Gamba Robo!

Activate the Cosmo Drive! There’s a menace rampaging through the city demolishing sky scrapers with enormous chains made out of pure energy. The Army, Air Force and Navy have all been crushed by the towering robotic monster. You might be young and inexperienced, but you’re our last hope. Only Space Getnar V can take that thing down and you’re the one person who can control him. Get out there and hold that beast off until Getnar is charged up enough to fire the Hyper Wave!

Gamba Robo! It’s a celebration of those glorious old robot shows that let the imagination run wild. Blazing swords and projectile weapons that looked like animals flashed across the screen to the amazement of many a yound child. Sure, they were written for companies that wanted to sell toys, but they were AWESOME! This is your chance to project yourself into their world as a daring hero or to create your own “show” as the narrator and throw all kinds of havoc at the poor unsuspecting Do-Gooders.

The mechanic is very simplistic and both play and character-creation are left mostly to the whim of the Narrator. This is an extremely rules-lite game designed to capture the feeling of those fantastic classic super-robot shows.

Chain fists, drill arms and tomahawks made of lightning were a regular feature of the 1970’s giant robot shows. The robots had names like Daitarn, Voltes V and Mazinger Z. They had personality and charisma of their own. Those towering heroes were shunned by the next generations in favor of more “realistic” mecha that emphasized the vehicular nature of the machines. Blazing swords were replaced by machine guns and guided missiles. We were no longer watching super heroes. We were watching wars. As fabulous and sophisticated as the new mecha shows are, some of us will always long for the super robots of days gone by. Nothing thrills like a huge, laser-edged disk hurling from a giant arm to cut right through the
shoulder of some immense monstrosity because our hero screamed, “SPINNN… SAUCER!”


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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 10:38 pm and is filed under 24 Hour RPG, Free RPGs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Gamba Robo!”

  1. mat13 Says:
    April 14th, 2013 at 2:00 pm

    Hi Logan,
    I’m hoping to run Gamba Robo for my gaming group but whilst trying to playtest the rules first i have encountered a hitch. The dice gained by the robots energy source are in addition to the 1 die action the robot is allowed each round. But the rules don’t state how many energy dice the robot initially has in its reservoir or how many dice it can gain each round. Could you please provide clarification?
    Thanks,
    Mat

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