I got the Transformers RPG last night. Is anyone interested in a first reactions, and maybe a review post?

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 11, 2022, 04:20:15 PM
I got the Transformers RPG last night. Is anyone interested in a first reactions, and maybe a review post?

  Definitely. Early reports on G.I. Joe and Power Rangers suggested some system design issues, but Transformers is the franchise I actually have some interest in, so I'd like to see if they've gotten things tuned up.

Alrighty First Impressions:

Lots of art. Between the CCG, the comics and the toy lines, there's a big art pool for them to draw from, and a few illustrations created for the RPG. (Like size comparison charts)
Layout seems ok. The text is legible and laid out well. I'd say it's comparable to 5th ed or Pathfinder in quality.

I'm flipping through the system, and some of the things that jumped out at me.

Alt modes (what your character transforms into) are highly abstract and the names are not very intuitive. "Champion" is a car of any type. "Monolith" is a big bruiser, like Optimus Prime's truck mode. "Lookouts" can be a flyer or a ground vehicle. Beasts are not in this version of the game, but they mention that they're planned for a future supplement. You can make a Beast mode with the current system (and they have stats for Ravage, the panther casette Deception) they just say the future rules will be more comprehensive.
Making an "Object" mode requires a specific perk in the Perks section, not the Alt mode section.

Weapons are mid-crunch, with a very low damage rating system. Like the average attack does 1 point of damage. Maybe increased by a very good attack roll, to x2 or x3, but for the most part, you're doing a flat 1 or 2 points of damage per attack.
Average mooks have less than 10 Health, with named Decepticons getting more like 11-24.

The system's got an Energon currency for doing really impressive feats, a Story Point currency for buying re-rolls and there's lots of mentions of how everyone is collaborating to tell a story, not play out a scenario. A bugagoo for me, since I dislike RPGs that try to tell a story, over setting up a situation. Thankfull, you can ignore most of this.

Core mechanics. Hoo boy. It's a D20 roll over target number or opposed test system, but there's a lot of stuff tacked on.

If you are unskilled, you roll with a "Snag", which means roll 2D20 and take the lower result.
If you are skilled, you roll a single D20 plus your level of skill gives you a bonus dice, from 1D2  to 1D12. (More with Shifts) Which you add to the D20 roll to get your final result.
If you are specialized in a skill, you roll a single D20, plus ALL the bonus dice from your skill level.
So a character with specialization and a D12 skill dice rolls 1D20 then rolls a D12, D10, D8, D6, D4 and D2, and picks the highest result from all the skill dice to add to the D20 roll.
*breath*
If you have Edge, you roll 2D20 and take the higher result.
So.
If you are specialized in a skill, and have Edge, you roll: 2D20 and take the higher result, then roll all your skill dice and add the highest result to your D20 roll.

You can also "shift" your skill dice up and down the skill ladder. So a 1 Up Shift will raise a D2 to a D4.

I have to wonder if they should have stuck with just a D20 roll, maybe with Edge and Snag, or maybe with skill ranks, but both seem to be a lot of shit to roll.

Weaons and equipment are assigned by requisition. So at the start of and adventure, you get average weapons and equipmment, and can roll for better but restricted gear.
Characters have 4 Hardpoints, and 2 hands (Called External Hardpoints) to slot weapons.

Size shifts attack and damage rolls up or down, depending on how big or small the attacker and defender are.

There's a dice ladder to keep track of all the dice shifting. from 1D2 to 1D12 for skill ranks, and shifts can take the bonus dice all the way from Auto Fumble, to Auto Fail, through the dice, up to Auto Success, and Auto Crit.

Character creation.
You have 4 "Essences" (I think I dislike that term) Strength, Speed, Smarts and Social. Stats range from 1-15, with starting characters getting 16 essence points to distribute between their stats.
Then pick your Influence, which is your background. Former Senator, Gladiator, etc. This will give your character a Perk related to their background.
Then pick an Origin, which will give you your character's Chassis (alt-mode) and starting Health and an Essence bonus.
Then pick your Role, which is your class. Warrior, Scientist, ModeMaster (Triple changers and characters who have built in minions like Soundwave)
Then pick skills. You get a skill for every Essence, so a Strength Essence of 4 would give you 4 Strength based skills, etc.
Then ick your default weapons and gear, though you're not locked into your choices until the adventure starts.

The back sections got stuff on how to run adventures, generic baddies, some named Decepticon baddies, some stats on humans and non-Transformer vehicles, and a short starter adventure.

There's some fluff, some short stories and exerpts, but it's thankfully brief. There's a lot of Transformers lore after 40 years of cartoons, comics and movies, and locking themselves into one vesrion would not be a wise decision, IMO.

Sum up, it's crunchier than I expected, but not as crunchy as I'd like. Some concepts are very fuzzy, and others are very specific. The dice rolling system looks clunky as hell. I think this is going to be a shelf-warmer. It's a niche (Transformers) genre for a niche (TT RPGs) hobby, with nothing to really stand out and make me want to run this system specifically.
Except.
It's an official, published game. And if I wanted to play Transformers, instead of introducing a group to some homebrew, they can get the offical RPG, read it at their lesiure, make characters on their own, etc. There's a certain legitimacy to a published game.

Accessories:

There are Transformers themed dice, including the D2 (A coin with Autobot and Decepticon faces) two D20's and the rest of the polyhedral shapes, and a dice bag available. I got both.
The dice are neat, and worth getting if you're a TF fan. The bag is... not so good. The bag is rigid and hard to close, and the vinyl Autobot logo looks like it will flake and rip with wear.
Do not reccomend the bag at all.

I got the Deluxe Edition of this rulebook direct from Renegade. I had preordered it and most of the other Essence20 products in March. They have been trickling in since.

My feelings are still conflicted on this game. It was the one of the three Essence20 games I had the highest hopes for.

I have not put up a personal commentary on this game yet. I'm not sure when I will.

Who's it by? I'm guessing Modiphius (hey, here's an rpg based off that thing you like- wait, what do you mean "play it?" Just give us money, put it on a shelf and wait for next product based off of something else you like."

Renegade Game Studios is who made it. They were allowed several Hasbro properties to make games from. The first three were Power Rangers, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. With My Little Pony next in line.

Threat



The TF RPG uses Threat Level for building combat encounters. A Threat Level X bad guy is roughly a match for a party of four characters of the same level.

Does this mean the defenses of the bad guy are scaled to a level 10 attacker? That would mean all the opponents are scaled to be a kind of video game Raid Boss encounter.

Guys. Please stop doing this. I hardly ever want to have exactly one bad guy, and I might not have exactly four players, and while I can reverse-engineer your CR system, I shouldn't have to. Just give them a Level and I can take it from there.

Wow . . . this sounds painful from your description.

I'd much rather play the free fan RPG that James Kerr made for Transformers years ago -- you could actually use the stats that they used to put on the back of the toys with it. James posts here sometimes as Panjumanju.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on November 11, 2022, 04:36:24 PM
  Definitely. Early reports on G.I. Joe and Power Rangers suggested some system design issues, but Transformers is the franchise I actually have some interest in, so I'd like to see if they've gotten things tuned up.

G.I. Joe goes into too much detail on certain aspects. Like actually requiring parachuting rolls.  getting into the miniutia a bit too much. When the game should be a more cinematic affair. And handwave that sort of things. People aren't playing Twilight 2000. They are playing G.I. Joe.

The system focuses too much on real-world weapons. And in a game like Power Rangers, that's just unnecessary and out of place. But as for other issues? No more than any other first-printing game. And that's really true of all of the Essence20 games.

Transformers is the exception. Beast modes, and proper explanation of combiners are absent. Where instead there exists a completely unnecessary weapons requisition system.

Quote from: Thondor on November 12, 2022, 10:55:43 PM
Wow . . . this sounds painful from your description.

I'd much rather play the free fan RPG that James Kerr made for Transformers years ago -- you could actually use the stats that they used to put on the back of the toys with it. James posts here sometimes as Panjumanju.

I've got my own homebrew if it came to that.

It looks like they went through far too much effort to put things on a five foot grid, with ranges for the guns absurdly short and the movements absurdly tiny, even in alt modes.  It's only wearing transformers as a skin, underneath it's some tactical medieval game.

Quote from: Tasty_Wind on November 11, 2022, 11:38:19 PM
Who's it by? I'm guessing Modiphius (hey, here's an rpg based off that thing you like- wait, what do you mean "play it?" Just give us money, put it on a shelf and wait for next product based off of something else you like."

LOL. So very, very true.

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 12, 2022, 06:13:46 PM
Threat



The TF RPG uses Threat Level for building combat encounters. A Threat Level X bad guy is roughly a match for a party of four characters of the same level.

Does this mean the defenses of the bad guy are scaled to a level 10 attacker? That would mean all the opponents are scaled to be a kind of video game Raid Boss encounter.

Guys. Please stop doing this. I hardly ever want to have exactly one bad guy, and I might not have exactly four players, and while I can reverse-engineer your CR system, I shouldn't have to. Just give them a Level and I can take it from there.

Sounds like a

I made a character.

I started easy. An Autobot car. If the system can't handle that...

Most Transformer-ey names have already been taken at this point, so I picked Highbeam, an obscure G2 toy. I think we can say that Transformers can have the same name, like Bob or Sally. Just pick an obscure character and not name your character Optimus Prime...

A neat trick I picked up from Metal Wars is a three word descriptive. So he's Highbeam, Reckless Autobot Gambler.

Most G1 Autobot cars are armed with some kind of rifle or pistol, and a shoulder mounted rocket or missile. Most Transformers also have some kind of ability. Like stealth or specialized sensors or a hologram projector. A kind of tech superpower. I want Highbeam to have the ability to dazzle his opponent's sensors with a blast of light from his car headlights.

I picked Champion for the car alt mode. His role is Gunner.
I placed all 16 stat points, since I knew he'd get 12 plus four from role and origin. But keep an eye on the bonus 4 stat points. Skills linked to those stat points are limited to certain selections.

I put 3 in Strength, he's not especially strong. 5 in Speed, he's a fast car, and Speed is used for ranged attacks. I put 3 in Smarts. He's not particularly intelligent. And 5 in Social. He is a bit of a fast talker.
I then picked out skills, Athletics so he can do adventurey-things like jumping and climbing. I put 1 in conditioning, giving him an extra Health point, and 1 in Might in case he gets in melee combat.
I put a point into Driving, which is used when a character is making skill tests in car mode, 1 point into Initiative so I'm not rolling with a Snag for init, and 3 points into Targeting, the skill used for ranged combat.
1 point into Alertness, and 1 point into culture.
2 points into persuasion and 3 points into streetwise.

At 1st level, I don't get access to cool powers, or a shoulder mounted rocket, so I arm him with a Blaster Rifle and a pair of Blaster Pistols. I figure for range, he'll use the rifle, for close in combat, he'll dual wield pistols (at a penalty).
I'm... not sure if I can load down on armor kits or not, so I skip that bit of equipment, even though I've technically got slot for it. The requisition system isn't very clear.
I list my perks from role and origin and get Armament (an extra hardpoint), Pistol Whip, Rapid Reload and Quick Draw.
He gets 3 health plus 1 for the skill pick, and his Energon value is equal to the lowest stat, so 3 Energon.
I fill in his defenses, Toughness, Evasion, Willpower and Cleverness, which are target numbers when being attacked or intimidated, etc...



Interestingly, the rules don't mention making Decepticon characters, but it's an option to fill out on the offical character sheet. (I've tweaked it here for room for the character picture)

Quote from: Ratman_tf on November 11, 2022, 04:20:15 PM
I got the Transformers RPG last night. Is anyone interested in a first reactions, and maybe a review post?

A YouTube vid.