62 replies to this topic

[stonerhino]

Dihm, on 23 November 2011 - 08:04 PM, said:

lol, everyone wants to play, no one wants to GM.

The damn truth.

[Zendric]

*slowly puts away his GM hat and screen*

[stonerhino]

Zendric, on 24 November 2011 - 12:52 PM, said:

*slowly puts away his GM hat and screen*

I know how that goes. I have never played in a mechwarrior campaign. I have ran them. Hell, I ran one for a year, almost each day of the school year back in the days when I was in high school and got into gaming. Same goes for shadowrun, though I did make a character once and play it for an hour or two before the game ended and the gm went back to just playing because, "I just don't know the world enough". Funny, since neither did I , but still ran it and just tried to bring the material into the storyline.

oh, and never let players get out of hand with their ideas, which might get the gm to keep uping things to keep them sort of in line. The game goes to hell, on an epic level, with swarms of the biggest targets around, and after a few hours of a massive fight, everyone kind of goes "uh...is it just me or is it a bit over the top?" and you are left wondering how to undo it all and get back to the normal scale of things.

[ice trey]

I love this RPG. Hell, I even had a small part in working on error-finding.

The biggest problem to me is the character creation. It can easily take me three hours to make a new character via the recommended Life Module system, and new players tend to take something like six hours. Of course, when I was trying to get my group to make characters, they put it off for literal months on end, expecting to "Just make it before the game session". No - that's not how this game works.

On the other hand, though, the combat is beautifully simplified. the game finally recognizes the fact that - no, it's not a stand-alone product - and introducing a new player to Battletech tabletop at the same time as the RPG can be overwhelming, so a simplified (if ridiculously deadly) RPG system is warranted.

I tried GM'ing it, but came to the realization that I make a bad GM. and near-encyclopedic knowledge of the universe does not a good GM make.

[Dihm]

Book came in over the weekend, been a fun read so far. The whole experience system for character creation is a bit nuts, but I'm going to give making some characters a shot tonight. Way thicker (both page count and information density) than I expected, I've been ruined by woefully thin D&D products. I love that they have FRR stuff in there, even when it is 3075 or whatever.

Any of the books give Life Modules for the other eras (3039-3049ish)?

[Renegade]

ice trey, on 28 November 2011 - 03:23 AM, said:

I tried GM'ing it, but came to the realization that I make a bad GM. and near-encyclopedic knowledge of the universe does not a good GM make.

Nah, not on its own. A near encyclopedic knowledge of the setting and the willingness to beat players over the head with it, however...

Anyway, that's why I just said eff-it and moved my Battletech campaign 500 years into the future. Too many players know too much about the setting for me to run effectively.

[Atlas3060]

Aaron DeChavilier, on 23 November 2011 - 11:23 AM, said:

boooo! life rolls were awesome!

life rolls were... quirky.
Character generation could end your character's career before you've finished making him/her up.
*Rolls dice* Yay I apparently lost an arm and somehow gained a strange rash from a local.
*tears up paper*

[Darion Rothgarr]

I GM'd this once. Took almost 4 hours to generate characters but i used a variant of letting my characters roll out thier life paths as realistically as possible. Came out decently but the ATOW system is clunky. Sadly we only played about an hour before we called it a night and have not picked it back up since.

[VEDRFOLNIR]

Never bought A Time of War - looks like a new entry in my 'Buy It!' list...

A character generator program would be very helpful with a chargen system that's more 'crunchy' in its' approach. I did a quick Google search and found a lot of requests for one, but it looks like the projects were shelved some time ago. If someone skilled in Visual Basic/Excel programming felt up to the challenge... *hint hint*

I GM'd a 2nd Edition campaign for several years that took place in 2048-2050... it was fun times. Building up the Clans as a subtle-but-scary threat like the Shadows from Babylon 5 was very cool - since my players were already well-versed in BattleTech lore, it was fun to mess with their perceptions by stationing their mercenary unit on Wotan - right in the path of the future Clan Invasion... heh.

Edited by VEDRFOLNIR, 28 November 2011 - 06:59 PM.

[Kay Wolf]

There's a fairly decent one for CBTRPG, it's a .jar program, and it has some great output. As far as I know, it's complete for the CBTRPG, but was only half-completed for the CBTRPG Companion.

[Dihm]

I'm making a FRR insurgent just because I can.

[Dihm]

Fancy, just found a Time of War Character Creator.

We'll see how it does, making one now.

[Kami Shinigami]

Dihm, on 29 November 2011 - 10:27 AM, said:

Fancy, just found a Time of War Character Creator.

We'll see how it does, making one now.

Unfortunately that generator if full of bugs. I was unable to make a single character after ~ 15 tries that was anywhere close to accurate to the system.

I just use the Excel spreadsheet I threw together. It isn't comprehensive (re: doesn't have the modules pre-programmed into it) but most of the calculations after chargen is done are automatic.

[Dihm]

Yeah, that was my experience last night. Things were... wonky. Has promise and is still being developed, so fingers crossed that it improves.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

Atlas3060, on 28 November 2011 - 10:49 AM, said:

life rolls were... quirky.
Character generation could end your character's career before you've finished making him/her up.
*Rolls dice* Yay I apparently lost an arm and somehow gained a strange rash from a local.
*tears up paper*

yeah but that represents life. As a GM, I always let my players
re-make a character if they really got shafted -having fun is more
important than adherence to rules
but even a guy who turned out to be a lowlife, lookout likes his
char and will continue with it.

If i wasn't tied down to a java game project, I'd throw together
a char maker with java, but alas time is fleeting.

[Atlas3060]

Well the generation rules from AToW reflect MW2's generation more and that's a bit easier for me. I could never get comfortable with D10s anyways.

Edited by Atlas3060, 30 November 2011 - 10:08 AM.

[Dlardrageth]

I remember the one MW 3rd campaign I ran my folks through. To be honest, after the PITA that was to get the character creation done (took way longer than with SR, some chars you really could only scrap after taking a 2nd look at them) and the lack of integration in some of the other sourcebooks (for some reason noone though it might be a good idea to have MW3 reference tables in all FMs e.g.), I pretty much canned it after that one attempt. Simply CBA, I'd rather run a full-scale SR or even ADD 2nd of old campaign.

Don't think I'll even bother to look into AToW.

[GreyGriffin]

I would love to play AToW online. The generally reduced pace of online gaming gives a lot more time to spread out that ridiculous sheet.

I have come to dislike random chargen, especially for universes like Battletech, where you can have one 'Mech jock, one Industrialmech jock, one civilian EMT, and one ***, just because you roll good or bad. Point buy, while it takes the charm out of those occasionally quirky characters, results in a much more playable party.

[Dihm]

I dunno, hand-crafting this Outworlds Alliance mechwarrior, I got plenty of ideas for quirks that I'm building in myself. Sure it isn't random, but you can go crazy with character concepts it seems.

[Kami Shinigami]

Making the character concept the primary focus seems to be the whole point behind the changes between MW3 & AToW.