As you can tell from the title, this whole idea came from an Apocalypse World hack I was making a few years ago, but I stopped because Apocalypse World is LITERAL ROLEPLAYING GAME CANCER and I will FIGHT YOU if you disagree with me on that!!!!!111!

(I personally don't like the AW dice mechanics and find its use for loads of super interesting settings slightly irksome, but fortunately, I can easily retrofit those settings into other games I prefer, and I hope people who do enjoy AW continue to enjoy it!)

Still, on to the setting!

Titanworld takes place in a vaguely Firefly style universe. There's the Core - a region of heavily regimented planets controlled by the Federation - which seems nice but isn't. Surrounding the Core is the Rim , which is loosely settled by a motley collection of freedom seekers, independents, psychopathic raiders, religious fundamentalists, Federation citizens seeking a new life. The Rim is the product of five or six colonial waves starting from a nigh mythical Golden Age stretching up to the most recent Bushfire Wars, which are just petering out. The galaxy is rife with danger and opportunity.

The basic premise is that the main characters are people who have a ship, a collection of mecha, and a yen for money. Take jobs, keep on flying, maybe get involved in deadly conspiracies.

Or, in short: Firefly but also Titanfall cause giant robots are cool.

Archtypes

[EDITOR'S NOTE: These have fake Latin. If you know real Latin, feel free to suggest something better. I just wrote stuff that sounded good. I'm not a Latinologist. Sue me. **** off! Don't judge me!]

HUMAN - Homo Sapiens Solaris

Description: A sexually dimorphus race of bipedal, mostly hairless simians, humans' lack a homeworld due to a species wide inability to make long term plans, cooperate, or refrain from experimentation with potentially destructive but lucrative in the short run technology.

Ethnic Groups: Pan-Asiatic (gold-brown skin, epicanthic folds) | Ameriglish (brown skin, blond hair) | Zurr (blue skin, white hair, red eyes) | Lemish (amazingly tall, skinny, purple skin) | Auzzi (Black skin, black hair)

(Use any of the Archetypes in the core book)

WOLFKIN – Canid Lupis Erectus

Description: A proud warrior race of bipedal wolf-men, Wolfkin were the second stellar governance. Shattered by wars and scattered by fate, they remember their past and dream one day of ruling again.

Ethnic Groups: T ibier (gray fur, gold eyes) | Russeto (Red fur, fox-like features) | Rex Legato Reginum (short fur, black/brown coloration) | Gilded (Gold furred, silver eyed)

(Use Animalistic Alien archetype, but swap Agility with Presence, Willpower with Cunning. Their racial skill is in Leadership.)

ELFKIN – F ae S apians A rcanus

Description: Long eared, humanoids of uncertain origin – though attempting to compare them with humanity will usually result in both races being offended. Deeply psychic – though they prefer the name “magic”.

Ethnic Groups: Star Elves (Gray hair, silver eyes) | Moon Elves (silver skin, black hair, rainbow eyes) | Wood Elves (brown skin, green hair) | Void Elves (Midnight black skin, white hair, red eyes) | Nebula Elves (purple skin, green/purple hair)

(Use Elven archetype, but swap Willpower with Presence, have them begin with 1 rank in Arcane rather than Perception)

VREK – Dracos Erectus Pyros

Description: Born in fire and water, Vrek are armored with thick scales capable of withstanding an astounding amount of punishment and can survive in water as easily as they can in air – giving them a rather distinct advantage. Prized by genejackers who want to reverse engineer their scales into starship hull.

Ethnic Groups: Coastal Vrek (Green scales, yellow belly) | Jungle Vrek (blue scales, teal belly) | Volcanic Vrek (black scales, red belly)

(Use Animalistic Alien archetype, but reduce Agility to 2, start with 1 rank in Resilience, and begin with the "Thick Scales" ability, which grants +2 soak)

SHIFTERS – Protophasic Maleus

Description: Small puddles of advanced proto plasm that learned to take the forms of other races – they often face judgmental outsiders who don't understand their ways, or fear their powers.

Ethnic Groups: None.

B: 1 | A: 3 | I: 2 | C: 3 | W: 2 | P: 2

XP: 60

Wounds: 8+B | Strain: 12+W

Skill: 1 rank in Skullduggery or Coordination

Shapeshifting: Can spend 3 strain to downgrade the difficulty of a check relating to their shapeshifting (deception to look like a new form, skulduggery for picking locks by molding their palm against it, coordination to squeeze through tight areas, ect) [ EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't know if this is TOO powerful - thoughts? ]

Reviled: +1 black dice to all Presence checks with people aware they are Shifters.

NERIDI – Aquis Humanis Progidia

Description: Aquatic humanoids with fin ears – astoundingly strong and intensely passionate, Neridi make for great friends and terrible enemies. Racially gets along quite well with humanity, baffling other races immensely.

Ethnic Group: Undynnie (Red fins and blue scales), Lug'Fin (Green fins, black scales), Trull (Yellow fins, green scales)

B: 3 | A: 2 | I: 2 | C: 1 | W: 2 | P: 2

XP: 90

Wounds: 12+B | Strain: 8+2

Skill: 1 rank in athletics

Super-Strength: Re-roll triumphs when using Athletics for lifting, prying, breaking, smashing. Increase Encumbrance by 5.

CARRIERS

Note on Skills: Remove Driving, light/heavy melee (just melee), Gunnery/Light Ranged and Heavy ranged (There is just ranged), Alchemy and Riding. Rename Arcane as Metapsi (Meta Psionics), Primal as Biopsi (Biological Pisonics) and Divine as Transi (Transitional Psionics.) Basically, FTL travel unlocked access to psychic powers, but psychic powers are used as magic because the only thing cooler than giant robots is GIANT ROBOTS WITH ******* MAGIC YEAHHHHHH * Electric Guitars Intensify*

You may ask why is there just Melee and Ranged? Well, I really liked how in Titanfall, characters can smoothly switch between being in their stompy robots to fighting on the ground. Also, the mecha have humanoid hands and arms, so firing an artillery sized laser while in a mecha is, for the pilot, the same as firing a normal rifle on the ground.

All role based careers are allowed, but if they have no combat skills and don't have pilot, they can replace two of their skills (chosen by the player) with Pilot and Gunnery or Melee. The reason for this is because this is a GAME about driving around giant robots, then doing rad stuff in the giant robots, and if you don't want to do that, then **** OFF.

Editor's Note: No, seriously, any other GM sick of players who hear the pitch of the game then go, "So...I want to do something completely opposite from that?" Like, "Hey, we're running a superhero game." and then this player goes, "But what if I want to play...a normal person?" Or: "Lets play Exalted!" and then someone goes: "Wait, I know! I'll play a mortal !" NO ONE THINKS YOU'RE CLEVER, KYLE SHUT THE **** UP! ...sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

STAL-KER PILOT - A pilot who drives a highly mobile Stalker Scout Walker (Stal-Ker). Focuses on the use of melee combat, scouting, survival and mixed-terrain tactics (I.E, the use of jumpjets in the battlefield.) Stalkers tend to be highly good at recycling.

Skills: Athletics, Coordination, Cool, Deception, Melee, Perception, Stealth, Survival

ARM-KER PILOT - the king of the battle, the Armored Walker stands as a titan. The biggest gun. The thickest armor. The biggest target. People who pilot Arm-Kers tend to enjoy the attention.

Skills: Athletics, Brawl, Coercion, Cool, Discipline, Ranged, Resilience, Perception,

RIG-KER PILOT - Regional Information Governor Walker. One part EWACs, one part ECCM, one part ECM, one part bristling beehive of mini-robots filled with guns, Rig-Kers act as force multipliers. And their pilots are ****** nerds .

Skills: Charm, Computers, Knowledge, Leadership, Mechanics, Medicine, Ranged, Perception

PSY-KER PILOT - Psyiops Amplification Walkers are lightly armored, highly mobile, and are riddled with micro-scale FTL drives that open up nanotube thin portals to the Psyscape. Psychics use this to do really cool ****. Since Psychics are usually hunted by the Federation, they're also quite good at hiding.

Skills: CHOOSE ONE PSI SKILL AT CHARGEN, Discipline, Ranged, Perception, Vigilance, Streetwise, Skulduggery, Knowledge

WALKERS

Okay. Now we're to the fun part.

The foundation of each character is their Walker. Walkers are between 15 to 30 feet tall, weigh between 20 to 50 tons, and are the basis of modern combat. Basically, there are either armies with lots and lots of infantry and tanks or armies with a very few Walkers of various types. The only people who can afford to have both types of armies at once is the Federation, which is why they're so very very very scary.

As previously indicated, there are five "basic" chassis: Stal-Kers, Arm-Kers, Rig-Kers, and Psy-Kers.

If you choose a character class, you get one of those walkers of that type.

System Strain in a Walker explicitly represents heat - when your strain maxes out, your Walker's fusion drive has overheated and the Walker emergency shuts down and begins to Vent Heat. You can spend an Action to "Vent Heat", to lose an amount of Strain equal to your Walker's Vent Speed per round. Venting can be canceled with a maneuver, unless it is due to your Walker being overheated - emergency vents cannot be canceled.

Each walker has "weapon slots", which denotes what weapons can be put where. Each Walker has a "core ability" and one "customization" - reflecting what it was built to do.

STAL-KER

Specialization: Coordination

Deficiency: Resilience

Weapon Slots

Held, 1 Shoulder Mount

Vent Speed: 10

Core Ability: Lead the Way

• Effect: When using a skill to find a path (survival, perception, streetwise, what have you), the Stal-Ker is designed to feed this info to the rest of the team. For 1 advantage, the Stal-Ker brings the rest of the team along with, using the same level of skill/quiet as the Stal-Ker. Perfect for ambushing and sneaking!

Customization Choices

1) Stealth Specialist: For 2 System Strain per round, your Stal-Ker turns invisible thanks to nanotech paint and light warping generators. Upgrades the perception check to spot the Stal-Ker by 2.

2) Death From Above!: Your 2 System Strain, move two range bands in a single maneuver - this can augment your free maneuver or your second maneuver.

3) Swordmaster: Your Stal-Ker has been built from the ground up to augment its melee attacks. When making a melee attack, can take 1 System Strain to add +1 damage, up to the silhouette of your Stal-Ker.

ARM-KER

Specialization: Athletics, Resiliance

Deficiency: Coordination

Weapon Slots

Head, 2 Shoulders

Vent Speed: 5

Core Ability: I Am Become Death

• Effect: All weapons used by the Arm-Ker Blast hit targets within Short Range, rather than Close/Engaged.

Customization Options

1) Walking Cover: Your Arm-Ker draws enemy fire by being really goddamn intimidating. Every teammate who is Close/Engaged with you gains +1 defense.

2) Indirect Expert: Reduce the advantage required to activate the Blast quality by 1.

3) Bug Smasher: Your Arm-Ker's unarmed attacks gain Blast (Brawn) for free.

4) Demolisher: As a maneuver, you can remove 1 point of cover from a rival or nemesis or minion group.

RIG-KER

Specialization: Computers

Deficiency: Athletics, Resilience

Weapon Slots

Held

Vent Speed: 10

Core Ability: All my Little Friends

• Effect: You start with three of the following drones. These drones have can be made to do their thing for a Maneuver. Each drone has a "one time" use, which causes the drone to be destroyed/used up when activated. Getting the drones back requires an 8 hour long Diff 2 mechanics roll per drone (1/2 the time per success) or the expenditure of 500 credits.

• Ammo drone – rapidly carries a resupply to an ally.

  • Continual Use: Removes 1 out of ammo condition on an ally.

  • One Time Use: Fills the limited ammo of a single ally.

• Repair Drone – a nanite sprayer that can patch holes and fix coolant

  • Continual Use: Can repair 1 hull on a single walker.

  • One Time Use: Can remove any and all critical wounds on a Walker.

• Harassment Drone – disorients and confuses enemies with its built in weaponry.

  • Continual Use: Prevents a single minion group from gaining access to skills.

  • One Time Use: Staggers and Immobilizes a rival or nemesis for one round.

• Spoof Drone – uses holograms and false heat sigs to look like another walker.

  • Continual Use: Reflexively prevent Blast damage on a miss.

  • One Time Use: Reflexively cause Blast damage to strike an enemy of your choice within Medium range.

• Squire Drone

  • Continual Use: Has 4 weapons that can be exchanged automatically with another weapon (any slot)

  • One Time Use: Become another drone type – the new drone is not destroyed.

• Coolant Drone

  • Continual Use: Vents 10 heat on a single ally.

  • One Time Use: Vents all heat for the entire team.

Customization Option

1) Com-Tap: Permanently enhances the "Jam communication" action. You can spend 2 advantage to learn one of the following. The location of an enemy, the enemy's short term objective or the enemy's long term objective.

2) Air-Con: This Rig-Ker is made to guide air support...including your dropship to help you bug the **** out. Provides +2 defense to any flying vehicles on your side (including a Stal-Ker flying around on their jump jets.)

PSY-KER

Specialization: [Psi Power of your Choice]

Deficiency: Athletics, Resilience

Weapon Slots

Held

Vent Speed: 5

Core Ability: My Own Personal Hate

• Effect : Channeling your psychic powers has never been so much fun! By expending System Strain rather than personal strain, your Psychic Effects are now vehicular scale. Barrier blocks 10 personal damage per damage, attacks do 10 personal damage per damage, conjuration summons things the size of houses, healing cures the wounds of entire regiments, ect.

Customization Options

1) Pyrokinetic/Biokinetic/Telekinetic/Cryokinetic/ect, ect, ect: This is actually, like, a billion different specializations. BILLIONS! Well, okay, more like 30. Basically, it counts exactly like a wand, knocking off a diff for a chosen effect.

OKAY, it's midnight and I haven't actually made the weapons and equipment, so I'm going to sleep on my gigantic pile of gold.

But I hope this stuff seems interesting. Any suggestions/thoughts/walker designs is appreciated.

Oh, also, I had the idea that there are loads of ancient alien ruins, but they're built by people the size of the Space Jockey from Alien (Prometheus? What's Prometheus, I haven't heard of this "Prometheus" of what you speak.) That way, you can explore ancient ruins with cool alien artifacts...WHILE IN A GIANT ******* ROBOT SUIT YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I had an idea while I was at work!

Nix piloting. Instead have you use the logical humanoid skill for what you're doing. Athletics to rush your mech faster than expected, coordination to climb a small mountain, and so on.

Then, make "handling" into "specialization." Specialization applies as blue dice to one or two skills (say, Athletics for the bulky, muscular Armkers) and as black dice for one or two skills (Coordination for an Armker.)

Thoughts?

All right, I've yanked piloting, and added specs to the Walkers.

So, mecha combat works pretty much how vehicular combat in normal Genesys works, but rather than piloting checks, any and all "dangerous moves" use reasonable personal skills. Coordination to scramble, athletics to bull through a building and so on.

SOME WEAPONS

Basically, I'm thinking any personal weapon in Modern, Sci-Fi or Space Opera can be "scaled up" to be a walker's weapon. Turn a shotgun into a HUGE SHOTCANNON and you've got an idea. Thoughts?

Also, combat should be integrated with the Hacking Mechanics to really give your Rig-Ker something to do. And so...

COM-NETS

All modern battlefields have not just two (or more) competing armies but two (or more) competing Com-Nets. These connect the warriors to their orbital systems (if any), to one another, and to the enemy if their Rigker or Sysmen are doing their jobs properly. Rigkers are people in R.I.G Walkers, while Sysmen are the poor bloody infantry of the electronic warfare world.

A Com-Net generally is comprised of the following parts.

1) Dropjock Feed (DJF). This is what connects you to your angel, your eye in the sky, your own personal Jeshammad, your dropship pilot. Without your DJF, your dropjock cannot provide air support, intelligence, evac for a downed pilot , and so on.

2) Peer to Peer Link (PTPL): Each Walker is also in communication with each other walker. So, technically, there are multiple PTPLs, connecting Walker to Walker. Each PTPL connects two walkers - if it gets shut down, those two walkers cannot communicate. As a GM, you need to adjudicate this carefully if one system gets taken down.

3) Advanced Targeting Emission Tracking Systems (ATETS, or as most people call it, Ah-****, because soldiers will invariably make it about sex): This is the basic system used to guide all smart munitions that uses a combination of heat sensing and electronic warfare technology to guide weaponry. It being online is the "baseline" accuracy (reflected by normal range/size penalties.) If it is taken offline, add 1 setback die to all the team's firing.

4) Scalzi-Gardener Field (SGF): This only exists if a Psyker is part of your unit. The FTL for the setting is the Scalzi-Gardener Drive. Any com-net with a Psyker has been upgraded to include a general purpose Scalzi-Field Generator. This is basically a free "concentrate" maneuver to keep one magical effect going. Shutting it down removes that powerful. function.

Obviously, anyone who has access to your Com-Net can use the Enact Command maneuver to shut down or manipulate one of these systems. They could turn off your PTPL and make someone unable to communicate with the rest of your table, or slip misleading information into your DJF so you think the enemy is attacking from one flank when they're actually coming from another.

So, you need defense programs! A Firewall costs 30 credits, a Sentry and Gate cost 20 credits. There's also a new defense program: Denial of Vent Exoprogram (or DOVE.) A Dove is a strength 3 defense program that causes 2 System Strain to an attacking RigKer or 2 Wounds to an attacking Sysman if they fail to get in, via overloading their hardware.

I only have a passing familiarity with titanfall, but it may be good to keep the same base skills. Brawl is hand to hand, melee is H2H with weapons, ranged light is 1h weapons (titan pistols), ranged heavy is the bigger 2h guns, and gunnery covers stuff like rocket packs on the back and such. This would allow players to focus their characters and excel at a particular type of combat over another.

Hmm...I'm of two minds on that. On the one hand, focusing is nice. On the other hand, using lots of different and cool guns is also fun!

Specializing is more fun in a group game because you don't tread as much on other people's toes and it lets your character shine in different situations. I would at most collapse Ranged Light and Heavy into a Ranged (Handheld) while keeping Gunnering because the skills needed are just massively different. Also Brawl and Melee should, in my opinion, always be separate. Brawl is not as powerful as Melee, but it's a **** of a lot more reliable.

This is more personal taste, but I'd drop the Elfkin. Vulcans are overdone, but a similarly fae race that is based on the Empathic Alien archetype would be fun.

That's fair, that's fair. Specialization in with brawl, melee, ranged, gunnery. Maybe make gunnery "indirect" ?

...I'm not removing my sexy space elves. I will take them out over my COLD. DEAD. BODY.

Gunnery could be "Non-handheld," where anything that isn't a rifle or pistol would fall under it.

Look, you can still have sexy space elves, just use a different, more sci-fi template. Vanguard and Psionic fit the same trope, but aren't as obviously elves. Which is something I like about your species, where they aren't just fantasy races with a slight sci-fi flavor (See: Vulcans/Elves, Klingons/Orcs, Romulans/Drow....)

I get what you're saying, but , the Psionics in this universe are based off the magic skills. So, having that and having a race with specific psionic abilities that work completely differently strikes me as needlessly confusing.

My basic idea is that FTL in this universe is vaguely 40k-ish, wherein it involves punching through to a realm of reality where physics functions differently. "Psychic" powers are doing the inverse of traveling FTL - dragging the other dimension into ours to do seemingly miraculous things.

Which, now that I think about it, is also how 40k psykers work.

So, I'm just basically a thief.

SOME GUNS

Weapon Manufacturing: Lupis Armory, YoyoDyne Armotech, XCollectXTiveX, F#@! You Big A@@ Guns Incorporated, New Springfield Arms, Smith and Smith and Smith Firearms, Takashi Limited.

FU-BAG 009 "Junker" Punchgun: Originally designed for rapid, cheap-as-sin, unregulated mining services, the Junker transformed from a murderous piece of mining machinery to an alarmingly effective melee weapon via the addition of a Walker scale glove. Though low in terms of raw damage, the huge spikes that are flung into the target on a direct hit can tear apart internal components easily.

Damage: Brawn+4 (Crit 2), Range : Engaged

Concussive (1) | Knockdown (1)

Enc : 2 | Skill : Brawl

Credit : 750

YD21 Psi-Artillery: Despite the name, this weapon does not, in fact, require the use of psychic powers. Rather, a micro-scale Scalzi-Gardener Field generator allows the projectile to "blink" from any point in the arc to a new direction, making it devilishly hard to evade, even by taking cover. Some experts worry that the scattering of SGF components and the required exotic matter to power it may cause long term deleterious environmental effects. In response, the Federation has stockpiled millions of 'winky winky' shells.

Damage : 12 (Crit 3) | Range : Extreme

Guided (3) | Blast (8) | Limited Ammo (3)

Special: Ignore any setback dice provided by cover.

Enc: 5 | Skill: Gunnery

Credits: 3,250

S3 "New West" Uber-Revolvers: Take the durability and simplicity of a revolver, scale it to the size of a Walker, and add some good old fashioned human charm via cloned ivory and faux-gold plating. Uber-Revolvers are popular for Stal-Ker or Arm-Ker pilots who are skilled in ambidextrous combat techniques and people who are compensating massively for their lack of personality by buying oversized cowboy hats.

Damage: 6 (Crit 3) | Range: Short

Linked (1)

Enc: 4 | Skill: Ranged

Credits: 600

YD-2000 Mercury Bow: The Walker version of a sniper rifle, the Mercury Bow does not actually shoot Mercury. Rather, it flash-freezes a slender alloy of mercury and triskelliate into a spike roughly the length of a small auto-car. Suspended in a counter-gravitic field and accelerated via a magnetic railgun, the spike is sharpened while it travels along the barrel via an array of lasers controlled by sophisticated AI linked with a local ATETS system to perfectly balance it for long ranged shooting.

Damage: 7 (Crit 2) | Range: Long

Cumbersome (3), Accurate (2), Breach (2), Knockdown, Slow Firing (1)

Enc: 5 | Skill: Ranged

Credits: 1,100