Universal Century Gundam

It is the year 0079 of the Universal Century. A half-century has passed since Earth began moving its burgeoning population into gigantic orbiting space colonies. A new home for mankind, where people are born and raised. And die.

Universal Century Gundam is one of the largest themes integrated on SRTMOO, with more than four decades of content spread across numerous media, including anime, manga, light novels, video games. SRTMOO has chosen to focus UC Gundam's integration on three core points: Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn (2010), Mobile Suit Gundam F91 (1991), and Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway (1989/2021). These entries are separated, in the original timeline, by 25 years; the timeline has been compressed to make all three viable entries.

Characters from other entries are welcome to be played, but their personal timelines should generally accord with a Unicorn-centric start. (The One Year War characters who survived, thus, are in their 30s or so at minimum, and similarly, Zeta/ZZ characters have experienced the meat of their plot. There's some wiggle room on some things, since UC Gundam in particular is a little bit of a mess to read at this point, and we're negotiable on a lot of points.)

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn is a story of the founding of the Earth Federation and the Universal Century. The mysterious Vist Foundation, a shadowy cabal of movers and shakers within the Federation, hopes to entrust the Earth Sphere's future to its residents, after decades of profiting off of an inconvenient truth of which only it is aware, and only it can prove. Depending on how it's used, this truth could lead to a brighter future or doom the Earth Sphere. In a world still reeling from the Axis Shock, what will come next?

Mobile Suit Gundam Hathaway

Hathaway Noa, son of Federation hero Bright Noa, has taken up arms against the Federation, a system he finds to be fundamentally unjust, despite fighting alongside it to preserve the world during the Axis Shock. The Federation once again brings its weight down on its already-downtrodden citizens... but is Hathaway -- operating under the name Mafty Nabiyu Erin -- even capable of changing a system so powerful? And does the attempt make him a hero, or just another terrorist?

Mobile Suit Gundam F91

The Crossbone Vanguard, the private military of the Ronah family, conquers significant portions of Federation space in an effort to establish a new aristocracy driven by noblesse oblige. Opposing this effort are youths like Seabook Arno, a young man struggling to survive amid the conflict.

Integration Notes - UC Gundam

The following are some of the key points that differ from Universal Century Gundam canon but figure into it.

• Universal Century Gundam is one of the least-touched themes, overall, in terms of what had to give, but adjustments have been made to encourage play or coincide with other theme events.
• The Axis Shock (0093) coincides with Future Century Gundam's Devil Gundam incident and Muv-Luv Unlimited: The Day After's Alternative V. Having these cataclysms concurrent and interplaying with each other, rather than keeping the Axis Shock separate from the other events, makes the decision to choose Alternative V more coherent and less pointlessly cruel.
• Operation Stardust (0083) serves as a sort of capstone to Evangelion Series's Impact Wars, themselves a follow-up to the One Year War. Its actual effects have been reduced; the historical record is distorted by overstatement of the impact of the colony drop by Britannia in the leadup to the Titans' formation.
• The current status of the Republic of Zeon relative to the Federation has been clarified, and is slightly closer than set out in Unicorn itself; this smooths out some sidestory content and makes it easier for PCs to be from the Republic of Zeon and participate in the plot in a meaningful way.
• Zeon incorporates elements of the Space Revolutionary Army of After War Gundam, which is also used as the name of the hard-right Zeonic political party of Monaghan Bakharov from Unicorn Gundam. This makes PCs from Gundam X slightly older, since their war ended 16 years ago rather than 15, but avoids inventing a whole second, more or less identical space revolution in the same general time frame.
• Obviously, Gundam F91 and Hathaway's Flash have been moved forward several years each to exist in the same space, in the usual SRW-y way. Accordingly, Hathaway is much younger when he gets his start as a revolutionary, in play; this doesn't hugely harm him, however, given SRW has already played Hathaway's Flash somewhat straight with a 16-year-old Hathaway. Hathaway's Mafty revolutionaries are a close ally of the Black Knights, and share a faction, due to their similar approaches and feel; this also gives the Black Knights more Size M mass production units.

The following are some things that are not integrated.

• At this time, there are no plans to be particularly aggressive about accommodating post-ZZ manga and light novel sidestories such as Gundam Walpurgis, Moon Gundam, or Advance of Zeta. Players interested in these slices of theme should treat them essentially as if they are not yet integrated, but could be (see Post-Hoc Integration for more information).

Development Trivia

The following are some fun notes about the design process that got us here.

• During the first iteration of this project, Unicorn was even more central to the game than it already is; ultimately, however, Unicorn is a much smaller, more personal story than many other integrated themes, and ultimately took more of an escort role despite the overall footprint of UC Gundam's timeline being very large.
• The reason for the use of the Universal Century calendar, perhaps-surprisingly, wasn't UC favoritism! Unicorn is the only show to specifically care about the calendar, so we said, 'well, no one else cares and UC does; may as well.'