Koniving, on 21 January 2019 - 08:50 PM, said:
Indeed from battledroids to the Battletech battlemech manual 2018 to The mechwarrior rpg first edition
The game says that these rules are here to give you a structured experience but the most important thing is to have fun, as such rules could be added or dropped in the name of fun.
Bt has always been open to custom rules to enhance the experience. A huge part of the battle technology mag was to bring in popular custom rules... Combat efficiency factor....became Battle Value. EXTREME RANGE....became less extreme range with a tweak. Sniper shot..... became a pilot skill of a different name that was more passive (instead of triple to four times range, but one weapon and could not move in the previous turn and declare you are lining up a shot on an unspecified target and if you were hit you had to do a piloting roll to keep your focus....you now simply have double range on all weapons.) The list goes on.
Yup and TT stopped being fun in 1990s, at least for me and for approximately 95% of the people I gamed with, most of the nearly 2 dozen started with battledroids and some of them never forgot those early years of fan-made campaigns and discussions of what's within the rules, the jokes, the laughs, fleeting frustration from random die roll, several of us walking 2 kilometers in snow once a month to one friends house, and the bowls of chips & kpopcorn, and at one home a couple plates of small finger sandwiches and crackers with pate + cheeses was always nearby which we all made light fun of at school but we always left empty plates. Spending a couple hours getting the sheets ready for an hour long game, and the discussions and vetting of each others salvage sheets to trade or sell parts before the match. And then using DnD lead figurines on photocopied hex grid paper with hand drawn rivers, forests, and other features, with the occasional need to find/borrow a pencil or pencil sharpener and the smell of pencil shavings during the game as things progressed. And for those who's mechs went down early they stayed or watched TV or played Atari, Intellivision, Sega Master system, NES, TG16, read magazines like white dwarf or whatever was available at the home we gathered at for a few hours.
And for those too young to know, the 1980's was an era of frying left over spaghetti/potatoes+onions/etc, of making peanut brittle, or firing up fondue pots, or even home made pizza just for snacks, like putting slices of bread with cheese whiz on top in the oven on broil and watching to remove as bubbles turned brown but not black, though I preferred doing that with half slice of bread with cheese with bacon on top each... And back then everyone threw out cold coffee/tea because microwaves were expensive and uncommon, mobile phones were rare and owned only by a few usually business owners that liked frequent disconnections and the sound of static with the occasional interruption by CB chatter, and phoning someone on a party line risked getting interrupted or picked up by some other household, and Donkey Kong Jr., Joust, PacMan, and Tron were some of the most popular arcade video games. And we'd catch a bus or walk before taking a taxi and hitchhiking was considered risky but okay and everyone seem to do that at least once to get to play a game of TT.
Basically we spent time to save money back then.
Today we spend money to save time.
The world is very different where microwaves are nearly as cheap and common as toasters and cell phones are as common as dirt and there's a thing called the World Wide Internet...
MWO is a modern take on what TT offered back in the day, with the busy doing a million things day to day lives where every minute counts towards getting something done with hectic job schedules, MWO offers a getaway and those who partake will startup their PC grab a their ikea rhubarb concentrate or whatever to make a glass of something tasty (or maybe a glass of something with more spirit...) and a bag of hickory sticks/chips/popcorn/etc and join in TS/Discord and enjoy debating how MWO works/patched/fixed/etc., or the story someone tells of how his internet went down and why it took so long to get started again (blog it), and when our mech goes down during a match we continue watching some paused YouTube video/get a refill/read the news online/visit the forums/or simply watch the rest of the match. With like-minded good company we get to enjoy and join in with the jokes, the fleeting frustrations, the anxiety of a close match, and share the laughs.
Yeah so maybe I stopped enjoying TT in the 1990s, and yes MWO certainly isn't perfect.
But nearly 34 years later with so many changes I still get to enjoy Battledroids... no matter the name.
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