Heavy Gear (off topic)

Hello all: Everyone at my game store is recommending the Heavy Gear
RPG/War game by Dream Pod Nine.  Could anyone tell me if system is any
good. I don't want to pluck down $30 bucks (a little pricey) for a bad game
system.

Later,

> Hello all:

> good. I don't want to pluck down $30 bucks (a little pricey) for a
http://www.uwm.edu/~cthulhu
> [quoted text omitted]

> At 09:54 12/03/97 -0600, you wrote:

> game system.
I'm a HG fan so I can give you an opinion..

HG is Primarily an RPG system. That's the most salient point. PART of that
system is a pretty good squad scale 'big mech' wargame. It's akin to
Battletech but much less complicated and easy to play. It's also much more
lethal. You can't sit there and duke it out in HG - most gears can take
in the region of 3 hits before they fail. It's based on a hex system rather
than using inch measures. It simulates combat fairly well, but doesn't go in
for Bubblegum Crisis style 'heroic combat', it's more realistic than
that. There are also a lot of minis/figures for it which are very nice
but not cheap. What you get is a wargame where movement and cover play a big
part and it's very quick to resolve,. As a component of the RPG it works fine
and you CAN play it as a wargame but a lot of the rulebook will be dead space
to you if that's all you do.

As a recommendation, I wouldn't really buy into HG purely as a wargaming
system, because that's not what it's about. If you are interested in RPG's
too, or just like anime based games it's worth buying.

                        TTFN
                                Jon