Commandroids!

Kind of Like The Go-Bots Of Transformers RPGs!

In That It Came Out Before The Official One

Well, there’s been a wee bit of a gap again, because I’m hard at work on the final book in the Kleptogenesis Trilogy, and, like the first two books, hating every single letter I type. And I am stuck at a point where I need to advance the plot but also justify a major character not simply “noping” right out of the situation, because while “I won’t leave my 8 month pregnant wife” is normally a good motivation for any nominally-decent person to stay, even if it’s dangerous, it weakens when you learn she’s been clandestinely letting people inject strange DNA into the fetus and lying about it. (She has a good motivation, though.) (Arguably, she’s not lying, just not mentioning it. I mean, he never asked “Are you letting them use our child-to-be as a test subject?”)

Anyway, I needed a break, and while I was tempted to finally write my next Cobra Kai piece (which I might end up doing anyway), or hauling out my copy of “Imagine“, one of the heartbreakiest D&D heartbreakers of the late 90s, I ended up looking at one of my shelves of digest-sized RPG rulebooks I buy in bulk at GenCon, and noticed “Commandroids”, an eighties-flavored game about giant robots, on Earth, who transform into other things. Having just bought the PDF (as my physical copy would break if I tried to scan pages, as well as being hard to hold open while I type), I guess I’m committed. (Well, I should have been committed long ago, but that’s another topic. Ba-dum BUM!)

Let’s begin.

Story Time!

It starts with… first person fiction. Sigh. OK, it’s not nearly as turgid and unreadable as in-game fiction usually is — props for that. Robot wakes up on Earth, discover he’s now in the form of a very expensive sports car, which isn’t bad, but also that he needs to bind with a human due to lack of energ protovoltaic power. In his memory banks is a message from Optim Alpha Columbia telling him he has to be nice to the humans, and try to stay hidden. Also, we learn he imprinted his ‘bonding frequency’ on a cassette tape, which the teenage mechanic listens to, forming a mental link between them. (We also learn our POV Symbitron is a Commandroid from Quazaros, named Lux Maximo.). We get a big one-paragraph infodump, in the form of a message from Lux Maximo to his new potential pilot:

“This war has been going on literally as long as your species has existed, and it destroyed our world completely. If you agree to help me, you’ll be making enemies of the Nemesite Capacitors- evil, parasitic religious zealots from Quazaros. If we’re here, they must be here too. Their cruel Inquisition would snuff out all organic life on this planet and replace it with their psychotic “Mainframe,”a power-mad Artificial Intelligence that wants to take over and reformat the whole universe.”

You got all that? Good. There’ll be a quiz later.

Sure, it’s corny, but it’s supposed to be. This is 100% in the spirit of the era — if anything, it’s a tad more complex, reflecting how Transformers lore evolved, from “We need some hook to sell these random, unrelated toys we licensed from Japan” into a complex, often contradictory, mythos now in its fourth decade, one that gets me to spend mumblemumble dollars on faux-leather hardcover compilations. 

Anyway, some Rich Asshole (a classic 80s cocaine-snorting businessman) tries to buy Lux Maximo. The Kid who bonded w/Lux gets all cybered-up due to nanomachines, hurls Rich Asshole out, and they both take off through the plate glass window and into the Everglades, looking for adventure, and the rest of the rules.

Operation: Exposition

Seriously, that’s the chapter title. You gotta love it! I’m going to say the same thing I say about Cobra Kai: The writers know exactly what kind of thing they’re making it, and lean into it unreservedly.

We get a bit more backstory, first. Comandroids were sent to Earth in 1987 as “frequencies” which took over cars, planes, Walkmen (Walkmans? Walks Man?) and so on. They can install “Dyaclone Chips” that can grant them temporary unique powers (e.g. teleportation). (If you’re well-versed in the history of the toyline, you understand that reference.)

Symbitrons, and their nemesis the Nemasites (I would have spelled it ‘Nemacytes’, because that’s k00l3r, but no one asked me, unsurprisingly), need human pilots to transform, making them sort of a cross between Transformers and Mecha. This is not merely to avoid violating the dread Rites of K’hopee, but also means each player effectively runs two characters — a youngish (13-21 is recommended) pilot full of Adolescent Angst, and sapient robot from Gobotr Cybertr Quazaros (Not ‘Quazartron’? Ah, well. Again, I was not consulted, for perfectly obvious and justifiable reasons.)

Shogun Warriors!

There is also a ‘Shogun Configuration’ which allows three or more Commandroids to combine into one entity. (On a second skim-through, I noticed there are also rules for triple-changers. They really do hit all the most memorable variants and sub-groups.)

Backstory

Hoo, boy, they definitely built out their universe, filing serial numbers off a lot of the core franchise elements that evolved after the initial “Good guys cars, bad guys planes, they fight” premise that launched the toy line. There’s Unicr Quopoth, the remains of Quazaros, now a dead machine world run by an evil mainframe, there’s the Sacred Parameters that prevent the two sides from engaging in open conflict on Earth, there’s even  stuff on how the insignia each side wears is a manifestation of the individual’s inner code (but special Infiltrons can wear the enemy’s signature without changing their nature).

And I’ll Form The Head!

Again — this is literally a chapter title. We will now (after 7 pages of defined terms — which, honestly, imply a lot of cool stuff about the setting, albeit clearly mapped to the inspiration, e.g., you have “Primacronic Cores” which allow a bestial rather than humanoid form, or “Kremzoid Electrogremlin”, a small creature made of electricity.

OK, this is one of those hippie games where you have a bunch of keywords for your character, instead of math equations (there may be math later, I guess. The game uses math rocks, aka, dice, so how can there not be math?). It breaks down into Type (archetype), Training (skills) and Talent (some unique aspect).

Typecasting

The main archetypes (you can pick something else) are directly from Breakfast Club, and if you don’t know what that is, get off my lawn, you damn punk kids. Or you can read the Wiki article, I suppose. In my day, we had World Book, not Wiki, and we called nickles ‘bees’, give me five bees for a quarter, we’d say, and… where was I? Oh yeah. Archetypes.

Athlete: The jock, in other words.
Brain: NERRRRRRRD!
Basket Case: The Weird kid. A decade or so later, they’d be Goths or Theater Kids. This can also be the Class Clown, or anyone who is kind of an outsider. Jughead, obsessed with food and disinterested in girls, would be this in the Archie-verse.
Criminal: The juvenile delinquent. The Rebel Without A Cause, or sometimes, a Clue.
Princeling: Rich, spoiled brats. Mean Girls. You know the type.

Each type is modified by some free-form adjective, and examples are given from the inspirational media of the day. An example of a “Pensive Princeling” is Princess Allura from Voltron, while Paternal Brain could represent ‘Sparkplug’ Witwicky from Transformers.

Training

This is wholly free-form, but it’s assumed the GM (or “Director”) will reign in the more munchkin types. Examples are ‘Journalist’, ‘Karate Kid’, or ‘Meanest Girl’. You then get three skills, each of which can have several effects, which are player/Director defined. An example is “Took A First Aid Class”, which is defined as “Character enjoys a -1 Challenge rating [to] heal and stabilize injured characters. They can patch a Scraped or Bruised character back up one level after five minutes of in-game care.”

(Reminds me a bit of “Over The Edge” or FATE. This is definitely one of those systems where the social contract matters, or the game quickly devolves into arguments over how broad or narrow a given trait can be. Players will always try to find ways to apply any mechanic they can, no matter how strained the rationale.)

Interestingly, there’s no real connection, mechanically, between your Type and Training. Again, this seems to be an area where the Director and player need to work cooperatively to make sure the character can do “what it says on the tin”. 

Another thing that’s a bit confusing, to me, is that each sample Training is written as a flavorful descriptive phrase, followed by a more mundane term would be a skill name in crunchier systems, such as Ear to the Streets (Streetwise) or Bowling Balls and Roller Skates (Improvise Traps). Reading this, I suspected there was a formal skill list somewhere, but, upon searching, determined there was not. Maybe it’s there to help narrow down or define what the skill means. Skills are, in essence, specialties of Type and Training.

Talent

So next we have Talent. Talent is the abstract ‘what makes you special’ ability, and it’s supposed to be the most specialized and least likely to come into play. (However, that’s not really clear from the examples: “Honorary Ninja” seems like it could be invoked, legitimately, in a lot of situations, including stealth, climbing walls, and giving someone a Boot To The Head.) Once more, it looks like this will require a lot of negotiation as to how/when it’s applicable.

Hooray! Math!

At last, we get to stats! You have three dice pools, Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary, which boil down to 8, 6, and 4. You then assign a pool to Type, Training, and Talent, based on which you think are the most defining aspects of your character. Lastly, you divide the assigned dice in each pool between Active and Passive. (Skills don’t have a dice pool, as they modify the difficulty of a roll or have other effects.)

Given that we have math now, it’s time to actually make a character.

I’d been considering a jock even before the chargen options called it out as a core archetype, but, since this is a fantastic, unrealistic setting, after all, we’ll have him be a basically decent guy.

Type: Supportive Athlete. (Competitive and wants to win, but cheers his teammates, admires good play by opponents, and protects kids from bullies. He’s everyone’s big brother, and not in the Orwell sense.)

Training: Letterman. (Not the late-night comedian. He’s an all-round athlete, on whatever team it’s the season for. He’s not the best in any one sport, but he’s second-best in most of them. Given his Type, he prefers team sports to one-on-one competition.)

Skills: (Note I don’t really know the mechanics, like, at all, so I’m just imitating how the sample skills are written.)

Team Player: Can reduce challenge rating by 1 for a teammate if it’s reasonable he can help in some meaningful way.
Medic: (Copied from ‘First Aid Training’) Character enjoys a -1 Challenge rating to heal and stabilize injured characters. They can patch a Scraped or Bruised character back up one level after five minutes of in-game care.
Good Reputation: Reduces Challenge rating by 1 when trying to negotiate with people around town who are not actually enemies. Suspicious cops, glowering principals, or cranky groundskeepers will be inclined to leave him alone, and, by inference, his less-reputable allies (if they don’t go out of their way to antagonize them).

Talent: Ready To Play: Somehow always has just the tool for the job, if it’s sports-related – a baseball bat if something needs smashing, roller skates for quick travel, a football helmet if there’s robot shrapnel flying around.

So, give that, I have to assign Primary/Secondary/Yaddayaddaary. What was that again? 8/6/4?

I think his Training is primary. He’s spent most of his life honing his athletic skills. Almost by definition, he is proactive. He’s not the Cobra Kai type, but he does prefer to Strike First. So we’ll divide that as 6/2. If I knew the mechanics better, I might regret that.

Type is Secondary, so, 6 dice. He’ll go 2/4 on this.

Lastly, for Talent, I might as well go 1/3. I see it as a reactive ability — it’s a response to a problem. How that might work in play, I dunno.

Oh, of course, he needs a name. Quickly, to the name-o-tron! A few spins of the ol’ dial later, we end up with Clayton (Clay to everyone but his parents) Hammond.

Truths and Ideals: Yeah, you know it’s a hippie game when you have to fill out this part. Eh? Arguably, that goes back to Champions and its Psych Lims, or Pendragon and its Virtues? Look, how am I supposed to be a cranky grognard if you keep pointing out most of the stuff I am required to bitch about, per the Official Grognard Rules, is actually How It’s Always Been, just with different names? Bloody annoying Voice of Reason in my head, ruining all my fun…. mutter grumble mutter…

So, there’s three questions, if I want to cross the Bridge of Fate:

I Love That: I’m usually able to help.
I Hate That: So many people need help.
I Know That I Can Count On: My as-yet-to-be-defined robot pal.

There are also ‘relationships’, which establish connections to other characters — who don’t exist for this example. Sigh.

Next time — who knows when that will be — I will generate his Robot Buddy! Probably a dirt bike, though a golf cart or Zamboni would be hilarious. 🙂