Search
Review of Tears of a Machine
Disclaimer: I kickstarted this game because my daughter played it at Dexcon and expressed an interest in running it. Plus it had good people on the team whose names I recognized: Jennifer Rodgers did the art (Mortal Coil), and Nathan D. Paoletta (Annalise) did layout and design.
ToaM is a simple RPG about teenage mecha pilots defending the world. The setting uses the Apocalypse as its template: aliens called the Mayzor set up shop behind the moon, and they drop robot war machines on earth, including Magnas, beautiful white human figures scorched black by atmospheric entry. Humanity reeled before the aliens, virtually helpless.
A secret society within the Vatican duplicated the Magnas and lobotomized the semi-living machines so that humans could pilot the renamed SAInts (Sympathetic Android Interface). The SAInts can only be controlled by gifted teens aged twelve to eighteen, because of the precise neural interface requirements. There’s a delicate dance here, as the SAInts still possess some dark will of their own, and if the pilot’s ego becomes unable to control the mecha’s raging id, the machine cuts loose in the most destructive way against all in the vicinity, until the pilot regains control.
Weapons systems with biblical names complete the illusion.
The setting is less important than it appears to be. As anime fans probably know, the real story is about the teenagers’ struggles to mature into adulthood, learning self-control, self-worth, and creating stable relationships out of turmoil. The apocalypse and the giant robots are scenery for the stories of development.
The mechanics are simple, and mostly player-facing. Characters have five stats, each associated with two skills. Players use their stat value as a die pool, and take the highest die rolled. The related skill adds to the high die. If the high die sum beats the target value, the character succeeds. Characters may get Benefits, which add to the die roll, and/or Boosts, which only add extra bonuses to a successful result. Each point above the target number scales up the results. If the character fails, that means their opponent succeeds, and the character takes the consequences.
The game revolves around an Ego economy. Ego may be spent to Benefit and Boost die rolls. It also rises and falls based on the character’s successes and failures, provided the challenge is related to a character’s two motivations. A character has a Hope, the ideal they are striving toward, and Despair, the negativity they are trying to escape. A character’s Ego can be tied to a challenge by directly tapping their motivations or through a relationship with an NPC (characters always have at least one).
The players and Director (GM) should push for emotional significance to every challenge. As Ego climbs, the character becomes more effective, spending it for successes and to keep their SAInt under control. A character low in Ego is at risk of losing control, of being less able to overcome challenges, and even fall into depression. Collins describes the game as modeling an anime television series. A session is a single episode, with twelve of them representing a year in the characters’ lives. As characters grow older, they gain more skills, making it easier to succeed in actions, which should create a positive feedback loop where more success boosts Ego, which in turn makes it possible to beat harder challenges. But the enemy Magnas scale up too, and even the older pilots should find enough challenges. But in the end, pilots age out of the program on their 18th birthday, so characters must retire sooner or later.
Given my limited experience with anime, I found I didn’t properly understand what the game was really about until I’d read the GMing tips and references to source materials at the end of the book. ToaM seems to have done a good job creating a setting that pays homage to the genre, and has balanced the emotional content against the giant robot combat. Certainly the pilots’ emotional state is at least as important to their combat effectiveness as their stats, which speaks well for the game’s mechanics.
But the mechanics are also the source of my main concern: a game should have mechanics to support the core theme, and the game appears to point toward the characters' maturation, given the focus on emotions, relationships, and heading toward adulthood. The game lacks mechanics to model this beyond raising ego and skills. (If this was not the author’s intention, I apologize for misreading him.) How about deepening or resolving relationships, or having other measures of personal growth? A skilled Director can make this work, but the game ought to provide more support.
My summary? For a superficially simple game, ToaM will require a more Director involvement than simply setting up encounters and letting the players pound aliens with giant robots. Working a game that’s really about teen maturity will require an expansion to my GMing toolbox. The mechanics appear consistent and workable for one shots and short series, and decent GMing ought to be able to build good campaigns for this.
While it has nothing to do with the game itself, Collins is also releasing the book in an audio format, so that people who are unable to use text (such as people with vision problems or learning disabilities) can play it as well. This is a worthy goal, and I wish him the best.
I’m glad I supported this Kickstarter. May the SAInts preserve us, indeed.
Style: 3 (Average). The layout is effective but unexciting. The art is terrific, but sparse.
Substance: 3 (Average). Solid and pleasant, I want to play it, but not "wow".
