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Message: <blockquote data-quote="payn" data-source="post: 9804743" data-attributes="member: 90374">I got a doozy for y'all. Its Battletech but I dont care because the story is stone cold hilarious. The set up;Battletech is crunchy and then some. Memes galore demonstrate how many charts exist to adjudicate just about any situation. Most of the time a game runs pretty smoothly. Though, once in a while you enter a rabbit hole of domino effects that require even the most veteran players to break out the numerous texts and work through it like M.I.T math students working on a proof. Sometiems it leads to hilarious places.So, we had a weekly meet up that was a random force build game. For reference, in BT you have "Battle Value" score that balances out a game. (Its like CR of 5E so not perfect by any means). Every player builds a force of equal BV which could be a few big units, or several smaller units. Occasionally, a whipper snapper comes along thinking they found the secret to min-max supremacy. This usually entails taking a light weight unit, but loaded with lots of guns, and dropping all the skills as low as possible. Think point buy min maxing and using certain multi-classing to optimize into a pun pun. We are a very welcoming bunch and love getting new players into the game. Occasionally, we get a new player coming in hot thinking they are going to show the old timers how its done. This is the story of Randy and his attempt to do so. Game night;We all start to shuffle in and get out our gear, lay a game board down, and start to form teams. The new guy Randy is all smiles. He places his single light weight unit ont he table and declares he was able to make it work by reducing his shooting skill to 0 (meaning he is most likley always gfoing to hit) by increasing his piloting (meaning he is going to struggle to keep upright...forshadowing...). A few eye brows raise followed by "are you sure?" questions. Randy is positive and so we take our places and begin the game.The map is a city. That means lots of cover, which Randy is very excited about. What Randy didnt anticipate was controlling his mech at top speeds on a paved surface. You see in Battletech you have two speeds for units. Cruising is akin to walking and very easy to accomplish. Then, there is flanking which is running and can require piloting checks particualrly on paced surfaces. Randy is about to get a crash course on the subject (pun intended).Several players move their units and then its Randy's turn. He looks around the table and shouts, "watch this!". He proceeds to flank run speed 80% of his considerable movement and then tries to turn. "Ok, you need to make a skid check for this manuever Randy" Randy scoops his dice and looks at his sheet and says a 6 should be no problem on 2D6. Rolls a 3. This is where the books start to come out.First, we determine how far Randy moved his mech, so that we know how far it is going to skid on the ground before stopping. In this case a considerable distance. So far, in fact, that his mech crashes into a city building. You might think it stops there but nope there are random charts for determining impact, whether the building has a basement (it did), how much falling damage the mech takes, how much damage the building takes before collapsing (enough to do so) etc..Half way through claculating and reading the rules its pretty clear Randy's mech has been destroyed and the pilot killed 4x over but we kept going. Eventually, Randy has had enough and starts collecting his gear, frown on face, his ultimate plan foiled by a bad dice roll. I look at him and say, "where are you going? I'm STILL WATCHING THIS!" Randy stares at me for what felt like 10 seconds before yelling "eff you" and running out of the store. We never saw Randy again after that. Though, to this day, we never under any circumstances begin our turn by saying, "watch this!"</blockquote>

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