WHAT'S UP WITH MEKTON: THE RANT

First, many of you have heard our strategy concerning Mekton through the MZMailingList or other mecha boards, so I apologize for redundancy, but based on my mail, a lot of people haven't, so let me offer a little about what's up with this line and why.

Mekton is R. Talsorian's oldest game. In fact its older than R. Talsorian, which was formed after the feedback at our local con, DunDraCon, convinced us that there was a market for an anime role-playing game. But being an older game right now has its disadvantages. Right now the stores are hot to stock new things and picking up a new supplement for an old game which has been dormant for awhile is not at the top of their list. This makes it hard for us to get the line up and running again. Fortunately for Mekton, we have Mobile Suite Gundam out of translation and into editing right now (Thank you, Benjamin Wright!).

Slight digression on Mobile Suit Gundam. Some years ago, Mekton Zeta was published in translation in Japan under license. It did well and the same folks involved with that came back to us and said "We have the Mobile Suite Gundam license. Can we use a variant of the Mekton Zeta system to make a Gundam game for publication in Japan?" Well, Gundam being the granddaddy of all mecha programs, or as we like to think of it, the Gone with the Wind of anime, we were delighted and agreed with the provision that we would have first whack at the English language publication rights. It's a big, beautiful book with masses of detail which also is just darned fun to play whether you're a Feddie or a Zion (or just look like one).

Why is Gundam taking so long? Because we have never published a book from translation before. Not only that but Gundam is so large and complex that it will probably have to be two books. But trying to figure out how to handle an important book like this when you can't read it can be challenging.

Well, since Mobile Suit Gundam and its many children are now getting American TV time, our hope is that retailers will be excited about picking up Gundam and this will lead to interest on their part in other Mekton related projects. What would those be? The first campaign book, written by the Atomic Rocket crew and cooling its heels for awhile now, is called Quicksilver Blues. We think it creates a new Mekton world you'll like a lot. There will probably have to be a second Gundam book and who knows - if we do a good job, perhaps we can talk to our licensors about a Gundam Zeta book?! Also near the top of the list will be a Mekton Zeta world book. We feel that while our emphasis with Mekton has been the ability to adapt it to all sorts of mecha anime, that the line has suffered from the lack of its own setting.

So those are our thoughts about Mekton right now. Feel free to send us your thoughts if there are things you would like to see. Meanwhile we're working on Gundam and will keep you up to date.