There’s a lot of really cool stuff happening in Edge of Tomorrow, but the thing that caught my eye first was the power armour. It seemed very low-tech, like some of the rigs that have been proposed and even tested. Given that my game Starship Commandos also uses power armour, I think it’s evident I dig the idea.
But how do you use power armour in your game. What does it do?
It really depends on the system you are using. It might not even be noticeable, just another power/talent/feat that gives some advantages but doesn’t super-power the PC. In other games, it might amp up the character so much, she is far more powerful than characters without it.
For Starship Commandos it provided a series of benefits, and if one of these benefits applied to the situation at hand, the character gained a bonus die (best two dice added together against a target number). Without power armour, the characters weren’t defenceless, but they came to rely on their “harnesses” a lot, so when they lost access to those benefits – say, when someone triggered an EMP – they felt exceptionally vulnerable.
For a game like D&D, powered armour could basically be highly enchanted magical armour – giving AC bonuses as well as stat bonuses and perhaps some other benefits. In Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, power armour – like Iron Man’s – is simply the narrative framework for powers and does not necessarily make the character better or worse than any other character.
And, honestly, it’s not the mechanical benefits of power armour that intrigues me – it’s the aesthetics of it. Power armour just looks cool, whether it’s the armour from Edge of Tomorrow or something more like the suits in Halo.
You can read more about Edge of Tomorrow at Wikipedia and IMDB.
You find more Edge of Inspiration articles here.
You can find out more about Marvel Heroic Roleplaying here.
You can find out more about Starship Commandos here.
You can use this conceit as well. As discussed in earlier articles, this might be to train up characters or to change their intent or outlook. They might live the same event over and over again, unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to reach the preferred outcome, until they find a solution with which they are happy. This might be teaching them skills, or forcing them to examine their own motivations – which also happened in the movie. Cage didn’t just learn to become a warrior, he accepted self-sacrifice as necessary. He became willing to give it all to save the human race, something he had not accepted at the outset of the movie, in contrast to even the worst of the soldiers which appeared as supporting characters.
The time travel in Edge of Tomorrow is interesting because it isn’t voluntary. Much like Groundhog Day (the most common comparison), at a certain point time resets back to another point. In Edge of Tomorrow, it’s the main character’s death.
The character of “Cage” in Edge of Tomorrow really only has the talker part of that. He grows into a gunner and a fighter, but that is the point of the movie – his character arc to becoming a warrior in order to save the world. There is no point in dividing Cage up into multiple characters except you get multiple characters who are emphatically not soldiers.
I’ve got a new soundtrack I’ve added to the playlist: Edge of Tomorrow scored by Christophe Beck. I should probably write a review of the movie, which I really enjoyed, but for now, I’ll focus on the soundtrack. I was really pleasantly surprised. The impact of the score wasn’t as obvious to me as I watched the movie. I had that experience with Man of Steel which made me go grab the soundtrack soon after I finished watching the movie. I was going through possible additions to my music folder, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the album cover for Edge of Tomorrow. I tried to remember the score, and realized I really had liked it. Specifically, I remembered the scene of the invasion (the first time). So I went and listened to the samples provided, and I really dug it.