Friday, January 1, 2010

Universal Century EX

This is it. The next generation of Universal Century 3000. The One Year war has ended. The Principality of Near Earth Orbitals has redeployed the mighty NEOMF into it's constituent Colonial Militias and reshaped itself as the all-inclusive Orbital Republic. The Earth Federation, through diplomatic manipulation, has embarked on a thousand year governance plan concieved and directed by the Orion Group's "Appleseed Project" OLYMPUS government in cooperation with Earths most powerful economic concern, POSEIDON Industries of former Japan. The Nipponese super-corporation controls the world's high technology in close competition to OLYMPUS. The two megapowers joined in a coalition which decides the Political and Financial future of the Earth in a calcualtedly benevolent (hopefully) psuedo-monarchy. The A.E.G.I.S. military apparatus of the former Earth Federation will retain it's 3-part formation of Army, Navy and Aerospace forces largely unchanged. See the History and Timeline section for further information.


Universal Century EX contains all the developments of the UC3K campaign, fully realized as aspects of the campaign setting. The GUNNM additions, with further integrated back-story. The ElephantMen additions with advanced timeline and of course the BubbleGum Crisis additions with further elaboration of Boomer technology and integrated HardSuit rules. See the Rules and Roles section for further information.

UCEX is still set in the near future of the next 200 years or so in an alternate parallel Earth very recognizable to our own. A great civil war has just ended and the aftershocks of the conflict still reverberate through the Earth Sphere. See the Timeline and History section of this site for complete details.

UCEX still uses R. Talsorian Games' Mekton Zeta and Cyberpunk 2020 game systems. These being chosen for their simplicity, broad-spanning scope and adaptability, ease of learning and availability in .pdf format. However it now uses standardized Mechs from Dream Pod 9's Jovian Chronicles Mekton supplement setting AND incorporates the R. Talsorian Games' Fuzion-based source material for the BubbleGum Crisis role playing game. Also now included are additions from Richard Starking's ElephantMen comics and Yukito Kishiro's GUNNM manga better known in the State's as Battle Angel Alita.

UCEX incorporates a philosophy of encounter I term "Scaled Warfare" where the battle scenarios the player-characters will face are categorized into three stages. These stages representing degrees of potential destruction. The first level is Personal Combat which is scaled at humans in personal armor including light powered armor and now HardSuits. This uses hand weapons from swords to mini-vulcans. The next stage is LandMate Combat which involves Shirow's LandMate battle armors such as the Guges D and the Maximum Metal sourcebook's ACPA's and ElephantMen. This scale of warfare uses vehicular class weaponry such as 20mm autocannons and 40mm auto-grenade launchers up to light artillery. Also covered in this scale are Attack Helicopters, Tanks and Jet Fighters. Escalating from this stage is Mecha Combat which includes Exo-Armors, Main Battle Tanks, army outpost bases and the smaller naval vessels. Finally, there is BattleCruiser Combat which encompasses Starships, orbital BattleStations, Full army emplacement bases and the largest of naval vessels, even Colonies!

UCEX has a truly extensive array of weapons and munitions that will NEVER leave you wanting for more. Literally hundreds of weapons from automatic pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, assault rifles and so on, to exotics like microwave guns, hyper-vibrational and monomolecular knifes, swords and whips, EMP grenades, suitcase nuclear bombs, lasers, masers and tasers, including needlers and gas-powered airguns capable of delivering weaponized bio-chem attacks and the reality of ESPer psionic attacks.

There are over 100 vehicles from motocycles to cars and trucks to tanks! Including Blade Runner style VTOL aircars, Osprey Aircraft, and commercial to military planes, helicopter gunships and jets. As well as Shirow's Hermes aricraft featured in AppleSeed mangas and animes.

UCEX takes place in a milieu that is a mix of Masmune Shirow's famous APPLESEED universe and the space colonization setting of the early GUNDAM universe. Now with the added twists of the ElephantMen timeline and the BubbleGum Crisis technological additions brought over from the dimensional gate to "Alternate Earth".

In UCEX your characters will still be members of an elite military unit, the "AP Team" or All Purpose Team. Post war restructuring of the army by the Allied Earth United Government (A.E.U.G.) combines units from each of it's military branches into 4-10 man teams capable of tackling a variety of tactical and strategic situations. Sort of like TV's "The A Team" where one member is a heavy weapons and mechanical expert, one is a command-tactical officer, one is a pilot etc. Your characters have access to unprecedented military hardware on requisition, from pistols, rifles and grenades to tanks and jets and LandMates to Battle Mechs. Even effectively becoming command crew of a Star-Cruiser Battleship capable of travel between the planets.

The timbre of the campaign will be war-time space-opera, much like Star Wars or BattleStar Galactica presented on a scale of squad unit tactics like SOCOM or StarGate S.G.1. The upside is that the enemy is always clearly defined and you will take the fight right to them in streets, jungles, deserts and even in space.