Updates

Heavy Gear came out in the mid-1990s and since then has accumulated a vast library of content. That content spans 3 (soon to be 4) RPG editions and multiple iterations of the tabletop wargame. The core 4th edition book provides a brief overview of the history, world and major players of the universe but ultimately, we only have so many pages. With that in mind I wanted to compile a list of recommendations for previous books that are rich with useful content.

Hi everyone, Prof here!

I just wanted to first say thank you again for backing us and helping see 4th edition come to life. I would like to take a bit and give a status update on the RPG Kickstarter post completion. So, on to business.

1. Our artists have already begun and are producing great pieces. This will be a long process though and we have many more to go. You can see some samples at the end of the update.

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First off, is the timeline. This week Kickstarter will be processing and collecting pledges. Please check to ensure your pledge was paid and, if not, that needs to be sorted ASAP. The fact that Dream Pod 9 is in Canada can cause issues with some payment cards. Aside from that usually the errors are incorrect information or out of date information. These can be sorted out quickly and you won’t lose any of your selected rewards. Once this is done, we will do our final internal processing to determine exactly what our final art budget is. 

Hey everyone, Prof here with a quick RPG update.

The KS is ending soon, and we just unlocked our last adventure stretch goal and the final goal is a new art book. We would love to get that done and show off all the stuff we have done. Blitz also just unveiled the 3.1 companion that Rooster has been hard at work on for quite a while. It has many new units for Blitz and of course we want them in the RPG! The only two vehicles that were in there that didn’t make it into the RPG book were the Murdock and Seeker. These are available in the North vehicle list.

Prof9844 here, Than is out of town this week so I figured we could take some time to discuss the RPG 4e/2e conversions and talk about how we are going to “preconvert” stuff for you. First off it is important to understand that the 4e rulebook has a process for converting 2e content into 4e. However, the nature of that conversion makes it hard to reverse. This means that in practice, converting 4e stuff will be more difficult and is not something the core rulebook supports. Characters are doable, but vehicles are the problem. Due to the shift to a Blitz style of combat, 2e vehicles conversion is tedious and has a lot of variables to account for.

We knew when building Heavy Gear RPG 4e that we wanted to have customization incorporated into the rules set. We also knew we wanted it to be intuitive and simple, but gamified in a way that is fun to play around with. The result is that you can customize almost everything. While Priority Level acts as a gating mechanic, the only real limit is what the director will allow. 

Custom Design Philosophy.

To quote William Gibson, “the future is already here, it just isn’t equally distributed.” We tried to play this idea forward in Heavy Gear. Auto factories do mass assembling in the more wealthy nations while poorer places still make heavy use of human labor. Advanced and well supplied military units might be able to cut and assemble entire weapon systems in a few hours while a Badlands outpost might have to reuse decades old tech to save valuable supplies and wear on essential machinery. To represent the ready availability of equipment, equipment uses the Priority Level (PL) system. If equipment matches your PL, then it is assumed to be available to the team without too much fuss. You can still use anything you find (and convince your sponsor to let you keep), but PL is usually going to be readily available to switch out and easy to replace. 

Archetypes are one of the optional rules for Heavy Gear. They represent different specializations a character can pursue, and players will recognize them as similar to the classes or jobs found in other roleplaying games. An Archetype represents a career long – or possibly life long – focus for a character, so they must be chosen during character construction and can’t be changed. A character starts at Rank 1 in their chosen Archetype and gets an ability then, and each time they rank up, up to Rank 6 in total. Ranking up typically happens at major story junctures, and is one of the many ways characters can advance over time. 

Heavy Gear Fourth Edition aims for a combination of open ended rules with well defined game effects. Anything the player imagines can be a Skill, Trait, or equipment and those rules get applied in the same simple ways. Heavy Gear 4e When and how they get applied though is up to a process called Lobbying.  

The Player Lobby

Today we want to talk about some of the basics that guide what a session of Heavy Gear looks and plays like. Before getting into any of that though, we should talk about optional rules. Heavy Gear Fourth Edition contains some rules which are tagged optional. By default these are on but a Director might choose to play without them. These rules add more complexity to the game and cover area’s otherwise entirely left to Director discretion. They can be thought of like mods to a video game – something that is rarely essential but provides a richer experience. The game functions fine without any of them, and may be a more streamlined experience, but we recommend using them. Some examples of optional rules are the wealth system, burden (how much players can carry), and Archetypes (which act like character classes in other systems.)  

Getting your character made in Heavy Gear is pretty simple once you know the concepts. It can be done before the game, but is really best done with all the players and the Narrator together as a sort of session zero. Today we are going to run through the process.

Building the Team, National Origin, and Lifepath   

The player characters in Heavy Gear are referred to as a Team. They might be a military, corporate contractors, or even a group of criminals brought together for a heist. The important part is that they are in this together. The Team works for a Sponsor, such as the military the Team serves in, a corporate entity, a revolutionary movement, or just about anything else. The Sponsor helps determine which vehicles the Team can choose from.