Commandroids G2

Remember Those? With The Funky Colors?

And The Cartoon That Was The Original Cartoon, But With Digital Effects?

More Than Meets The Eye

More than a week, less than a month. Third novella in the series is coming along, I’ve got two seemingly separate plots mostly completed, they’re the first two-thirds, and I need them to join up, and that’s where I’m kind of stuck, plus, I got edits back on the second book, which I am supposed to be going over, but I dread seeing every error and typo and plot hole called out, so, I’m procrastinating by writing this. You’re welcome.

(Digression: I mentioned Imagine, which I called the heartbreakiest of D&D heartbreakers, last time, and on a whim, checked to see if their site was still up. It is, and not only that, but they’ve published two more books, including a massive 600 page tome in 2023. I now own it, and the only slightly-less-massive book from 2013. This guy does what I can’t do — stick to a passion project and not only complete it, but expand it. It really merits a deeper look. For the future.)

OK, when last we left our intrepid man/machine pair, we’d finished the human half. All of this, and the backstory, is detailed in Part I. 

Form Follows Function

Actually, as it turns out, Function follows Mechform. At least in the order you pick them.

Mechform

Commandroids are, per the rules, less free-form than humans. They’re purpose-built machines and thus narrower in overall scope. I guess if you’re built to transform into a microscope, you don’t become a firefighter. (Seems like there’s some good RP material there, though — just because you look like a tank doesn’t mean you can’t want to be a race-car!) Anyway, we start with picking a mechform. Our human is an older teen, but not an adult. So while he could in theory be driving a car, he probably doesn’t have a license and this could lead to annoying encounters. Also, his general personality makes me think he’s the outdoorsy sort — and not all adventures will take place near a highway, or even a paved road. Given that, I’m going to go with Motomech, including bikes, motorcycles, ATVs, and so on. (As it turns out, having now completed the first pass and am now editing, mechform is really important and ties in to a huge amount of lore, and discussing the various forms ended up being most of this article. Huh. Go figure.)

Function

The next step is function. Alphatrons are leaders, Medicrons are healers, Battletrons (I like “Combatron” better, but my input was not sought) are soldiers, and so on. I am going to go with Infiltron — scouts, spies, or saboteurs. In this case, the emphasis is on “Scout”. This Commandroid is more explorer than spy. Possibly, it was pushed into an intelligence-gathering role by the war, but it would rather just be seeing things no one else has seen, looking for hidden, uh, cyber-caves, lost, er, digi-valleys, and rivers of energy… stuff. (As I read the lore more, there used to be a cyber-wilderness on Quazaros, so this kind of works!) Here on Earth, everything is new and alien to it, but it would rather not be in the built-up areas — reminds it too much of home. Whatever fictional community this game would be set in, I’ll assume it’s located just a few miles from a national park or other wilderness area. Possibly, Simpsons-style, there are a multitude of biomes improbably nearby — a beach one way, mountains the other, deserts to the north, swamps to the south. All within an after-school drive!

Matrix

No one can be told what the Matrix is. Thus, this section is blank.

As are the stares from my imagined readers. Don’t y’all remember that tagline? It was only… (checks date)… a freakin’ quarter century ago? Seriously? People whose parents came home from seeing that movie and decided to make the beast with two backs are now in their mid-20s? That’s just… no. No, I refuse to accept it.

Anyway, Matrix is… uh, wait, I spent so much time on that dumb gag I forgot what I just read. Maybe it was 26 years ago…

“Matrix” is the Commandroid equivalent of “Talent” for a human, but again, rather than being free-form, there’s a list. It’s “what makes you special”, aka “what gimmick your toy was sold with”, such as Apparatex (has an add-on not sold separately), Primacronic (animal form), and Trinary (triple changer). The default is “Omnicircuit”, which give you an extra Chip Slot. Still not sure which I want, so let’s read on a bit.

The next section gives more details on the individual mechforms. This gives a good bit of background lore. Some summaries:

Aeromecha (planes, helicopters) were the ruling class of not-Cybertron, divided into five houses, such as Aquilae, who played too much Warhammer 40K, and House Toreador, I mean, Falco, patrons of the arts. On Earth, many adapted military forms, only to learn that a Mig flying over Ohio was the opposite of “staying unnoticed”. It’d be fun to play against type and have a crop duster or an advertising blimp. 🙂 They tend to pick the kind of humans as their pilots who match them as, well, kind of arrogant show-offs with an attitude. 

Automecha can transform into 1940s-style self-serve diners, with a wide range of food and drinks at.. no, wait, that’s Automats. As one might guess, Automecha transform and roll out! They’re sort of the proletariat/blue-collar class on Quazaros, the most common types, and with something of a complex about the speed of the Aeromechas. On Earth, they can be anything from compact cars to monster trucks, taking forms to match their character, Human pilots are equally varied. As the Commandroids take over existing vehicles, they may become someone’s family car, which creates an interesting dynamic.

I Love The Cigar So Much

Combatmecha …wait, aren’t these “Battletrons”? (scroll scroll scroll) No, “Battletron” is a function, “Combatmecha” is a form. These are military ground vehicles, from jeeps to tanks. I’m not sure I’d have split them from “Automecha”, but, for the fourth time in this series, no one asked me and no one should have asked me. They did what they did because it’s their project. On the other hand, this is my review, and I think the lines between the two forms, and between Combatmecha the form and Battletron the function are a bit blurry, but, on the gripping hand, I’ve already noted this is one of those hippie games where the GM… no, wait, it’s got some other name, the Director… has to decide for themselves where the boundaries are. As there’s little mechanical weight to these choices (kind of funny, because, robots, right? Eh? Eh? Sigh.) there’s likewise little reason for some munchkinbot to try to find a sleazy Form/Function combo that gives them an unexpected edge. So it’s all good. 

There’s some interesting lore for them, too. They “began as border tribes of the MechaShōgunate” and can we hang on just a second? That is precisely the right point between “awesome” and “cheesy” a game like this needs. I can one-hundred-percent see that as a throwaway line on a toy package some overworked, underpaid writer who had to crank out 20 “tech specs” a day would write, as quickly forgotten as it was created, and, decades later, ended up feeding into thousands of pages of fanfic and licensed comics. It goes on a bit into “War is hell, mmmkay?” territory, as the Combatmecha became, naturally, the front-line soldiers of warring factions, often being lied to and manipulated into conflict, then scrapped when no longer sufficiently useful. Imagine Kup w/serious PTSD. Their pilots are not necessarily military personnel (given the game’s preference for most pilots being under 18 and the oldest topping out at 20, this makes sense), but they need to be cool under fire. A military brat would make an excellent concept for a pilot. Some bored 12 year old on the third base she’s lived at this year suddenly finds one of the tanks talking to her? Oh, yeah. Damn. I want to play this now.

Motomecha Motorcycles, trikes, ATVs, scooters, maybe golf carts and lawnmowers? (They’ll fuck a gopher up, man!) On not-gobotron, they were couriers, mechanics who could slip into small spaces, and so on, and also seen as… treacherous nogoodniks always sneaking around and up to no good? The small workers banded together into clans, and these clans  were “often met with the same warmth and confidence that a farmer might welcome an oncoming locust swarm”??? Whoa. It’s clear from the text this was irrational prejudice on the part of the larger robots, but apparently the evil AI Mainframe got all of its information from watching Foxtron Cybernews, and so, attempted to wipe them out. On Earth, they retain a lot of their clan identity as shown by colors and markings, which has led to some interesting confrontations with, or alliances with, biker gangs. And, oh yes, it explicitly says a few are, indeed, golf carts. Their pilots tend to be daredevils and thrill-seekers.

Technomecha These turn into…. things. TVs, radios, microscopes, cameras, etc. While this is very useful in many ways, in Actual Play TM, I’d imagine there’s a risk of not being able to do much in their alt form. The Aeromecha flies across the city to attack the baddies, the Motomecha races a Nemesite cop car, and the guy who turns into a microscope… sits in the High School science lab. Well, let’s see what the actual rules say. In lore, they were diplomats and ambassadors to other worlds, able to fit in and offer services as a literal piece of gear. They also tended to go a little nuts, with odd speech patterns and other ‘quirks’. On Earth, they take over arcade machines and bleeding-edge tech like an Apple II! (Which suddenly has more processing power than every computer on Earth at the time., put together. Huh. Given the timeframe, one could easily become an early-model Macintosh. And now I want to create one called “Gooey”. For GUI. Get it?) Their bonded humans aren’t actually pilots — you don’t climb into a Walkman. (The Commandroids don’t have the same size-changing ability that the inspirational media had, at least not by default or to the same degree.) And, yes, the rules do mention this can be a challenging role, as technomecha have to out-think, rather than outfight, their enemies, and their human “pilots” lack the protection of being inside a robot body.

 Terramecha Another case where I think the distinctions are blurry, Terramecha are heavy construction equipment — bulldozers, cranes, cement mixers. Is a ruggedized dump truck used by the Army Corps of Engineers a Combatmecha or a Terramecha? I guess the GM decides. This category can include tractor trailers and garbage trucks. The rules acknowledge there’s not a perfect bright line, at least. (And, as a sort of a little dig at the “Where does Optimus’ trailer go?” question, it’s called out that if a Terramecha takes over a truck, the whole truck is part of their body — they can’t detach the trailer any more than you can detach a leg. Personality-wise, they are big, tough, and not too sociable, and their human pilots are likewise generally burly and rough, or if kids, very high-energy types who can keep a living crane powered up. (Think a ten year old who has just eaten three bowls of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.)

Rolling Out!

For now. I did not expect to be diving into this much detail, but hell, I like the lore — it echoes the inspirational material without mindlessly copying it, and it contains many seeds for characters and scenarios. I would really like to play or GM… er… “Direct”… a session of this. 

No idea when I’ll get to finally stat out the Commandroid part of the character, but hopefully it will be in under a month. Now, it’s time to play Rimworld and commit war crimes.