It's been just about two years since our game died. Man, I remember when Lockon first came over to a thread I was hanging out in advertising his new game. Actually, it wasn't even a game back then, it was this very thread, Galactic Soldier Troperion Brainstorm ! Was it just me or did anyone else feel that you had to shout this thread's title in your head every time you read it? Anyway, I came over to this brainstorm thread and thought it sounded really cool, so like everyone else at the time I joined in on helping out the early world building.
By the way, here's Hydrall
having some fun with the edit button on the first page of the Discussion, just a little while after the game started.
And Here
it was decided that we'd be playing "Frame" pilots fighting over the Lambdadelta Sector after a "truce meeting gone wrong". Looking back, I'm amazed that most of the set-up for the game was just so casually thrown in. And I feel dumb for not realizing that Lambdadelta was a When They Cry reference for THREE WHOLE YEARS!
We started building those robots pretty fast. You can see Hydrall and others chugging them out like a factory in those early pages. It's funny to look back and see what we were thinking of
for names
, before we settled on Wryte's suggestion of Mythril Aces.
Sidetracking for a bit, why did we never have that Frame bikini beach volleyball game!
We had our ups and down, but most of all we had a blast. I remember the early game with me and Jimmy and his hicksville accent. That was actually hard to write! I remember Hobbes, the only character we ever referred to by last name. I actually forgot that it wasn't his first name! I remember the battles of Lamia, Giest, Persephone, Ubekon. I remember that giant machine monster that went on a rampage. I remember rescuing Lorraine from ROZUM. I remember mercenary pilots and clone soldiers. I remember stars and planets that were Final Fantasy, Lord of the Rings, Pokemon, and Winnie the Pooh references.
Remember when Earl gave that pep talk to Roxy after she was traumatized because she killed someone up close and personal? "A flower will bloom over hell." The only time our tagline got used in-game. I think that was probably my favorite scene. Other honorable mentions include Jimmy getting knocked over by Roxy when they first met, Jaedong's introduction, Earl getting saddled with Blau the space octopus, Hobbes and everything he did on the In getting crashed into spiration, Jimmy's robot getting totally thrashed so that Earl had to carry him home, how Hobbes responded to Jaedong being a grade-A douchebag, Jaedong's defection, Varina and Flint's flirting, and Jimmy getting hit in the face with a wrench.
I remember our first birthday, the day Mythril Aces turned one years old. I wish we had celebrated more. So, if any of you guys are still reading this, how about another go? I know some of us are no longer here, including our first GM and founder, lockonlockon. But I think we have enough heart and spirit to get the ball rolling again! Old and new players alike, let's resurrect Mythril Aces!
Oh, wow. I thought we'd go for a completely new thread. It was a smart idea since I didn't account for who'd have this on their watch list rather than just loafing around the discussion board that they might see it.
Myself, Hydrall and Parable have had this in discussion on and off for what must be a year or two now, since the old game fell apart; most attempts sort of fizzled out since I think most of us are too worried to take executive action and we all have had fairly busy lives [I started this game in highschool and tomorrow I am picking the Gradschool which I will be attending]. Some stuff from the old MA verse definitely needs to be reworked, if only because the people with the notes disappeared while a lot more could be trimmed off without really significant loss and would help a lot with a stream lined presentation for new players.
That said, many players in one form or another helped keep the legacy of MA alive on these boards and elsewhere and I believe that is a spirit that is worth renewing. If only to see what more damage Rena can do in her never ending crusade against Miniputts.
So, in order to prevent us from squabbling about it, here are some major points of contention for your consideration;
1. Naming and Fluff
- I think I was the one who brought up that the Confederacy really ought to be a Commonwealth with their Monarchy up and running. Further, Hydrall has argued that perhaps the Empires should be more scattered and terraforming downplayed in favour of wider empires picking over the inhabitable planets, in which case, our Centauri Confederacy might find a new home.
- Planets are also something that was discussed; The original planet list was quickly come up with and had a few patterns and videogame themenaming that was later downplayed. Being a bit of a language geek and seeing how important cultures became for the game, I recommended renaming a lot of planets and systems to match dominant cultures and a slightly more hard scifi feel [adapting the names of course, but still].
- Finally a major point of discussion that came up but was never really addressed was third parties; some were discussed as neutrals and a league was thought up but it was never instituted. Would people be infavour of making the Feddies and Cents into Dominant powers in more a Cold War deal with smaller powers playing a role or should this be more a classic Gundam-fare of Earth v. Spacers?
2. Rules
- There have been a lot of incarnations of the Rules for MA. Variants, both for individual missions and some major rewrites. The most detail for the original rules were put down for Aeris Gaiden. Hydrall has put a lot of time and effort into writing some pretty detailed rules up however and while incomplete they look good. Is it worth us hacking together this more complicated but strategic system where you will have to use your wits to survive or do you prefer the old narrative style rules of MA where dice determined some elements but strategy was relatively simple?
- A note here is we would be able to pull a Wizard of Oz behind the curtains and do most of the leg work for the complicated system [including building the characters themselves as I did in MAAG]. Hydrall has done some amazing work to streamline this system and it wouldn't be too hard to run the battles in the background so P Cs would be able to think narratively rather than technically. However, speaking as someone who has run stat-heavy games, there may be DM burn-out or delays in a sufficently large battle that wouldn't occur in a narrative game.
- In either system, would who would like to introduce maps as a consistant and major factor? Lockon and Me [and I think Hydrall] all improvised maps at varying points and it helped resolve ambiguity in terms of distance. But this falls into the same problems as the above and perhaps more so; scenario design and the like takes a lot of time and I've seen people avoid this in the past.
3. How to line this up with the old game
I think everyone here wants to see their character's to some degree in the background. As I said previously, I think many have had their legacy in later games on the board and I don't want to see their story cut short. So, I think one of the major changes will be having our old characters serve in the background, perhaps even playing significant roles in the verse. However there is the question of how.
- Should we pick up when the old game did and interact indirectly or even directly with the other teams who might serve as rivals and allies with whom we occaisionally interact? Or should we make our previous characters older and give them legacies from the last war? How can we fit ROZUM into this picture now that the players know of it? Or should they?
- Another option is this; it's relatively confidential but I was told afterwards that we were approaching a skip forward in the verse where ROZUM caused some major chaos. A series based later in time has the potential to be interesting! There are two ways to go about it; Our former heroes succeeded and now tension are mounting again with a new generation at the helm or alternatively, they managed to prevent ROZUM's complete victory but the battle isn't over and chaos has broken loose; the new players must step in to finish what the last groups started.
This doesn't have to be a formal voting situation but personally, I would really like to hear imput of all those interested in [re]joining this game so we can weigh what needs to be done.
edited 29th Apr '14 10:57:43 PM by Fauxlosophe
And to think I was about to go to bed without seeing this. Holy shit, I never thought this day would actually come.
Having neutral third parties seems preferable to me, if only for the relatively greater freedom it would provide in plotting out scenarios and so on. Besides, I personally find the dynamics of a universe with an environment outside of merely two supernations far more interesting than one without. As for names of planets, I don't really have a preference, as long as we can keep straight where things are and who's from which planet.
The matter of the Centauris' government is the thing I'm struggling the most with, specifically how a monarchy could endure despite being spread over such a vast distance in space. You're right, of course, in that it would make infinitely more sense to go full monarchy or full whatever else as opposed to the old status quo, but I'm thinking you'd have to indoctrinate the citizenry pretty heavily in favor of monarchy and so on. I can't think it through properly when I'm this tired, though.
I love maps; I feel it's important to provide a consistent sense of space and a clear frame of reference for everyone involved in a scene, lest we get caught up in small details. That said, of course, there's only so much you could do on that front for a battle in outer space, considering it's... space. Honestly don't know whether I'd prefer a narrative or strategy-based system, but considering how much work I know you all have put into it already, might as well start with the strategy system and change out if things become too troublesome.
Don't know whether it'd be better to timeskip or not or whether things should have gone tumbling down or not. Guess it depends on just how thoroughly we want to reboot. Maybe a timeskip would be better for the sake of getting fresh blood in the mix. Whichever way we do it, it would be really cool to see allusions or cameos for old characters every now and then.
Also, I'd like to motion for the creation of a comprehensive glossary of some kind that we make sure to update when new terms are introduced so we don't have to go searching through half a dozen different references to find what we're looking for. Did we have one of those last time? I don't really feel like we did. There's the wiki, but I can't recall ever actually finding much useful information on it. I know we also had basic lists of terms for the Feds and Cents respectively, but they didn't really cut it most of the time.
edited 30th Apr '14 12:12:32 AM by darksidevoid
GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.It's not your fault, though! You did a great job with it. It's just that most people never added or properly intra-linked to anything that wasn't directly related to their characters, so it ended up being ridiculously difficult to find a given morsel of information within the proverbial haystack unless you used exactly the right search terms. That's why I'm thinking a more simple categorized glossary that can just be ctrl+f'd through would be better.
edited 30th Apr '14 12:00:23 AM by darksidevoid
GM: AGOG S4 & F/WC RP; Co-GM: TABA, SOTR, UUA RP; Sub-GM: TTS RP. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire.Actually to build on your point Dark, we never really came up with the role that the Monarchy would fill.
I sort of envisioned some class based socialism where soldiers typically were well rewarded but the citizens had all they needed. Some Genetic Modification might play into this too to play up some of the tech which Lock liked giving the Cents. I don't think this is too unprecedented and having an Aristocratic class of enhanced soldiers trained from an early age [possibly even designed in the womb] for combat would have advantages in maintaining order over a regular old Dictatorship in a lot of ways, combined with liberal social policies and I can see it holding together. Especially in the shadow of the ultracapitalist Federation, where the Cents have a more stable [if stagnant] social structure.
In the other corner for this is the idea of an inoffensive Monarch like Britain. The Queen features on a lot of coins in countries which consider themselves [and are defacto] independant but she remains a largely ceremonial head of state.
In general the MA vision of the future sees there being a constant cycle of Democracy and Tyranny, so both visions likely fit to different parts of the MA timeline and likely different regions [The Crown's authority was always assumed to be lesser on Frontier planets and Atlanta seemed to be rather democratic]
As to the wiki; the Reboot will have to streamline a lot. The reason you didn't find much info on the wiki is that a list of planets were drawn up for player character origin convience to give a location for their backstory and only later given fuller stories. By then continuity porn and conflicting ideas came into play since nothing was stated, even if we stay mostly faithful to the original, substantial changes will have to be made.
As to the gloss: I like the idea of a gloss. I am open to making it more wiki-sized over time or even returning it to the old MA wikia but only once we have enough new players and game to make it feel like an organic system rather than awkwardly forcing ourselves into the old one.
edited 30th Apr '14 12:19:34 AM by Fauxlosophe
I'm against any major world building changes outside the basic layout of the game and cosmetic details. We should have input from new players as well, it doesn't seem fair to stick them with stuff they had no say over. I do support a name change for Centauri if only to make it sensible. I would however, refrain from imposing a culture tied theme naming for planets and stars. I found making a home and story for that home part of the fun for creating my characters, and I can easily see Jimmy not getting past the sign-up if we had so much worldbuilding set in stone already.
Even in my other game, where I do make an effort at being hard sci-fi and world/culture building is part of the game, I still made places named after anime and songs. Heck, the character Faux's guy is talking to right now is an expy of a character from a children's book.
And there's a Lord of the Ring's reference right in the game's title. And we were fighting in a place named after a visual novel. If we can work with those we can work with anything!
Fair. I'm not saying we need too much hammered out; I support a glossary where we give maybe a one or two sentance description of the planets and maybe a couple cultures that influence it. What I am suggested with the name changes is that we go for ones which are more likely to be used by people naming planets and star systems that they might live in; Nóvaja-Arkhangelsk, Indus and Eden opposed to Celadon and Lavender.
edited 30th Apr '14 1:03:12 AM by Fauxlosophe
My thoughts besides general exclamations of fuck yes and squee and other things not appropriate for this place.
Naming and Fluff:
1. I think playing up the opportunities for internal conflict within the two empires is important. With the Cents, to me, it seems like it'd be best to see a sort of regional difference with some on the oldest, inner planets under direct Imperial/Monarchical control or having representatives more sympathetic to the centralized power of the executive branch (which happens to be the monarchy) because the monarchy favors the higher population inner systems, with the outlying regions being more strongly independent minded and their representatives/nobility more interested in moving power away from the monarchy and into democratically controlled areas of government. Centauri citizens would have differing opinions on this, some favoring the more direct and efficient monarchy (where the elected officials would act as a checks to the monarchy gaining too much power) and others favoring the populist approach where they would rather die than their voices lose influence. The conflict would be nowhere near civil war levels, but some tension and mistrust would exist.
For the Federation you'd face the combined issues of the megacorps holding too much power, almost being states unto themselves within the Federation, and the rampant corruption throughout the cherished democracy of the Federation, only kept in check ironically by the same military that gave up control threatening to institute martial law if the corruption gets too bad. The megacorps and corruption are also intimately linked, of course, and basically we get a much worse example of one of the major issues of modern day democracies.
These internal conflicts allow more potential storylines to exploit, and I feel they give a lot more depth to the setting. They don't entirely fit with the current view of either side but I think that they could easily fit whatever we change the two into for convenience.
2. We bow to your naming power Fauxverlord.
3. In the old game I wrote into existence a secondary power called the ISDTA as a sort of smaller power to give the world some flavor and put another player into the game. While I don't think that there should be very many smaller nations, since the big war is the central setting, I do think that around half a dozen small powers would be an interesting add on to the setting.
Rules
1. I feel like the Aeris Gaiden system was wonderful, but it was undeniably lethal and risky in a way that I don't think fit with the main game. Aeris had a very "war is hell"-like theme and it fit in well with that, but I don't think that really jives well with the themes of the min story. It could also be a bit confusing at times since it was totally possible to lose almost all your health in one turn and not have any real idea how or why or what you could've done to prevent it. It took actual discussion about tactics with Faux for me to truly understand how to use different Frame types and the like. I think it should be a tad bit less dangerous if we're going to run something similar to the main story, and maybe a bit easier to understand.
2. I totally trust the mechanics you and Hydrall work out and am confident that any problems that arise will be quickly smoothed over. In my opinion, the bridge is yours to do with the system what you see fit to provide the best experience.
3. I think map making can be useful for understanding the basic geography and set up of certain encounters, but is only really needed for big fights or special ones, the average space tussel lends itself better to narrative alone.
Old Game
1. As someone who only got maybe five total posts of the old game in before it died, I am rather neutral on this point. Whether we want to do a sort of small introductory arc to bring us back into the spirit of things (and provide lots of eerie similarities to the original start, of course
) or kind of try and jump start things from near to where we left off, both are perfectly fine with me.
2. I still don't know much exactly about the nature of the ROZUM conspiracy and such things, having never been part of that storyline, I will leave that decision up to others, but I will say that more factions emerging are always a plus for me.
I am ready and rearing to go, let's get this rebirth from the ashes back on the road, like a flowering blooming ove- okay that was a bit of a stretch even for me.
edited 30th Apr '14 1:07:59 AM by rabbitRider
Your legacy shall drift away, blown into eternity, like the sands of the desert.A thought regarding maps. I'm with Dark that I think they would bring a much-needed degree of order to the game's combat, since ranges were a really superfluous factor in the old game. Oh, we had stats on equipment for minimum/maximum effective ranges, movement rates, etc., but without any real way of keeping track of where anything was during combat, they were largely ignored. The obvious solution to the issue of 2d maps in space would be to shift the focus of the game from space combat to planetary combat, the alternative being making multi-layered maps. Come to think of it, our inspiration material frequently sets its storylines on the ground to begin with and expands into space later in the story. We could start our game on a single planet, eventually leaving it behind to go into space. This would give the GM time to get comfortable with creating maps for interesting combat scenarios in a 2d battlefield before being called upon to do it in 3d.
Story-wise, I'd be in favor of making this a reboot of both the game and the story. Since it sounds like we'd be needing to do a fair amount of retooling of the universe anyway, we might as well start the story over from scratch, too. Again, our source material loves to start new AUs with every new series; why shouldn't we? This would also give us more freedom with incorporating characters and events from the previous game(s), even up to playing an AU version of the same characters from the previous game, if we wanted to, and would give new players a better jumping-on point.
Hi. I'm fairly busy being in Korea and stuff but I'll definitely be on board for a reboot.
I'd like to have the Conferates and the Federation as two sides again, but have ROZUM as a third party, that screws them both up in the middle of the war.
Maps, I'd like, but am otherwise indifferent to.
And I'd like it to be a reboot. I wouldn't mind starting from the same place again, or changing things up this time. Whichever.
edited 30th Apr '14 1:48:16 AM by neobowman
Alright, so barring major objections;
What I propose is that we cut the Cents and Feds to like 7-10ish Star systems [in order not to have the huge 30 star long list on the wiki] and have maybe 6 or so neutral stars, most of which would have be a part of a loose ISDTA alliance, with maybe one or two independants.
Names are a working thing; I'm talking with Parable about working with me to pre-gen a list of most [but not all] of the planets for the factions. It should be noted that I am leaving most areas on these planets unbuilt and free for new players to name and imagine; this is the spirit of the original and good in a lot of ways. I just want to make sure that Feddie players remember there's a Federation outside of Earth and Cents to build on the same planet so we don't end up with 50 stars for them again while all the Feddies are from Earth.
Maps sounds like a good idea, and I'll talk with Hydrall about rules since his stuff seems awesome but we'll need to put to together.
Stuff still up for Discussion;
To the System; Gaiden at its core ran off of 90% of the original's rules. It also comes with a large relatively well assembled manual which can explain these to new comers. The main difference is that Lockon ran most mook ships off much weaker stats while I put you guys on [mostly] equal footing. If we wanted to stay true to the original, we could run off Gaiden easily. Hydrall a bit more of a well thought-out system with roles and strategy; it is the one that would make you really think but also gives. Both however can be run easily enough with the levers and switches hidden from those who do not want to see them; Difficulty comes down way more to stats you give enemies than the system itself.
Reboot; I agree there will be major retooling but how to work it into the story is my main question. I think most Vets would be bored rediscovering ROZUM; We could set it up as being after they had some major successes, not necessarily tied to the old time line but with the same goals and where what was still hidden needs to be figured out. Alternatively we could change things up or remove them completely.
This goes for other plot elements as well; starting at a peace conference could be redone [but in a different way] or seen as simply backstory in a text crawl. We don't need too much in common with the old verse but we need to decide where it is we want to revisit.
Lastly, in regards to maps; I think space is a bit easier on D Ms in a lot of ways! Big ships might be a pain but it's easier than cities. Working along the 3rd dimension can be done by writing a number next to the Frame to clarify how high up or down it is [since it's space, the 0 would be arbitrary though likely where the Party launched from].
edited 30th Apr '14 2:11:37 AM by Fauxlosophe
So many memories, even if I did pop in when this was on the downswing. It's also great to see so many of the old gang!
@Fluff:
To be honest, I don't feel too strongly either way on most points, though I do think that Cold War style parallels with the introduction of minor powers would be interesting (especially if proxy wars are used to further the major powers' interests). Then again, I am a major Cold War nerd who feels that sort of dynamic is criminally underutilised, so perhaps I'm not the best judge.
A monarchy would be pretty rad for the Cents.
@Rules:
I don't feel qualified commenting here, as I tend to run games without any 'crunch' to speak of. All I'll say is that the system for the original MA worked pretty well, but since I didn't take part in the Aeris Gaiden spin-offs, those might have been even better.
@Old game lining up:
Hm... tough to say. I genuinely don't know!
Yes, I know this was a lot of words to effectively say 'idk spidey lol' but screw it.
edited 30th Apr '14 1:54:55 AM by Flanker66
Locking you up on radar since '09![]()
Take Kalm and Carry On.
Actually, I'm pitching Gaiden as "Pretty much the rules for the original except with a handy rule book". It's Hydrall who is bringing new rules to the table [and some look interesting but I don't have easy access to them]!
Also it's good to see you back and it's nice to see people just showing interest at all! Strong opinions aren't necessary, I just don't want to step on toes.
edited 30th Apr '14 1:57:12 AM by Fauxlosophe

Roxy shouldn't be listed on the first combat page. :P