17 replies to this topic

[Steelgrave]

Hello fellas.

Introduction. I'm an old school BT player from the days of the original FASA BT/CT/AT/BF/Mechwarrior era (starting with the FASA BT 2nd edition box set). I've got materials up to the 3rd edition FASA boxed set, though I never invested anything in the clan wars era books.

I'm presently staring across my room at all of my materials and pondering starting a Succession Wars era campaign for my roommate and friends. However, the one thing that occurs to me is that I never had any books/rules that provided a cohesive campaign framework for doing so.

In particular, one that covers the following:

1) Pilot development (advancing/degrading mechwarrior pilot/gunnery skills)
2) Balancing battles on a point scale for fair (or unfair if I'm feeling gritty) engagements.
3) Handling logistics: Buying, repairing, selling, and salvaging mechs, ammo, components, vehicles etc.
4) Creating and handling rosters for mechs and pilots, and other battlefield assets.
5) Effectively creating and running a fledgling mercenary company for my friends to own/operate.

Now I know all the old rules had fairly simple instructions on 1, and I know Catalyst has awesomely provided a master point list on the website for 2, but I'm looking for a comprehensive, holistic rule-set for everything above.

I obviously have volumes of rules for CT/BT/AT/BF game-play, and even the original Mechwarrior RPG, but nothing covering campaign development.

Can any of you point me to what I need to make that happen (in as few purchases as possible as I am financially thin)?

Does Battletech: Total Warfare cover these needs?

As far as setting and theme go, I'm aiming for 3026 era Succession Wars not long before the Helm Datacore discovery.

[RangerRob]

I've run quite a few campaigns over the past 10 years.

Total warfare covers most of these.

1) Standard is 10 kills to lower your gunnery, 5 kills to lower your piloting. But I have seen several modifications of that.

2) Battle Value might be the best balancer that you are lookiing for. Each mech has BV that is then modified by the G/P of the mech warrior. regular 4/5 mechwarrior BV x1, 3/4 mechwarrior is BV x 1.25

3) Logistics I usually just made up as I went along. Make them a House unit rather than mercs and you don't have to worry about repairs / replacements units or ammo.

4) Excel is your friend. Google docs is even better because they can read the excel sheet from their PC.

5) I offer up my campaign blog. (Operation Bulldog) Feel free to take as much as you want. Look for the google docs.
http://operationbulldog.blogspot.com/

Hope this helps...

[Skylarr]

I have been playing with my current GM for many years in sevral games. He was very unhappy the way character development was. We do allot of in Mech and Out of Mech action. So he wanted Mechwarriors who could snoop around and not die to standard guards and thugs.

He decided on a flat 30 XP per session. No matter what we do. We do play for 12 to 14 hours at a clip. We follow standard Total Warfare rules for placing XP.

We started in 3025 and followed the grey death legion source book. With some modification to make it fit our unit. They start off a company and are a Battalion in 3050.

As for logistics? it is fun role playing in beginning with role playing. As we got bigger he went to a point system used in one of the new books.

Edited by Skylarr, 04 August 2012 - 11:31 PM.

[Daetrin Voltari]

I'd say it depends on how much detail you want.

If you are looking for something relatively abstract I'd go with the Chaos Campaign rules. The core rules are available free online and are designed to be used with the various scenarios put out in recent years. It has the players follow pregenerated "tracks" to determine what missions they fight and what the results are. There is an extensive list of fan made tracks (so you don't need a scenario book) available on the Classic BattleTech forums. It's simple, kind of abstract. Not bad.

On the other hand, if you want detail you want to grab a copy of Field Manual - Mercenaries. It has a full description of contract types available to merc units, breach of contract clauses and contract enforcement, salvage contracts, and your MRBC or Mercenary Review Board rating. There are detailed character generation rules so things like where the unit's CO was born and where he or she got their training can effect how various Houses are willing to deal with the unit. It has contract generation and negotiation rules, jumpship and dropship availability, repair and refit, medical, loans, and even what to do if you end up in a "company store" situation. Obviously this level of detail isn't for everyone and you don't have to use everything, but I love having it at my fingertips.

Both Mercenary Supplementals provide alternate or additional rules to round out the experience but aren't really necessary. Though Supplemental 1 does have some great worksheets for tracking salvage, personnel, salaries, contracts, etc.

Finally, last I heard Interstellar Ops is supposed to have more detailed general campaign rules but it may be some time before we see IO hit the shelves.

[Ian]

Quote

1) Standard is 10 kills to lower your gunnery, 5 kills to lower your piloting. But I have seen several modifications of that.

Kills is a terrible way to determine skill. Who gets the killshot when the unit is focus firing is pretty meaningless. Unless you are adding all the kills for the group together and then dividing by the # of survivors from the group.

[Atlas3060]

Ian, on 11 June 2012 - 02:24 AM, said:

Kills is a terrible way to determine skill. Who gets the killshot when the unit is focus firing is pretty meaningless. Unless you are adding all the kills for the group together and then dividing by the # of survivors from the group.

I agree with you there. I've always gone off the idea of either a GM awarding XP and putting that to the character's RPG sheet or everyone gets 1 XP and awards one pilot from the other team another point for something MVP-worthy. Then I just use Chaos Campaign's framework to level people up.

Quote

Now I know all the old rules had fairly simple instructions on 1, and I know Catalyst has awesomely provided a master point list on the website for 2, but I'm looking for a comprehensive, holistic rule-set for everything above.

Officially I don't think Catalyst has anything product-wise for that level of detail until we get Interstellar Operations.
However there's been talk of splitting parts of that even because there's just so much stuff going into that book!

[Elessar]

Why not go the whole way towards an RPG...
there was "Mechwarrior" Rulebook which gave you a complete ruleset for playing a member of the successor states military (and in later editions clan military) (be it aerospace pilot, mecharrior, infantryman end so on, even a simple tech )
together with rules for gaining experience (and investing them in skills) and rules for outside of the cockpit (including rather brutal rules for firefights )

[Thundar The Ork]

Honestly, I think the RPG peaked at Mechwarrior 2nd Edition. I liked the D6 rules versus the D20 rules. It made your characters tough, but not superhuman.So if you can find it, I would recommend finding it.

[Evil Hamster]

Are there any resources available for finding other nearby local players?

I'd love to get back into the miniature gaming but don't know anybody here in SE Connecticut.

[Oni Storm]

Got to say from having run on BBS, AOL, and other role-playing forums, GURPS is in my humble opinion one of the best systems to use for pilot and support crew creation. The system is points based and having your players create merits and flaws from the get go is always a help to starting players and game masters to kinda know where their character came from and is heading. I do tend to break the mech and weapons combat down a bit more into subcategories though, using for example; Lasers, Missiles, Streak lock-on, Machine Guns, Pulse, etc. to give a bonus to the character so they can feel more specialized and superior in some ways to other average pilots, also adding in a piloting bonus to say a medium mech that the character usually pilots compared to him jumping into a heavy with jump jets is a good way to bring about more of the feel of emersion in going into an unknown or new situation. Hope that helps a bit

[Beazle]

I run my campaigns using a mix of crap i've put together from old Mercenaries handbooks, and this little gem here:

http://megamek.info/mekhq

Of course, i play my campaigns on MegaMek, but you could easily use it to track a TT game as well. You would just have to enter all the data manually. It's also pretty customizeable as far as progression goes. You pick from a list of options for how your characters gain EXP, and decide for yourself how many points it takes to raise each skill at each level.

Seriously, it's got more bells and whistles than i can shake my best shakin' stick at.

It being free is also a plus.

[Samalander]

Let me second the vote for Mekhq. It is a seriously awesome program that I wish existed a few years ago when I ran my campaign.

[Elsydeon]

MegaMek (and all its various addons) is pretty nice since it handles almost everything (MegaMekLab will not let you build fighters), but Solaris Skunk Works (which is also a free Java program) has a better interface for building Mechs, and it exports to MegaMek as well.

[Skylarr]

You can Use HeavyMetal or you can use Solaris Skunk Werks for Mech, Vehicle, Aero, Battle Armor sheets. Skunkwerks is free,but, I do like HeavyMetal's sheets better

I do not think MegaMek has downloadable Vehicle sheets. It is a TT Game simulator. You can either play against the machine or against another. Not sure how you do the later.

I would rather set out a map and use real figurines than do it on a computer. Now, if they could only create a 3D version is would play that. But, I doubt that will be in my life time. I would do this if it was made for BT.

[Sidney]

Thundar The Ork, on 31 July 2012 - 12:42 AM, said:

Honestly, I think the RPG peaked at Mechwarrior 2nd Edition. I liked the D6 rules versus the D20 rules. It made your characters tough, but not superhuman.So if you can find it, I would recommend finding it.

The current RPG ruleset, A Time of War (Link goes to the Quick Start PDF) uses D6.

That being said, if you're just looking for a simple campaign, I'd echo the Warchest/Chaos system.

[Skylarr]

Sidney, on 05 August 2012 - 05:19 PM, said:

The current RPG ruleset, A Time of War (Link goes to the Quick Start PDF) uses D6.

That being said, if you're just looking for a simple campaign, I'd echo the Warchest/Chaos system.

We switched to warchest and the down time between battle was greatly improved. 10 minutes max to repair/salvage mechs and set up the next battle.

[Beazle]

Skylarr, on 05 August 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

I would rather set out a map and use real figurines than do it on a computer. Now, if they could only create a 3D version is would play that. But, I doubt that will be in my life time. I would do this if it was made for BT.

Um.

I wasn't saying to run the game with MegaMek, i was saying to manage it with MekHQ. If i had the option, i would also prefer to play at a table with my friends, but i would still use MekHQ to track the unit TO&E, pilot experience, company assets (like spare parts) and support personnel. It also lets me print out record sheets for the mechs i use (never tried vehicles) and has an integrated mechlab that lets me do custom jobs on Mechs while it handles all the comlicated book work involved in calculating the time and parts needed to make it happen.

Seriously, if your running a campaign either in person or via MegaMek, check it out.

It's free (although they love donations), so if it's not for you, your not out any money.

To me, it's a much better option than things like the warchest system which, in my opinion, are over simplified.

[Aidan Calderon]

http://rpg.drivethru...ers=0_0_0_10132
The Mercenarys Handbook is your source. IMHO there are 2 Versions out there, one for the timeline between 3025 and the Claninvasion (Link above), the other one for the Time after the Battle of Tukayyid with the Wolfs Dragoons Rating for Mercenary Units.

Edit:
3025-3055
http://www.amazon.co...duckduckgo-d-20

3055-3xxx
http://www.amazon.co.../ref=pd_sim_b_1

Not sure whats in the first one but the second Edition (3055+) got some lists so you can dice roll everything, its all about your mercenary rating.
for example you manage a lance of mechs and 2 lances infantry, that brings you to a rating where you next roll out how many contracts are available and how long they last, whats their object, salvage rights etc etc.

Edited by Aidan Calderon, 09 August 2012 - 02:00 AM.