Love Death and Robots came out a while ago on Netflix. It’s a worthy successor, in many ways, to Heavy Metal – the series, the anthology comic and the movie. It can be a bit hit-or-miss, many of these kinds of shows can be, but it’s more hit than miss. One of the stand-out episodes was the first one, based on a Peter F Hamilton short story, where bio-engineered mini-kaiju battle it out in underground arenas.
That would make a great premise for an RPG campaign, and carries implications with it – around the technology – that could form a broader and more varied set of RPG scenarios. The technology would be unlikely to only be used in the underground and the military applications of producing cybernetically controlled monsters, organically, bypassing a lot (but not all) of the normal industrial infrastructure necessary for war machines.
Creatures bypass a lot of the real-life issues around giant robots, and engineered and bio-printed organisms, stitched together from cybernetics and vat-grown organs are – in many ways – a lot more plausible.
My FATE-based game, Daikaiju Die! Has the basis for people able to run such a game, with a few tweaks.
Scale
- Fighting monsters should be scale 2-3 (vehicle or tank).
- Scale adds to physical Stress.
- If you’re attacking something bigger than you, the difference in scale counts as two points of extra armour for them.
- The other way around, the difference in scale is added to damage.
- If you’re shooting at something smaller than you, the difference in scale is a penalty to the roll.
- If shooting at something larger, the difference in scale is a bonus to the roll.
Fighting Kaiju Creation
Concept: Overall idea behind the creature.
Codename: Start with a codename for your Fighting Kaiju. Something that sums it up in one go.
Aspects: Concept Aspect, Trouble Aspect, Bonus Aspect.
Stunts: Fighting Kaiju start with a single stunt.
Everything Else: Fighting Kaiju also have Skills, Armour and Attacks to buy. These come out of a starting pool of 12 points.
Skills: Fighting Kaiju have Athletics, Fight, Notice, Physique and Shoot skills. Buying them is 1/1. Don’t forget to increase stress according to their Physique as per the main rule book.
Armour: Fighting Kaiju are naturally very tough, but some are tougher than others. 1 point of armour costs 1 point, 2 points of armour costs 4 points and 3 points of armour costs 9 points. For Fighting Kaiju, armour also adds to stress.
Weapons: Fighting Kaiju’s weapons must be natural, claws, teeth, biological acid vomit and so forth. Weapons cost one point per bonus point of damage, up to a maximum of +3. You can also buy aspects for a weapon for one point each.
Bonus Stunt: A Fighting Kaiju can have a second stunt at a cost of 3 points.
Bonus Aspect: A kaiju can have additional aspects at the cost of two points each.
Rules
The Interface skill works as normal, but there is only ever a single ‘pilot’.
The connection is direct and at the speed of light and is essentially lagless out to a distance of 225km. The operator suffers a -1 penalty for every 100km distance or part thereof beyond that.
A civilian transmitter typically only has a maximum range of 500m before connections start to drop out, less in built up areas or inside structures.
In both competitive and military settings, the relative loss of operational effectiveness and the use of upgrades follows the same rules as per normal.
Khanivore
Concept: High velocity predator.
Concept Aspect: Lithe and Twisty.
Trouble Aspect: Relatively Weak.
Stunts: Split Attack – After making a successful head-tentacle attack, Khanivore can spend a FATE point to split the tentacles, making four strikes instead of one, at -1 damage each.
Skills: Athletics 3(4), Fight 3(4), Physique 2.
Weapons: Claws +1, Teeth +1, Head-Tentacle +2.
Bonus Aspect: Skin in the Game.
Scale: 2.
Physical Stress: OOOOO
Postmortem Studios 