Originally known as Galactic Soldier Troperion, Mythril Aces is an RP on the TV Tropes forums. It was created by Lockonlockon and GM'd by Hydrall, with parts of the setting provided by pretty much anyone involved. The original iteration ran solidly for about two years until the game developed creative differences between the players, leading to decreased input, several people leaving and an eventual stall from which it never recovered.
The essential premise was a century long conflict, shifting between tense cease fires and open warfare, between the Earth Federation and the Centauri Confederacy (later Redubbed The Solar Federation and Centauri Commonwealth respectively). Conflict was fought out largely between Mecha in deep space with a tone reminsicisent of various Gundam series. The specifics of this conflict have developed and changed over the years but this much has remained constant.
During its prime, it sired 3 spinoffs of varying success, one of which, named Aeris Gaiden, would become a notable game in its own right, although it died only a month after the original.
Two years later, however, a band of old players launched Mythril Aces (Re)Union, as a follow-up sequel game which takes place ten years after the original.
Included on this page are the three major iterations of the story.
In the Lambdadelta sector, a supply of the compound codenamed Mythril, necessary for FTL travel, has been found. Two factions, the Earth Federation and the Centauri Confederacy, are battling over these precious mines. Recently, a peace treaty has been planned, so both can make use of this area... But tensions are high, and any spark could set it off into a fragfest...
Both factions use specially made mecha called Armored Mobile Frame, dubbed AMFs or Frames for short. They come in many forms, although they are mostly humanoid, and wield scaled up versions of normal weapons, similar to Gundam. They are highly maneuverable, and at first their role was dodging the large, slow anti-spacecraft weaponry and destroying them up close. By now, they've become one of the main focuses of warfare in space and on land.
Gameplay was be somewhat turn-based using Roll to Dodge as a template. Actions were rolled for by each side's GM, with bonuses depending on the situation. Combat will be generally at somewhat long range, but depending on players' actions it could really take place anywhere. Each frame started with 100% health, with an additional amount of health depending on armor class. Heavy is another 100%, medium is 50%, and light is 25%. The trade off was that lighter armored frames get more actions per turn. Heavy armor frames can only perform two action per turn, mediums can perform three, and lights can perform up to four, but one of them can only be used to move. Damage done by any attack was determined by the dice and the GM's discretion. Battles can be in space or on planets, with the majority being the former.
It has a wiki of its very own
.
Has a recaps page.
Located here.
A spin-off of Mythril Aces, also known as Galactic Soldier Troperion, Mythril Troperion Aeris Gaiden is an RP on the TV Tropes forum. It was created by Fauxlosophe as a Gaiden Game to the original RP, and as such many of it's tropes and details on the setting can be found on that page.
Like it's predecessor, Mythril Aces: Aeris Gaiden is set in our galaxy almost a thousand years in the future, where the two galactic superpowers, the Earth Federation and the Centauri Confederacy, war with each other in a massive, galaxy-wide conflict with no end in sight. Both factions use specially made mecha called Armored Mobile Frame, dubbed AMFs or Frames for short, which run off of a mysterious substance dubbed Mythril.
Unlike the original RP, which focuses on high-skill Aces and Knights operating on special missions, Aeris Gaiden is based around the trials and tribulations of ordinary pilots on the contested world of Aeris, a Federation world taken by the Centauri for many years, as a Federation fleet invades. It is notable for having a far less forgiving difficulty, as opposed to the original in which combat was considered fairly easy. It is also much shorter than it's sprawling, hundred plus page parent.
It shares a wiki with the original RP.
Located here.
"Try not to die"
A failed treaty conference sparks a way, where characters much like those in the original, form up respective sides of a three year war. The scales and specific locations of combat have changed but otherwise the story remains the same, with the players arriving at the planned conclusion; Veillard (successor to Lorraine's Regiment) and Hobbes prevent coups on their respective governments by a mysterious ROZUM organization. Midgard is eventually regained after years of bitter fighting by the Federation, though pockets of resistance remain until the end of the war. The two governments agree to a ceasefire and commit to internal investigations while keeping under wraps how close the Humanity came to a major collapse and bitter civilwar, however the ROZUM threat has not been eliminated but rather lies weakened and dormant, waiting for a new chance to strike...
Ten years of peace pass but tensions mount in the neutral Bodhi system as the two Powers support different factions within the system. Simultaneous attacks by both Federation and Centauri forces on strongholds made on mysterious orders suddenly escalate the war. Now, the Protagonists, previously expecting to be serving as instructors and auxilaries, are thrust into the centre stage of a new war.
- Absent Aliens: No extraterrestrial life of which to speak of. All non-Earth creatures were genetically engineered.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: How one gains rank in the Centauri military service, through number of enemies shot down.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: The AMF (Armored Mobile Frame)
- Artificial Limbs: Although full flesh and blood grafts are available to replace limbs, some still go the cybernetic route.
- Artificial Intelligence: Computer based Robot Girl, Sen, is the most notable example but they abound aboard ships and buildings.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Military service is a prerequisite for holding any public office in the Earth Federation; the higher, the more service. In an aversion, government office can also count towards this, but since it's impossible to hold even the lowest public office without a minimum years of service, every public official requires at least some military service.
- Axe-Crazy: Delorelai vai Bizekbirg
- The Battlestar: The ships that carry the characters of each side, the Seraphim and the Castellan are classified as "Battle Carriers" and theoretically should be able to carry a decent number of frames and still hold their own against enemy warships when going head to head.
- Beach Episode: Subverted to the darkest pits of hell, with Yokolit encompassing more time in the RP than most actual battles (including planning time), the introduction of several new characters to both teams, the loss of a character from both teams, the introduction of several major plot threads, and very little fanservice.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family - The Bannikberg Clan and most of the Ossetian nobility in general, Lorraine and her siblings are the only ones who are realy at all normal. Other members include a nymphomaniac author and an Axe-Crazy frame pilot with white hair.
- Binary Suns: Several star systems, among them the Centarui System itself.
- Blue Blood: A few of the Centaurians are from the aristocracy
- Boarding Party: Rescuing Lorraine from the ROZUM prison ship involved the Knights heading one of these.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Happens with depressing regularity when players drop out unexpectedly and the story just goes on without any regard for their characters.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Done by Godot for fun.
- Colony Drop: Discussed by both sides but has never come into play. Many on both sides seem uncomfortable with the idea, actually.
- Critical Existence Failure: Zig-Zagged. The AMFs fight unimpaired no matter the damage they take, but avert the One-Hit-Point Wonder; any frame that drops below 10% HP shuts down. Still, no frame explodes until 0% HP, regardless.
- Cyanide Pill: TheConspiracy's henchmen have a built in variety that automatically takes effect if they get captured.
- Gundam: Explicitly the inspirational material for the game and verse. Lampshaded in on of the suggested titles for the game, Bears A Resemblance To But Is Legally Distinct From Gundam So Please Don't Sue Us, We Have No Money: The FRPG
- Emotions vs. Stoicism: Lorraine as Emotions and Earl as Stoicism. To a lesser extent, Jimmy and Earl, though Jimmy admires Earl's attitude but finds it a drawback for himself.
- Energy Weapon: Are in every freakin' battle.
- Eternal English:
May or may not be English but everyone still speaks it despite the Federation and Centauri not commumincating for a century or two. - Expanded Universe: Here.
- Also the below linked Mythril Aces Wiki, which contains stuff either not seen at all or only implied in-game.
- Former Teen Rebel: Hobbes.
- Gender Is No Object
- Guns Akimbo: Hobbes in the battleship hijack mission.
- Happily Married: Jimmy is the only main character married and very happily at that.
- Hologram: How most screens are displayed on personal computers, as well as for face to face talking with an AI.
- High School AU: The intermittently active Mythril Academy. Sort of an aversion of the typical, as some of the characters act very differently, and all are de-aged into highschoolers.
- Hyperspeed Escape: Used by the Federation when their attack on Ubekon seems to fail.
- Jerkass: Jaedong Lee. Who later made the jump from "a jerk" to "evil" by joining ROZUM.
- Last-Name Basis: Subverted. Although the setting is militaristic, which would imply that everyone would be on a last name basis, only a few characters are commonly referred to by their last names. Hobbes in particular, to the point that some players forgot that wasn't his first name.
- Let's Play: Hobbes is Let's Playing Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade as part of the Expanded Universe material.
- Lost Colony: The Centauri Confederacy started off as this, a world cut off from Earth that became in interstellar nation of its own overtime and then "rediscovered" the Earth Federation on accident. Its been hinted there may even be more lost colonies out there as well.
- Mechanical Monster: The... space lobster, for lack of a better word, created by the Earth Federation and promptly got loose, requiring the Aces to subdue it.
- Meet Cute: Roxy Bishop and Jimmy Stuart meet over a plate of sea rat. Or, rather, under one. Subverted in that it was not a setup for future romance between the two (Jimmy's Happily Married).
- Military Academy: The prestigious Centauri East Crux Academy, parody name on West Point.
- Minovsky Physics: Mithril, the energy source that powers the machines and the plot.
- Naming Your Colony World: Try and match these planet names with what kind of example they are: Eden, New Dakota, Saffron, Raphael, Washington, Thor.
- Non-Human Sidekick: Mod the not-quite-talking dog to Barney.
- Old-School Dogfight: With frames and occasionally fighters.
- One-Steve Limit: Subverted right off the bat, with three unrelated pilots with the surname "Lee."
- Two with the first name "James", although, one goes by a nickname.
- Point Defenseless: Somewhat averted. The defense turrets of ships can be used against enemy mechs as much as missiles, but they don't do much damage unless massed.
- Powered Armor: Used for boarding actions.
- Put on a Bus: Previously important characters are sent away often due to issues with the players.
- Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: The Federation pilots more than the Centaurians, since most of the later seem to know each other already and be old comrades, while the former are a freshly created squadron with no experience together.
- Real Robot: The entire point of the game. The bots are called Armored Mobile Frames, or just Frames.
- Recycled In Space: Gundam, recycled in DEEP space!
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Played with. While the Centauri Emperor is largely a figurehead anymore, a few members of royalty are active in the military. Even then, the Emperor still controls the Praetorian Guard, which doubles as a State Sec in some cases.
- Shout-Out: So far, Calvin and Hobbes, The Venture Brothers, StarCraft, Cowboy Bebop, BattleTech, Fire Emblem, and Toppa Tengen Gurren Lagann.
- Special mention goes to the Final Fantasy VII Shout-Out - an entire planet named Aeris, with its cities named after other characters, the capital (Valentown) for example being a play on Vincent's last name.
- Shower Scene: Male example with Hobbes, starting off as a Shower of Angst and turning into a Shower of One-Night-Stand once Sune gets involved.
- Space Is an Ocean: Played much like Star Trek
- Space Marine: Two flavors; the literal space marines being infantry troops assigned to military starships as boarding/repelling troops, and the nickname for any infantry soldiers fighting on a world other than Earth. Hobbes was one of the later before becoming an Ace.
- Standard Starship Scuffle: Played straight.
- Super-Soldier: Successfully created by the Centauri but amusingly enough, never saw mass production since the program's budget was cut.
- Sweet Home Alabama: Jimmy's homeworld is basically the Centauri Dixieland.
- The Conspiracy: ROZUM
- The Empire: The Centaurians are a benevolent example. The Total Earth Union was the aggressive kind for most of its history, before transitioning into the Earth Federation after achieving total inter-star system dominance.
- The Federation: The Earth Federation, in a highly aggressive example.
- Throwing Down the Gauntlet: The Centaurians live and breathe this trope.
- Throw It In!: The start of simulated combat during the Frame demonstrations at the peace treaty was originally an accidental action by Fluid, which was subsequently expanded upon by other players. Wryte pointed out on the discussion page that some of Hobbes and Lorraine's attributes lent themselves to leadership roles; when the game started, the two of them just sort of assumed command of their respective squadrons. Something like 98% of the world building has been done by the players and just run with.
- Universal Universe Time: While most planets use their own calender for dealing with local affairs, there is a standard calender used to keep everyone in the galaxy roughly on the same page.
- You Have Failed Me: Godot has a subordinate executed...or worse when he delivers a lukewarm cup of tea.
- Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Subverted and played straight. On one hand, kills can earn pilots quicker promotions. On the other, it's been shown that skill in a Frame doesn't make a pilot a good officer and just as often end up joining special forces, while those in command often avoid piloting if they can.
- A Mech by Any Other Name: The AMF (Armored Mobile Frame) and it's predecessor the ATMC (All-Terrain Mobile Chassis).
- Blue Blood: Vestigial from the original game however on a much smaller scale. A couple players hail from old money, while only one holds a title [which is technically entirely honourary]. Also an insult used by Federation soldiers.
- Brick Joke: Many. Most notably "The Fighting Flying Electric Squirrels" arose from a complaint three months prior to their appearance about a gym leader in Pokemon Black in the discussion thread for the main RP. Many other attributed elements of Aeris from before the RP were subtlety pulled in, both serious and joking. But most make an appearance. Eventually.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted. Frames take realistic damage and suffer from it's effects as they drop in health.
- Eternal English: Played with. Colonists speak a Franco-English creole invented for the purpose of the colonisation while various dialects of corrupted English, Mandarin and Swedish are spoken in various areas but the soldiers of the Federation and Confederacy speak standardized English based on what was spoken prior to the Centauri/Sol split only a hundred years from present day.
- Expanded Universe: The wiki, which extends the content seen in Aeris Gaiden and the original RP vastly, with heavily detailed worlds, languages, and cultures for both superpowers and several minor powers not yet mentioned at all in either RP.
- Frickin' Laser Beams and Swords: The Centauri as a whole, although rapid-fire weapons and snipers are also very popular, they use them much less in Aeris than in the original RP, replacing them with good old-fashioned firearms.
- Green Rocks: Mythril, in the expanded universe.
- Gundam: Heavily influenced, just like the original RP. Draws more inspiration from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team and similar series than the original.
- Last-Name Basis: Played straight and averted. Fairly common among higher level officers, what with it being a military setting, yet many low-level soldiers, particularly the players and their squads, refer to each other by their first names.
- Lower-Deck Episode: The entire series as a whole, to the main RP.
- Mildly Military: For the most part averted, though there is some allowance for the sake of the narrative.
- Position of Literal Power: Commanders and officers are often former pilots with high kill scores, and many of them have significantly upgraded Frames.
- Put on a Bus: The mass desertion of about half the Centauri PC's after their players dropped the RP.
- Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: Both squads of PC's, with the Feds dipping into Rag Tag Bunch Of Mentally Unhealthy People And Phil on occasion.
- The Federation squads include a pyromaniac alcoholic with a tenuous grasp on reality, a shameless womanizer with a worrying attachment to his Frame, an insubordinate jaded ex-lawyer, an overly idealistic and enthusiastic by-the-book recruit, and... one fairly normal guy with a tendency to quote the Old Testament during battle.
- The Centauri include an honourary noble with an ego the size of a small planet, a wanna-be Film Noir detective who narrates things in a dramatic Internal Monologue, a fresh-faced new recruit with a love of strawberries, and a stoic sniper.
- Real Robot Genre: Played straight to the max. Frames are useless without teams of engineers, pilots and equipments are expensive but replaceable, and trying to be a hero will get you killed fast.
- Shout-Out: Many, to the point where the entire planet of Aeris is a Brick Joke Shout-Out to Final Fantasy VII from the original RP. Monty Python, Gundam, and Final Fantasy have numerous shout outs.
- Theme Naming: Quite a bit. Metals and Stones for Federation equipment made by the Metallurgy Corp, English Weaponry circa WWI and II for many Cents, Mythology for customs, and FFVII/Norse Mythology for Aeris itself.
- Space Marine: Subverted. They exist, but they are just regular soldiers who happen to perform boarding actions and fight in space. Regular marines and other infantry also exist and receive significantly more screen time.
- Artificial Intelligence: Significantly limited compared to the first; Robots and Computer programs have not obtained Human level intelligence and response times, justifying why Humans are still piloting rather than drones.
- Adaptation Distillation: Years of Throw It In! World building both in and out of game, lead to weird and sometimes contradictory Canon. In order to make it more comprehensible and appealing, a lot of elements were merged, cut or downplayed.
- Bus Crash: The battle in the tunnels and the city that killed off a decent amount of MIA Cents and Feds, respectively.
-
Continuity Lockout: The GMs have done everything in their power to minimize this, cutting the rather substantial 50+ world factions into 15 clearly developed worlds for both sides. That said, many running gags and implicit Canon persist and almost all of its players are veterans of the original or Gaiden games. - Continuity Reboot: Planets were renamed, figures removed or made more important in order to suit the needs of the GMs. It's generally best considered as an AU to the first.
- Darker and Edgier: Not to the point of Grimdarkness, but the game hasn't shied away from death and grey morality and sheds far more light on moral ambiguity than the original.
- Gallows Humor: A particular favorite of the GM, and many of the players.
- Put on a Bus: Mythril Poisoning, the catch-all excuse for player absences.
- Shout-Out: Many are made to its predecessors, but mostly averted towards other media and real shows. Except maybe with the PCs.
