Factions in the Survival Paradigm

GATES Market Index EKAA +12, ASNZ -15, SWAI +59, QZXX -132, GEM -1750 ACTIVE CAT2+ KAIJU USA GIGANT SURGE (CAT4 Houston TX), STRIKER CENTIPEDE (CAT2 Kansas City MI), WYRM EXILE (CAT3 Portland OR), HAMMER EMERGENT (CAT4 San Diego CA)

 

NEW YORK, 2PM EST (BREAKING) Renegade pilots allegedly stand down during dual Category-4 events GIGANT SURGE and HAMMER EMERGENT as kaiju attempt to breach prototype General Engineering Materials (GEM -1750) bunkers. GEM spokespeople are reportedly requesting TacNet (QZXX -132) provide identifying information for all pilots refusing to engage, citing "attempted stock manipulation" on the eve of the official rollout of GEM's new CONDOR armored real estate project - of which the San Diego and Houston bunkers were the flagship models.

 

- - - 

In any city under the Survival Paradigm, there are always two simultaneous crises. One is the obvious - kaiju. Each worse than the last, always barely outscraping your response capacity in some novel and horrible way. The toll is always manageable (for those in power) and devastating (for you).

The other crisis is the ever-hungry jaws of disaster capital, which in this world of perpetual disaster has become the primary financial engine of the planet. Investors always have a scheme, and they aren't just looking to make pennies on the dollar here - they're playing for all the marbles. If they're a big player, they want to kneecap another big player and become even bigger. If they're small-time, they want this plan to break them into the big time. And they're willing to break anything in their way - the planet; the city; your friends; you.

GMs should have two simultaneous and intertwined plots going on. One involves the kaiju and their escalating threat; perhaps a new development to protect the city, or a way to make the kaiju think twice about next time. The other involves the hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, and megacorporate interests playing with the city like a connect-four board.
 

This isn't a game about shadowy conspiracies like SEELE or the Illuminati controlling the world from behind the scenes. While the specific details of any corporate plan will be obscure, financially obtuse, and most certainly difficult to stop, the powers that be rely on sheer scale to protect themselves - not secrecy. The people destroying the world have names, addresses, Twitter accounts, and public IPOs. And they all hate each other, but not enough to stop punching the little guys (you) in the process.

 

All the information about their schemes is public, especially if you know where to look. Journalists have made careers investigating these stories, then lost their careers and lives breaking these stories. Or, more often, they've kept their careers, and no one's cared. Nestle keeps on using child slaves, Coca-Cola keeps on hiring death squads to murder dissidents, everyone and their mother has a tax shelter on a private island, and you add a few more atrocities to what you know about the world. There's no New World Order. There's the same awful world order as always, just spinning closer to destruction than ever before, while a handful of fuckers loudly flaunt how rich they've gotten by destroying it.

 

by Eddie Mendoza

GATES Market Index EKAA +10, ASNZ -12, SWAI +63, QZXX -251, GEM -2931 ACTIVE CAT2+ KAIJU USA STRIKER CENTIPEDE (CAT2/Kansas City MI), WYRM EXILE (CAT3/Portland OR), ANGEL SIEGE (CAT2/Miami FL)

 

HOUSTON, 2:30PM CST GIGANT SURGE event resolved (estimated casualties 9000).

SAN DIEGO,  3:45PM PST HAMMER EMERGENT event resolved (estimated casualties 15000).

NEW YORK, 6:45PM EST (UPDATE) Both prototype luxury CONDOR bunkers have been destroyed, after which point pilots on the ground handily dispatched both kaiju with minimal casualties. Collaboration between pilots has been alleged by both GEM and TacNet, the latter of whom has released all personal information on pilots connected to their command network during the engagements to the SEC under the "GameStop Law" of 2021 that allows retaliatory action by endangered corporations on charges of suspected collective stock manipulation. Commensurate federal investigations have been opened... (DEVELOPING)

 

- - -

 

The Survival Paradigm is an international treaty, signed in 202X as a response to the rapidly escalating threat of kaiju attacks. It formally acts as a statement of intent to maintain the existence of humanity as a species and organized global civilization, declaring a global state of emergency and ceasefire on all human wars until the cessation of the Kaiju Crisis. To this end, it establishes a variety of international councils to manage resources and ensure cooperation of various nation-state and corporate actors.

 

Paradigm Coordination Council

Coordination is the main body of the Survival Paradigm, as a 15-member security council of major stakeholders in global defense. Five seats are permanently held by nation-states, representing almost 4 billion people worldwide - the United States of America, the People's Republic of China, the Republic of India, the Federative Republic of Brazil, and a composite delegation representing the European Union as a single actor. Five more are permanently reserved for leading corporations in the mechtech sector; while these initially were rotating seats, they have stabilized within the past decade to be held by the GATES: General Engineering Materials, Aerospace Northern, TacNet, Eka, and Stormwatch. The final five seats are yearly rotating seats held by either nation-states or corporations, recently trending towards a 2/3 split.

 

The Coordination Council chooses priorities for research and tactical response, declares regional and continental states of heightened emergency for high-category kaiju, and intercedes in humanitarian crises to resolve them to the benefit of the Paradigm. Deployment of paranuclear weapons must be authorized by the PCC, due to their vast collateral damage costs and unknown effects on the environment, collective subconscious, and/or fabric of reality.

 

Warmer World, Colder War (email newsletter, 202X)

...rumors persist that the Russian Federation was cut out of the PCC's permanent seats by the demand of the United States, who refused to sign onto the Paradigm unless they crippled the political power of their longtime rival...

Minimum Viable Path to GATEhood? (excerpt from Financial Times article, 203X)

...corporations constantly vie for the prestige and power of becoming the "Sixth GATE", and startup pitches often include their path to GATEhood through gaining a seat on the PCC...

Paradigm Development Council 

Development is the research and finance arm of the Paradigm. Nation-state signatories pay tithes into a collective Paradigm defense fund, which is then distributed by grants to a variety of research conglomerates and promising mechtech corporations. After the dissolution or repurposing of global militaries, the PDC gained access to the military budgets of its signatory nations - and through the PDC, so did big business.

 

The PDC is the primary source of income for the GATES and the rest of the mechtech sector. While all have diversified into some combination of national and municipal defense contracts, consumer products, corporate partnerships, and land rents, PDC funds are the kingmakers of the corporate world. As such, council membership is fully infested with lobbyists performing regulatory capture on the largest scale. Boondoggles and moonshots can be fully funded in a matter of days, if you just know the right people and convince the giant pots of money that your project will be the one that can raise their bottom line.

 

Decades After Dissolution, NATO Remains Global Powerhouse (excerpt from Huffington Post article, 203X)

...despite this, it does not go unnoticed that 4 of the 5 GATES are North American, and the 5th (GEM) is based in the EU. This gives the former NATO countries outsize power in the Paradigm, and the accompanying preferential response capabilities and resource distribution. The interests of NATO remain the interests of global capital...

 

Public-Private Partnerships: Public Protection or Protection Rackets? (excerpt from political science undergraduate thesis paper, class of 202X)

...the United States, Canada, UK, and Australia all operate under the TacNet model of distributed kaiju defense. This model - full privatization - is incredibly rare in the rest of the world. China and Russia (among others) relegate kaiju defense to their national militaries, deploying within conventional command hierarchies and providing salaries and benefits to their pilots. The European Union, India, and Brazil follow a combined-arms approach, with militaries hiring private mech contractors to execute anti-kaiju operations within a particular region or city. In this essay I will...

 

Paradigm Adjudication Council

Adjudication was established as a judicial body for mediating conflict between governments and corporations without resorting to wasteful military engagements. Low-level disputes are mediated through regional judiciaries, drawing legal personnel from existing systems. Higher-level disputes are settled through courts with between three and nine judges.

When a dispute cannot be settled out of court and judges believe that a decision in favor of either party will jeopardize the stability and impartiality of Adjudication, they have reintroduced the controversial practice of trial by combat. Each party nominates a mech pilot to fight in their stead, and the first to forcibly deactivate their opponent in the arena is declared victorious and given preferential terms by the judges. These gladiatorial trials have become high entertainment - prosecutors and defenders on the international circuit are equally experts in the field of law and the field of battle. Because these conflicts are between nations and corporations, they do not lack for funding, and trials-by-combat are as often expos for new mechtech as they are attempts to enforce one's will on the international scene.

Imperial Legacies and the Truth About "Pirates" (clipping from anarchist zine)

While all human wars are under "indefinite ceasefire", imperial paramilitary operations continue as private military contractors make their reputations and fortunes protecting supply lines. Hired ostensibly to prevent kaiju interference and protect local population centers, they don't discriminate between kaiju and human "pirates" - and often deem kaiju attacks too dangerous for their pilots, forcing underequipped and desperate local fireteams into the meat grinder in their stead.

 

The terminology of "pirates" is also a misnomer - these supply lines are just the most recent evolution of extractive plunder from the colonies to the imperial core, and anyone striking back against the continued imperial looting of already-impoverished nations are executed for Paradigm violations with extreme prejudice...

Suited Up: Inside the Lives of the Modern Gladiators (excerpt from dust jacket)

...contains exclusive interviews with both the prosecution and the surviving family members of the defense in the infamous VOID CHIMERA reparations trial, chronicling the extensive blackmail, bribery, and sabotage on both sides leading up to the climactic confrontation and its interruption by the Category-4 kaiju FUSION RIPPER...

by Vu Hoang Hiep

GATES Market Index EKAA +663, ASNZ -10, SWAI +92, QZXX [TRADING FROZEN], GEM [TRADING FROZEN] ACTIVE CAT2+ KAIJU USA ANGEL SIEGE (CAT2/Miami FL), VECTOR ARTIFICE (CAT2/Anchorage AK)

 

NEW YORK, 8:00PM EST (UPDATE) Trading in both TacNet and GEM stock has been frozen to "preserve the integrity of public defense". CEOs of all five GATES have given statements to the media in full support of maximum federal penalties for all pilots who allegedly "abandoned their duties as defenders of the American people". GEM has suspended its CONDOR project pending the results of its subsequent lawsuits. TacNet has deactivated all suspected collaborating pilots' TacNet accounts, and is reportedly hiring high-profile private contractors from firms like Eka (EKAA, +663) to supplement tactical demands in relevant metropolitan areas. Eka is notable for its highly polished social media presence, eccentric billionaire founder Jan Tomas, and high-collateral-damage combat record.

 

- - -

To populate a city with factions for a Survival Paradigm campaign, roll 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, 1d12, and 1d20 on the following table. If you roll the same faction twice, there's an internal conflict boiling over where people are forced to take sides - whether between different branches, feuding executives, or the workers and management. Then, roll 2 Relations for each faction to see who they're interacting with and what they're trying to do.

 

If two factions are related to each other in seemingly conflicting ways, remember that the factions are made of lots of people and none have perfect information on the other's goals. Wheels within wheels ceaselessly turn, grinding us all to dust. If one faction rolls that it's trying to undermine or defraud itself, there's internal conflict - someone is trying to pull a fast one on their own people.

Factions (d20)

1. General Engineering Materials (GEM). Controls entry-level mech fabrication, Eschaton core mass production, kaiju corpse harvesting and processing, TacNet's pilot supply contracts. Constructs millions of modular mech chassis a year. Facilities include factories, kaiju processing plants, prototype subscription-service bunkers. Wants to expand into real-estate - specifically launch bays and bunker construction - to vertically integrate all infrastructure in the urban battle space.

 

2. Aerospace Northern. Formerly Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop; forced to merge after Paradigm forced radical reinvestment from NATO militaries into mech sector. Controls advanced mechtech development, military holdover patents and facilities, elite mercenary supply contracts. Focuses on bleeding-edge prototype tech, including paranuclear weapons, Wants to be as big as it was when it was the primary contractor for the United States military, instead of just one of five.

 

3. TacNet. "Uber for mech pilots". Controls the app, uses vast profits to contract GEM for mech manufacturing and Stormwatch for algorithmic kaiju event prediction. Vital nexus of capital in the mechtech sector, and the de-facto tactical coordinator in all United States combat zones. Wants the status quo to stay stable as long as possible, actively kneecaps corporations trying to rise to the GATES. Has heavily-fortified tactical command bunkers in all major metropolitan areas, and invests in launch bays for rapid response (renting a berth isn't cheap).

 

4. Eka. Mercenary company turned bespoke mech manufacturer, media darling with incredible PR department and army of online stans. Deploys their own fireteams to prove their proprietary "kaiju-inspired" tech in real combat conditions; high-casuality engagements are nevertheless flashy and impressive tech demos. Jan Tomas, controversial and high-profile entrepreneur founder, makes constant media appearances to keep Eka in the media - made his initial fortune in the crash after the first kaiju emergences. Isn't profitable; kept afloat by vast VC streams and needs those flows to remain intact.

 

5. Stormwatch. Controls the largest server clusters in the world, manages orbital infrastructure. Provides hosting for TacNet, develops/deploys/operates the advance kaiju warning satellite network, space launch systems, AI predictive systems, paranuclear orbital weapons platforms. All this tech comes out of their R&D wing, STAR Group (STormwatch Advanced Research). Funnel promising student projects directly from university campuses into STAR, providing great benefits and vast resources in exchange for exclusive rights.

 

6. Municipal government. In the end, it always comes back to the city. State capacity handles everything it's too difficult or not glamorous enough to privatize; like roads and sewer systems and power lines. Depending on who's in power, they might be trying to sell off even the unprofitable parts, or trying to claw back a little of the capacity their predecessors divested in order to provide for the citizenry. Either way, the mayor's office is a vital chokepoint for anyone trying to ensure corporate dominance - with the stroke of a pen, they can give you the keys to the city, and send your rivals packing.

 

7. Startup. Galvanized by low interest rates, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, and the PDC pour trillions of dollars into every idea that seems vaguely promising or sounds good on paper. The key buzzwords to make a cool billion change every few months, and the business plans seem to only get stranger over time. Attitude and aesthetic are what gets a startup off the ground, but don't make profit - not that any of their founders seem to understand.

 

8. Hedge fund. These piles of money exist only to grow as quickly as possible. Their managers make shrewd investments in companies they believe are the future - but are quick to hang them out to dry if it becomes apparent their money will be wasted. Slick, greasy, willing to do anything to keep their investments safe and their dividends flowing in. It's not like anyone will regulate them for making an end-run around such petty things as "legality" - they have the money to field the best corporate lawyers (and Adjudication gladiators) available.

 

9. Real estate magnate. Land is the ultimate source of capital. Everyone needs to sleep somewhere; every corporation needs physical space for factories and server farms and offices; every government needs space for bureaucrats. The Kaiju Era has made real estate a riskier proposition, what with giant monsters shredding entire neighborhoods, but this just means that landlords have grown more cutthroat and brutal. Rents on shielded kaiju-safe condos with integrated bunkers are sky-high, and the slums that grow around devastated areas are the only option for anyone who's lost their home to a kaiju - a monopoly that slumlords are more than happy to exploit.

 

10. Local politician. Every political party has a political opponent, whether the established Party-in-Opposition or a political outsider rising on the strength of their demagoguery. Opposition politicians have an agenda, don't like the way things are being run, and are willing to make waves to get their way - especially if they have an extensive war chest from interested parties.

 

11. Mercenary company. There's strength in numbers. The alternative to TacNet, mercenary pilots are contracted by states and corporations with money to burn and hard targets that need an extra layer of defense. PMCs differ in their symbology, tactics, tolerance for collateral damage, and PR history - but if a company wants to survive, they need a certain ruthlessness that refuses to consider humanitarian goals when they conflict with their mission.

 

12. Criminal syndicate. Deprivation creates a demand for smuggling; hard times create a demand for illicit substances; a dangerous world creates an opening for protection rackets. Syndicates crop up everywhere, operating under the radar with impunity in a world that has much bigger fish to fry. They might be less exploitative, on net, than the corporations. They might follow some sort of code. There's a million reasons to get involved with criminals - but it always paints a target on your back, and there's no honor among thieves.

 

13. Kaiju Responders' Union. Unionized with the air line pilots association, KRU-ALPA (under the AFL-CIO) is the premier mech pilot union in the states. Naturally, TacNet hates them, as do the rest of the GATES and their regulatory capture stranglehold on mechtech development and production. Despite the vast array of unstoppable forces deployed against them both on and off the battlefield, they've won some important concessions: mandatory corp-funded search and recovery services for KRU-registered pilots after battles, free chassis repairs to original specs, and corporate coverage of 50% of pilot funeral expenses.

 

Most pilots aren't KRU. They've been scared out of it by TacNet's marketing and higher bounties for non-union pilots, or they're gunning for GATES sponsorships (few make it, but those who do are rock stars), or they've joined a mercenary corp for lucrative state contracts. KRU also tends to get the brunt of media blame when ops go very, very wrong.

 

14. Military remnants. The dissolution of military apparatuses under the Paradigm and mass reallocation of state/manufacturing capacity to kaiju defense left a whole lot of material and disgruntled soldiers behind. While many retrained to become mech pilots or cops, military bases are covered in old hardware that still works just fine. Whether arms dealers, local mercenaries, criminal syndicates in their own right, or political extremists demanding a return to the good old pre-Paradigm days of imperial conquest and overseas slaughter, ex-military troops are a wild card searching for a home in a world that deems them obsolete.

 

15. Paradigm Coordination Council. Coordination steps in when an area is under increasing kaiju threat; sending military officials to work with local stakeholders and prepare a large-scale defense plan that ensures the threat is neutralized with minimal damage to Paradigm signatories. Signatories include: corporations and governments. Notable exclusions: people. High-risk neighborhoods are designated "ablative buffer zones", entire fireteams of pilots are thrown at the threat as acceptable casualties for reconnaissance missions, the brutal utilitarian calculus of necropolitics deems some lives to matter and some to not. Property is protected. You are not. And the threat is approaching regardless.

 

16. Paradigm Development Council. Development typically acts on an international scale, but local municipalities are useful testbeds for new initiatives and technology. If there's a big contract in the offering, they often turn cities into free-enterprise zones where each bidding corporation tries their hand at a proof-of-concept pilot program for several months. Whoever's most effective gets the contract - and everyone who gets shafted has to live with it.

 

17. Paradigm Adjudication Council. They have a presence everywhere there's likely to be skirmishes between corporate and state interests. While local branches try to stay under the radar, every so often a major case emerges that everyone knows will end in trial by combat. When the media starts baying for blood, they ramp up the coverage, and the trial's progress becomes a daily news update.

 

18. Rapture Futures, LLC. A research group approaching the current eschaton from a divinity studies perspective. Surprisingly widespread, their research projects investigate the strange side-effects of the Eschaton Core - and while they were founded by highly conservative think-tanks, recent sweeping changes in leadership have opened up opportunities for progressive researchers to make waves. Notably not funded by the PDC, but well-funded regardless.

 

19. University. The Kaiju Era has opened up a universe of questions, and entire fields of science are mutating to approach them. Department heads and enterprising graduate students can get a lot of money if they play their cards right, and sometimes they ask the right questions to get world-shaking answers. Corporations are always scouting for the best-and-brightest, and students often end up taking on pilot gigs on the side to make rent.

 

20. Cult. Between the Kaiju Era Neo-Gnostics, the Church of the Sainted Pilot, kaiju worshippers, the Techno-Rationalists, prosperity gospel evangelists, Marxist-Calvinists, and devotees of the American civil religion (praise the Checks and the Balances and the Commander in Chief!), there's a million burgeoning sects scraping the symbolism of these endless end-times for believers and tithes. They might be trying to build a new world, or might just prophesize the end of this one - but they have a way of growing and metastasizing and bubbling over at the worst possible moment.

 

Relations (d10)

1. Undercutting...

2. Pushing ... out of the area

3. Contracted by...

4. Advertising against...

5. Trying to acquire...

6. Allied with...

7. Blackmailing...

8. Defrauding...

9. Bribing...

10. Funding...

Downtime in the Survival Paradigm

Not every day is a pitched battle against titanic monsters clawing their way out of the hidden places of the earth to menace the populace. You still need to eat, shower, fix your mech, fix your sleep schedule, go to your second job, and if you're lucky you might still have time for a much-abbreviated social life and/or therapy. This post contains the unglamorous half of the game - when you aren't melded body-and-soul to twenty tonnes of metal and lightning, when you have to realize that global capitalism is just as crushing and punishing as the monsters it demands you face.

 

Pilots

You are just as important as your mech, no matter what TacNet's corporate policies imply. Gameplay during downtime - i.e. whenever you're not in a kaiju battle - is much more freeform, but you have a few stats and defining characteristics that let you resolve actions with unclear success chances and interesting consequences of failure.

To resolve such an action, the GM picks one of the Pilot stats and has you roll a d6 under your stat to see if you succeed. If you roll the exact value of your stat, you critically succeed, and get something extra for your trouble. If you fail the roll, that doesn't necessarily mean you lose everything - just that the GM gets to add a complication to your action. If you roll a 6, however, you do unequivocally fail.

Each stat has a value from 1 to 5. You start with 10 points to distribute between them. They don't model specific physical qualities of your character; humans tend to be more alike than you'd think (especially when they're all mech pilots eating canned noodles and getting way too little sleep). Instead, they represent your character's strengths of personality, and what talents you rely on when all the chips are bet against you.

Cunning: Actions that require cleverness, trickery, guile, or subtlety. If you have high Cunning, you can think circles around anyone else, and know exactly what (and what not) to say to get your way.

Grit: Actions that require stubbornness, determination, sheer force of will. If you have high Grit, you can face adversity head-on and weather any storm.

Prowess: Actions that require training, skill, general excellence through practice and achievement. If you have high Prowess, you excelled in the academy and can put those lessons directly to use in your life.

 

Pilots also have a Background, where they came from before becoming a pilot. Backgrounds are freeform descriptors that let you automatically choose to succeed with complications (as if you'd rolled above your stat, but below a 6) instead of rolling a stat and risking failure whenever they apply. For example, if your background is "Delivery Driver", you might apply that to any time you're in a car chase, or looking for a hidden location. If your background is "Physics Degree", you might use that to fast-talk a scientist into giving you information, or to interpret kaiju attack data to predict the next one.

Finally, each pilot has a Crisis that determines what Debts they start with (in addition to their initial mech core loan). All pilots need a Crisis - there's a reason you got into this vital, lethal, awful, essential business, and it's not for the adrenaline rush.

 

Sample Crises

Addiction: Living expenses debts are incurred at Category 2.

Car Debt: Start with an additional Category 3 debt and a new car.

Credit Card Debt: Incur Living Expenses debts each season you didn't have at least two fights.

Inherited Debt: Start with a Category 4 debt that can be reduced by 1 each season in which you hire Accountants (see Debt rules).

Kids: Incur an additional Category 1 debt each season.

Medical Debt: Start with an additional Category 2 debt and a Category 1 injury.

Nice Pad: Living expenses debts are incurred at Category 3, and you have a prime apartment in a building with kaiju-grade reinforced plating and defenses.

Student Loans: Start with a Category 4 debt and an additional Background from your degree (or whatever chunk of it you completed).

 

Debt 

Instead of currency, you have debts. Breaking even is a win condition. Debts have categories, like kaiju. They're about as devastating to your personal life. You can pay off a debt with the reward money from a kaiju attack of that category or higher.

 

Category 1: Ambulance ride. Bail (minor crimes). Living expenses (one season).

Category 2: Buying a used car. Funeral expenses. New mech system or weapon. 

Category 3: Core loan to build a new mech. Gender affirming surgery. 

Category 4: Student loans for an undergraduate degree. Immediate life-saving medical intervention. Experimental mech system. 

Category 5: Home ownership. Cancer treatment. Paranuclear weapon, single shot.

Debts don't combine to create debts of a higher category, but you also can't pay off multiple lower-category Debts with a higher-category bounty. Every debt you incur means you're gonna have to fight one more kaiju.

You can go into debt of your own volition, and will have to in order to stay on your feet. Mech repairs, medical debt, living expenses, and extra Core loans can be of whichever level's necessary to keep you moving and fighting.

If cumulatively the categories of your Debt ever sum up to 10 or greater, you can't take on more. If you don't clear a debt that season, your character is forcibly retired. You have to sell off your mech, move into an even tinier apartment, and start working minimum wage.
    
Your Credit Rating is based on the category of the largest kaiju you've defeated. Debts for equipment, training, housing, etc can only be voluntarily taken on if their category is less than or equal to your CR. Medical debt and other involuntary debts happen anyway regardless of their category.

In a season you don't have at least one fight (perhaps you took a well-deserved vacation, or have an injury you don't want to exacerbate), you incur a Living Expenses debt. Every subsequent season you haven't paid it off, and don't have a fight, it increases by 1 Category.

There's predatory payday loan companies around every corner. If you want to, you can use them to pay off a debt this season in exchange for a debt one category higher next season.
    
You can get accountants on payroll to fiddle with your debts and make payments that violate the rules. At the end of the season, this incurs a new Category X debt, where X is the number of times you've had the accountants perform their financial wizardry.
    - Pay off multiple debts with a higher-category one
    - Take on a debt of a category higher than your Credit Rating
    - Take on a new debt when you've got 10 or more cumulative points of debt
    - Stay solvent and in your mech if you have 10+ debt and didn't pay off a loan this season
    - Something else, if you can think of it and they don't see why not.
    
Once you've finally cleared all your debts, you finally gain the option to retire and take on a less dangerous profession. You can't do so earlier without facing total destitution - if you had other lucrative marketable skills, you wouldn't be piloting a mech. Good luck.

Seasons
A Season is a unit of time. There's roughly 4 seasons in a year. They don't correspond to seasons, they correspond to financial quarters. The weather's fucked anyway, "fall", "winter", "spring", and "summer" don't mean much when global climate catastrophe has been in motion for half a century and kaiju are manifesting natural disasters we don't even have names for yet.

In a season, you can take on as many kaiju deployments as you want, but you can't pay debts until you decide to stop fighting and end the season.

When a season starts, and between kaiju battles, you can engage in any interactions or systems you want. Acquire gear, take on debts, follow plot threads, repair your mech, etc. This is open-ended pilot-scale RP, like any other tabletop role-playing game. Often during this time, the GM will let you know that there's a local kaiju attack, and give the party the opportunity to suit up and fight it (you can choose not to, but to paraphrase a great man - "Where do you want to die? Here, or in a mecha?").

You can and should also seek out kaiju to fight on your own. It's your job, after all. When you do, the GM will give you d4 options; you must choose at least 1.

When players decide they've had enough and need to lick their physical and financial wounds, they can choose to end the season, and Payday occurs. On Payday, players are awarded bounties and use them to pay off debts of their choice. You can't stockpile bounties to pay off higher debts later unless you have accountants - your creditors are calling and knocking on your door.

 

Repairs and Injuries
Compared to your body and your mind, mechs are a trivial fix. Order some spare parts, put in the elbow grease, bill it to the company as mission-critical expenses (thank the unions, they fought hard to win you that benefit). At any time between fights, you may restore all damaged systems to maximum capacity. However, attrition is a slow but efficient killer - every 10 damage you take to a stat over time will reduce its maximum by 1 due to overall wear and tear.

You don't have health insurance. If you want medical care, it'll cost you. During fights, any Overflow damage over your core systems' remaining stats is applied directly to you (if one of your systems takes 4 damage when it's only at 3 remaining, you take 1 damage personally). 10 Overflow is instant death unless you immediately take on a Category 4 debt.

Otherwise, healing your damage requires taking on a loan equal to Damage/3, rounded up - 1-3 is a category 1 debt, 4-6 is a category 2 debt, etc. If you're strapped for debt and taking on multiple fights per season, you can save paying your medical debt for later - but if you haven't healed it, Overflow carries over between battles and you're that many points closer to instant death. You can always take on debts above your Credit Rating for medical care.

 

If you don't take on debt to heal Damage by the end of the season, you get a chronic injury that nothing but time can heal (well, time and money and physical therapy - but the point is, the docs can't do anything for it in the short term). Injuries let your GM inconvenience you in a variety of ways inside and outside the cockpit, and also come in categories - dictated by the category of debt you'd need to go into to heal it (but chose not to). You can accumulate multiple of the same Category of injury.

Category 1: GM can force you to reroll a die once per fight OR GM can make a Strain roll fail once per fight OR GM can force you to reroll a die outside of combat once per session.

Category 2: GM can immediately have you fail a roll once per fight OR GM can reroll a damage die against you once per fight until it's higher  OR force you to fail a roll outside of combat once per session.

Category 3: GM can make a damage die deal max damage against you once per fight OR GM can make you go last in the initiative order once per fight OR reduce one of your Pilot stats by 1 permanently.

You can spend a Season resting and recuperating to decrease an Injury's category by 1. That means no fights, and this can't reduce it below 1. It's not a particularly cost-effective option, but someone needs to fight off kaiju - and if everyone decided to lick their wounds instead of going into the meat grinder, we'd all die a horrible death.

When your mech is cratered, with all its stats reduced to 0 and you crawling out of its crash harness broken and bloodied, you can refurbish your mech by upgrading the category of your Core loan. If you've paid off your Core loan, or your existing loan is already Category 5, you'll have to take on a new one.

 

Equipment and Progression

Someday, you're going to need a bigger boat. When you do, there's plenty of options - from TacNet's Direct-To-Pilot lifestyle weaponry brands, to old Air Force surplus missiles auctioned off by ranking officers turned arms dealers, to the Lockheed-Northrop-Boeing conglomerate's maximum-collateral line of bleeding edge systems. All mech systems and weapons suppliers are more than happy to sell you the latest and greatest - with repayment plans they describe as "more than fair, generous really, you'd be lucky to find anything better at this bargain price".

Buying new equipment incurs debt, and is the only way to advance your mech's capabilities.

 

Weapon: Category 2. Comes with a free mod. You can have a maximum of 4 weapons on your mech at any time, and may swap between them during down time at will.

Additional Weapon Mod: Category X, where X is the number of mods on the weapon already. Can't be moved between weapons without some risky tinkering.

New System: Category 2. Category 3 if it costs 6 or more points. You can only have a maximum of 20 total points in systems, and may swap between them during down time at will.

+X points in a stat: Category X. Can't get more than 10 points in a stat, or more than 20 total points in stats overall.

 

Experimental Tech: Always incurs a Category 4 or greater debt. You need high-up connections with corps or militaries or academies to look at this gear in person, and it goes without saying that you don't break it in the field. This is the good stuff - weather inducers, miniaturized paranuclear weapons, orbital drop systems, flash-clones.

 

Temporary Gear: You can rent gear for a much cheaper price - just make sure you give it back in one piece. If you rent a new weapon or system, decrease the Debt category by 1. This might even be free for special high-level deployments - you can't fight a kaiju in the stratosphere without an air frame, for instance. While you can return the gear immediately after the fight to pay back the debt, you can keep it until the end of the Season and add that debt to your increasingly long pile of bills. On Payday, it'll get repossessed whether you like it or not.

 

Extras

By default, you have a deal on a garage that serves as your warehouse and hangar bay. These come rather cheaper for mech pilots - it's considered part of lifestyle expenses - but are as bare-bones as you'd expect. There's a variety of lifestyle extras you can shell out for, if you're willing to pay.

 

Health Insurance: Incur an extra Category 1 debt each season. You can heal the first 5 damage you take per season without incurring debt. May be bundled with life insurance to take as one lump Category 2 debt each season.

 

Life Insurance: Incur an extra Category 1 debt each season. You do not incur your first debt for lethal damage each season. May be bundled with health insurance to take as one lump Category 2 debt each season.

 

Launch Bay Access: You have access to a proper mech bay, with rapid-response launch tubes and high-quality comms systems. You can deploy to any sector of the city your bay is in at the start of a fight, and get +1 to Response Rolls to determine how the rest of the fight is going (this doesn't stack if multiple people have launch bay access). Incur an extra Category 1 debt each season. Can be bundled with Warehouse into a lump Category 2 debt.

 

Warehouse: Your average garage is a tight fit for one mech frame; even tighter considering all the loose boxes and machining equipment and tools scattered all over any surface you can convert into a temporary workbench. If you want, god forbid, another frame - or even just to share space with another pilot - you'll need to rent something bigger. Incur an extra Category 1 debt each season. Can be bundled with Launch Bay Access into a lump Category 2 debt.

 

Accountants: See Debt rules. Category X debt, where X is the number of times you have them break the rules. Minimum 1.

 

Disaster Insurance: 20 years into the Kaiju Era, nobody's counting giant monster attacks as "acts of God" anymore. Paying for this means you won't have to upgrade your mech's core loan (or get a new loan) if it gets cratered. Incur an extra Category 1 debt each season.

Second Job: You get to pay off an extra Category 1 debt each season, but only have the time to do one of the following between each mech battle:

- Repair one of your mech's stats.

- Swap out weapons and systems.

- Buy and install one new weapon, mod, or system and install it.

- Seek medical treatment for damage suffered in combat.

Mechs in the Survival Paradigm

://pilot.manual.era//:

The Kaiju Era is roughly comparable to the smartphone era, in terms of where we are relative to its beginning. Many remember the world before, but there's no way back.

The first kaiju attack occurred fifteen years ago. The Survival Paradigm became international law eighteen months later, marked by the first mass mech deployments. The military-industrial complex finished restructuring to a total war footing between mechs and kaiju shortly after. The international economy has never been stronger. Protections for workers and pilots have never been weaker.

The largest mech deployment occurred five years ago. Operation: OUTER GOD slew the largest kaiju to date, in orbit at the L1 Lagrange point. Debate still swirls in academic circles on whether it could be considered a Category 6. We haven't seen another one yet. We think it's only a matter of time.

The mech gig economy is not the only model of defense. However, its prevalence (backed by Pentagon contracts and the bloated mass of American taxpayer dollars spent on the final human wars) has terminally warped everyone else's strategies. They piggyback off of TacNet's satellites and early warning grid; global supply chains are all precisely tuned to build prefab small mechs in bulk; research into other solutions has been chronically underfunded in favor of "proven strategies".

Some nations marshal national defense mech fleets from a new military arm. Some fully decentralize their deployments under a more egalitarian system, where pilots are provided for by state healthcare and stipends. Those stories are worth telling, but they are not the ones told here.

This is the bleak corporate death-cult stranglehold of the United States of America, and you're one of the essential workers whose blood fuels its metastasis. Thank you for your service, hero. Here's your medal. Here's your debt.

 ://pilot.manual.core//:

The Eschaton Core is poorly-understood and difficult to scale, but easily replicable. When linked to a human cognitive experience, it provides clean (in conventional senses), easily-distributable, and controllable power. It obviously breaks conservation laws, yet is impractical as a civilian energy source for several reasons.

The amount of energy a core produces correlates to hundreds of factors. It seems to respond to linked pilot emotional state, surrounding energy fluctuations, kaiju proximity, *violence* and *meaning* and perhaps even *dramatic tension* (which scientists gave up on understanding a long time ago). You can't use this to power a plane or a city. It's not exclusively for mechs, but it produces exponentially more power in one than it does anywhere else.

While it's not a pollutant, it fucks up your brain. The connection's a two-way street. Prolonged exposure changes your cognition to match its use context - when all you have is a mech, every problem looks like a kaiju. Mech pilots become more combative, more self-sacrificial, more impulsive, and more heroic (according to their cultural notions of heroism). This leads them to early graves, even out of their mech.
   
For a pilot in the right mindset, the core will start to produce energy that can be harnessed through a dizzying array of auxiliary systems to produce seemingly magical effects. Flight. Force fields. Damaging auras of pure energy. Summoned beasts of light and fury, multiplying the destructive power of weapons tenfold. These are linked to the pilot's own predilections and combat style, as well as the stakes of the battle. In short, it takes a pilot's will, and makes it reality.
   
Our weapons are no longer mere wonders of science and engineering. Now the human element - meaning - translates directly into their power. Cultural context and lived experience are essential to pilot outcomes, so we've sent deeply traumatized individuals into a deeply traumatizing conflict, and expect them to carry the weight of the apocalypse on their shoulders.

://pilot.manual.basics//:

There's two types of test: a Roll and Strain. Each is a d10, usually against one of the mech's stats (Chassis, Engines, or Reactor).

Rolling is just a binary success/failure. Roll equal to or less than the target number to succeed; rolling over is a failure.

Straining always succeeds, but if you don't get equal to or less than the target number, you take damage. This is usually 2, and increases by 2 every time you Strain in a round, even if you don't take damage. Your first strain roll deals 2 damage if you fail, your second deals 4, third deals 6, etc.

Rolls and strain aren't interchangeable. You can't swap one for the other at will, only if a system or the GM lets you.

://pilot.manual.controls//:

On your turn, you get two actions for free. The base action types are Move, Attack, and System. You only get to do each action once.

If you want to take an extra action beyond the first two, you may strain the relevant stat. You can do this any number of times, in any order. These extra actions may be additional actions of a type you've taken.

When you Move, move to an adjacent zone. For an extra Move, strain Engines.

When you Attack, fire one of your mech's weapons at an enemy within range. Pick an ability to target, reduce the number of damage dice you roll based on the kaiju's Category, add any from weapon mods, roll damage, then remove all the dice with values equal to or less than the kaiju's Armor. For an extra Attack, strain Chassis.

System actions are based on whichever subsystem you're using. For an extra System action, strain Reactor.

Other actions exist and are up to you and the GM to adjudicate. Sheltering civilians with your chassis, picking up a new mech-scale weapon, making an impassioned plea to corporate overhead for reinforcements, pulling the body of your best friend out of the shattered carcass of their mech. Each of these would count as an action.

://pilot.manual.survival//:

When a Kaiju attacks your mech, you get to Dodge. Roll Engines; on a success, you avoid the damage. On a failure, you take it and go down hard. Allocate the damage to a stat of your choice (all damage to the same stat). Excess damage goes directly to you, the pilot. Every point of overflow damage you take keeps you out of action for a week. Medical care can reduce that time, but isn't cheap (this is, of course, the American healthcare system we're talking about).

When a stat goes to 0, roll on its Breach table. When all your stats are at 0, your mech goes from a somewhat capable battle machine to just another lump of battlefield scrap.

://mech.construction//:

You've got 25 points to build a mech. 1 point  = 1 in a core stat. All core stats start at 1 for free.

You can't spend more than 15 points on core stats. You can increase them through rewards and play.
A weapon is 5 points.

A system has a base cost in points and might scale for each additional point you put into it.

I encourage players to try to break this. If you do, congratulations, welcome to the big leagues. EXTERMINATE BERSERK is cutting a swathe towards Shanghai and we need all the warm bodies we can put in its way.

://mech.core//:

Chassis: A mech is only as tough as its frame. If the steel doesn't hold together, you've just got a garage of very expensive, very fragile, often explosive components. Roll Chassis for in-mech feats of strength, resisting damage, or holding together when you push your mech beyond its limits.

Engines: The joints and hydraulics and actuators that make your mech go. Sometimes includes actual rocket boosters or jet engines. Roll Engines for moving quickly and dodging attacks.

Reactor: Your mech's thrumming heart, cabled into your nervous system, beating in tandem with the rhythm of your thoughts. Roll Reactor for anything that needs its power, whether that's charging a system, unleashing raw energy, or sustaining a power drain from a parasitic kaiju.

://mech.core.breach//:
1. Crushing Strain: Strain for 3 damage instead of 2 for the rest of the battle.
2. Immobilized: You can't move under your own power until the end of next round. Afterwards, moving always strains Engines.
3. Neural Feedback Overload: Take 2 Overflow damage as the Eschaton core's context overlays itself partially onto your mind. Gain or increase the level of your the trauma Coreshock (rules forthcoming).
4. Shattered Windshield: All damage you take from here on out inflicts half as much damage as Overflow.
5. System Shocked: Your highest-point system deactivates for the rest of the battle.
6. Weapon Jammed: One of your weapons stops working for the rest of the battle.

://mech.weapons//:

First, pick your weapon's core. This determines its base damage die size and other innate bonuses. All weapons by default can't attack targets outside of the zone the wielder's in. Weapon cores with lots of small damage dice have higher baseline damage output and will have leftover dice after Category resistances, but scale worse with Mods and will get negated by Armor more often. Weapon cores with few but powerful damage dice fare better against armor, but get rapidly nullified by high-Category threats.

Remember how Kaiju resistances work: Armor ignores all damage dice with results less than or equal to the armor, and the Category reduces the number of dice you get to roll by (Category-1).

://mech.weapons.core//:
1. Accelerator: 1d10 damage, range 1
2. Blade: 1d10 damage, ignores 1 armor
3. Blaster: 3d4 damage, ignores 1 armor
4. Cannon: 2d6 damage, range 1
5. Missiles: 4d4 damage
6. Mortar: 1d12 damage, can only attack at range 2 (no closer)
7. Saw: 2d8 damage
8. Impactor: 1d12 damage
9. Rifle: 2d6 damage, always attack in First Strike phase
10. Rockets: 1d10 damage, range 1, explosive (hits everyone in target area, both allies and enemies)

Every mech pilot optimizes their weapons for certain situations that they're likely to face. Modifications set circumstances in which the weapon gets extra damage dice. Each mod will only provide 1 die, so a Missile mod will increase it from 4d4 to 5d4, while a Blade mod will increase its damage from 1d10 to 2d10.

All weapons start with 1 mod. More mods can be added after you've obtained enough resources from proving yourself worthy of further investment. You can't stack the same mod twice.

Some mods' conditions are easier to achieve than others, and some work better with certain weapons. This is intentional. Eventually, when fighting against category 5s that shrug off 4 damage dice before even considering any other defenses, you'll need to stack every advantage you can get.

://mech.weapons.modifications//: 
1. Anti-Armor: +1 die vs targets with Armor 3+.
2. Blitz: +1 die against a target that hasn't been hit yet this round.
3. Burst: +1 die vs targets who've taken 6+ damage this round.
4. Chemical: +1 die against targets suffering an ongoing debuff.
5. Combo: +1 die when fired alongside a Combo weapon on another mech. Both mechs must be in the same zone and acting in the same phase. Make both attacks simultanously.
6. Energy: +1 die when plugged into a larger, stationary power source like a Power Plant or Research Lab.
7. Fallback: +1 die if your mech's been Breached.
8. Fine-Tuned: +1 die if you haven't taken damage yet this combat.
9. Focused: +1 die vs targets that haven't moved yet this round.
10. Heavy: +1 die if you roll to Strain your Chassis as part of the attack.
11. Hunter: +1 die vs targets with Category > base damage dice.
12. Kinetic: +1 die if you've moved closer to the target this round.
13. Overcharged: +1 die if you roll to Strain your Reactor as part of the attack.
14. Rapid Fire: +1 die if you roll to Strain your Engines as part of the attack.
15. Reactive: +1 die if you've been hit by the target this round.
16. Reliable: +1 die if the damage would be reduced to 0. Roll this die after all the rest of the damage is tallied. Doesn't stack with itself.
17. Stabilized: +1 die if you burn a Move action first to aim (don't move, just expend the action).
18. Tactical: +1 die against abilities that the Kaiju used this turn.
19. Tracking: +1 die if the target's moved this round.
20. Twin-Linked: +1 die if you've fired another weapon with the same core on your mech this round.

://mech.systems//:

Each system scales by (points) or by (+). (+) is the number of points spent past the base value, (points) is the total number of points in the ability. The divisions in type are arbitrary and flavorful to make the d66 table come out nice.

[1] ://mech.systems.chassis//:
1. Auxiliary Limbs: 2. Can take any number of times. Each limb set passively reduces strain damage for either attacks (arms) or movement (legs) by 2 (minimum 1).
2. Bunker Mode: 4+. By burning a Move action, you can gain (points) damage reduction for the round if you haven't moved and don't move.
3. Hazard Plating: 3+. Reduce damage from extremes of heat, pressure, pH, radiation, etc by (points). Does not reduce kinetic damage, from things (like kaiju claws) hitting your mech really hard. Fully seals mech against fluids, gasses, etc. Can double damage reduction for the round with an action.
4. Heavy Armor: 4+. All attacks that deal (+) or less damage don't affect your mech. Can't have (+) greater than 6 (some experimental tech might increase this).
5. Stabilizer: 2. You can roll Chassis instead of Engines to Dodge. If you would be moved, you can strain Chassis to resist being moved.
6. Titan Frame: 8. Your mech is the size of a category 1 kaiju. You can always strain Chassis to reduce the number of damage dice rolled against you by 1.

[2] ://mech.systems.engines//:
1. Air Frame: 5. Your mech can fly. You ignore all ground-based hazards and can engage flying kaiju in melee.
2. Bore Drill: 5. Your mech can burrow. Whenever you move, you can choose if you're underground or on the surface. Underground characters can't target or be targeted by characters on the surface, and vice versa (area attacks that damage everything in a zone still harm you, as do attacks that can specifically target underground characters).
3. Grappling Array: 3. A set of high-tension cables and rocket-propelled hooks lets you grapple onto locations and targets in the same zone with a move action. If the grappled target moves, you do too. You can also use this to pull grappled targets with a strained Engines roll (large enough targets are hopeless to pull). When you take damage, you must make a strained Engines roll or choose to decouple.
4. Jump Jets: 2. Your mech has VTOL boosters. While you can't move laterally in the air, your jets will let you do vertical jumps up buildings or kaiju hide. You can engage flying kaiju in melee.
5. Lateral Thrusters: 2. When you successfully Dodge, you may move to an adjacent zone. Uses past the first strain Engines.
6. Reaction Boosters: 3. Your first Dodge each round can strain Engines instead of being an Engines roll.

[3] ://mech.systems.eschaton//:
1. Bioform: 3+. Grown from your cell culture strung over a kaiju-bone scaffold, the Eschaton Core is the raw beating heart of your meatpunk mecha. Restore (+) to a system of your choice at the start of each round. By taking an action to consume a large quantity of flesh, you can get a (+) bonus to one of your systems for the rest of the round.
2. Energy Shields: 1+. You have (points) damage resistance per round. Recharges at the start of the round. Doesn't apply to Strain.
3. Eschaton Manifest: (Points = Reactor). Pick a Kaiju ability or create an ability in a similar style. You can wield that ability by straining your Reactor. On a failure, the ability still occurs, but your core powers down until your next turn. All rolls are strained until it comes back online.
4. Gravity Hook: 3. You can roll Reactor instead of Engines to move. You can also move mech-size or smaller targets in the same zone as you with a strained Reactor roll.
5. Stealth Shroud: 4. You can disappear from the visible spectrum, making you unlikely to be targeted by the kaiju unless you're the only character within range (or it's hitting the zone you're in with an area attack). All actions while under stealth besides movement are strained, and taking damage decloaks you until the start of your next turn.
6. Teleport Beacons: 3+. As part of a move action, you can drop a Teleport Beacon in the zone you're moving from, or strain Reactor to teleport to any beacon you've set up. You get one beacon for taking this system and have (+) spares. Picking up a deployed beacon is free. Beacons are destroyed if they take any damage.

[4] ://mech.systems.reactor//:
1. Backup Batteries: 2+ Even if your Reactor is 0, you can always treat it as if it's (points) for rolls and strain.
2. Drone Carrier: 2+. You have (points/2) drones attached to hardpoints on your mech. Each has an unmodded weapon and a single system with cost less than or equal to (+). You can use a Move action to move each of your drones instead of your mech, and an Attack action to have one of them attack. Strain for these actions can be allocated to a drone instead, though if a drone ever takes damage it's immediately destroyed.
3. Heavy Reactor: 4. Reduce Reactor strain damage by 2 (minimum 1).
4. Modular Circuitry: 2+. At the start of your turn, you can choose a stat or a system to get a (+) bonus. You can't use any other stats or systems this turn.
5. Overdrive Vents: 2. Once per round, you can strain Reactor instead of another stat.
6. Spinal Mount: 3+. Pick a weapon. You can strain Reactor to give it (points) extra damage. You can only have one Spinal Mounted weapon.

[5] ://mech.systems.sensors//:
1. Black Box Neural Net: 2. Advanced neural nets give you advance warning of the kaiju's next move. You can take one of your actions each round immediately after the GM announces the kaiju taking an action, before the kaiju's action is resolved
2. Comptroller Matrix: 2+. You can spend an action to let an ally take a free action on your turn. They get plus (points) to one roll they make with that action.
3. Deep-Scan Suite: 2. If you can spend a whole round uninterrupted in the same zone as the kaiju doing nothing but gathering data on its capabilities, you learn one of its hidden abilities, and players can now target it.
4. Onboard AI: 4. If you get exactly the target number on a roll, you get a critical success and can do something extra (negotiated with the GM).
5. Satellite Uplink: 3. You know what the exact values of the kaiju's visible abilities are.
6. Targeting Optics: 3. When the kaiju exposes a weak point, your attacks ignore its armor as well as category resistance.

[6] ://mech.systems.support//:
1. Breach Sealant: 2. Once per combat, you can negate the effects of one Breach on your mech or a mech in the same zone.
2. Creature Comforts: 1. Heated seats, air-cooled cockpit, kaiju-leather control pads. No aches and pains distracting you. You can reroll one die per combat for free.
3. Custom Paint Job: 1. You can ruin your paint job to ablate one enemy attack. Recharges when you give it a new paint job out of combat.
4. "Juice" Injectors: 2. You can always act in First Strike if you want to, regardless of initiative. Take 1 Overflow damage if you choose to activate this in combat.
5. Shock Harness: 1. Reduce all Overflow damage taken by 2 (minimum 1).
6. Streaming Rig: 1. You can make some extra cash by livestreaming your fights. Rules forthcoming for downtime and bills and repairs and the like.