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The Robotech RPG #2
The RDF Manual (Robotech RPG Book 2) by Kevin Siembieda
This essential guide to the Robotech Defense Force (RDF) immerses you in the world of mecha combat, high-stakes adventure, and heroic sacrifice.
As a member of the RDF, you'll pilot iconic mecha like the Veritech Fighter, engage in intense dogfights, and explore the secrets of the SDF-1. With detailed character creation rules, mecha stats, and equipment guides, you'll be equipped to take on the challenges of the Robotech universe.
As a member of the RDF, you'll pilot iconic mecha like the Veritech Fighter, engage in intense dogfights, and explore the secrets of the SDF-1. With detailed character creation rules, mecha stats, and equipment guides, you'll be equipped to take on the challenges of the Robotech universe.
Mass Market Paperback
First published December 1, 1987
26 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Siembieda
205 books52 followersKevin Siembieda (born April 2, 1956) is an American artist, writer, designer, and publisher of role-playing games, as well as being the founder and president of Palladium Books.
Palladium Books, founded in southeast Michigan, claims to be the first to implement a role-playing system intended to work for all genres and to introduce the perfect-bound trade paperback format to the RPG industry.
Some of the role-playing games Siembieda helped produce include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985), Robotech RPG (1986), After The Bomb (1986), and Rifts (1990).
Siembieda is also an artist, best known for occasionally illustrating Palladium Books' products. In 1978, he started the now-defunct Megaton Publications in Detroit, publishing a digest style title called A+ Plus and several other titles. He also contributed art and cartography to several early Judges Guild products (for both their Traveller and Dungeons & Dragons lines).
Palladium Books, founded in southeast Michigan, claims to be the first to implement a role-playing system intended to work for all genres and to introduce the perfect-bound trade paperback format to the RPG industry.
Some of the role-playing games Siembieda helped produce include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (1985), Robotech RPG (1986), After The Bomb (1986), and Rifts (1990).
Siembieda is also an artist, best known for occasionally illustrating Palladium Books' products. In 1978, he started the now-defunct Megaton Publications in Detroit, publishing a digest style title called A+ Plus and several other titles. He also contributed art and cartography to several early Judges Guild products (for both their Traveller and Dungeons & Dragons lines).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 26, 2020
Great reference book for Robotech games. nice art and layout. Recommend
April 15, 2010
The time of the Macross Reconstruction is a difficult one. Very detailed Robotech supplement and excellent resource I have used many times.
September 3, 2020
Short, sweet, and absolutely mind-blowing!
This book, perhaps more than the first rule book, solidified my love for the Robotech RPG more than any other. Here, at last, the world is fleshed out (well, the New World, at least). A few new items of tech and a few new vehicles are added in; however, this is not where my heart skipped a few beats. There is also a timeline to bring us up to date from the events of the cartoon series to the default time frame of the game, that glorious future year of 2016 (*published in 1993* - oh, what promise we felt).
The world is not necessarily as it seems, and not everyone is happy with the United Earth Government. Here we see more information regarding the Barony of York, the Free Nation of Quebec, the Arkansas Protectorate, and the beginnings of the Argentine Merchant Republic, all working to disquiet the North and South American Sector. But more to the point, as a budding young communist, eager to devour everything about the Soviet Union, younger me found five, beautiful words: Eastern Bloc Soviet Independent State (EBSIS). A ridiculously clunky name for a nation, admittedly, but here is our true enemy. Yes, the Zentraedi are a threat and dangerous, but the political intrigue of a new Cold War and an organization capable of funding an entire network of Anti-Unification Rebels/Terrorists. How can one not love that? We also see that the EBSIS is amassing their own army of Zentraedi as well being ravenously hungry for any RDF Mecha that they can obtain on the Black Market (oh yes, there's a Black Market).
Of course, one can not forgot the expansion of the RDF into the naval realm. Here we see that there are two massive classes of ship plowing through the oceans as the RDF Navy, of which they operate at least a half dozen of each; the Prometheus-class Submersible Aircraft Carrier and the Daedalus-class Submersible Landing Ship (not to mention the Iapetus, the Prometheus-class which was gifted to the EBSIS as a goodwill gesture). This also comes complete with some rules on how Mecha operate underwater.
Did I mention that I love rules, charts, tables, and graphs? Well, let us welcome the addition of the Random Hit Location table. Finally, we have a mechanism to utilize all of the actual damage locations in Mecha vs. Mecha combat.
Lastly, we have oodles and oodles of Random Encounter tables for the wastelands of North and South America, as well as a Random Village creator. Literally hours and hours of adventures can be crafted from outright combat encounters, to the exploration or ruins and wreckage, to encounters with refugees and villagers, and everything in between.
This book, perhaps more than the first rule book, solidified my love for the Robotech RPG more than any other. Here, at last, the world is fleshed out (well, the New World, at least). A few new items of tech and a few new vehicles are added in; however, this is not where my heart skipped a few beats. There is also a timeline to bring us up to date from the events of the cartoon series to the default time frame of the game, that glorious future year of 2016 (*published in 1993* - oh, what promise we felt).
The world is not necessarily as it seems, and not everyone is happy with the United Earth Government. Here we see more information regarding the Barony of York, the Free Nation of Quebec, the Arkansas Protectorate, and the beginnings of the Argentine Merchant Republic, all working to disquiet the North and South American Sector. But more to the point, as a budding young communist, eager to devour everything about the Soviet Union, younger me found five, beautiful words: Eastern Bloc Soviet Independent State (EBSIS). A ridiculously clunky name for a nation, admittedly, but here is our true enemy. Yes, the Zentraedi are a threat and dangerous, but the political intrigue of a new Cold War and an organization capable of funding an entire network of Anti-Unification Rebels/Terrorists. How can one not love that? We also see that the EBSIS is amassing their own army of Zentraedi as well being ravenously hungry for any RDF Mecha that they can obtain on the Black Market (oh yes, there's a Black Market).
Of course, one can not forgot the expansion of the RDF into the naval realm. Here we see that there are two massive classes of ship plowing through the oceans as the RDF Navy, of which they operate at least a half dozen of each; the Prometheus-class Submersible Aircraft Carrier and the Daedalus-class Submersible Landing Ship (not to mention the Iapetus, the Prometheus-class which was gifted to the EBSIS as a goodwill gesture). This also comes complete with some rules on how Mecha operate underwater.
Did I mention that I love rules, charts, tables, and graphs? Well, let us welcome the addition of the Random Hit Location table. Finally, we have a mechanism to utilize all of the actual damage locations in Mecha vs. Mecha combat.
Lastly, we have oodles and oodles of Random Encounter tables for the wastelands of North and South America, as well as a Random Village creator. Literally hours and hours of adventures can be crafted from outright combat encounters, to the exploration or ruins and wreckage, to encounters with refugees and villagers, and everything in between.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews