I always neglected Heavy Gear, thought it was good art - bad writing.
The tactical game and the PC game didn´t make me want to play them again, neither.

What´s your take on it?

Especially: Does anybod know whether "Operation Jungle Drums" is any good?

Cause right now I could totally use a Jungle based; espionage mech mission!

Quote from: Settembrini;343789I always neglected Heavy Gear, thought it was good art - bad writing.
The tactical game and the PC game didn´t make me want to play them again, neither.

What´s your take on it?

I enjoyed the tactical table-top game. The mechanics are consistent throughout both the table-top game and the RPG. It's Battletech done right.

I've not run the RPG, but the setting books are good reads; enough material to build from, but not novels, either. Also, each has a spot in the timeline indicated on the back. RPG is point based, 0-normed stats, 1-6 level skills, with 2 being pretty normal. Typical stat range is -2 to +2.

The PC game sucked.

Same mechanics as Jovian Chronicles, Tribe 8, and Gear Krieg.

I was kind of in it at the start, until they changed the scale. I wasn't in the mood to swap out for the smaller mechs that everyone started playing with... fun while it lasted.

If you don't like the tactical rules, you may not like the rest of the ruleset. Aramis is correct that the game system is pretty well integrated throughout.

Like Aramis, I've had fun playing the tactical game. I've only played it as part of RPG play, though -- I've never played it as a stand-alone tactical set.

You can ignore this:

Quote from: aramis;343812It's Battletech done right.

This is wrong. It just shows that Aramis doesn't understand Battletech.

Operation Jungle Drums has some problems. It requires some (but in my opinion, not too much) adaptation. It tends to assume PCs will take a certain route from Sequence 1 to Sequence 2 to Sequence 3. This is a problem. The designers have somewhat mixed loyalties. On the one hand, they're clearly enamored with hex-based wargames on some level. On the other hand, they're also enamored with the tropes of mecha anime, including storyline tropes. This means you have to use some judgment if you want to approach the adventure purely as a military RPG scenario rather than a dramatic military adventure.

On the positive side, information is provided about unit strengths, typical numbers of guards, and typical responses to PC actions. It is enough to extrapolate logical possibilities. Real failure is also on the table in every part of the adventure if the players make poor decisions (or have bad luck). In most cases, the adventure doesn't encourage stepping in to save the players from bad choices.

It's imperfect, but serviceable. I thought the positives outweighed the negatives, but I'm also a fan of the RPG itself as a game system. We played it a long time ago. If I remember correctly, when we played it the party took substantial losses in their first encounter (pilots only have a 1 in 6 chance of surviving the destruction of their gears), and the mission was a failure at an early stage. This means I can't actually speak with much authority on how the rest of the adventure played out.

I understand battletech just fine; it's the incoherency across scales that is battletech's biggest flaw, followed closely by weapons ranges being reversed from reality. They are slightly different flavors of the Mecha combat... and HG is Mecha Anime done realisitcally and without the break in mechanics that characterizes the BT/Mechwarrior divide (no matter which edition of mechwarrior one happens to choose).

That the two have very different scopes (BT being pan-stellar, HG being 4 worlds or so, and mostly just Terra Nova) isn't really relevant. HG is the game I've always wished (since release) that Battletech would be: integrated rules for tactical and RPG, relatively realistic (3m instead of 30m height for most mechs, for example, bigger guns have longer ranges).

My feeling is that the original basic rules were not bad; I still prefer Palladium's mecha rules by a long shot, and Mekton comes second, but Heavy Gear was pretty good. Its after that, in subsequent products, that the game went to shit.

RPGPundit

Thanks Richforest! Does Operation Jungle Drums actually play in a Jungle?

It should also be noted that the game has a metaplot (collected in three small booklets that contain no game info whatsoever) and that there are NPCs with a kind of script immunity. (The importance of NPCs is rated by chessmen icons - a pawn is considerably less important to the storyline than a bishop.)

But if you only want to use one adventure/scenario you won't have problems with that.

In the only supplement that i own, I already saw this and was quite disgusted. Still, the module might be something worhtwhile.

Another question: Do I need the 1st or Redux Version? Printed or is pdf enough?

Hey, first post here.  Long-time lurker, but thought I'd reply because I ran a Heavy Gear campaign for a long time.  I've also run the module in question, Operation: Jungle Drums.

My opinion (not surprisingly) is that Heavy Gear is an excellent game, with various rough spots around the edges.  Some of these include less than stellar editing, a poor 3rd edition of the game that tried to get on the OGL D20 bandwagon, and some sloppy writing in the last few supplements released.  If you're going to play the game (the RPG side), I'd strongly recommend the 2nd edition, not the 3rd.  There are only a few books released for the 3rd edition, and they are a bit of a mess.  They also attempt to dual-stat everything for D20, which I personally hated.  D20 is the wrong system for everything this game does.

On the plus side, I found the game to be a breeze to run, with an ability to generate what felt like really "realistic" or internally consistent results for actions taken.  It is also extremely well-integrated between the tactical miniatures side and the RPG side.  Be aware that the game can be exceedingly deadly, especially if played at the base power-level for character creation.  This requires a different way of thinking for players used to the "kick-in-the-door" D&D mentality.  Our group had that mindset, and it just took some adjustment.

There is also an enourmous amount of source material available, although few published modules.  I found both the scope and detail of the source books to be (largely) fantastic, and they were fodder for endless adventure ideas.  As others have mentioned, there is a meta-plot woven through the game, and characters are generally marked with a sybol indicating their importance to said meta-plot.  Why this should "disgust" you, I'm unsure.  You're free to ignore it, and it merely serves as a guide to who's death would make later portions of the meta-plot awkward.  Again, if you're not using the meta-plot, you can totally ignore these.

As for Jungle Drums, it's an okay module, and our group had a lot of fun with it.  It combines both RPG and Tactical elements, with a strong bias towards the characters being Southern Gear pilots.  In our case the players were all Northern Gear pilots, which took minor modification.  With a little more effort, you could easily run this without any of the players being Gear pilots.  That would, however, miss an area where the game, as a whole, really shines: combined RPG & Tactical.  The module also definitely doesn't provide coverage for all the things a clever party might do (what module does?), meaning it's a little linear, as written.

If you're going to run the module more or less as written, either buy the print version or make sure you have access to a decent printer.

1st: thanks alot, Boblablah!
2nd: Do I want the Redux or the Starter Kit version?

If you're ever going to run another Heavy Gear adventure, get the Redux version, otherwise, whichever is cheaper/easier to obtain.

Thanks a lot! I do wonder about the reasons, though. Makes me a bit suspicious: metaplot reasons?

I slowly fear this is not a real adventure, but I´ll be off and buy the Redux Pdf to see it myself.

Thanks!

Actually, the reasons are nothing sinister.  The Redux version simply adds some more info that's really only of significant value if you're going to play something more than just this module.  The stuff is still handy, regardless, just not deal-breaking.

Welcome to theRPGsite, Bobloblah!

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