Concepts and Character arcs to fold into a rebooted G1.

[KingSwoop]

Suppose that you were tasked with doing a rebooted Transforms cartoon largely based on the G1 property. What concepts, characters, and character arcs would you adopt from other iterations of the story and why?

For example, here's some things I'd want to fold in from Armada:
1. Demolisher - "Missile Tank" is a very fun, very Decepticon alt mode. I like the idea of Megatron being a tank, and folding Bludgeon into the main cast (as a creepy tank ninja), but having Demolisher being a "reverse Starscream" and being loyal to Megatron to a fault sounds interesting.

2. {Starscream's betrayal & joining the autobots} - G1 featured Skyfire who defected (after not really being a Decepitcon) in the cartoon (and in the comic he was destroyed and given new life? Harsh!), but Armada Starscream defected for reasons to the autobots. IDW tried to do something similar with Thundercracker; and I can't say Armada Starscream's arc was great... or even good... but the idea of a Decepticon defecting is a good thing to try out. Obviously not with Starscream, though; but we do have this very loyal character, Demolisher, who I just talked about.... and having him swap sides would be substantive.

3. {Wheeljack} - An autobot turned Decepticon is a good idea to explore, but obviously not with Wheeljack. Of course there have been many good guys who defect to the 'cons, but what made Armada Wheeljack notable was that he seemed to defect thanks to Megatron's kindness towards him. Now that doesn't make a lot of sense... it's from Armada, remember; but the key features of this arc, I think, are (a) Armada Wheeljack is not evil, and (b) he doesn't un-defect. Maybe Megatron scouts him as a warrior and recruits him after the autobots think he's dead, or... maybe after prioritizing humans over saving him? This brings me to a second, substantive, change I'd want to make: Have this happen in the present day. As with G1, have the transformers be in stasis lock until the present day, but it strikes me that you could play up the epistemic dread of the Autobots not knowing if their planet is okay. (It always struck me that Megatron was so certain that Cybertron existed, and this strength of leadership kept his forces together when they could have given in to despair.) It's not hard to imagine our future-defector, with a later-wave toy, obv., pulling a Gears and complaining about Optimus's leadership or whatever. Not evil, but perhaps showing some cracks. Late in Season 1, or mid-Season 2, you can do the defection arc, which features Prime (or whoever is in charge of the unit) prioritizing humans and making a "tough call" leaving him behind. You could even show them return to the scene to look for him after the fact. But Megatron sees this warrior and recruits him. Frankly I think I'd set up a rivalry between him and Starscream earlier, so Megatron's choice here might just be to screw with Starscream for all we know. But he gives our Autobot the sales pitch about how Transformers are superior to humans; that he has a duty to his race to unite them under his rule and defend cybertron. Ideally we'll have had some light quintesson back story at this point setting them up as a threat that Megatron MIGHT plausibly be trying to unite the people against.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Grandus.

Also Barricade. Frenzy being totally surrounded by police cars, and just hopping in one of them and getting away is one of the greatest uses of the robots in disguise concept I've seen.

 

[Cybersnark]

Wildwheel from Cyberverse. He was aboard the Ark when it went down, but they couldn't account for him after everyone woke up. Then have him show up much later and reveal his whole side-story.

Shatter and Dropkick, just to give us more Decepticons (ooh, maybe have them turn up midway through the series as scouts from Cybertron, proving to everyone that Cybertron is still out there).

Slipstream, because we need more women. I'd like Arcee and Elita to stay on Cybertron, but I'm sure we could add a few Autobot femmes for parity. Maybe Road Rage or Catapult.

I'd also use the comic origin for the Dinobots; have them aboard as "marines" who were hit particularly hard by the crash (so it took additional months for Wheeljack and Ratchet to get them back online, and their vocal processors never quite worked right after that). For that matter, the "season-2" Autobots were also knocked out by the crash, which is why they were so slow to be introduced.

More of what was happening during the four million years back on Cybertron; Shockwave being overthrown by Trannis, then Straxus, then the triumvirate, and having to reclaim his authority, maybe a conflict between Ultra Magnus and Elita-1's respective factions, etc.

 

[Haywire]

Lots of characters from club D.A.N.G (Didn't Appear iN G1), of course!

From the live-action movies, there was a somewhat conscious effort to make the Decepticons have alt-modes that subverted authority (like Police and Military), Barricade being the best example. I think this should continue, particularly with rescue services and the like; as CoffeeHorse said, it's a great use of the robots in disguise concept, and gives the Decepticons that much more menace.

From Animated, the ideas of multiple teams operating at the same time. While Optimus' team was active on Earth, Rodimus and Sentinel (and presumably others) had teams active on other worlds. Likewise, we saw Strika leading her own team of Decepticons, one of many subsets of the Decepticon army.

From Armada, the third Minicon faction. This could be adopted for some of the Targetmasters, Headmasters, and Powermasters, as well as the typical Powerlinx connections.

From Cybertron, the lost colonies (which seems to have already been largely adopted) with divergent evolutions of Cybertronian colonists.

From RiD15, the prevalence of characters with animal or animalistic robot modes.

And, of course, introduce Gobotron and Gobots as another species (not descended from Cybertronians) that could compete or ally with various teams at times to shake up the status quo.

 

[Exatron]

I'd lean into TF One Bumblebee's line about there being a lot of _____waves and make all the highest-ranking Decepticons be named as such. Soundwave's in charge of Intelligence. Shockwave for Science & Engineering. Tidal Wave for the Space & Naval corps. Laserwave (maybe with an Animated Longarm design to contrast with a more G1 Shockwave) for the heavy artillery. Maybe something new like Seismic Wave for the ground forces.

Maybe even reveal that Megatron had wanted to call Starscream something like Stellar Wave, but he refused to go along with it.

Aside from Tidal Wave, there've been quite a few other characters that I'd love to add to bulk out the Decepticon forces. Blackout & Barricade from the movies, Lugnut and Slipstream from Animated, Airachnid from Prime, RiD Steeljaw, etc.

 

[KingSwoop]

Wildwheel from Cyberverse. He was aboard the Ark when it went down, but they couldn't account for him after everyone woke up. Then have him show up much later and reveal his whole side-story.

Shatter and Dropkick, just to give us more Decepticons (ooh, maybe have them turn up midway through the series as scouts from Cybertron, proving to everyone that Cybertron is still out there).

Slipstream, because we need more women. I'd like Arcee and Elita to stay on Cybertron, but I'm sure we could add a few Autobot femmes for parity. Maybe Road Rage or Catapult.

I'd also use the comic origin for the Dinobots; have them aboard as "marines" who were hit particularly hard by the crash (so it took additional months for Wheeljack and Ratchet to get them back online, and their vocal processors never quite worked right after that). For that matter, the "season-2" Autobots were also knocked out by the crash, which is why they were so slow to be introduced.

More of what was happening during the four million years back on Cybertron; Shockwave being overthrown by Trannis, then Straxus, then the triumvirate, and having to reclaim his authority, maybe a conflict between Ultra Magnus and Elita-1's respective factions, etc.

Slipstream & Roadrage seem like inspired choices.

I like the comic origins of the Dinobots, but I think we need something to get people excited about transformers and doing a Dinobot prequel would be better. Modify the IDW origin, with the Dinobots leaving cybertron to chase some villain or set of villains, they land on, effectively, Skull Island with strange energon properties, and then they beat their villain, only to be awoken much later when Scorpy & the Insecticons show up to mine the stuff. We then get Grimlock reassembling his team, interacting with (Very King-Kong inspired) humans, bashing insecticons, and then maybe fighting the Terrorcons or something in the finale (without combining, obv.) You can then reintroduce the dinobots into Season 1 if the full-on reboot, and probably fold them into the main team in Season 2.

Re: Cybertron - I've always been a fan of Marvel-style Decepticon factionism preventing the 'cons from finishing off the autobots. Still, I'm inclined to say that you have Iacon protected by some shield, probably related to Primus, and thus most of the autobots on Cybertron are isolationist civilians, while most of the decepticons have resorted to in-fighting. This way when the 'cons eventually break the shield, probably with Megatron's help, the new Autobots are as "innocent" as the Optimus's generation; artists and scientists and professionals, not warriors. Not sure if I like the idea of Iacon being destroyed... but you could have it's population flee to one of the (newly deserted) moons and/or to Earth (Cyberverse style, so they largely go undercover?)

Wildwheel... well, I'm all for autobots being "sent out early" like the Marvel comics origin of the Dinobots, but sending him out in the wild west doesn't make much sense unless he scans a horse... or a DeLorean? Your mileage might vary, but I think maybe a WW1 biplane might be a better target, or maybe a Hearts of Steel-style boat?

I'd lean into TF One Bumblebee's line about there being a lot of _____waves and make all the highest-ranking Decepticons be named as such. Soundwave's in charge of Intelligence. Shockwave for Science & Engineering. Tidal Wave for the Space & Naval corps. Laserwave (maybe with an Animated Longarm design to contrast with a more G1 Shockwave) for the heavy artillery. Maybe something new like Seismic Wave for the ground forces.

Maybe even reveal that Megatron had wanted to call Starscream something like Stellar Wave, but he refused to go along with it.

Aside from Tidal Wave, there've been quite a few other characters that I'd love to add to bulk out the Decepticon forces. Blackout & Barricade from the movies, Lugnut and Slipstream from Animated, Airachnid from Prime, RiD Steeljaw, etc.

I wouldn't focus too much on character names; I could see a UK Divebomb/Swoop-inspired story, but having characters rename themselves seems more confusing than it needs to be.

I don't know about Airachnid; she's a robot... but also a spider maybe? If you want to give me a triple changer Spider/Robot/Helecopter, I'm in. But I think what you really want is Blackarachania... and I don't think you can have that. You CAN have Tarantulus, maybe even being responsible for some time travel that causes history to be different (so you can cross over with G1's cartoon if you want!), but post-Beast Wars attempts at Blackarachnia have been iffy at best (see Animated, for example).

As for Tidalwave... I think the Decepticons need an Aircraft Carrier, so if they want to do a Tidal Wave as sort of a pretool of Broadside and give him a major role in, say, Season 2 of the show, I'm all in.

 

[Shadewing]

As mentioned previously, I am running my own TF continuity in a TTRPG, and I have LOADS of this.

Lugnut (in his universe body) and Tidal Wave (in his titan returns one) being Decepticon heavies and one of reasons Megatron still has command of the disenfranchised Decepticons on Earth. Lugnut is powerhouse loyalist, who's blind faith in Megatron makes him seem simple minded, but Tidal Wave really is just a dumb brute that lets others do his thinking for him.

Three generations of Predacons. There are the Ancient Predacons, the ones from Prime/Alligned. There names and forms went on to inspire the G1 Predacons and Terrorcons, who along with some Insecticons eventually form the BW Predacon faction, each attributing something to them. Faction Name, Transformation Code, and Faction Symbol.BW currently has no actual place in my game atm, but once I started I had to explain all three.

Sky Lynx is the only known surviving Ancient Predacon, time and events eventually lead him to joining the Autobots and has a sense of rightous indigation at the G1 Predacons for bismirching the name Predacon and Predaking.

Barricade head of Decepticon Security, rival to Bumblebee

Knockout (Legacy body) and Breakneck (Prime Breakdown using UW body) Decepticon medic and his somewhat brutish but good natured boyfriend.

Wheeljack and Downshift are brothers, Downshift combines both G1 and UT characters togeather.

Cybertron after the Ark left experinced a Decepticon civil war; This was both good and bad for the remaining Autobots as it lead to them gaining some ground and being able to create a safe territory they can protect; while the Cybertronian Decepticons evended up in two different factions by the end. Shockwave's loyalists, and Straxus' court aka Ultracons. Both sides are roughly equal in power so there is a very fragile peace between the three factions, but everyone knows that it won't last and even the tiniest change to the status quo could lead to total war once more.

Nothing to do with any other continuity, but Blurr and Arcee are Siblings. This comes purely from my own belief as a kid, since they are fairly similar looking car modes, similar to Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. Both are sleek, angular cars with a single "bent" antenna.

I have ideas for colony worlds, that takes a bit from every where. But they're still in the vague territory.

Some of this is setup for future plot lines, while some of this might never get used, but its hard to control my mind when I start getting ceative about world building.

 

[Destron D-69]

While I'd personally rather take concepts from other canons and move them forward in a canon that wasn't g1... if we're bound to it forever and ever as it is beginning to appear to be the case. the things I would like to see:

Females in the main cast. It has been a thing (to varying degrees) since midway into season 1 of beast wars. -don't get me wrong, I loved that we finally got Arcee in season 3 of g1 as a main stay of the cast... but let's be real, they could have done better by her.

Recommendations to this: Add Slipstream, Airachnid, Thunderblast... put them all in on the cons side, give me Glyph, Windblade, Make Elita-1 interesting like she is everywhere other than g1... it should be a simple thing.

Primus and Unicron. Unite the origin stories of the g1 Tv show and Comics. just make it official. They are gods, they weren't built by a weird alien monkey man. the 13 are real, the Quints did invade and take over and for a time Cybertronians were subjugated and made to think they were manufactured goods - but they regained their true origins after the uprising...

RtT: Just make it true and say it happened. and just for gits and shiggles say this is the timeline and "g1" that beastwars is connected to. just to make me feel good.

 

[lastmaximal]

Might come back later and itemize an "idk how any of this would be done, but here's what I want from each post-G1 era or alt-G1 take" list. Just for my own tastes, character names would be changed to avoid reuse, favoring G1.

But for now I'd beef up Megatron's Earth crew, adding in characters from later series who were part of those series' core Con casts. Demolishor, Blackout, Barricade with Frenzy, Knock Out, Breakdown, Dreads, Prime Vehicons...

And I'd throw in a range of female Autobots and Decepticons, on Earth and Cybertron alike, to mix things up some. Windblade, Slipstream, Airachnid, Nautica, Velocity, Glyph, Strika...

 

[KingSwoop]

As mentioned previously, I am running my own TF continuity in a TTRPG, and I have LOADS of this.

Lugnut (in his universe body) and Tidal Wave (in his titan returns one) being Decepticon heavies and one of reasons Megatron still has command of the disenfranchised Decepticons on Earth. Lugnut is powerhouse loyalist, who's blind faith in Megatron makes him seem simple minded, but Tidal Wave really is just a dumb brute that lets others do his thinking for him.

Sky Lynx is the only known surviving Ancient Predacon, time and events eventually lead him to joining the Autobots and has a sense of rightous indigation at the G1 Predacons for bismirching the name Predacon and Predaking.

Barricade head of Decepticon Security, rival to Bumblebee

Knockout (Legacy body) and Breakneck (Prime Breakdown using UW body) Decepticon medic and his somewhat brutish but good natured boyfriend.

Wheeljack and Downshift are brothers, Downshift combines both G1 and UT characters togeather.

Cybertron after the Ark left experinced a Decepticon civil war; This was both good and bad for the remaining Autobots as it lead to them gaining some ground and being able to create a safe territory they can protect; while the Cybertronian Decepticons evended up in two different factions by the end. Shockwave's loyalists, and Straxus' court aka Ultracons. Both sides are roughly equal in power so there is a very fragile peace between the three factions, but everyone knows that it won't last and even the tiniest change to the status quo could lead to total war once more.

I have ideas for colony worlds, that takes a bit from every where. But they're still in the vague territory.

I like Lugnut. I'm not sure he'd be in my Revised Nemesis Crew (Given contemporary animation and voice acting limitations, I think it's best to be able to break characters down into 5-man teams with some straggers, so we're talking ~15 autobots total and maybe ~10 decepticons (not counting whatever we do with the cassettes, which I'm partial to turning them into targetmasters... but I digress). Megatron, Soundwave, 3-4 Seekers (I do like Slipsteam), and then I'd fight for Bludgeon and a few tanks to flank him. Tidalwave screams "Season 2", and Lugnut showing up sounds great.
THAT SAID, I'm a big fan of Megatron just being that much more powerful than everyone else, on top of being a good tactician and all around leader. He doesn't need muscle.

Sky Lynx is an interesting choice, but is he your go-to Autobot shuttle instead of Omega? That would probably make more sense, logistically, but we could always just not have Omega be able to transform when he's split into two parts, which could add a lot of stakes...

Re: Barricade - I hate him with a passion. G1 S1-2 had, for the most part, a clear distinction between civilians and military. Police are civilians; if you make police into military or vice versa, you're gonna have a bad time. Movie Barricade's not really a character so much as a plot point; and while that might be interesting, I hate to say it but I'd probably enjoy Runamuck and Runabout cosplaying as police for an episode more than I would a dedicated Decepticon police car. A second worry here is that Barricade feels like an Autobot-scale threat, but the Decepticons should always be a bigger threat than a normal autobot. Starscream and Bludgeon and, of course, Megatron can sometimes be occupied by a Prowl or an Ironhide, but you should never think "Oh, Ironhide can beat Starscream in a fair fight" and the Decepticons... well, they don't play fair. But Barricade? He's a doofus. Making him a rival to the "weakest autobot" is basically saying he'd be trounced by a Prowl or a Mirage, and that's not where I want my villains to be.

Knockout & Breakdown - I know at some point we're going to need Decepticon cars to tell some stories, but if push comes to shove I'm inserting Stunticons over these guys. Stunticons are comparable to normal autobots on power level, of course, but the difference is their carelessness and wreckless behavior. Starscream is a threat because of what he can do, Motormaster is a threat because of what he will do.

Do the Decepticons need a medic? Sure. Flatline's an option, but honestly I think I'd go for a general mad scientist; basically what Shockwave's become since Prime. But I think this needs to be a new character. The question is whether you want the vehicle mode to reflect his medic/mad scientist status. But if so, then I think the solution is just have the constructicons be the medics, and before the Constructicons show up in the latter half of Season 1, haves someone like Thundercracker and/or Soundwave have to Tom Paris it up as emergency medics.

Re: Downshift - What about Gobots? In all seriousness, Season 1 autobots have got to be super tight. If we're looking for a retool of Wheeljack, I think Slicer or Makeshift are the go-to at this point. As for family; I'm actually a bigger fan of Sideswipe & Sunstreaker; twice but different molds sets a substantive precedent, and while Wheeljack tops them as characters, I think playing up the Sideswipe/Sunstreaker brotherly dynamic is fun... and it opens up the possibility of "secret brothers" and/or siblings, although I'd want to keep this rare. How often do you just... work with your brother, professionally (outside of a family business)?

Re: "Two Decepitcon Factions with different names" - Hey, I remember DW trying to do this, and it's always more trouble than it has to be. If the Autobots are dug into Iacon, thanks to their city shield and small, but reliable energon source, then the Decepticon forces can control the rest of the city-states, and if Scorponok wants to get into a tiff with Straxus every once in a while, that's great; but they're not the "Scorpocons vs the Staxusites"; they're all just decepticons.

The City-state commander model, I think, lets us introduce possible rivals to Megatron and/or compartmentalize villains; there aren't a lot of city-states on Cybertron, but there's enough such that when Season 5 wants to dig out Deathsaurus or Gigatron or Whatever, they can do that w/o stepping on anyone's heels. Megatron didn't call in Whatever and his army of Whatevercons because Whatever used to piss him off at strategy meetings or something and he just assumed he'd died and no one corrected him.

Re: Colony Worlds - This has become a pretty big staple of current transformers fiction, and while I like the idea of lost colonies, I don't have any particular interest in introducing FUNCTIONAL colony worlds any time soon. For example, it would be kind of fun for someone to be stranded on "Animal planet" and be hunted down by [Weird animal-themed toy subline in this years toyline] until they escape, but if you introduce Velocitron, then that's an arc that you need to deal with. If you don't want to blow up every colony world you see, save 'em for later. It's not a Great War if Vehictron has a population of billions and they just don't care about your war... now is it?

Might come back later and itemize an "idk how any of this would be done, but here's what I want from each post-G1 era or alt-G1 take" list. Just for my own tastes, character names would be changed to avoid reuse, favoring G1.

But for now I'd beef up Megatron's Earth crew, adding in characters from later series who were part of those series' core Con casts. Demolishor, Blackout, Barricade with Frenzy, Knock Out, Breakdown, Dreads, Prime Vehicons...

And I'd throw in a range of female Autobots and Decepticons, on Earth and Cybertron alike, to mix things up some. Windblade, Slipstream, Airachnid, Nautica, Velocity, Glyph, Strika...

Blackout is interesting... military helecopter, unique super power; why not? That said, he does kind of feel like a B-team character.
Vehicons - If we go with the City-state model, we'll probably need generics at some point. But Vehicons suffer from two big problems: (1) most of them are just cars, and as I've noted above, this puts them on par with the autobots, rather than having them be genuine threats, and (2) the ones that aren't cars... just don't make any sense. TFPrime animators didn't want to a Vehicon Jet, so they just added wings to the existing vehicon vehicle mode... instead of just giving us a Starscream model with a different head? What?

Re: Windblade - I kind of hate this character at this point; she transforms into nothing and exists because people voted her into existence. Yeah, there's some lore we could adopt, but this strikes me as a "We genuinely visit a colony world" character, and I don't think you can set that up any time soon.

Nautica sounds like fun; a boat transformer or submarine could work and her skills let her stay back at the base often enough; sure.

I love me some Glyph and Tapout, but they feel like guest characters; the Devcons of the modern age; have them scan local alt modes, interact with our guys, and then have them fly off to have offscreen adventures until we need them. You can't do this too often; but it's always fun when you do.

 

[LordGigaIce]

Re: Barricade - I hate him with a passion. G1 S1-2 had, for the most part, a clear distinction between civilians and military. Police are civilians; if you make police into military or vice versa, you're gonna have a bad time.

G1 season two featured Warpath, Powerglide, the Arielbots, and Jetfire on the Autobot side and the Stunticons on the Decepticon side. The "Autobots are civilians vehicles and the Decepticons are military hardware" divide didn't even make it to the 1986 movie.

And really it didn't make much sense in season one either. I guess you could make a case for Reflector's camera mode being "espionage" related, but what does a tape deck have to do with military hardware? Or construction vehicles? Or robotic bugs for that matter?

Also! Whirl and Roadbuster. Not cartoon guys but they were military themed Autobot toys on the shelves while seasons one and two were airing.

We all like to think of the civilian is to military :: Autobots are to Decepticons but it was more a very broad vibe more than a hard and fast rule that could be- and was- dispensed whenever Hasbro needed to dispense with it.

 

[Haywire]

Re: Barricade - I hate him with a passion. G1 S1-2 had, for the most part, a clear distinction between civilians and military. Police are civilians; if you make police into military or vice versa, you're gonna have a bad time.

It's a war; not everyone is a clear-cut soldier. Yes, you have standard soldiers and heavy artillery for regular battles, but there's also surgical strike teams and infiltration and espionage units. Barricade definitely falls into the latter. I don't think he's usually meant to actually be police, he is using the police disguise as a means to gather intelligence and sow distrust and/or sabotage. Which seems like a very Decepticon way of doing things.

Re: Colony Worlds - This has become a pretty big staple of current transformers fiction, and while I like the idea of lost colonies, I don't have any particular interest in introducing FUNCTIONAL colony worlds any time soon.
It's not a Great War if Vehictron has a population of billions and they just don't care about your war... now is it?

I see your point here, but counterpoint, there will always be conscientious objectors and non-combatants no matter how big the war is. Sure, it's very likely that if actual battles start taking place on a colony world then most of the colonists will get caught up in it. But until that happens, the war could very much be a somebody-else's-problem in the minds of the colonists. On the other hand, if you pull a couple of colonists off their peaceful world and throw them into the war, it might give the opportunity to write some characters with a fresh perspective as their addition changes the war while simultaneously the war changes them.

 

[lastmaximal]

Okay, I've decided against posting the rest of my ideas here. The rest of you can have fun with it.

This has quickly turned into a repeat of the first thread where "here's a question, what are your thoughts?" is followed by "see, here's why you're wrong."

Discussion is great, but "submit your thoughts for my approval" is not it.

 

[Undead Scottsman]

I'd keep the 13, at least as examples of alternative religions to Primus. (Primus worshippers, as they take over the planet, eventually fold other religions into their own by making their dieties "The 13." So you're still free to worship, say, Solus Prime, so long as you acknowledge she's a creation of Primus.)

Mentorship from IDW2 is a must, also the idea that Transformers come from forges. Sometimes forges produce multiple bots at once and that's where siblings come from (So Sideswipe and Sunstreaker were forged at the same time. Clobber and Lugnut would be another example of siblings.)

Subsequently, I'd also keep the rise of functionism. It think that ties into how every G1 transformer has a "Function" in a neat way.

Mini-cons exist and are enslaved by the functionists. They come out of forges and are otherwise normal bots, just smol, but have their voiced boxes removed before being sold off as "multitools"

I'd keep the cybertronian colonies, but expand them out to a full 12. (Earth winds up accidently become the 13th) taken from a wide swath of media, not just Cybertron and IDW. Jhiaxus' "Hub" would be a colony founded by Liege Maximo worshippers, for example.

I'd incorporate a lot of IDW Megatron stuff. Starts off idealistic, gets the idea of peaceful resistance beaten out of him, runs afoul of the law and goes underground and eventually surrounds himself with thieves, mercenaries, murderers, and psychopaths.. anyone who can help him get revenge on the corrupt Senate, who in turn increase their cruelty fighting against the Decepticons, which in turns pushes the Decepticons to get even worse. I wouldn't keep the redemption arc however.

I've mentioned elsewhere, but I'd keep the G1 Orion Pax stuff, only after he gets blown up he becomes Optronix and becomes a data clerk under Alpha Trion, before getting conscripted and fighting against the Decepticons until he's the highest ranking office around when Sentinal Prime gets killed.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Okay, I've decided against posting the rest of my ideas here. The rest of you can have fun with it.

This has quickly turned into a repeat of the first thread where "here's a question, what are your thoughts?" is followed by "see, here's why you're wrong."

Discussion is great, but "submit your thoughts for my approval" is not it.

Isn't the back and forth part of the fun though? This isn't a contest where ideas get eliminated if they're met with some objections. It's just probing the various "But then" domino effects these ideas could have if they did happen.

And I bet I'm not the only one who's picturing all these ideas thrown in a blender, so the back and forth is also at attempt to find the compatibility.

 

[lastmaximal]

If it felt at all like it left any openness for a back and forth I wouldn't have said what I said.

I mean, read the responses.

"You want Airachnid? I think what you REALLY want is (thing you didn't say) but... you can't have that." is a twofer.

"That doesn't work for me." Why does it have to?

"I have no interest in introducing (idea someone else voiced interest in, as they were asked to)." "

"You want Wildwheel? ... make more sense as a Delorean." Yes, Wildwheel, whose appeal famously comes from being a Delorean.

"What would you add to a new G1? Barricade? Barricade's a doofus... That's not what I want my villains to be." Then sheesh, maybe don't bother asking other people what they want their villains to be.

If the thread title and opening prompt were, "Convince me to incorporate concepts or characters into my G1", I'd have no objections. At least it'd be up front about it. But the apparent intent of the post as is, is to be inclusive, rather than to expect everyone to have to defend their choices and preferences.

Now, maybe that's all entirely subconscious and it's just phrasing obscuring intent, with each counterpoint being unintentionally overstated as definitive, I don't know. Regardless, it's already soured me on the conversation. I've seen this one before and have no need to see it again. Being asked what you want and being told why it's not a good idea is the opposite of fun.

It IS an interesting prompt for discussion, so if y'all are still good to go with it, by all means, it's all yours and I'm sorry for momentarily tainting the mood.

 

[Shadewing]

I like Lugnut. I'm not sure he'd be in my Revised Nemesis Crew (Given contemporary animation and voice acting limitations, I think it's best to be able to break characters down into 5-man teams with some straggers, so we're talking ~15 autobots total and maybe ~10 decepticons (not counting whatever we do with the cassettes, which I'm partial to turning them into targetmasters... but I digress). Megatron, Soundwave, 3-4 Seekers (I do like Slipsteam), and then I'd fight for Bludgeon and a few tanks to flank him. Tidalwave screams "Season 2", and Lugnut showing up sounds great.
THAT SAID, I'm a big fan of Megatron just being that much more powerful than everyone else, on top of being a good tactician and all around leader. He doesn't need muscle.

Sky Lynx is an interesting choice, but is he your go-to Autobot shuttle instead of Omega? That would probably make more sense, logistically, but we could always just not have Omega be able to transform when he's split into two parts, which could add a lot of stakes...

Re: Barricade - I hate him with a passion. G1 S1-2 had, for the most part, a clear distinction between civilians and military. Police are civilians; if you make police into military or vice versa, you're gonna have a bad time. Movie Barricade's not really a character so much as a plot point; and while that might be interesting, I hate to say it but I'd probably enjoy Runamuck and Runabout cosplaying as police for an episode more than I would a dedicated Decepticon police car. A second worry here is that Barricade feels like an Autobot-scale threat, but the Decepticons should always be a bigger threat than a normal autobot. Starscream and Bludgeon and, of course, Megatron can sometimes be occupied by a Prowl or an Ironhide, but you should never think "Oh, Ironhide can beat Starscream in a fair fight" and the Decepticons... well, they don't play fair. But Barricade? He's a doofus. Making him a rival to the "weakest autobot" is basically saying he'd be trounced by a Prowl or a Mirage, and that's not where I want my villains to be.

Knockout & Breakdown - I know at some point we're going to need Decepticon cars to tell some stories, but if push comes to shove I'm inserting Stunticons over these guys. Stunticons are comparable to normal autobots on power level, of course, but the difference is their carelessness and wreckless behavior. Starscream is a threat because of what he can do, Motormaster is a threat because of what he will do.

Do the Decepticons need a medic? Sure. Flatline's an option, but honestly I think I'd go for a general mad scientist; basically what Shockwave's become since Prime. But I think this needs to be a new character. The question is whether you want the vehicle mode to reflect his medic/mad scientist status. But if so, then I think the solution is just have the constructicons be the medics, and before the Constructicons show up in the latter half of Season 1, haves someone like Thundercracker and/or Soundwave have to Tom Paris it up as emergency medics.

Re: Downshift - What about Gobots? In all seriousness, Season 1 autobots have got to be super tight. If we're looking for a retool of Wheeljack, I think Slicer or Makeshift are the go-to at this point. As for family; I'm actually a bigger fan of Sideswipe & Sunstreaker; twice but different molds sets a substantive precedent, and while Wheeljack tops them as characters, I think playing up the Sideswipe/Sunstreaker brotherly dynamic is fun... and it opens up the possibility of "secret brothers" and/or siblings, although I'd want to keep this rare. How often do you just... work with your brother, professionally (outside of a family business)?

Re: "Two Decepitcon Factions with different names" - Hey, I remember DW trying to do this, and it's always more trouble than it has to be. If the Autobots are dug into Iacon, thanks to their city shield and small, but reliable energon source, then the Decepticon forces can control the rest of the city-states, and if Scorponok wants to get into a tiff with Straxus every once in a while, that's great; but they're not the "Scorpocons vs the Staxusites"; they're all just decepticons.

The City-state commander model, I think, lets us introduce possible rivals to Megatron and/or compartmentalize villains; there aren't a lot of city-states on Cybertron, but there's enough such that when Season 5 wants to dig out Deathsaurus or Gigatron or Whatever, they can do that w/o stepping on anyone's heels. Megatron didn't call in Whatever and his army of Whatevercons because Whatever used to piss him off at strategy meetings or something and he just assumed he'd died and no one corrected him.

Re: Colony Worlds - This has become a pretty big staple of current transformers fiction, and while I like the idea of lost colonies, I don't have any particular interest in introducing FUNCTIONAL colony worlds any time soon. For example, it would be kind of fun for someone to be stranded on "Animal planet" and be hunted down by [Weird animal-themed toy subline in this years toyline] until they escape, but if you introduce Velocitron, then that's an arc that you need to deal with. If you don't want to blow up every colony world you see, save 'em for later. It's not a Great War if Vehictron has a population of billions and they just don't care about your war... now is it?

You're welcome to do what you want, but as others have said the Civilan vs Military has never been as strict as you make it out to be. As others have stated, Reflector is a Camera, Soundwave is Cassette player, the Constructicons are construction vehicles.

Right now for my "season 1" I am avoiding the combiners completely becuase this is, as mentioned, a TTRPG I am running and I feel like they'd be way too much for level 1 players to handle. So right now, they either don't exist or remain on Cybertron. So Stunticons and such are out. The over arching goal of my "Season 1" is adapting to Earth, Dealing with it might be there new permenant home, while having "what happened to Cybertron" be a big mystery.

Megatron being powerful is fine, but I'm taking a bit more from the comics where the Decepticons aren't are unified a force as it seems, and a lot of those that partook in the Ark Raid are rather not happy they are stuck on Earth. While there was a full scale civil war between the Decepticons on Cybertron, there is a cold civil war between those on Earth. The only things keeping the current Decepticon status quo is Megatron, Lugnut, and Soundwave. Megatron is still powerful and ruthless, but having Soundwave who seems to know everything the goes on, and Lugnut blind devotion, makes even the most ambitious decenters a bit hesitant to act rashly.

With the Constructicons on Cybertron, the Decepticons need a medic character; so Knock Out is in. Can't have Knock Out imo without his partner, so with a slight name change Prime Breakdown also joins. I am all for characters that show the Decepticons aren't all evil. These two help serve that idea.

Colony worlds: Even G1 had them, Paradron for example which very much was "Ignore the war". If I even use them, they are a long ways off from where I am; but my mind doesn't work in a straight line. Some Colony worlds are successful, some aren't. Some are just hangin in there. The two most successful are Caminus and Neo-Cybertron (What I am calling the Hub from G2/Regen1). The former has diplomatic ties to Cybertron, but the Latter no one currently knows about. But there are also failed ones like "Combatron" and Gigantian; one is devastated apocalyptic planet with barely any life left, and the latter is barely able to sustain itself, leaving most the population in a state of stasis.

Re: Factions with different names: Frankly its no different then stuff like the Dinobots or Combaticons. Doesn't matter what they go by, theyre still Autobots or Decepticons.

But largely I agree with lastmaximal where this is feeling less like "share your ideas" and more like "let me tell you why you are wrong."

 

[LordGigaIce]

Okay, I've decided against posting the rest of my ideas here. The rest of you can have fun with it.

This has quickly turned into a repeat of the first thread where "here's a question, what are your thoughts?" is followed by "see, here's why you're wrong."

Discussion is great, but "submit your thoughts for my approval" is not it.

Yep. More of the same.

Shame, the idea of the thread has merit, but "I'm going to tell you why your ideas aren't good enough for me" is lame.

 

[Cybersnark]

Being a Star Trek fan, I love the idea of Autobots and Decepticons having clear crew/department divisions (that get scrambled and abandoned as they spend more time on Earth).

Bumblebee doesn't start out as Optimus' right hand; he's just a junior engineer/scavenger working for Wheeljack. He just happens to come through the crash undamaged, which means he's one of the first to come online when Optimus awakens them, which is what leads to him becoming such a central figure. Similarly, the Ark's communications specialist was Blaster, but he's too badly damaged to wake up until S2, so Jazz has to step in temporarily, which leads to his expertise in Earth culture (from building the translation database that lets them speak English).

(On the Decepticon side, I agree that Bludgeon would make a great ground forces commander, but that's exactly why I feel he would've been left on Cybertron; the Nemesis was expecting a space battle, they wouldn't have needed ground troops, but Shockwave still would've. This gives Starscream a reason to bring out the Combaticons --Megatron knows they're Starscream's supporters, but he needs someone to manage the ground forces, and Onslaught comes with his own [semi-reliable] administrative staff.)

This could play out alongside Optimus' discomfort with his Authority as Prime (remember that old character profile where he hired Smokescreen to spy on his own men because he was afraid that they wouldn't tell him what they were thinking?), letting us see how the chain of command breaks down as the Autobots go from crewmates and colleagues to family.

(Megatron deals with the breakdown of his chain of command by brutally terrorizing his own subordinates to keep them in line, leading to Thundercracker's near-desertion and Starscream's attempted coup. . .)

When the Autobots return to Cybertron, people are scandalized to see people like mercenary businessman Tracks, suspected Decepticon-sympathizer Mirage, "barbaric" Grimlock, and street-rat Bumblebee walking alongside the Prime, addressing him by name, and even arguing with him in public --and shocked that the Prime not only accepts, but seems to encourage it.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

If this idea gets me more Autotroopers as the redshirts I'm all in.