5 reasons to play Heavy Gear 4e
For beginners or RPG vets, Heavy Gear is a vibrant world to explore.
You might have just seen the kickstarter, or you might have had friends talk about this 90s Canadian mecha game they used to be obsessed with, either way, you don’t know if it is a good game to pick up. Heavy Gear has a lush setting and long in-world history. These are far from the best reasons to play it. Here are five reasons you should play Heavy Gear.
As real as it can be, while still having Giant Robots
Heavy Gear is part of a generation of sci-fi stories like The Expanse that seek to provide a world that is scientifically accurate, while still allowing for fantastic technology. The focus is having things feel gritty and real – like the world is actually lived in – but still get to pilot a 14 foot tall anthropomorphic robot. Details such as timekeeping, ammunition, logistics and all manner of other concerns are present in the world and game. While the stories you might choose to tell can be over the top or operatic, the setting itself works to remain grounded. This also comes through in the ways it presents its world: there are certainly “bad guys” but by and large things are shades of gray rather than black and white. Even the major antagonists of the universe have reasons for being who they are and doing what they do. This also extends to politics, religion, social issues and all manner of situations.
Play Your Way
Fourth Edition presents a rules system that is simple to explain, but complexly open to character design. The domain system allows you to build a character that does things in their unique way. Say you need to hijack a vehicle carrying something valuable. Three characters can approach this all in different ways – one with a military solution, one through subterfuge, and one by high-tech trickery – and all succeed. But two characters can actually do the same method in different ways. Players create their skills from scratch allowing them to do things in unique and interesting ways. This means two characters doing the same thing can do it their own way. For example, say you are pretending to be a scientist from a secure facility and talking your way past security. A con artist might use Showmanship: Fast Talk, while a spy could use Tactics: Impersonation. The player gets to create this skill, the only limit being their imagination, and both of them work.
Terra Nova – a Whole Different World
Heavy Gear is focused around a particular planet, Terra Nova. It’s a planet not unlike earth but hotter, with massive deserts at the equator and colder, greener spaces at the poles. Despite these similarities, it really is another world. From large fauna sharing both characteristics of insects and reptiles, to massive underwater cave networks, to corrosive ash wastes, to industrial urban sprawl and ships from the early colonial days, there is so much to explore. The setting is lushly defined with each of its 70 city states having its own culture, visual style, political and social landscape all while acting on a larger global stage. You can go as deep or as shallow as you like into all of this, but having it there gives places to explore and potential for storytelling for both the GM and players. Of course, Terra Nova is just one of ten planets to explore. While it might be the core of the setting, you could play entire adventures on these other worlds and find them just as fulfilling.
Freedom to Tell Your story
Heavy Gear will function just as well if your team is archaeologists searching for a rumored abandoned ship in the southern jungles, a hardscrabble caravan trying to cross a contested desert wasteland, or smoothe spies conducting espionage on their own allies in an urban mega-city. The gears are there for any of these settings, but the world is big enough that you don’t need them to have a fantastic game. Any genera can fit here. Want to tell a story about high-tech low-lifes? Try the planet Caprice and its mega city Ghamorra that spans hundreds of miles. Like the idea of mecha in a less military setting? Gear sports let players engage in the same fun you could find in professional wrestling or sports stories from behind the controls of their machines. Mafia drama? Tribal society coming into contact with outsiders? AI gone mad horror story? Clones on the run thriller? All of these not only fit into Heavy gear, they all have direct tie-ins to the setting.
Table Top Potential
Last but far from least is the table top potential of Heavy Gear. With literally hundreds of models to choose from, table top players can build a huge variety of machines to play with AND against. But even if you choose to use paper tokens, graph paper, or an entirely digital board, Heavy Gear still provides crunchy satisfying mecha combat for players. Vehicles are well balanced to face each other, and the damage result system is open for as complex or simple a design as players want. Want to go deep into exactly how your vehicle is damaged and let the players tell you how they manage it? Want to simply record damage points? Either works without losing anything from play. How you use it is up to you.
Bonus Reason Number Six: It Really is Deep
Once you get a feel for the Heavy Gear setting, there is so much more to dive into. The Storyline books give a season by season breakdown of important events allowing you to run games at many different points in Terra Nova’s history. Leaguebooks and the Life on Terra Nova books are set up much like travel guides, letting you get a feel for the setting but also providing endless new ideas for games and characters. All of these from 25 years of releases are available in high quality digital versions. So when you get our feet on the ground you can delve deeper and find more and more to explore.
