ROBOTECH

CAMPAIGN MANIFESTO

(JUST WHAT AM I GETTING MYSELF INTO?)

These are the original notes and guidelines I provided to the players who were interested in joining this new Robotech game I was starting. Little did any of them really know what they were getting themselves into...

History

My Robotech campaign is many years old. It started in high school as a Macross era game and though it didn't last long, I resurrected it in university where it was more successful than I could have hoped. That success was due in great part to the players I had in the game. They were willing to go along with whatever I threw at them as I struggled to find a firm direction for the game, and the campaign universe that evolved from those early sessions owes them a great debt. In time my campaign universe expanded to the point where there were stories I wanted to tell outside of the scope of the Macross/Sentinels setting that the current game was set in. In order to tell those stories I decided to start a second game set in the Southern Cross era of the Robotech show. It would take place in the same campaign universe as the Macross/Sentinels game, and some events from that previous game would echo in the Southern Cross game. Like its predecessor, the Southern Cross game had growing pains. Unfortunately, this game never stuck and ended after only a few sessions. But I still had stories to tell so every few years I dust off my notes and try to start the Southern Cross game up again. The last attempt finally stuck.

Themes

space opera: a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travelers and extraterrestrial beings.

Robotech is a space opera, pure and simple, with over-arching themes of Love and War, and my campaign is no different. Events for part of the campaign will be dictated by what happened in the show and will therefore be out of the players' control, but that doesn't matter. What matters is how the characters act and react to those events. The focus of the game will be on the characters, not the combat, so if all you want to do is get into a giant robot and blow things up, go find yourself a Battletech game to play in. If you want to play a character as they struggle to survive and grow set against a grand backdrop of war and alien invasion then this is the game for you.

Vision

The characters in the Southern Cross campaign will start out as a squad of Veritech Hovertank pilots in the Alpha Tactical Armored Corps, fresh from the Academy on their first assignment. For those familiar with the Robotech universe, the campaign opens a few years before the arrival of the Robotech Masters and the Second Robotech War. The long-term vision for the game takes the characters through the Second Robotech War into the invasion and occupation of the Earth by the Invid. If the campaign lasts long enough it could go beyond the events of the established Robotech continuity. At that point I, as Game Master, will have complete control over what events occur, which means that the characters will be become the central figures in their own epic story.

Recommended Viewing

Anime

TV and Movies

Warp Zone | Robotech RPG | Campaign Manifesto