I’m smitten with this game mode.

Before bastions appeared in 2024-25 Dungeons & Dragons we had Crawlers in Salvage Union, communities in Mutant: Year Zero, and caerns in Werewolf: the Apocalypse. People have been finding ways to take care of their Player Character group and extended families behind the scenes for decades. Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 had us building merc companies and pooling resources, for example.

Mecha games almost always have to have this game-ified concept for obvious reasons. I think Salvage Union’s Crawler exemplifies this more than most games. Repairing and upgrading giant robots gets expensive fast. In Salvage Union, we have to look out for the community that supports the pilots of the giant robots.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

I had kind of a love/hate relationship with Salvage Union originally.

I did an overview of the game for RPG-A-Day 2024, but not a full review yet. That article is here. I’ve really grown to appreciate this game out of the many mecha games in my collection. Mechanically speaking the game is a bit fluffy. (Not crunchy like BattleTech or Heavy Gear.)

I hesitated to back the Kickstarter for this game, and I kinda kick myself for it. As d20 based games go, Salvage Union is outstanding. It’s almost like a heavily oversimplified Cypher System game. I think it’s fun because it has just enough mechanical bits (scrap) to keep things interesting.

Salvage Union has three game modes for lack of a better term. You have the pilots with their need to survive, relationships, and personal struggles. You have the mech salvage and sometimes combat component of the game. Last there’s the Crawler, Union, or community portion of the game. If one of those three components goes down, the entire game effectively grinds to a halt. This leads to a high level of intensity only Salvage Union can deliver.

A lot of old fart gamers hated on this game because of the Crawler/community component. According to at least two YouTube videos I’ve seen, Salvage Union is just short of a communist plot to take over TTRPGs. The Crawler is a commune according to these lunkheads and that makes the players communists for supporting that style of game play. I strongly disagree with that notion.

It’s just another play mode.

As a side note, I’ve studied socialism heavily as part of my Sociology degree. People often mix the two up. I’m a sociologist, not a socialist. However, if you dig heavily enough into Marx, you might find that he had a setup for society that has several benefits. It’s that you simply can’t trust everyone to do the “right” or uncorrupted thing in that society. I digress.

Communism and socialism are different. From Google:

Socialism and communism are two different ideologies that have similarities in their practices. Communism eliminates private property in the hopes of creating equality. Socialism seeks greater equality by creating more equal distribution of wealth.

You can also check out Wikipedia for more depth of information on Communism and Socialism at these links. A simplistic way of looking at the two concepts is Communism is the far right and Socialism is the far left of the political spectrum. Either the government owns everything (Communism) or the people own everything equally, everyone has the same amount of wealth, and it’s all in the hands of the people (Socialism.) Both concepts are fine ideologically, but they are easily corrupted in the hands of the people they are meant to serve, unfortunately.

Back to roleplaying games now. Salvage Union characters serve their Union. Labor unions are usually one of the first things to be eliminated whenever Communists or Socialists take over in the real world. Therefore, Salvage Union loosely represents Social Capitalism in its presentation of the Crawler Community. Without getting too much more philosophical, this Wikipedia article explains the concept in depth.

Salvage Union works like this: The Crawler, a giant mech in and of itself, carries an entire town on its back. Everything and anything needed by/for the pilots is on board or they have to go find it. Minimally the Crawler provides food, water, shelter, and defense for everyone on board. In game terms the PCs are in charge of this thing, its upgrades, and day-to-day functions.

The mech pilots have the privilege and responsibility to go into ruined post-apocalyptic areas that were formerly populated civilizations and find as much stuff as they can to haul back. The stuff is known as “scrap,” which is somewhat generic for electronic or mechanical parts to make things go. With enough scrap the Crawler and/or the mechs can be upgraded. Mechs gain armor, communications, chassis upgrades and more firepower. Crawlers can get all kinds of things including whatever can be done to a mech.

The challenge comes in what to upgrade.

The  pilots need the Crawler to survive in the nuclear/biological/chemical contaminated wastelands. In my game it’s actually zombies, robots, fungus, and other weird stuff because I’m funny like that. What’s more fun: nerve agents and bacteria OR zombies and alien contaminoids? I thought so.

Regardless of what cause the downfall of most of the planet, the Crawler is the means of survival and larger scale transportation. Please note that flight is almost non-existent in this world from what I’ve seen and read. Crawlers plod along, carrying the mechs, their pilots, service crews, and everything they need including their families. Those numbers of people add up fast.

I view this a lot like the world of Chrome Shelled Regios. (One of my favorite anime/manga series of all time.)  The domed rolling cities in that anime are very much like the Crawlers in Salvage Union. The only difference is fights between Crawlers are relatively rare and potentially more deadly if they can’t be resolved by peaceful means.

There’s a little extra work at the end of each session or between sessions in Salvage Union. Scrap must be allocated to Crawler upkeep. The tech level of scrap must match the tech level of the Crawler, or it doesn’t help. There’s also a matter of upgrading and repairing mechs that uses scrap as well. Upgrading a Union Crawler is a lot of work. It might almost be cheaper to build a new one after a certain point. On the bright side, scrap spent on upkeep also counts toward the upgrade, so that’s something.

I’ve actually considered that if I were a player I might be tempted to convince the group to squirrel enough scrap away to build the most basic Tech Level 1 Crawler just as extra storage space, and also as a backup in case the main gets blown to bits. The system is set up so that deterioration is almost inevitable unless the group is really bringing home the bacon on every run.

Luckily, the group gets to decide on most of the aspects of the crawler up front and even create NPCs for the various bays on the Crawler. There is no captain or any other rank. The PCs are pretty much the ruling council; however they want to break it down. That means the group is in charge, communally. (Not to be confused with communism. You can live in a commune without being a communist or a socialist, even.) The NPCs could mutiny if the group gets too out of hand, though.

Repairing, rearming, and reallocating resources could fall on one member of the group or be taken up by one math oriented member of the group who’s good at bookkeeping. It seems like we all have that one player who fits the bill. Then it’s just a matter of keeping that player honest, depending.

The responsibility should not fall back on the GM. The GM has enough on their hands already. Time and map management are a big deal behind the scenes in Salvage Union.

I think there’s a lot of fun to be had with community management and keeping track of a Crawler or whatever similar situation comes up in other games. It might be a starship, a small village, a bastion, or a massive quadmech with a town on its back. Regardless of what it is, have fun with it. Name it, decorate it, maybe even draw a schematic.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.