Titanomachina: Exploring the Design Space

Recently I've been playing with the idea of figuring out how to implement kaiju in Titanomachina, because people love having giant monsters for giant robots to punch, and kaiju are pretty awesome. In doing so it has occurred to me how much design space I have left open, particularly when certain things like the amount of space on cards and dashboards is considered. Here's the dashboard for a giant ape, for example. I haven't really figured out what to do with the area labeled 'HABITAT BUILDINGS' but the rest of it is pretty standard. What's not standard are the systems.  

Let's take the limbs, for example. Positioned at the four corners of the Titan's System Diagram these reflect how the giant ape is mostly quadrupedal and how those stubby legs aren't really kicking anyone except as a matter of last resort. Both Massive Arms and Stubby Legs have the normal option of combining a Walk action with an Attack action, but also the option of combining a Walk action with a Jump action, enabling the giant ape to jump over and swing around buildings in a single, combined action. Obviously those Massive Arms are going to be better at it than the Stubby Legs, but it's going to give that giant ape the mobility it needs, and represent the agility we've come to expect from 100m+ mega-simians. I think I'm going to peg the Massive Arms at Effect 3, and the Stubby Legs at Effect 2, and then have them at Charge 1 for the Walk & Attack, and Charge 2 for the Walk & Jump.

This walking, jumping, and attacking is almost all the ways that the giant ape is going to move around and inflict damage, and so to back these limbs up there's a Brain and Spine that will be able to Operate other body parts, for Effect 2 and Effect 1 respectively. Our giant ape will also be able to bite effectively, able to inflict Shock with such a bite, but that's to represent its ability to hang onto things with that bite as well as bite chunks out of its opponents. With sufficient fore-thought that giant ape is going to bite whole systems off though. Those share eyes will be able to Scan, allowing the giant ape to seize the initiative from whatever it's fighting. The flexible body will enable Twist actions so that the giant ape can swing its limbs, jaws, and gaze around a little more freely. 

Now the muscles and the heart at interesting because I want to try a full 9 options for Full Power, with the Muscles also being able to Block incoming attacks, and the Heart itself propelling that mammalian physiology to the heights of energetic violence. To offset the ability to continuously double down on punching and movement, the cost of activating these Full Power actions will be Charge 3 for the Muscles and Charge 2 for the Heart, effectively allowing the giant ape to activate a limb for some movement or attack and then to reactivate it for every five cards or so. The heart is, after all, a muscle that we use the most. With only 19 cards the giant ape is going to find itself needing that frenetic rate of activity, because it has no shields and no ability to repair damage... 

So these are 'new' systems, and they certainly need some more development, but they show how there's various actions available that can be mixed and matched for new systems, either as choices or combined actions. I've had suggestions for drone systems, teleportation systems, weapons that fire multiple shots (attacks combined with... attacks. BRILLIANT!), systems that create buildings, systems that pull rather than push, systems that push sideways, systems that increase the charge cost for systems played that round (an EMP pulse), systems that re-jig a Titan's system diagram (the so-called configuration cog), weapons combining both High Explosive and Armour Piercing, or that combine Shock and Hard Rounds, and so on. Having tracks instead of limbs (just Walk, no Attack), auto-repair instead of crew (just Repair, no Operate), or active counter-measures to Block an attack so that it doesn't hit the Titan at all. If giant robot/monster media has shown us anything, it's that there's all sorts of weird and interesting stuff out there that could be fun to implement in games. I think Titanomachina has a handy assortment of levels and ports available for expanding beyond the existing game without, as it were, bogging down the existing game engine of playing cards to carry out actions on the board.