Ish

Twenty. Twenty. Twenty-four hours to go… Seems to have stalled out at not quite $6.5 million. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/battletech-mercenaries?ref=user_menu

$5,998,704 pledged as of 8:25 AM PST, with over 20,000 backers… and about 72 hours to go.

This is the Way.

I’m fond of TriMet’s Bus-class dropship, myself.

HH also let’s them create one range of models (spess mahreens versus spess mahreens) and maybe a dozen extra models so each faction can have one or two “unique” units…

Meanwhile, the latest BattleTech Kickstarter has just crossed the $5.5 million mark with over 19k backers… Geedubya might have missed the opportunity here.

I would love to see WH40k return to the days of RT/2nd/3rd where the default game size only had twenty to thirty Space Marine infantry on the table backed up by maybe a tank/dread/APC. Back in 2nd Edition, a Tactical Squad of ten marines (one with a heavy bolter, one with a flamer, bolt pistol and chainsword for sarge, and krak grenades for everybody) would cost you 358 Points. In 9th Edition, that same squad set up costs 180 Points. But, of course, GW doesn’t want to do that. MOAR MODELS!

SWN is basically Traveller, but quicker to play.

The more I leaf through MechWarrior Destiny the more I kinda don’t like it. It seems fine, I’d probably enjoy playing it alright… But I think I’d prefer something a bit more traditional (but without the complexity of A Time of War). Stars Without Number seems almost perfect. Just don’t let anyone pick the psionic classes or feats, replace what little setting background material there is with the BattleTech lore, and either use SWN’s mecha system or (even better) just play Alpha Strike/Classic BattleTech for those fight scenes. SWN uses Attribute Modifiers not too dissimilar from D&D (-5 to +5) and Skill ranks (+0 to +5), it wouldn’t be hard to transfer that information into derived statistics for play Alpha Strike/Classic BattleTech. You could just say take your Intelligence modifier plus Shoot skill bonus equals Gunnery and your Dexterity mod plus Pilot skill bonus equals Piloting. Easy. Edit because of Derp: I forgot that for Piloting and Gunnery skills in BattleTech lower numbers are better. So do the math above, subtract from some sort of baseline number (maybe 6?) and use the result.

I don’t automatically hate the idea of campaign supplements, I really enjoyed Codex: Armageddon and Codex: Eye of Terror back in the day… But I want supplements that are actually supplemental to the game. The last several years worth haven’t been optional ways to add some spice to the recipe, they’ve been nigh mandatory updates. Ideally, a wargame should require no more of the player than owning the main rulebook and maybe one other book for their chosen army.

YOU DARE REFUSE MY BATCHALL!?

Curse you. Ever since lunch, I’ve been singing to myself “seppuke, seppuke” to the tune of Shipoopi from The Music Man. Seppuke, seppuke, seppuke When dishonored you do get Seppuke, seppuke, seppuke It’s time your ancestors and you met

In 3072 a veteran lance was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These MechWarriors promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Deep Periphery. Today, still wanted by the Cappellan government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem... if no one else can help... and if you can find them... maybe you can hire... The ’M-Team.

As of my typing this, the Kickstarter Has raised $5,013,427 of the $50,000 goal.

Well, I mean, boltguns are meant to be anti-infantry smallarms and terminator armor is meant to make one-man into a walking tank who is all but immune to anti-infantry smallarms… So this seems reasonable to me. Run the numbers for those to squads powerfistin’ each other in the face.

That’s the point of the “troupe style” game that I mentioned before. Everyone makes a “main character” and a “supporting character.” So if Alice and Bob makes their “main characters” MechWarriors, they’d be the stars of the show during ‘mech combat scenes. But Alice and Bob would also play a “supporting character” like the company’s quartermaster or an assistant technician. Meanwhile, Charlie and Diana make their “main characters” the company’s Commanding Officer and Intel Analyst (a.k.a. Spy). These aren’t frontline combat roles, they stay at the base, negotiating with clients, making campaign plans, and the like. So these two players also play “supporting characters” who serve in the same lance as Alice and Bob’s “star” MechWarriors. So even though only half the “main characters” are MechWarriors, all four of the players get to be involved in the giant stompy robot action. Likewise, even though only half the “main characters” are directly involved in the drama going on in the base, all four of the players get to be involved in those scenes.

Destiny is a roleplaying game like D&D. But you have to have the characters do something and typically in of the BattleTech RPGs that something is “be mercenary mechwarriors.” You could play a game where everyone is any other possible profession or occupation you think would fit in the universe… But just as D&D sort of has the built in default assumption of “heroic hobos who search for treasure to loot and evil-doers to vanquish” the default assumption of a BattleTech RPG is “guys in giant robots shootin’ other giant robots.” So in D&D a DM needs to come up with a story that serves to provide a reason for heroes to wander around vanquishing evil and acquiring treasure. A BattleTech RPG DM needs to provide a reason for the player characters to get into their giant robots and shoot other giant robots. There are primarily three ways to find yourself piloting a BattleMech in the narrative of the universe: • Join the military of an Inner Sphere major power or one of the larger Periphery states; attend their military academy and train as a MechWarrior; get assigned a ‘Mech; and go off to die for your country. • Be born the scion of a noble house in the Inner Sphere or Periphery; get trained as a MechWarrior by tutors or household soldiers; inherit your parent’s ‘Mech; and go off to die for your family’s honor. • Be genetically engineered as a zygote in a test tube to be a MechWarrior; get plucked out of a giant vat and shoved into the cockpit of a ‘Mech; and go off to die honorably because some dishonorable jerk dared to refuse your batchall! • Be born literally anywhere; maybe figure out how to pilot a ‘Mech at some point; acquire a ‘Mech that “fell off the back of a truck”; convince a mercenary company or pirate bang to sign you; and go off to die for somebody else’s money. The first three options – PC’s are all military / all nobility / all clanners – limits the possible origins for the PCs and to a certain lesser degree limits the sort of adventures they can go on. Having the PCs all be mercs grants the greatest degree of narrative flexibility without having to give up on the giant robots shootin’ other giant robots action.

I really rather like this direction for the game… I’m just really apprehensive that the game will remain as streamlined going forward. I was really happy with Eighth Edition when it launched too.

Gonna drop in and try to wrangle someone into playing BattleTech.

Catalyst makes the Chaos Campaign supplement a free download. It’s not terribly complicated, a bit more “between games” bookkeeping than a WH40k Crusade campaign but only about as much as “leveling up” a middle levels D&D5e character. Having a ‘Mech get truly destroyed – defined as having its center torso internal structure completely eliminated – is a serious financial hit. You have to acquire a whole new ‘Mech then (and probably a new pilot). All other damage can be repaired between game sessions… for a cost. Life is cheap, ‘mechs are not.

If I were GM’ing a BattleTech RPG, then I’d probably structure it as a campaign about a mercenary company and use a troupe style of play. Having the heroes be a mercenary company makes sense to me because everyone wants ‘mech combat to be in the game, otherwise we’d play something else, right? Plus, mercs are notorious for being eccentric personalities drawn from all corners of the galaxy… So if Alice has her heart set on playing a character from the Draconis Combine and Bob absolutely has to play a character from the Deep Periphery, we can make them both fit. Troupe style play would see everyone create a “main character” and a “supporting character.” So if Alice really wants to play an Ace Pilot as her primary character, she can also play the company’s medic as a guest star in other scenes; If Bob really wants to play the company’s commanding officer, he can play a secondary character as a MechWarrior to fill out the lance. Think of Battlestar Galactica characters like Admiral Adama and President Roslin were definitely “player characters,” but they weren’t flying Vipers into combat alongside Starbuck and Apollo (the other “PCs”), so you had a bunch of secondary and tertiary pilot characters to fill out the squad. Likewise, supporting characters like Billy and Dualla were there to round out scenes where the focus was on the non-pilot “PCs.” Mercenaries have to balance the risk of pilot death, ‘mech damage, or (worst of all) destruction of a ‘mech against the potential rewards whenever they take a contract. That’s part of the fun! Negotiating those contracts and managing the finances of the company is a big part of the gameplay… if you want it to be. It wouldn’t be too hard to handwave that sort of thing: “Good game everybody! Your company was contracted to earn $1 million c-bills. After expenses, repairs, paying the rest of the company NPCs and other overhead, each player gets $25,000. You also each get 10 XP. See you guys next Sunday.”

I played the second edition of the MechWarrior rpg a couple times back in the Neolithic epoch, but my friends and I mostly stuck to Mekton Zeta for our giant stompy robot roleplay. I’ve read the Destiny rpg and it looks pretty good… I found the ‘Mech combat rules a bit lacking though, at least on paper, I’ve never actually played. I’ve tried to read the A Time of War rpg, but oi vey, it’s just an incredibly dense system with a terrible book layout! Like, flipping between three or four different chapters just to determine what one rule means. The guys over at Penny Arcade recently started a video series where they play a combination of Destiny for the out-of-cockpit parts and Alpha Strike for the stompy robot parts.

I’m tentatively planning to go to WOW on Thursday and then head up to Mindtaker on the 16th for their BattleTech event.

I’ve played Classic maybe a half dozen times over the last thirty-odd years (and quite a lot of MegaMek against the computer), but I think I still have a lot to learn. But, honestly, Alpha Strike just seems more appealing to me. Being able to run a full company versus binary battle in only a few hours instead of the all day affair that it would be in Classic. But I’m really finding myself loving both games…

So, between the A Game of Armored Combat box set, the Alpha Strike box set, and the random other 'mechs that have been floating around in my bitz box since the early 2000's, I now have an inventory of 38 `mechs. I've also backed the KickStarter, which means another company of 'mechs should be mine in about a year and a half. I should probably learn how to play this damn game.