I’ve started working on an Mecha inspired BitD hack, Hull Riders of the Imperial City. I like the Shattered Isles as a setting and was surprised to see John had built everything I needed into the setting. A cockpit appears to be a standard component of a Heavy Hull. Hence in this hack, each crew member will be attuned to a Humanoid shaped Heavy Hull (with an Interior Operators Chamber). In fact he even included reference to airships in the Kickstarter deluxe edition so I could have mecha/hull drops into combat with canon
I’m currently not too sure of the economies:
• Heat doesn’t make a lot of sense for this hack but it’s a really clever throttling mechanism. I may need to replace it with something to represent fallout (in a game where I may potentially have Hulls fighting Demons there is bound to be some sort of collateral) but initially I’m going to try dropping it from play tests
• I am replacing Stress with Sync (a measure of how closely the rider’s mind can attune to the Hull). One implication of not having a stress stat is Pilots wont be able to either push themselves without taking a Devil’s Bargain, or to resist effect when not in their hulls. The pilots in this game will be quite squishy and dependent on their hulls.
• Trauma is being replaced by Bleed (strong emotions from the rider/pilot which influence the Hull’s spirit causing indiosyncracies in the way it acts).
My intial thoughts for crew roles include: Gladiators, Enforcers (Vigilantes, Bluecoats etc), Workers (Rescue Workers, stevedores, etc), Mercenaries, Bodyguards and Hunters (Deal with Demon and Leviathan threats – this setting’s Kaiju).
From a sheet perspective, advances are going to be divided into Actions, Techniques and Fixtures. Actions and Techniques describe the ‘pilot’ and will be purchased with experience. Fixtures will be associated with the Hull, purchased with Coin, but reduce the maximum Sync.
One thing which is going to play a huge role in the fiction is the actual sizes of the hulls. Having looked at a variety of anime, films and games for inspiration I’ve come to the conclusion these Hulls are going to be tiny by Mecha standard (https://eruisar.deviantart.com/art/Height-Chart-v6-428719259). I want Urban combat to feel like urban Combat – I don’t want them just peering over buildings all the time to see their enemies, so anything over about 20 feet (6.5m) just isn’t going to work. So something possibly a little larger than the AMP suit from Avatar (14 foot), at most the same as the Mark IX Mantis from Halo (19 ft), and definitely smaller than even the tiniest Battletech mech (the Commando at 8.68m). This also works well with John Harper’s description of a Heavy Hull as Wagon sized. I can see the AMP suit as Wagon sized.
All of this of course sounds good, but it means nothing until I get it to the table to see what its like in play. My experience hacking PBtA tells me things which sound great often don’t play nearly as well – not without lots of tweaking anyway. I’m currently 4400 miles from home, skiing during the day, making lots of notes in OneNote in the evening. When I get home I’ll see how well my copious notes pull together to make a lite playtest pack and enlist a few playtesters.
https://eruisar.deviantart.com/art/Height-Chart-v6-428719259