A Mechwarrior: Destiny Review

I convinced my mom to drive me and a few of my friends down to Chicago to experience a Battletech Center when I was thirteen years old. For those unaware, these were an early format of multiplayer gaming that featured multiple computers running a Mechwarrior-style 1st person perspective giant stompy robot game set in the Battletech universe. They went beyond a simple LAN party, though. They...

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I convinced my mom to drive me and a few of my friends down to Chicago to experience a Battletech Center when I was thirteen years old. For those unaware, these were an early format of multiplayer gaming that featured multiple computers running a Mechwarrior-style 1st person perspective giant stompy robot game set in the Battletech universe. They went beyond a simple LAN party, though. They had full cockpits with readouts, toggle switches and full joystick and throttle to enhance the immersion. Later versions included celebrity warm up videos and a second game involving hovercraft racing on Mars. All in all, it stoked a love of Battletech, even if it never quite took hold the way something like Shadowrun or Vampire: The Masquerade did. The recent tactical computer game was like meeting an old friend, and I recently decided to take a chance with Mechwarrior: Destiny., their take on creating a more narrative RPG set in the universe. Did the game score a head shot? Let’s play to find out.

Mechwarrior: Destiny uses the Cue system, which has seen a few different variations across Catalyst Game Labs RPGs. It’s a narrative system at heart featuring players taking turns narrating inspired by short prompts on their character sheets or in the scene and spending Plot Points for special effects. I’ve never been into the system all that much; the cue prompts don’t have any real mechanical weight and that always struck me as an odd choice compared to games like Fate or Cortex.

But developer Phillip A. Lee does something unexpected: he welds the narrative elements onto something approaching a traditional RPG engine. The engine stays simple: stat + skill + 2d6 versus an opposed roll. Much like the Battlemechs at the center of the game, they also give the GM options to tailor the game to their group, such as offering different rules for initiative or how to set the game in a more traditional GM/player structure. I like it when core books give me options like these, but I also want the writers to pick the mainline rule and clearly mark the options. That happens in some places here, but other times these alt rules are buried in the text.

Character creation is relatively straightforward, with three levels of experience and chance to buy merits and flaws that add bonus and penalties to specific rolls in context. Admittedly, adding a bunch of plus ones and minus twos is part of how Battletech rolls, but it seems a little counterintuitive for a game that’s built for people who want a narrative framework for their military sci-fi action. Context is also key here: compared to previous entries like Mechwarrior and A Time of War, even this tiny bit of grittiness is a breeze that any good GM can figure out quickly.

Because character creation is so quick, I do wonder why the designers decided to put in over 20 sample PCs to use. I get that these games are meant to be pick-up-and-play but given that the recent Shadowrun rules set, which takes a lot more time to create characters, had ten archetypes, it seems excessive. I think that space could have been used in a much better way. The owners of Battletech should know that the mechs are the star of the show and could have given us some fine one page write ups of some of the best two legged tanks 3025 has to offer. The selection in the book is fine, and the rules for converting Battlemechs from the original game seem easy to use, but it feels like a missed opportunity to play to the strengths of the setting.

The real test of a game set in the Battletech universe is the mech combat. Make it too light and it doesn’t feel right but make it too heavy and players will wonder why they aren’t just playing the original game. Mechwarrior: Destiny threads the needle here by providing a few options. The game simplifies the mech combat while keeping the stuff that makes it unique like hit locations, heat and the joy of critical hits. It also offers rules on how to combine Destiny characters with the two big tactical rules sets used by the miniature sides of things. The narrative elements also offer a chance to speed play. There’s a risk/reward element to using Plot Points in combat. You can use them to trigger critical hits or summon battlefield support to damage opponents but you also need to keep some on hand if you want your pilot to eject safely from a damaged mech without putting them in danger of being injured by the experience. It’s an intriguing combination of narrative and mechanical elements that worked for me despite my skepticism.

The book focuses on the original Succession Wars era of 3025, which makes sense given its popularity and how it connects to the very excellent Hare Brained Schemes computer game. There’s a small primer on the setting and various historical eras that have evolved in the decades the game has been around, including an appendix that makes Clan mechwarriors and mechs playable. But it also highlights one of the big paradoxes of the product: for a game that’s meant to be an easy entry into the Battletech universe, it makes a lot of assumptions about what the reader already knows about the setting. For example, there are no rules for mech customization or creation. The assumption is that you would port over those things from technical readouts or the Tech Manual. Maybe I’m misreading the intent because it seems like a product made for me: someone who already loves the setting but doesn’t like the heaviness of the current games. I liked it, but that seems like a much thinner slice of potential customers than people who want to stomp around in a rich sci-fi setting full of political intrigue and cinematic explosions.

Mechwarrior: Destiny is an excellent game for Battletech fans who want to experience the world without always having to book out a day for hardcore minis gaming.

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Rob Wieland

Rob Wieland

Sorry, but Mechwarrior is one of the best examples of ...... how sci-fi gets old very bad. The new generations miss current technology now it is real, but it wasn't even imagined in the sci-fi fiction from previous decades.

The fight of mechas are really spectacular, but these are more expensive and difficult to be repaired after the damages because a battle. Now the army use remote-control drones to attacks enemies even in a different continent.
 

Blue

Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
I remember playing one of the Mechwarrior RPGs back in the 90s. My biggest complaint was that the same pool of character creation was used for on the battlefiend and off, including purchasing your initial mech. So we ended up with two characters that were complete people, had interesting abilities when not in a mech, and were neophyte pilots in light mechs, and three characters who had basically zero skill outside a mech, but were gods in mechs with talents, great skills, and heavy or assault mechs.

The GM, looking at half the party unable to function at anything except being in mechs, focused most of the game on the battlefield. To the detriment of the two of us. (And exasperated by the advancement system which granted XP on rolling a 12, so those bigger mechs with more weapons also granted more XP to their pilots.)

I mention all that because it seems that with the Plot Points also being able to be spent for mechanical aspects in mech combat that this game also may have the same one-pool approach for on-the-field and everything else, leading to the same disparities where some player build only for in-mech and some build for a whole world in an RPG. Can you go into some detail if this is true or how they avoid it?

Thanks.
 

payn

I don't believe in the no-win scenario
I recently got this via humble bundle. I wanted to get into individual pilots for my players while I ran their opposition. Turns out the campaign textbook was a little more what I was after. Though, I really appreciate this write up.
 

MGibster

Legend
Sorry, but Mechwarrior is one of the best examples of ...... how sci-fi gets old very bad. The new generations miss current technology now it is real, but it wasn't even imagined in the sci-fi fiction from previous decades.
I would say that it was a bit dated rather than bad. But then I don't think it really makes a big difference in determining how interesting the setting is.

The fight of mechas are really spectacular, but these are more expensive and difficult to be repaired after the damages because a battle. Now the army use remote-control drones to attacks enemies even in a different continent.

BattleTech has always had its absurdities and walking mechs on the battle field is one of them. Did you know vehicle mounted machine guns in BattleTech have a 90 meter range? Just three hexes. In real life, right here in the 21st century, such a weapon would have an effective range of 2,000 meters. But table top war games typically have much shorter ranges for weapons than real life because you've got to be able to fit everything on the table.

If someone is the type of person who is more interested in realism than the spectacle of battle mechs duking it out, well, that's cool, but BattleTech probably isn't the game for them.
 


Celebrim

Legend
Sorry, but Mechwarrior is one of the best examples of ...... how sci-fi gets old very bad. The new generations miss current technology now it is real, but it wasn't even imagined in the sci-fi fiction from previous decades.

The fight of mechas are really spectacular, but these are more expensive and difficult to be repaired after the damages because a battle. Now the army use remote-control drones to attacks enemies even in a different continent.

I think that there are a lot of valid complaints to be made about treating Battletech as a serious narrative setting, but I don't think this is one of them.

This is not an example of people imagining the future and failing to imagine how technology would plausibly advance. I'm more than convinced that the designers of the Battletech game were perfectly aware in the 1980's that the tech imagined by the game was utterly unrealistic and implausible. All the narrative created around the game is most mostly hand-waving to get you to not think how stupid it is to imagine warfare in the far future as occurring between giant humanoid robots.

The whole point of the game is to be a good tactical game and everything else is secondary to that. The ranges involved were never meant to be realistic. Nothing about the game was chosen out of realism. Everything was chosen for running small scale tactical combat that could fit easily on a card table and which would have interesting tactics on that small scale. I'm sure the designers were well aware none of this made sense if you thought about it hard.
 

MGibster

Legend
The whole point of the game is to be a good tactical game and everything else is secondary to that. The ranges involved were never meant to be realistic. Nothing about the game was chosen out of realism. Everything was chosen for running small scale tactical combat that could fit easily on a card table and which would have interesting tactics on that small scale. I'm sure the designers were well aware none of this made sense if you thought about it hard.

Yeah, the weapon ranges for BT are so low in part because it's impractical at that scale to have them reflect something more accurate. But more importantly, if the weapons had such long ranges, we'd rarely see mechs punching or kicking one another let alone a death from above. And I don't want to live in a world where giant mechs aren't bringing DFAs to the table.
 

kunadam

Adventurer
I just liked BattleTech, and never cared about how realistic it might be. To be honest I would have more problem with the 2D star chart than ginat robots ruling the battlefield. But to each their own.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Yeah, the weapon ranges for BT are so low in part because it's impractical at that scale to have them reflect something more accurate. But more importantly, if the weapons had such long ranges, we'd rarely see mechs punching or kicking one another let alone a death from above. And I don't want to live in a world where giant mechs aren't bringing DFAs to the table.

Aside from the fact that if we had mechs opening up engagements at 500 hexes we'd probably not see mechs in melee, even if you doubled the normal speed of mechs movement would still be relatively unimportant to the overall flow of the battle. Movement wouldn't materially change range increments much, or cause you to move from one side of the mech to another quickly. If you can imagine long range weapons with practical engagement ranges of 500 hexes, then it would take many rounds of movement to bring to bear a "short" range weapon with a maximum range of say 200 hexes. And even if my Battlemaster is running at 12 hexes per round, it's still going to get shot at for 25 rounds before those medium lasers and SRMs matter.

So if you are going for the "Chess" aesthetic here of that easy for the human mind to embrace tactical challenge with the sort of easy to understand trade offs that engage the human mind, then you just kind of toss realism out the window. You know, kind of like the makers of Chess did when modeling war.
 

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