Playing Mecha Vs Kaiju
Mecha Vs Kaiju is powered by The 5th Engine, a narrative hybrid of modern storytelling games and 5th Edition. Create characters using Anime Archetypes with narrative traits. Here is a sample character, our iconic hot shot pilot, Ace Kasuragi.
Call Out Your Traits
In Mecha Vs Kaiju when you take an action you “Call out your traits”. This is a roleplaying exercise all its own. In this example, Ace Kasuragi wants to attack a kaiju with his Iron Angel Mecha. Here’s how a player could call out Ace’s traits.
“Ace feels a real need to stop Kaibutsu fast, so he’s Always in a Fiery Rush. But he’s good at fast actions so he’s going to do a Swift attack. He issues a Passionate battle cry as he unleashes a Missile Swarm on the monster!”
Even before rolling dice, Mecha Vs Kaiju players are narrating their actions.
Watch an example of calling out your traits
Rolling Your Dice Pool
Each trait you call out has a die type, representing how important that trait is to your character. When you take an action you roll each of these dice in a pool, along with a d20 Fortune Die, representing the fickle finger of fate.
Add the two highest results to get your Action Total. Countering this roll are the DANGER DICE. These 3 dice represent the level of peril in the scene: d6 for typical heroic, d8 for deadly, d10 for end of the world. The GM always rolls the Danger Dice to counter your action, sometimes adding extra dice representing NPCs or other challenges.
If the Counter Total is higher than your Action Total you fail. Otherwise you succeed!
Watch an example of rolling an action
Spending Impact
When you determine your Action Total, count every die that rolled a 4 or higher to get your Impact. This represents the effect you have on a scene. Spend Impact to do stress to an enemy, inflict them with a condition, grant yourself a boon, or defend yourself with Reaction. Or do a combination of all of them as you narrate your outcome.
Creating Conditions and Boons
Since Mecha Vs Kaiju is a Narrative game, you have the power to directly influence the story. MvK rewards your creativity by letting you spend Impact on in-game effects. These take the form of Conditions and Boons.
Conditions are narrative penalties you place on a target. Invoke this Condition by narrating how it makes it harder for your target to resist your action. For example, if you kick someone and push them to the ground, you can put a “Prone” condition on the person. Then every time being on the ground would be a problem for them, you can Invoke that Condition.
Boons are benefits you can place on yourself or others. These represent advantages like “Lay of the Land” or “Combat Stance”.
You can put Conditions and Boons on characters or the scene, and all of it influences the game world.
Mecha Vs Kaiju 