# Mecha *Created:* 2024-06-22, *Modified:* 2026-10-08 ![[Mecha (cover).jpg|600]] **Mecha** is a giant-robot roleplaying game by Chris Perrin, and it starts from one stubborn idea: the machine is the person who pilots it. Pilot and mecha are built as a single character, and the engine is designed so the personal drama and the mech combat feed each other instead of fighting for table time. It's a low-crunch affair — a handful of d6s, an abstract battlemap, and a reserve of anime-style heroics — sold as a toolkit you can aim at any mecha flavor you love, with three settings included to prove it. The author wrote it, in his own words, to be "the ultimate expression" of a lifelong love of giant robots blowing each other up. ## Setting Mecha is built around **Setting Reference Schematics** (SRS) — the game's word for a setting, defining its time period, its mecha, its factions, and its conflict — and the second edition happily tells you it's a toolkit: pick an SRS from the book or build your own. The core ships three ready-made ones to cover the genre's range: - **Revolution: Deity Godblind, The Living City** — a city that is itself alive, fought over by pilots and the giant war-mecha of living gods, with the player mecha standing between a populace and a pantheon that isn't ready to be dethroned. - **Steel Gunner: Destiny Tomorrow** — a war to control Destiny Prime, split between the **Arbor Defense Force** and the **Separatist Guard**, fought with "Steel Gunners" across Destiny I, II, and III and a roster of named NPCs and vehicles. - **Special Research School** — the high-school mecha drama, set at a special military academy in the class of 1966, with mecha football, school dances, rival schools, and all the teenage-pilot angst that implies. You're the pilots — by choice or by fate handed a mech and asked for great feats of valor, heroism, or evil, depending on who's asking — and the fiction insists the machine reflects the person who commands it. Pilot and mecha are generated together, because in the best mecha anime the two are one character. ## Mechanics Resolution is a clean, exploding d6 pool: - **Rolling:** roll a number of d6 equal to your relevant **stat**; every die that comes up equal to or less than your **skill** level is a Success. **1s explode** — count the die as a Success and reroll it, keeping any successes it produces, so a small pool can still pile up a mountain of hits. - **Great Success and Cut Scenes:** bank a **Great Success** at 5+ successes and gain a point of **Overdrive**. Hit **8+ successes** and you earn a **Cut Scene** — the speed-line anime moment where you describe your mech doing something that defies physics, and you get a free half-combat action that can ignore optimum-range penalties. - **Standard and Contested rolls:** a standard roll pits you against a passive target (a door, fate, your own body); a contested roll is traded against an opponent's successes. **Character & mecha creation** is a 13-step process done in one pass — pick a pilot/mecha concept, choose a **Model**, select an **Archetype**, spend **Stat Optimization Points**, **Link** the pilot's stats to the mecha's base stats into four **Linked Stats** (Attack, Defense, Movement, Initiative), buy Skills, choose **Configurations**, pick **Traits**, pick **Weapon Systems** (each with a name, optimum range, damage type, and dice), then give the pilot a **Goal**, the mecha a **Protocol**, equipment, and starting Overdrive. **Overdrive** is the game's signature fuel — a shared pool (players *and* the GM earn it) spent to buy extra successes or to fire off a mecha's **Configuration**: the onboard special systems that make your machine distinct. Analyzer, Assassin, Berserker, Burwark, Boomer, Hot Shot, Prowler, Ripper, Sniper, Transformer, and two dozen more — each a one-point-of-Overdrive anime move that does something dramatic on the board. **Combat** takes place on the **Bullseye Battlemap**: a circular arena of quadrants and sectors, where the abstract positioning is everything. You roll Movement to generate **Movement Points** (one point moves you a sector, two cross a quadrant line), weapons have an **optimum range** (measured in Movement Points) and a **damage type** (missile, wave, impact, or energy), and your mech's Configurations turn Overdrive into the special effects that win fights. ## Editions **Mecha** ran through two editions from Heroic Journey Publishing, and both are in the library: - **Mecha, First Edition** (Heroic Journey Publishing, **2009**) — the original rulebook, held as the hardcover. *In the library.* - **Mecha, Second Edition "Mecha Core" / M0** (Heroic Journey Publishing, **2012**) — the current core: a new Paul Bourne cover, revised text, an expanded world-building chapter, and fully backward-compatible with the first edition. The book calls itself **Mecha Core** or **M0** to distinguish it from its own supplements. *In the library* — as the core (id 995) and its **2020 reprint** (id 2667; same content, a different ISBN). **Supplements and play aids** (the "other Mecha rules sets" the core points to): - **Mecha Quickstart** — the free fast intro. *In the library.* - **Mecha Combiners** — creating combinable mecha. - **Mecha Mercenaries** — mercenary crews and campaigns. - **Mecha: Kaiju** — it is 2113, Earth is under attack from the sea. - **Mekayana** (Jake Baker, **2012**) — the Bollywood supplement, reworking Mecha into India and Hindu-flavored settings (the Special India Defense Taskforce and their "mekayana"). *In the library.* - **Mecha character sheet** — the play aid. *In the library.* ## References - [Mecha - Heroic Journey Publishing, on DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/82258/mecha)