Waiting for A Time of War - BattleTech RPG

[MerricB]

Well, the next big RPG release that I'm waiting for is A Time of War, the fourth edition of the BattleTech RPG (aka Mechwarrior).

I'm mostly a D&D rpg player. It's very rare that I look outside D&D to other systems at all, but BattleTech holds a spot in my heart from the novels and boardgame from years ago, and from my more recent play of the BT boardgame.

The Quick Start Rules were published last month, and it's strange looking at them from mostly a D20 perspective.

The biggest problem remains one of adventures - the Quick Start rules don't come with a sample adventure. I'd need to create one myself. Although the Chaos Campaign tracks in the Jihad sourcebooks are useful, I'm woefully out of practice at creating futuristic adventures. Oh well - finding the time to run it will be difficult enough!

Still, it's something I'm looking forward to!

Cheers!

 

[Badwe]

Battletech has always intrigued me, though i had read horror stories of rolling millions of dice to resolve a single round of combat (or is that a wet dream?), but i never knew where to start or who would play with me.

This has piqued my interest, i'll be keeping an eye on it.

 

[MerricB]

Battletech has always intrigued me, though i had read horror stories of rolling millions of dice to resolve a single round of combat (or is that a wet dream?), but i never knew where to start or who would play with me.

No, it's Warhammer where you roll millions of dice. Battletech you roll two - over and over again!

There's no doubt that the BattleTech boardgame requires a lot of dice rolling, and is somewhat clunky. However, the clunkiness is part of its charm. It's not one dice roll and determine damage - no, it's then roll the dice again to see where you were hit and what its effects are! The regular game is clean - just time-consuming. We're talking around 3 hours for a 4 mech on 4 mech battle, normally.

(For those wanting to get into the boardgame, the Introductory Boxed Set is definitely worth your time).

Cheers!

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

I didn't notice there was going to be another iteration of the Battletech universe RPG. Nice! I have fond memories of Mechwarrior (the RPG) and Battletech battles (with read lead! figurines!).

 

[Marshall]

The problem with the whole concept of a Battletech RPG is, well, Battletech.

Anyone not playing a Mechwarrior is left out of huge portions of the game or anyone playing a Mechwarrior wastes a huge amount of resources on something he'll never use.
The concept forces you to break one of the cardinal rules of RPGs : Never split the party.

 

[MerricB]

The problem with the whole concept of a Battletech RPG is, well, Battletech.

Anyone not playing a Mechwarrior is left out of huge portions of the game or anyone playing a Mechwarrior wastes a huge amount of resources on something he'll never use.
The concept forces you to break one of the cardinal rules of RPGs : Never split the party.

It's an ongoing problem in many sci-fi games. The roles of pilot and hacker often require splitting the party.

That said, it's very possible to run games in the BattleTech universe without a mechwarrior - it's a very rich universe. However, it should also be possible to abstract mech combat so it doesn't become a bore for the rest of the combat. We'll see if the new edition allows such.

Cheers!

 

[chriton227]

IME, the biggest problems in the previous versions of MechWarrior has been trying to integrate the RPG characters with the tabletop minis game. You tend to either end up with starting pilots that aren't even qualified to look at a mech, or starting pilots that are more skilled than the elite veterans (depending on which edition). That said, we have had some great campaigns where everyone played a pilot as part of a unit, and we mixed in-mech and out-of-mech adventures. The contracts we took and the people we worked for became big parts of who we were and what we were willing (or not willing) to do.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The problem with the whole concept of a Battletech RPG is, well, Battletech.

Anyone not playing a Mechwarrior is left out of huge portions of the game or anyone playing a Mechwarrior wastes a huge amount of resources on something he'll never use.
The concept forces you to break one of the cardinal rules of RPGs : Never split the party.

It's an ongoing problem in many sci-fi games. The roles of pilot and hacker often require splitting the party.

That said, it's very possible to run games in the BattleTech universe without a mechwarrior - it's a very rich universe. However, it should also be possible to abstract mech combat so it doesn't become a bore for the rest of the combat. We'll see if the new edition allows such.

Cheers!

One solution one could always try is ensure that everyone is a good pilot - but with specialities - and then something else.

In the Star Wars EU, I liked the Wraith Squadron take on this. Every character was basically ace pilot. And every character had its own out-of-cockpit specialty to conduct some special operations. They might not be quite as good as pilots as the Rogue Squadron, but they had "secondary" skills that made them very valuable for their unique job.

The same could be done with a Battletech RPG. Of course, it's not as "simulationistic" as some people might desire, but that's a sacrifice I'd gladly make. Give the game a stronger focus if it plays better overall and increases the amount of stories and action you can have in every game.

 

[Cadfan]

It's an ongoing problem in many sci-fi games. The roles of pilot and hacker often require splitting the party.

That said, it's very possible to run games in the BattleTech universe without a mechwarrior - it's a very rich universe. However, it should also be possible to abstract mech combat so it doesn't become a bore for the rest of the combat. We'll see if the new edition allows such.

Cheers!

My problem is that what I really want from a Battletech RPG is a seamless merging with the Battletech miniatures game. I want roleplaying rules that let me use the miniatures game for combat resolution, and which help me structure a game around the things I love most about the Battletech universe- campaigns and salvage and mech upgrades and mech on mech violence.

This would probably require some adjustments of the Battletech rules, to get rid of some of the easier, completely random mechwarrior deaths. Its bad enough when your Warhammer walks onto the field for the first time and immediately takes a PPC shot right to the face that criticals into the cockpit, but its even worse when that was your PC inside.

 

[Badwe]

I distinctly remember running into such issues attempting to GM the Alternity RPG back in the day. I had a player who made a hacker PC, and was just bored all the time and then otherwise made all the other PCs antsy when he finally got to have his "turn". Worse, I gave the party a space ship, and only half of them had taken piloting skills, so the other half sort of sat, dumbfounded.

On a certain level, I have to believe a certain degree of abstraction or ephemeral play is necessary to pull off something like that. For example, somehow in the civilization games, you play the same leader (especially amusing when it's abe lincoln) for 6,000 years, and are a singular controlling entity despite sometimes changing your gov't to democracy. In these games, they manage to divorce you from represting a single human being to allow you to remain a participant in multiple large scale conflicts.

What i mean by ephemeral play is something somewhat counter to the epic, 1-30 D&D campaign. Something akin to the PC mod Defense of the Ancients, or the text-based web game Earth 2025, where you get the thrill of advancement and leveling up within the context of a singular, long form game that is intended to end without a guarantee all the players will reach maximum potential. in this way, players enjoy getting better without having unberable dread at the possibility of losing their character.

Still, having never played a sci-fi RPG besides that, I'll have to reserve judgement.