Steel Roses is the first product to be released by the Heart Quest line since their optional campaign setting "Musical Mistresses" which was a work that was uniformly silly and somehow manages to make even Sailor Moon's protagonists look like they were serious stick in the muds. Steel Roses on the other hand is a much more straight work in the fact that it covers mecha anime in the world of Heart Quest. Given that Heart Quest is a gameline dedicated in concept to the romantic sub-genre of shoujo magna, this immediately roused my interest. Also I've always personally felt there was a serious dearth of rules for giant robots beating the hell out of each other in current game licenses.
Steel Roses first immediate strike against it is that it is an e-book. E-books and me don't get along but I was pleased to note that the cover and everything on the pages in the immediate 'scroll-through' looked to be of professional quality; so I'll just hope they make enough money on this supplement that I can purchase a paperback version. It also isn't exactly a large supplement at 53 pages either, though they seem to cram a lot of information into those pages at least. On the other hand its only $5.95 and I've paid more for shorter books put out by RPG companies.
Allow me to share my initial impressions of the book summarized on the way through....
The Cover: A rather nice looking dark (as in color not content) piece with a bishounen looking guy and what I think is a girl in the typical anime military-girl style that I've seen routinely in Gundam Wing and other programs. You know, the 'I'm not sure they are women except for the chests' type but that's probably because the guys are so dang effeminate.
Chapter 0: The usual explanation stuff. A brief explanation of mecha anime, as if someone would be buying this if they didn't know. The surprising point to bring up that not all mecha are giant robots or made for combat is pointed out and it is illustrated that mecha pilots are elites no matter what time period they are in since its difficult to move around these things no matter who builds them.
Chapter 1: This chapter is about creating pilot characters. Heart Quest uses the FUDGE system, which I have a fondness for being no-nonsense in a world of fluff. It covers some points from the original Heart Quest book and has only a little redundancy in skill lists. The work then gives a glut of new skills for piloting mecha, which go well into saying this is a full time job that requires a lot of training by sheer volume. On the other hand, the new skills also provide a wide variety of ways that pilots can vary in their focuses during battle or other mecha actions (as if anyone is going to use their mecha for anything but bashing heads!). The chapter also covers some notes about what sort of skills should be considered when creating mecha pilots but very little in the way of actual psychology for mecha pilots other than their requirements weed out alot of 'lesser mortals'.
Gee thanks Neo. This is another of the books few flaws.
Chapter 2: This chapter is about creating the mecha themselves. Its initially a bit dry until you get to the Gifts and Faults sections where things start to have the old Heart Quest trademark humor again ("Looking Cool" is a gift for mecha that may not necessarily be able to do anything but darn well have neat leather interior, wickedly impractical battle armor, and lots of shiny buttons!). It touches on everything you need to create Mecha from Evangelion, Gundam, and even Dai Guard the 'we're not a rip off that's still trying to be parody pretending to be serious really' anime.
This section also curiously covers AI and pays great homage to Isaac Asimov as the father of robotics. This section, while wonderful for us fan-boys of Isaac, nevertheless doesn't make much sense even in the context of the book. Robots are ALL ABOUT killing people in anime. Oddly, this section can be used not to just create intelligent robots but also could passably allow Game Masters to create Boomers from Bubblegum Crisis and other human sized robots for Heart Quest. It also touches on a short bit of AI psychology and the need for machines to serve vs. their own desires.
Chapter 3 and Chapter 4: The sections about combat. Oh sure chapter 3 is officially about actions in general vs. resisted actions and all that but we know its a supplement to the REAL MEAT in Chapter 4. This section covers in short detail all the rules necessary for handling a cinematic mecha fight without getting bogged down in the rules. Testing it a bit with my group we had a easy time tearing into each other and depending on how we built our mecha or maneuvered could make the combats incredibly short of very long drawn out battle sequences.
That's the best praise I can give for a combat system.
Chapter 5: The chapter about running games with mecha. The chapter basically points out in detail some concerns to any good mecha campaign. That battles in the middle of downtown are likely to make you very unpopular with the locals yet compelling reasons should probably be found why you are on a deserted island to duke it out. The chapter covers in concise, if again short, detail what type of people should be drawn to operating mecha. It gives tips for players and Game masters to sound more like 'mecha experts' in game. It also points out fairly that the rules for mecha can just as easily be used to simulate tank or airforce pilots as well as giant robot pilots.
I still put my money on the EVA's vs. jets....unless its America.
Chapter 6: This is the sample campaign of which Heart Quest is famous for. In one of those homage/somebody should worry about their lawyer being called incidents 'Asuka Dangerous'’ suspiciously looking like Asuka Soruyu heroine is a mecha pilot out to help the Japanese Self Defense Force against the proliferation of dangerous mecha in the hands of...yes....BAD PEOPLE (okay the book handles it much more seriously but this is how it would be handled in anime).
As befitting a mecha game the otherwise cute love story has a horrifying undertone in the fact that her puppy love crush is a no-bones-about-it terrorist. No redemption potential here, the guy is just scum. It has an interesting mecha robot with a personality of its own and serves the actual purpose of the sample campaign in giving a good idea how to handle mecha pilot and mecha creation. It also gives the book some of the romantic feel that is otherwise missing in a fairly straight rulebook for creating big a** robots that are often built for killing each other.
The Books interior art is extremely well done and superior to the Heart Quest main book, and some animes for that matter. It doesn't hurt that the women in this book are also older and fully mature women, including Asuka Dangerous' heroine rather than the glut of adolescents that proliferate the genre.
My only real complaint about the book is probably it lacks the Heart Quest trademark Bibliography that provides an anime guide as well as supplemental material for the game. The book is still pretty darn good though and I have to say I got more than my money's worth, something I haven't been able to say about a RPG supplement in a long time.
8/10
Steel Roses is available at http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=2203&
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
