Robotech is a Tabletop Game published by Palladium Books. It is a Licensed Game of the Robotech series that covers the series from the Macross Saga to the New Generation, as well as Robotech II: The Sentinels, but does not include Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles (which was eventually released as a separate game).
The core game is set during the interwar period between the Zentraedi invasion during the Macross saga and the launch of the SDF-3's expedition to Tirol (and the Robotech Masters' attack on Earth) - a period coterminous with the novel The Zentraedi Uprising.note Khyron, Azonia and Dolza are dead, but the Earth is not at peace. The new United Earth Government hasn't fully escaped the shadow of its corrupt predecessor, the surviving Zentraedi are divided between uniting with humanity and continuing their old ways, and much of the world is divided among various warlord states and other anti-unification forces. In this world, the now battle-tested RDF struggles to keep the peace with the power of its Humongous Mecha and the aid of their allies, the fledgling Army of the Southern Cross. Later sourcebooks alternately expand on this interwar period with new ideas and adventures and expand the series to the Southern Cross and New Generation periods, as well as a capstone book for The Return of the Masters set in the post-Invid era. Robotech II: The Sentinels was released as a theoretically-separate game, but a de facto sourcebook for the original in a new setting.
This RPG is out of print, as Palladium Books no longer has the license. Strange Machine Games has picked up the license and developed a separate RPG with no ties to the Palladium version.
This game contains examples of:
- After the End: The game covers several periods of this, since the Earth faces three separate apocalypses. The core game is focused on the first postwar period.
- Alternate Continuity: The game materials don't strictly mirror canon, in part due to Kevin Siembieda having limited access to the source materials and accordingly mixing up some mecha, or making creative decisions of his own when expanding the setting, and because he was working with areas that different areas of the Expanded Universe had different takes on. The game also well predates Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, and the two are not in continuity.
- Canon Foreigner: The mecha in Strike Force and Return of the Masters are entirely non-canon. In-universe, they're generally either intermediary designs between the RDF mecha and the Southern Cross and REF designs, or they're experimental units that didn't pan out for either technological, cost, or political reasons.
- Crossover: The Rifts Conversion Book used to have rules for crossing over Robotech mecha into Rifts, but that never officially occurred, both because Robotech is its own franchise and sticking Rifts material into it would jar the theme, and to minimize the amount of material that had to be excised from Rifts when they let the license lapse.
- Expanded Universe: The game details a significant amount of material related to Robotech's first interwar period.
- Fantastic Racism: Endemic between Zentraedi and humans, even when they're ostensibly on the same side. In particular, this ended up weakening the capabilities of the Zentraedi forces in the REF.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: The RDF and REF favor bullet-firing gun pods and missiles as their main Veritech weapons, with lasers taking a secondary role. A couple of Destroids have primary beam weapons, though. For personal weapons in the later eras, however, lasers are king (it's impossible to make a handheld kinetic gun that can shoot Mega-Damage bullets). Also, Southern Cross makes much heavier use of energy weapons on their mecha.
- Macross Missile Massacre: It's Robotech, of course you've got this. It's encouraged by the volley rules, for emptying several missiles into a single target.
- Mechanically Unusual Class: Southern Cross characters are made a little differently from RDF and REF Character Classes. While RDF and REF define their classes by specialization, Southern Cross instead define their classes by membership in one of the fifteen Armies of the Southern Cross, with Military Occupational Specialty only being an additional skillset (so in the Tactical Corp, their mechanical engineers are still a rifleman first and an engineer second). Furthermore, while the RDF and REF lack dedicated infantry gruntsnote , most Southern Cross forces are primarily infantry, with mecha used as a force multiplier.
