(TLDR: Rambling about various ideas for converting the Hull playlist from BitD to serve as a mech for another…

(TLDR: Rambling about various ideas for converting the Hull playlist from BitD to serve as a mech for another character to pilot around, either in vanilla BitD or Scum & Villainy)

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Scum & Villainy (ish, but kinda vanilla Blades too) idea that I was hoping for some feedback on:

My group is starting an S&V game soon, and something I’ve wanted to include in a sci-fi game for a long time is mechs. My idea was to use an idea (I’m sure I’m not the first one to think of it) for vanilla BitD that involved using the heavy frame Hulls with interior compartments as cool eldritch mech type things that the characters would drive around. There’s a few technical issues I never figured out– namely, using a playbook that was intended to serve as its own character as more of a vehicle/tool for other characters.

Some issues that come to mind are: if a character is driving the mech, who should take things like harm or stress (or drain)? Should the mech have its own action ratings that get rolled, or should it rely on the pilot’s ratings, or some combination?

It’d make sense to me that a character who isn’t particularly great at fighting on their own could still be a talented pilot, so having a poor Scrap/Skirmish/Hunt score shouldn’t hinder you while you’re piloting the mech. Maybe just generally rolling with Helm in S&V, and Finesse or Attune in vanilla? All resist rolls made in the mech just being made with those respective attributes? Having a single catch-all action/attribute for everything that happens while in the mech seems a little reductive, but would be the simplest implementation.

At the same time, I like the idea that there’s some semi-sentient consciousness serving as the “operating system” for the mech/hull, either a ghost in BitD or some sort of AI in S&V, so the idea of the mech having its own action ratings and personal talents that it’s employing might be cool. Maybe you could even use “leading a group action,” where the pilot and the mech both get to roll together, to simulate the pilot and mech’s combined efforts and abilities.

I think that could be more interesting than relying on a single piloting action roll, but it’s also more complicated– in that case, keeping the mech leveling up and improving their ratings seems difficult, given that they’ll be brought out in certain scenarios, but frequently left behind as the main characters go on foot, so they would presumably get much less exp, if it were tracked in the normal way.

Maybe a low maintenance workaround would be to allow the mechs to have as many points in action ratings as their pilots, so they progress at the same rate, and the players don’t have to fuss with making sure exp is being spread around between the two. There wouldn’t necessarily be a clear in-lore explanation for why the mech is improving on its own as its pilot advances, but I’m not personally too bothered by that.

Taking a cue from armatures in A NOCTURNE, I’m thinking it’d be fair to let the mech have its own health and take damage/protect its pilot from any damage, but have the pilot take stress for actions that would generate any.

Alternatively, I could see being even more lenient and letting the mech take damage and drain, as per the vanilla Hull playbook, simulating some sort of fuel or energy source that runs out as the mech is shooting lasers and flying around and whatnot. That would preserve the possibility of the mechs developing wear over time, which I think is interesting.

If that were the case, the pilot themselves would basically be protected from any direct consequences while in the mech, which might be alright, but seems maybe a little too cheap. Similarly, I suppose that could be balanced by the characters still having to use up downtime actions to repair the mech’s health and reduce drain, but it might get boring to have downtime actions constantly eaten up with mech maintenance. Then again, having to pay a cred or two for the extra action of maintaining the mech on top of your personal downtime actions seems fairly appropriate.

However, it also probably wouldn’t seem right if the characters went through some particularly intense job that they were constantly exerting themselves on, but came away without any personal stress.

If the mech/hull isn’t tracking its own exp, maybe new traits and frame upgrades could be acquired through research projects by their pilots?

My group’s pretty lenient with penalties and balance– we tend more towards the heroic epic character side of things, rather than being real scrappy underdogs who are all liable to get killed by some stray bullet, so in terms of balancing the penalties of using the mech, we’d probably not be too bothered about making sure the characters are punished particularly severely.

At the same time, I don’t think I’d want what happens in the mechs to feel like there’s basically no consequences– like if a score ends and the characters all come away with no harm or stress to clear because it all got shunted off to their mechs.

Anyway, this ended up being way longer than I expected it would be… >_>

So thanks to anyone who’s read this far, and for any insights you might have ^_^