveness, Luck, and Movement Allowance.
- Intelligence: 5
- Reflexes: 5
- Cool: 10
- Technical Ability: 3
- Luck: 2 (Used up all his luck surviving his injuries)
- Attractiveness: 3 (scarred and battered)
- Movement Allowance: 3 (Has a low-end prosthetic leg that impedes movement)
- Body Type: 3 (Shattered and near death from previous war wounds)
- Education: 8 (Veteran)
- Money & Family: 2 (Penniless)
OK, those stats are pretty dire in order to get two decent things: Education, for Veteran skills, and Cool, to represent being an experienced combat veteran. But the idea we’re going with is more of a mentor or leader than an active combatant. We go on to Lifepath and see what the dice have in store for us.
LIFEPATH!
5 - Both parents are living. Go to B.
2 - Apparently our hero gets along with them. Got to D.
10 - Family Standing is BAD. Go to E.
2 - Family lost all titles due to betrayal or bad management. Go to F.
5 - Goal is to hunt down those responsible and make them pay. Go to G.
2 - Hero has two siblings. One twin brother, one younger sister. They both like our hero. Go to I.
Our hero has as many friends as COOL divided by two. So, five friends, then go to J.
Male childhood friend.
Female childhood friend.
Male who is like a kid brother/sister.
Female old family friend.
Male old family friend.
2 - We have zero enemies, 1d10-2, and rolled a 2. Go to Romantic Life.
4 - Currently uninvolved.
So, pause for a sec. Enemies and romantic involvements are fun, so we’ll roll a “what if” for both, but not include them in the final character writeup.
1 Enemy - A female childhood enemy, there was a major humiliation involved, both parties hate each other, generally ignoring each other in most situations.
1 Romance- Tragic Love Affair. They committed suicide or went insane. They now hate our hero, if they’re still alive.
OK, back to the character. We’ll now roll for section T.
4, 10, 1 - Blonde hair, short and curly. Blue eyes. Go to U.
7 - Stable and serious personality. Go to V.
9 - The thing our hero values more than anything else - having a good time. Go to W.
10 - Most valued possession, a letter. Go to X.
5 - Person most valued in the world, themselves.
Knowing all that, we pick skills now. We have 21 points to use thanks to our high Education stat. This is Mekton, so we’re creating a veteran Mekton warrior.
Mecha Piloting +3
Mecha Fighting +3
Beam Weapons +3
Leadership +7
Awareness +1
Streetwise +4
His skills aren’t what they once were, but high enough to serve as an instructor or mentor. His injuries have reduced his Awareness somewhat, but he has developed a certain amount of Streetwise since his family’s downfall and being put on the “Invalid List” He has 40 crowns to spend on equipment- and purchases a ballistic cloth vest at SP 6, and a communicator. Now he’s broke.
The Character
From the Kellyn family Hunting Lodge, the Kregors, along with Bil and Emly Kellyn, plot their revenge on those whose machinations brought down the House of Kregor. Roglund is training his brother, sister, and the Kellyn heirs in the arts of Mekton piloting. His former trainee from his time in the Kargan Military, Subaltern Mikel Bligh, was summarily transferred out of the line forces and into supply and procurement when he spoke out against Roglund’s abandonment by the military. From this position, Bligh is planning to help Roglund steal the Mektons he needs to outfit his team.
During training sessions, Roglund is all business, but after hours he is a different man. His near-death experience has taught him to enjoy himself during downtime, and the indifference of the Kargan military to either his medical issues or justice for his family has taught him that one cannot count on anyone but oneself and one’s family. That family is now the team he is quietly building under the noses of the Kargan nobility. A crippled son of a fallen house matters nothing to the Kargan nobles- especially since it appears some among them engineered the entire situation. That is all about to change. Roglund has in his possession a letter, delivered to the Kellyn family by a former servant, spelling out his father’s suspicions on who was plotting against them. The letter escaped the raid on the family lands by mere hours- and now provides a starting point for what the team is calling OPERATION: RESTORATION.
<<Apologies for the dodgy character sheet>>
My Thoughts
Ummm… I think I just wrote a campaign seed.
Seriously, Mekton II, and its followup Mekton Z, are very much worth looking into. While the Kregorlater release cleans up the rules a bit, there’s something truly awesome about the Gundam-esque world of Algol, and the mecha included in The Mekton Techbook. I love how the designs flow with the timeline of the Archipelago War, and how the newer designs aren’t always better than the ones before them, due to concerns like budget and simplifying the supply chain.
This game deserves a lot more love than it gets, and I was excited to back the Kickstarter for a new Mekton, only to have it sidelined by R. Talsorian’s involvement with Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Red. I very much hope Mike Pondsmith gets back to Mekton, and maybe it will use the revamped core Cyberpunk Red does.
I can’t tell you how many hours I have spent making mecha, powered armor suits, starships, etc. with this system. I love it. And I have such a nostalgic connection to the art, and the layout of the Mekton II-era books, which are some of the first RPG books to use desktop publishing, along with Cyberpunk. I also love the lifepath- it takes the process from Traveller and turns it from a series of die rolls that each player interprets into a set of actual events and experiences in and of themselves. It was great in Cyberpunk and it’s great here.
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