After recently running some old school D&D (OD&D and Labyrinth Lords) and a campaign of Hollow Earth Expedition, I'm on a Palladium kick- looking at my copies of TMNT, Heroes Unlimited, and Ninjas & Superspies and thinking of lots of cool ways to roll them all together into a really good campaign.  I'm also looking at some of the Palladium games that I never played and wondering if I missed out on anything.

So what's the deal with the Mechanoids?

I guess I've always just assumed these books were somehow tied in with Robotech.  Low and behold, that doesn't appear to be the case.  Rather, they sound rather Borgish or Daleky, from what I read on Wikipedia and the Palladium Books FAQ.  

What kind of rules system does the game run on?  Is it the same as the original Heroes Unlimited/TMNT (High school, college skills, etc)?  Or is it something else entirely?

What really suprised me and intrigues me is that it's an SDC setting.  Which I really like.  I figured for sure it was MDC.  It sounds like it was reworked into an MDC book at some point though- so which version is SDC and which version is MDC?  

Anybody on here played the game in the past?  Still play?  What do you think?

Like you pointed out Mechanoids has zilch to do with Robotech. As a setting, it’s pretty interesting, basic premise of machines trying to snuff our humans.

The system is the basic Palladium system, before MDC. You can find the book that combines all three of the original books into one and is completely SDC (The Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy).

There is a Mechanoids supplement (The Mechanoids) for Rifts which basically takes the basic Mechanoids theme and thrusts it into Rifts and is written in the standard Rifts MDC methodology.

The latter borrows some of the history of the former but is really designed for play in an MDC world.

Okay, Mechanoids is the original form of Palladium's rules, with book three of the Invasion trilogy being the best version of said rules to ever see print.

There are about four pages of rules.  None of your long winded special case rules like Rifts.  If it ain't in there you make it up yourself.

Book One deals with the invasion of a human colony by the mechanoids, who entertain themselves by tormenting the inhabitants while strip mining the sun.

Book Two deals with the few surviving colonist's desperate escape into the Mechanoid mothership itself.  The ship is about the size of North America (being one of the little ones) and even the Mechanoids really have to struggle to root out stowaways.

Book Three takes place on the Mechanoid homeworld itself.  The Mechanoids have withdrawn to intergalactic space, aparently leaving off their genocidal war with humanoid races to congregate around a mother ship three times the size of Jupiter.  A minor confederation has managed to lay claim to the homeworld and is scouring it for anything useful.

The Mechanoids was an expanded reprint of Book One that came out before Rifts.

The Mechanoids comic from Caliber had rules for character creation that were compatible with Rifts and if you also had the Rifts Mechanoids book you could run Mechanoids with Palladium's current scrambled hash of a ruleset.

So, this is high Space Opera spanning galaxies.  The enemy is a race of implacable psychic clones in super advanced battle armour who strip mine stars to power their impossibly huge warships.  Too bad the cloning process also duplicates their insanity and hatred for all humanoid life.  (and why would that be do you suppose?)

Quote from: wulfgar;250424So what's the deal with the Mechanoids?

I am finishing a Rifter Zero magazine article for Mechanoids detailing a base camp on Homeworld so people have a starting point for a campaign with plenty of plot hooks.  Probably get published via PDF in early 2009.

The original three books are challenging to find, however Palladium compiled them all in The Mechanoids Trilogy book which you can find pretty regularly on eBay and Noble Knight.   The Rifts supplement The Mechanoids brings them into the Rifts world and restats them.  

The game is bare bones old school so you will probably house rule stuff.  It would run great in Savage Worlds if you wanted to bring a minis aspect into the game (break out those Imperial Guard vs. Necron minis!).

If your group ever wanted to play Terminator: the RPG, Mechanoids certainly scratches that itch.  Especially Invasion because humanity is seriously screwed.  

One play variant that I have heard postulates that the Human Federation has a space armada capable of driving off the Mechanoid ship from Planet Gideon IF the player characters can keep their forces at bay long enough for the Earth Fleet to arrive and save them.   It breaks with canon, but works well for players who want some kind of happy ending possible for their campaign and gives more impetus to their guerrilla war.

Homeworld oddly has lots in common with D&D.  You have a bunch of aliens with classes who go into dangerous complexes full of evil monsters who need to be killed so their stuff can be sold back in town for bigger weapons and better armor so you can go deeper into their lair.

BTW, if you are on an Old School / Palladium kick, I highly suggest downloading their Valley of the Pharoahs RPG.   It's Egyptian Fantasy with proto-Palladium rules and it was their first (and only) boxed set game.
http://www.palladium-megaverse.com/cuttingroom/valley/valley.html

What's Rifter Zero?  

Zero Calories same Rifter taste?  

Seriously though, is this some sort of fanzine?

The Rifter Zero project is a fanzine put together by Palladium junkies who donate articles into a 100 page PDF that Palladium sells for $3.00  

The idea was spawned back during the Crisis of Treachery to help the company and hopefully open them up to the idea of selling stuff on PDF.  The first issue came out this spring.   My mini-campaign for Rifts and Splicers called "Seven Year on Cerebus" is in that issue.   The second issue has a submission deadline of November 1st.

Rifter #0 PDF - Volume One
http://tiny.cc/x5QXT

Rifter Zero forum
http://tiny.cc/fWliM