Editing Mobile Suit Gundam (section)

== /tg/ relevance ==
Gundam, being as old as it is and with a lot of lore to boot, has had a good bit of influence on /tg/ over the years. Mostly this is in the form of homages, inspiration and outright ripoffs, but there ''are'' several licensed games either released or in the works.

First and foremost among these is [[Mekton]], which rips off Gundam at least as much as it does Robotech and other anime popular with 90s [[Weeaboo]] types like Mike Pondsmith. There's even an optional rule in Mekton Zeta called "The G-Factor" to represent the franchise's tendency for limbs and such to get exploded by one good hit. Readers wondering what the G stands for are directed to "ask us at a con and we'll be happy to enlighten you." Perhaps because of this a Japanese publisher back in 2000 chose Mekton as the basis for their officially licensed RPG '''''Gundam Senki'''''. It uses 2d6 for rolls and changes several other rules to tailor the game to the setting and mitigate Mekton's notorious swinginess. This includes special rules for Newtype bullshit, awarding bonus rerolls for high pilot skills and making "The G-Factor" mandatory; using 2d6 in itself also helps a lot by reducing the impact of exploding dice. An English translation by R. Talsorian has allegedly been in development hell since 2004, with only fragmentary documentation of the new rules by fans. Recently /tg/ has been [[/tg/ gets shit done|getting shit done]] and drafting a from-scratch translation of the core rulebook.

Its influences can be felt in many other games, such as [[Battle Century G]] (though it does admittedly pull more from "Super Robot" rather than "Real Robot" anime), [[Jovian Chronicles]], and the mecha you can play with in [[BESM]]. There are also numerous fan hacks for other systems such as [[Genesys RPG]], [[FATE]] and /tg/'s very own [[Mobile Suit Mechanicus]], as well as generic wargame rulesets like [[MechaStellar]]. We would also be remiss to point out the [[Tau]], considering rumors persist to this day that they were created when GW saw how much money Gunpla makes and wanted a piece of the action.

Lastly, Bandai has recently seen the explosion in the popularity of /tg/ products in the 2020s and finally committed to some official tabletop games, namely a trading card game similar to the Digimon TCG and Gundam Assemble. Gundam Assemble is the thing fans on both sides of the Pacific have been begging Bandai to make for literal decades, an official Gundam wargame with proportionally-accurate miniatures and real rules. The minis are notably single-color (where Gunpla kits usually use multiple colored sprues so they can look good without painting) multipart kits with a similar level of detail to Entry Grade Gunpla, continuing the industry trend of [[Games Workshop]]'s sculpt quality being crapped on by every single other manufacturer. The scale seems to be "32mm" in that everything is rescaled to be about the size of a 32mm scale human, even when it's a giant like a Zeong or even an entire warship, while the rules are card-based and seemingly similar to [[Marvel Crisis Protocol]]. Anything more will apparently have to wait until the game launches in 2026.

=== Gunpla ===
What made Gundam a success was in large part through the sales of model kits of the various Gundam and Mobile Suits. Gundam Plamo, shortened to Gunpla, are model kits of the many Mecha that have appeared in Gundam shows down the years. Over time the quality of these kits has risen to the point where Mythbuster's Adam Savage has praised the engineering that has gone into certain Gunpla Kits. Gunpla are modular and use an internal skeleton that allows kits to be combined and kitbashed together to create multiple combinations and allows for a lot of creativity on the part of skilled modellers. Gunpla is often a gateway drug to both military modelling and wargaming in general, as the skills required to build Gunpla are the same skills used to make a Games Workshop kit.

[[Category:Weeaboo]]
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