It's the year 2100 and Earth is under siege. The Outsiders have, after a 24-hour battle that annihilated most of humanity's space colonies, subjugated the United Earth Federation. Leaving the humans in the now-compliant Federation's Safe Zones, the Outsiders rove the planet looking for Gygravagnite, which has near-miraculous energy-generating properties, and which is used as the fuel for the next generation of war machine: the General Enforcement Anthropomorphic Robot, or Gear.
Outside the Federation's upper echelons, however, humanity has not decided to take this quietly. The Hiryu Islands, situated in the Far West Archipelago right next door to the Outsiders' main ship, is deploying its superpowered Gear prototypes in defense of the home islands from the Outsiders and their Botakuri minions, and the forces of the Revolutionary United Front, spearheaded by the Mobile Battleship Wagner and its ace Gear pilots are taking the fight to the oppressive United Earth Federation.
Meanwhile, in the Verne colony cluster, the survivors of the Battle of the 24 Hours are being terrorized by the Cryptids, which appear seemingly out of nowhere and which steal both biomass and memories from those they attack. The only real defense against them are the strangely biological Gears produced by the mysterious Clarke Foundation.
Giant Guardian Generation is a /tg/-produced tabletop RPG that puts the players in the shoes - and cockpits - of giant robot pilots as they battle to save the world on multiple fronts. Can be found here
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Relevant tropes:
- Airborne Aircraft Carrier: the Wagner.
- Alliterative Title: Giant Guardian Generation.
- Anti-Villain: Leon Wakefield, one of the pre-generated Rival characters, hates the RUF for killing his family in one of their earliest strikes against the Federation, and while he knows the Federation is corrupt, he believes the best way to change the system is from inside.
- Applied Phlebotinum: Gygravagnite, an all-purpose energy source that the Outsiders seem to be obsessed with. In one suggested endgame scenario, it's suggested that every bit of Gygravagnite over a certain limit brings the heat death of the universe closer.
- Beam Spam: The aptly-named Boss Archetype Bullet Hell.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Among other things, the Outsiders resemble crystals or manufactured objects more than living beings, their bodies are made from a material that has negative mass, and if killed, their remains will vanish over the course of 432 hours.
- Blood Knight: Julia Campbell, another of the pre-gen Rivals. She refuses to use ranged weaponry, preferring to mix it up in hand-to-hand combat, is unlikely to communicate with whoever she's fighting with except to taunt them, and will carry a serious grudge against anyone who forces her to retreat. Interestingly, she's also unwilling to go down in a blaze of glory, and if forced to listen, might actually switch sides if it would let her experience the thrill of battle more.
- Butt-Monkey: Anyone who takes the Genre Typecast of the same name. On the one hand, everyone is free to screw around with them. On the other, they get the fuel for their Genre Powers out of it!
- Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Threshold points, for your layers of Plot Armor.
- Combination Attack: Synchro Attacks let you combine with other players' attacks to overwhelm enemies' defenses.
- Cool Ship: The Mobile Battleship Wagner, which can fly, has its own on-board AI strategist, and still hasn't been shot down despite being the RUF's most visible target.
- Crapsack World: Outside of Hiryu, the world's in rough shape. The global government takes its orders from aliens, the few population centers are hellish slums outside of the Sanctuary Districts, said government is entirely willing to nuke its citizens to keep the RUF from taking cities from them, and the few remaining space colonies are drowning themselves in hedonism to distract themselves from both their stultifying lives and the literal monsters lurking in the shadows...
- World Half Full: ...but that doesn't mean you can't change it for the better. It's just going to take a hell of a lot of effort.
- Cybernetics Make You Bad at Socializing: Being a Cyborg makes you immune to the vacuum of space and most toxins and diseases, but imposes a Disadvantage to Empathy rolls and Awareness rolls for Diplomacy or Deceit.
- Eldritch Abomination: Cryptids, the things the Clarke Foundation fights. Are automatically assumed to be tougher than other beings of their "threat rank", because they can attack pilots directly through psionic power.
- Fantastic Nuke: The 3G bomb, which causes a catastrophic chain reaction in all the Gygravagnite within range, and makes the ground where it went off hideously radioactive. Given that all the mecha in the setting are powered by Element G, deploying this thing turns all the Gears around it into walking bombs.
- Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Hiryu Islands are pretty clearly an idealized version of modern Japan.
- Finishing Move: The Deathblows, which add additional effects to attacks when they're used, and weapons with the Technique tag, which lose their Tension bonus if used against a target more than once.
- Genre Savvy: The "Counter Intelligence" Genre power-you realized what another Genre Power was going to do, so you prepared for it.
- Government Conspiracy: The Clarke Foundation. Hardly anyone outside the Verne colony government knows they exist, the nanomachine hives they implant in their operatives effectively make them Clarke Foundation property, and their organic Gears are almost certainly captured Outsiders shackled in armor.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: The Divine Wind melee weapon has you rip your Gear's arms and legs off and throw them at people.
- Heroic Willpower: The Hard Work And Guts and Spirit of Steel Traits. The former lets you ignore any Disadvantages for the length of a scene; the latter lets you use your Willpower stat for ANY one roll.
- La Résistance: The Revolutionary United Front has taken up arms against the Outsider-led United Earth Federation. Curiously, although they're outnumbered, the RUF appears to have the technological edge of better Gears and the AI-controlled Mobile Battleship Wagner.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Genre Points let you force your opponents to reroll for the worse, reroll your own attacks for the better, set up Synchro Attacks, upgrade your mecha mid-battle, and other things.
- Mecha Tropes: ALL OF THEM
- A Mech by Any Other Name: Gears
- Combining Mecha: Multiple types of combination!
- Mecha Expansion Pack: Frames can do things like make you more accurate, more agile, or more armored. The downside is that the frames can be shot off.
- Mini-Mecha: Usually anything with the Eagle frame.
- Transforming Mecha: Again, multiple types
- Unusual Weapon Mounting: Any Weapon or Upgrade can be mounted to any part of the Gear unless its description says otherwise.
- Psychic Powers: The Miracle skills are a Magic from Technology version. They're dangerously prone to Superpower Meltdown, but a character with the Psychic Power trait is mostly safe from that...which given how they're intentionally overpowered, tends to make said character a Physical God.
- Plot Armor: Three layers of it for PCs, four for their mecha.
- Powered Armor: The Power Suit feature. You don't lose access to your Weapons or Upgrades when the parts they're attached to get Maimed, but you get unique penalities for each part that does get Maimed.
- Robeast: The Botakuri.
- Rocket Punch: Functionally, the Extending Punch.
- Shout-Out: To basically every mecha show ever released.
- To start with, the game's name (or at least the name's initials) is a reference to King Of Braves GaoGaiGar.
- The Clarke Foundation sub-setting, with its mysterious Mind Rape-capable monsters, organic mecha, conspiratorial tone, and pilots referred to as Children, is one giant shout-out to Neon Genesis Evangelion
- The Riot Weapon is a direct reference to the Alt Eisen from Super Robot Wars: Original Generation.
- The Micro Missile weapon's description refers to the Itano Circus style of missile launches from Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
- The Federation's Vichy Earth-style government is basically a nod to every Leiji Matsumoto anime ever.
- One of the between-chapter stories describes a mech as having "the power to let a human be a god or a devil".
- The Radiant Fist melee weapon is described as glowing with an awesome power.
- The Gallant Kick is a reference to the Gespenst Kick, performed by Gespenst pilots in SuperRobotWarsOriginalGeneration
- The All-Out Attack is a rapid-fire flurry of mechanical fists that come so fast that they deliver half the original damage on their next turn. Those hit by it are described as "not knowing it yet, but they are already dead."
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: In-Universe. The Soaring Dragon Fortress sub-setting is the idealistic Super Robot playground where goofy-looking villains square off against spiffy-looking experimental prototypes with Hot-Blooded teenage pilots; the Mobile Battleship Wagner sub-setting is closer to gritty-but-still-hopeful Real Robot anime, where both sides have good and bad people; and the Clarke Foundation sub-setting sits way at the cynical end, where pilot death is more likely than not, the pilots' employers can't be trusted, and the civilians are as likely to hinder the players' efforts as they are to help.
- Super Prototype: The experimental units of the Hiryu Islands and the Glory units of the Federation's Gear Armed Forces.
- Tactical Withdrawal: The "Live Another Day" Genre Power.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: The RUF is clearly the good guy in the Wagner sub-setting...
- The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: ...but that doesn't mean they haven't done some shady things, especially in the beginning.
- Walking Techbane: The Technobane Anomaly trait lets you disable any modern machinery as big as yourself for the duration of a scene, at the expense of making all Electronics, Vehicles, and equipment-based rolls at a Disadvantage. This doesn't apply to your Gear.
- Wild Child: The Wild Anomaly lets you take an Advantage on all Awareness and Survival rolls and on interactions with animals, but puts you at a Disadvantage on all Intellect and Resources rolls.
