Pyramid Review
Doom Striders (for the d20 System)
Published by Bastion Press
Written by Sam Witt
Cover by Kari Christensen
Art by Christopher Herndon, David Hendee, Ed Bourelle, Jacob Elijah Walker, Jesse Mohn, Joylon Minns, Scott Purdy, Thomas William Babbey, & Yap Chong Aik
128-page b&w softcover; $22.95
Mecha and the high-fantasy roleplaying of the standard d20 System are tough genres to mix successfully. On the one hand, the Battletech giant battle robots and the various forms of power armor from Rifts can easily be conceptualized as having fantasy versions in a high-magic fantasy game world as a development of standard magical armor and golem construction taken to the next level. There are some examples of this in fantasy literature and anime, and Victorian Steampunk is sometimes considered its own roleplaying genre with steam- and/or magic-powered automata and power armor.
On the other hand, fantasy roleplaying is often a very first-person immersive experience. The character faces challenges physically and interacts with others directly. Playing in a giant mecha, the perspective shifts to that of the robot and away from the piloting character. Also with the party structure there is the issue of whether everybody will be a pilot for their own mecha, everyone works only part of a single big mecha (similar to Voltron), or if the PCs are the pilots, mechanics, and people who only work outside of the mech battlefield.
Bastion Press provides a system for creating and using magical mecha . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 10, 2004
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