Heavy Gear is a tabletop tactical and role-playing game that debuted in 1994 from a company called Dream Pod 9. It is best known for the PC-game incarnations of it by Activision in 1997, developed after Activision lost the rights to the Battletech/Mechwarrior series. While best known for its mecha (called 'Gears'), you could drive anything or even play with your character on foot as an infantry soldier or even a civilian in a nonmilitary scenario: you could do whatever you wanted.

Story

Heavy Gear takes place on a distant planet called Terranova roughly 4,000 Earth Standard Years from now (story begins in 6132 AD). Terranova was once the crown jewel of the United Earth Government, which had abandoned Terranova and all the other colonies several centeries before, leaving Terranova in a sort of Dark Age. Eventually, City-States would rise and either through treaties or tyranny, these City-States would eventually unite to form the unions called Leagues. These Leagues would in turn unite (again eithe peacefully or forcibly) to form the superpowers that dominated the temperate southern and northern hemispheres of the planet.

The main forces at work are the Confederated Northern City-States (CNCS) and Allied Southern Teritories (AST). As of 6132 AD (TN 1936 local date), the polar superpowers are recovering and rebuilding from the War of the Alliance. The polar superpowers have great fear and animosity for eachother, while the independant City-States of the equitorial region known as the Badlands simply tries to survive the crossfire.