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Mekton Zeta Plus

Author: Mike MacDonald and Benjamin Wright
Category: game
Company/Publisher: R. Talsorian Games
Cost: 144 pages
Page count: $22.95 (US)
ISBN: 0-937279-60-9
Playtest Review by Bradford C. Walker on 03/04/99.
Genre tags: Science_fiction Modern_day Historical Horror Far_Future Space Anime Espionage Conspiracy Post-apocalypse Gothic Asian/Far_East
This book is the other half of the Mekton Zeta core rules. You can't make full use of this RPG without it because this book has the full Mekton Technical System (MTS). It also has a number of optional rules for extra combat actions, dogfighting and subsystems for aliens/beasts etc.

What's great about the MTS is that you can build damn near anything, despite the heavy bias towards Gundam-style mecha. Yes, this means that you can recreate the starships of Traveller, the Landmates of Appleseed, TIE Fighters from Star Wars, the Great Dragons of Lodoss War and toy pistols you see in stores everywhere. It's all possible, with varying degrees of difficulty, and you don't need to cope with formulas out of a higher math textbook.

The downside is the heavy bias. Most of the stuff is meant for mecha, be it clones of Gundam's Mobile Suits, the Valkryies of Macross or the Motor Heads of Five Star Stories. From that point, it gets more and more difficult to countenance using the MTS for your campaign's needs. As I mention above, you can use this to create beasties for another genre but it's still a bit wonky. (The alien/animal/monster systems work, but they're best seen as akin to the stripped-down construction system in MZ.) It's hard to see this system's products as anything other than science-fiction, unless you're deliberately converting real machines into MZ.

The ugly bit is, as with the MZ rulebook, the lack of support. This book needs more than it gets, and it needs to be in print; most of us aren't wired yet, so the "no print=dead RPG" problem persists. I so hope that it gets saved, revived and enjoys renewed life so it can keep Silhouette and Tri-Stat honest as well as promote excellance in all three anime RPG engines.

So yes, if you play MZ then you must have this book. Get it ASAP.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

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