When playing a mech-themed tabletop role-playing game, you may, in the fullness of time, find yourself locked in a death duel with your nemesis: the ace pilot of the enemy side. To draw comparisons from mecha anime: the Char Aznable to your Amuro Ray; the Ypsilon to your Chirico Cuvie; the Alex Rosewater to your Roger Smith. You will, for drama's sake, no doubt clash with your nemesis in single combat, each of your bipedal tanks slugging and blasting and strafing it out to see who survives to tower over a war-torn galaxy buried in the twisted and fused rubble of ambition. If it's a proper close contest, you and your nemesis will bust off all of your ammunition and be forced to grapple and pummel one another hand-to-hand to settle the vendetta. During this death-clench you may stand your ground, do-or-die . . .
. . . or . . .
. . . you may avail yourself of this awesome Optional Rule: Victory By Means of Induced Vadering!
Here's what you do. When you're locked into that final death-clench, you engage your autopilot, you stealthily slip out of your cockpit, and you haul ass to the nearest spaceport. You book a spacefold to the planet where your nemesis's parents live. When you arrive planetside, you clean yourself up, and you put on your Sexy Self, 'cause you're about to seduce the silver, my friend! That's right! You use all of your wiles to seduce one or both of your nemesis's parents, and then you make sure you get your name on all the paperwork, baby! Because you're adopting your nemesis as your own child! BRILLIANT!!!
I think it's pretty slick, at any rate.
Obviously, this path favors player characters with high natural charisma stats and/or those explicitly trained in the arts of seduction. It'll also require quite a bit of research and investigation time, but that should work itself out, since you usually meet your nemesis relatively early on in your character arc, so just block out extra detective time for yourself.
If your nemesis's parents are dead, you may have to multiclass as a necromancer to pull off this particular caper. This will eat up more time. Or you could contract this out to a hired necromancer. This will eat up more money.
If your nemesis was grown in a vat or raised by a robot in an auto-creche-lotta these enemy ace types are war orphans as it turns out-then your task goes from seduction to impersonation. You basically conjure a Mother/Father/Guardian/etc from the psych profile you've compiled of your nemesis. If they're vat-grown, you may end up pulling a Frankenstein Routine-as, say, the military-industrial complex biohacker who oversaw the relevant production line of synthetics-which can be its own kind of fun, for sure!
However you do it, this all leads up to a confrontation where your nemesis comes home victorious . . . but then you jump on the scene to reveal yourself as your nemesis's Mother/Father/Creator/Bio-Vat Maintenance Technician . . . and another Final Battle ensues!
Which is neat, right?
'Cause usually it's the bad guy who gets to pull a cruel twist. But you're the good guy, and you're pulling the cruel twist. Which is a change-up, for sure.
I think it's neat.
