Mekton Zeta is, as the title blurb on the front cover would say, "anime mecha roleplaying." Oh, it is. But so much more.
A Call For Heroes: Character Creation
After the series of cinematic frontpages (the color plates from the previous printings are gone; this is a sad thing from a "look and feel" point of view, but greatly improves the structural integrity of the book), the first thing we see is character generation. This is, as per R. Talsorian tradition, a large and meaty section. Over the span of 29 pages, this section helps you take a potential new character from a hazy concept in your head to a fully fleshed out individual, complete with personal history, statistics and skills, and major personal equipment. It also gives you a concept to hang your character on, whether the brash young hero "templates" or the seasoned older "professions."
The system of character and skill advancement in RTG games, as always, is fairly fluid and doesn't give you as nice and coherent a character as a "fifth level ranger" or "eighth level paladin," and if you've played any RTG game (come on, who HASN'T played Cyberpunk), you know that character creation can take as little as half an hour or as much as an entire night. Nicely detailed PCs without being OVER detailed are a staple of R.Talsorian products.
Armor's Edge: Mecha Construction:
This section takes up 32 densely-packed pages in the middle of the book. It is to mecha what the previous section is to characters: How to create them, give them statistics and determine what it is they do in the world. Now, once you've got a few mecha under your belt, you're going to want to invest in Mekton Zeta Plus, the companion volume. The construction system in Mekton Zeta is a bit sparse, but it will do nicely for constructing "grunt" mecha on both sides, as well as the basic mecha piloted by Our Heroes at the beginning of the series. Damage that effects mighty giant structures like mecha is measured in units called "Kills" (abbreviated "K"), and Mekton Zeta's construction chapter includes weapons from the tiny 1K Light Beam Gun all the way up to the almighty 15K Nova Cannon and Nova Sword. If you've ever wanted to "Form Blazing Sword!," these are for you.
Also included are a fairly primitive way to build Starships and Roadstrikers, giving you construction rules for mecha on three of the five Scales in Mekton Z (from smallest to largest they are Human Scale, Roadstriker Scale, Mekton Scale, Corvette Scale and Starship Scale, plus a sixth meta-scale, Excessive Scale). I say "fairly primitive" because in Mekton Zeta Plus, you'll build everything on the same construction rules and convert by scaling. But that, as Alton Brown would say, is another show.
Included in the mecha construction chapters are six example Mektons, a sample Starship and a sample Roadstriker. Bon Appetit.
Desperate Battle: Combat in Mekton Z
Combat is dead-nuts simple. Hex-based movement makes measuring combat on a map breathtakingly easy, and the rolling is the same stat skill modifier 1d10 roll as anything else. The combat system is full of charts, but with a bit of practice (and the system's Wall of Fear and Ignorance, erm, "Mekton Tactical Display"), you'll be able to easily run it closed-book. Rules are included for ramming, knockback, out of scale combat, and the infamous "G-Factor" (if you can't figure out what the G stands for, the artwork in the book is mostly inspired by a certain animé currently running on Cartoon Network).
Masters of the Universe: GM's Section
No, you do not get to scream, "I HAVE THE POWER!". This section includes medical tables (important when, not if, a character gets badly hurt), advancement tables, rules for Reputation and alien creation. This is a fairly small section, because it's leading into the most important section of the book...
Final Showdown: Running Anime
This is THE most important section of the book. Possibly the most important section of ANY RPG book you'll ever read. This section gives you a LOT of pointers on how to run games in a grand cinematic style, with plenty of crosses, double crosses, triple crosses and crosses that no mere human could possibly follow (a bow of the head to the late, great Poul Anderson).
The most important part of this oh-so-important section is the article labeled, "Short, Dark and Neurotic - the Anime Hero." This section tells you everything you need to know about the irritatingly self-centered and angsty anime hero, like Amuro Ray, Hiiro Yuy, Hikaru Ichijyo (Rick Hunter), et al.
"If you grow from someone who is weak, confused, angst-ridden and helpless into a person capable of saving the world, it's much more heroic." - Mike MacDonald
(Incidentally, this is one of the things that infuriates me about Shinji Ikari from Evangelion. He starts out weak, confused, etc. BUT HE NEVER GROWS FROM THERE. *rant* *fume* *rant*).
To the Stars: Worlds of Anime
This final section of Mekton Z details two of Mekton's signature campaign worlds. First is the famous Algol world, which has been around since the beginning. Algol is a hybrid of Gundam, Macross, Five Star Stories, GUNNM, SPT Layzner and many, many more shows. Included mecha designs for Algol are modern updates of the classic Deathstalker and Vantage mecha, the "D-Stalker" and "AdVantage." Unfortunately, their designs look VERY different from the classic Algol designs.
Second is Imperial Star; an update and transplant of the Mekton Empire into the Milky Way Galaxy. Don't throw out your old Mekton Empire books, folks, because I-Star is fairly incomplete and those ME books are gold.
Summary:
Mekton, despite being the oldest anime RPG on the market at 17 years and counting, remains one of the best. Mekton Z improves on some sore spots of the previous edition (most notably the typesetting on a VERY EARLY copy of PageMaker) and the newest printing improves on some sore spots from the previous printing (the flimsy color plates are gone). If you are at all interested in anime, Mekton Z is a worthy addition to your gaming library.
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