My Top 5 Things I Like and Don't About BCGR

The thing I originally was going to upload this month could benefit from a few more days of prepwork, so in lieu of it I'm going to do something related, but a little bit different from the usual. In the vein of blog posts of old, and particularly of the BCG Retrospective, I'm gonna do a bit of game design chat, talk about things that worked as intended (or better than intended) and things that, well, didn't.

Without further ado: My Top 5 Things I Like About BCGR

5) The Math of the Resolution System

Math is not the most exciting topic, but it's a crucial element to good game design, only second to gamefeel in my opinion. BCG is a d10-based, roll-over system that adds flat modifiers to the die roll, with a roll-and-keep advantage system for situational/build-based mofiers. That's a mouthful of jargon, but it basically means "you roll 1d10, add a static bonus, hoping to roll as high as possible, and sometimes you get to roll multiple dice and keep the better result". It's simple, and a little old-fashioned considering all the wild things that indie systems are doing these days, but that simplicity makes it very easy to see at a glance what your odds of doing something are. There is a decent amount of randomness, but not enough to completely override having very high or very low bonuses. The bulk of what decides success or failure is up to a player's choices of actions and build, instead of RNG, and I think that's something crucial to both a good narrative and a fun experience at the table, which a depressing number of systems forget in lieu of making colored stones go click clack.

4) The Ease of Reskinning

A good system lets people roleplay whatever concept they want, instead of constraining them to a small number of effective choices. A problem with many systems, particularly class-based ones, is that you have to jump through an absurd number of hoops to find a way in which the game lets you do the thing you are interested in doing, and you usually have to make concessions even then. While there are many advantages to using classes instead of point-buy, the use of point-buy combined with the effects-based nature of the various traits/powers/upgrades/weapons is a slam dunk. Arguably some concepts that are a big part of the genre (like PCs who are their own mech or endlessly repeatable artillery weapons) cannot be faithfully represented by the core rules, but Custom Weapon Creation and the extra Features in BC79 take care of those.

3) The Pilot/Mecha Separation

Like the point above, but focusing on the "effective choices" part. The fact that you can make ANY type of pilot character pilot ANY type of mecha whatsoever is such an obvious boon to the game that it's frankly mindboggling how common it is for mecha systems to fumble this step. I understand that, for some people, this is actually a bad thing because they want to swap mechs constantly and have part of their build carry over, but that's simply being in the wrong side of the genre for this game (the western side, specifically). BCG is anime, and in anime, your mecha is a part of you, a tool for self-expression, and often a living being of its own figuratively if not literally. There is room for making a temporary switch in mechs more interesting by having some elements that stick around and others that change, but it's not something that should come up often.  

2) Genre Powers

Genre Powers are your primary tool for affecting the pacing and direction of a battle as a player. They're buffs, debuffs, dramatic twists and cool character moments all in one package. There are so many of them that they can be used to enable any kind of build or cool moment that you can imagine. Having said that, I do have a small issue with them: The name. I love and hate the name. I love it because it conveys what the system is about better than a hundred words about cool robots ever could (at least if you know what the "Genre" is). But I also hate it, because a lot of people don't get meta mechanics, and struggle to conceptualize of a character being able to do a thing without it being an in-character talent. I've had to explain how they work to the same player so many times that I think I should've probably explored giving them a different name.

1) Tension

Man, Tension is so cool. Tension is a very simple rule that does a lot with very little. It makes battles go faster, it adds a risk factor to the passage of time, it makes Initiative matter after the first Round since moving first means you get to use higher Tension first, it enables flashy super attacks in Techniques, it makes faceless mooks into lethal killing machines if given enough time, it makes the timing of your abilities matter and it makes FIGHTING SPIRIT into a game mechanic for the builds based around it. There's more that I'm forgetting probably but Tension might just be my favorite rule I've ever come up with. You have no idea how bad I felt that I couldn't figure out a way to put it in Monsterpunk.

And now for a bit of self-criticism and/or revealing of unpopular opinions: My Top 5 Things I Don't Like About BCGR

5) Supports Are an All-In Build Option

While some Support abilities are designed to be viable replacements for weapons (by providing alternative ways of doing damage, really powerful debuffs, or some other high-impact utility effect), most of them were intended to be utility effects that many builds could slot into their builds to use when necessary. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, this is not a very effective way to use them. And so they're mostly relegated to full support builds (plus some self buffs here and there, mostly with glass cannon snipers). Considering that Targeting Disruption and Dividing Field, in particular, are meant for frontliners, this is a bit of a failure. All the Supports are still good, viable options, but the way the mechanic works as a whole is not something I'm happy with.

4) Optimized Combat plays like Rocket Tag

Most noticeable at PLs 4 and 5, but also a problem at lower levels with very coordinated parties of highly optimized PCs. Dedicated damage dealers, specializing in either eliminating Grunts with Blasts or Bosses with Techniques (sometimes doing both at once). Granted, I would rather have fights end in 3-5 turns instead of taking 10+, but when a solo superboss is being annihilated in 2 Turns, not even getting to use two of its three Levels of Upgrades, things are probably a bit too quick. In general, the system favoring offense over defense as a whole (except where defensive Genre Powers are concerned). While superattacks and teamwork-based beatdowns are cool, I would like it if they were slightly less effective at vaporizing the opposition.

3) "But what do you do?"

Probably the hardest thing to explain to people who don't immediately "get it" is what a campaign is like when you're not in combat. I think I could've done a better job of making the mechanics guide people a bit more. As is, Genre Themes exist, and that's it. I'm not a fan of mechanics that limit what you should do in any given session to always roleplaying the same two or three scenarios, and Genre Themes are already toeing that line enough for my tolerance limit, so I'm not sure much else can be done. Either you get it, or you don't, unfortunately. I tried to remedy that a little bit in making the PCs more active as political actors with the faction management rules, but those are still optional rules in the end. A Monsterpunk-esque system for actively taking care of wounds and mecha damage (instead of wounds and humanity loss) would have helped with that, giving people definite resources to manage during play. That won't be the first or last mention of Monsterpunk during this post.

2) Intermission Mechanics

This one bothers me a lot. The simple "roll over a static number" for a binary yes/no result core resolution mechanic is... Fine, but is very dry and not particularly transparent from the player's side of things. It is also very boring, as failure often leads to nothing happening. You can see me trying to officially tackle this in some capacity by the inclusion of the Critical Failure, Failing Forwards and Exceptional Success optional rules and by the fact that they're in page 25 instead of relegated to the back of the book. It still suffers from transparency issues, but because the system is just a Remaster instead of a full rewrite, I could not do more than that. Monsterpunk is a lot more fun in that regard. Also, the less said about the Pilot Combat rules, the better. Would've been better off being narrative rules, instead of imitating the mecha rules but with less mechanics.

1) Map-Based Combat

This is probably a surprise to some of you, but I really, *really* do not care about maps, at all. Like, I think they're fine, in a vacuum, but I dislike making them and as a player I would rather the GM spend their time doing literally anything else to improve the game than making a good looking map. I really wish I could've made proper mapless play rules, but movement and ranges are too ingrained into the rules to fully do away with them. You still need to draw a line to use Linear Battlefields and some abilities need to be banned. I have said many times that a good system is many things to many people, and sometimes that means me, the designer, sucking it up and living with mechanics I'm not a fan of to make the game an enjoyable experience for others. C'est la vie. 

I may no longer be doing long-form retrospectives, but I still spend a lot of time examining what works and doesn't in my games. So much that, sometimes, I make Remastered versions of systems YEARS after theoretically being finished with them! 

So, y'know, some of these points could be relevant in the future. Maybe.

Until next time, 

Gimmick Out.