17 replies to this topic

[Hitty40]

Has anyone ever tried this? I'm interested in making my own campaign to play with some friends because they seem interested in it too. I'm not totally sure where to start, besides playing as a band of mercs sitting in a pub waiting for offers or to check a job board.

[Chief 117]

Let them all meet in a very bad situation, that is how I introduce PCs into my Dark Heresy story. For example: They are all on a shuttle when it is hit and crashlands on a backwater pre-industrial world where they have to survive and get to the only spaceport on the planet. Or they are on a cruiser and during warp transit their Gellar field generator is sabotaged etc.

Edited by Chief 117, 07 August 2012 - 07:48 AM.

[Egomane]

Hitty40, on 07 August 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

besides playing as a band of mercs sitting in a pub waiting for offers

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Be creative! Don't meet in a pub, inn or similar place.

[Hitty40]

Egomane, on 07 August 2012 - 07:51 AM, said:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Be creative! Don't meet in a pub, inn or similar place.

Hmm.

'Mech Hell, anyone?

[Elsydeon]

Atlas falls down on the party, everyone dies

[Hitty40]

Elsydeon, on 07 August 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

Atlas falls down on the party, everyone dies

Don't troll, bro.

[Xuvios]

so this what the original Mechwarrior game was all about... it was the RPG game element to supplement Battletech TT

[JFlash49]

ahhhh...i got nothing...

[Carnifex Requiem]

Are your friends insisting on the "we all want to make our own characters, regardless of how this destroys any chance of a coherent story" method of starting the game? If not, and you're wanting to make this a 'mech-focused campaign, make them members of an existing mercenary company -- they can make their own characters, but within reasonable constraints. If you game a lot with these friends, and one tends to end up as the leader, well, actually make that person the lance commander.

Focus the 'mech combat around missions they're assigned, add in plot and character stuff in the larger company and wherever they're stationed. There's tons of material out there to work with with the Inner Sphere.

Edited by praecantator, 07 August 2012 - 09:26 AM.

[GH05T]

This could be done easy, there are tons of ways to introduce the party as well. Newly assigned lance mates from the same Merc Unit. Intro them in a combat hot drop. Put them as members of a Solaris 7 stable. Now you have tons of cyberpunk style adventures centered around Giant Mech Games. Make them revolutionaries on an occupied world fighting to push the occupying force off planet. Make them clan and have them all from the same birth batch and stick them in a star during the invasion. there are Dozens of options you could take and make a great game out of this. Just be mindful that Tabletop Battletech combat takes considerably longer to play out then RPG combat. So I would say to keep your game flowing run combats at the start or end of a nights game. preferably the start when everyone is excited and focused. Then RPG the after action and everything that leads up to your next encounter.
I would go as far as even only tossing out tabletop combat every other session so you do not lose your story in the the conflict of extended hours of Tabletop warfare. Each of your battles I would also encourage to be objective based to keep the focus on the prize. In this case the Role play that is the over arch of the story your looking for.
See tons of options and not an inn in sight.

[Derek Icelord]

Are you using A Time of War (the current BattleTech RPG book), or the tabletop? If you're going for more of an RPG character based thing over a story/themed campaign, I'd suggest A Time of War. It also integrates very well with the 'Mech rules for when the players are using them. If you're thinking more of a standard tabletop campaign, but with a bit more individual character fluff, I'd go with the tabletop.

In general, as game master (GM) I find that spinning a good story in a pre-existing setting like BattleTech is all about knowing the fluff. Immerse yourself in the lore of BattleTech. Learn its history and you'll go a long way to making a good story.

Here's a few campaign ideas:
Merc Company: The Grunts - Don't have the players be in charge of a MercCorp, have them be the fresh faced peons that just signed on. They get the crap jobs, but the opportunity for advancement (along with the whole fame and riches bit) is dangling in front of them.

Merc Company: The Bosses - This is fairly standard, but I'd make the players do a little more managing than they'd have otherwise. Make them need to hire NPC 'Mech jockeys to fill out their roster. Wherever there are NPCs, there are opportunities for GM twists and badass side plots.

House Warriors - Have your players be in service to one of the Great Houses/Factions. This makes it easy to contrive a way to get disparate character backgrounds together. From there, you can decide if they're on garrison duty on a peaceful planet (at least for now ) or gearing up for a planetary assault on a border world.

Pirates - Screw the rules. Job security is for pansies. You take what you want, and pay your dues (read: cut of the take) to the Big Cheese pirate lord in the region. Particularly useful if the characters fall more along the Chaotic Evil/Chaotic Neutral region of the alignment table (which is not a BattleTeche thing, I know).


Other Thoughts:
Remember you are in charge. Don't be afraid to put your foot down and GM fiat things to keep the game moving.
Don't let the rules get in the way of a good story. If it comes to a mutually exclusive choice, screw the rules and tell the story.
Let your players do whatever, but be sure that appropriate consequences come knocking at some point.
As a combination of the above, if a player wants to do something that the rules don't cover then just wing it. I personally have trouble making modifiers up on the fly, so part of my prep is jotting down a few ideas for outlandish things players may try (or have tried).

[BFalcon]

Hitty40, on 07 August 2012 - 07:36 AM, said:

Has anyone ever tried this? I'm interested in making my own campaign to play with some friends because they seem interested in it too. I'm not totally sure where to start, besides playing as a band of mercs sitting in a pub waiting for offers or to check a job board.

Well, aside from anything else, try looking up "Mechwarrior" in google - it's also the name of the roleplaying game (up till the more recent version, I've been told) and (kind of) where the computer game series got its own name from.

The Mechwarrior RPG has one big advantage in that the Pilot and Gunnery skills translate directly into Battletech... so you can swap between the two rules systems as needed. There's also a LOT of information in there on how to run the game and on the background in general. There's also supporting books out there that flesh out various aspects (such as the "Mechwarrior's Guide to the Clans" which details the Clan culture, outside that which is seen in the novels).

As for how to meet, you could have them drawn up as a unit just fresh from their academy classes on their first mission and it all goes horribly wrong... or...

Just look up a Mechwarrior RPG scenario and go from there (yes, they did make them and there's also free ones online).

[Orcish Librarian]

Did this waaaaay back - Mechwarrior 1st Edition. I played a Mechwarrior who was discharged from Steiner military after he lost an outpost to a pirates attack. After trying to join a mercenary unit on Galatea, he was recruited by some weird Draconian guy and joined a unit with a vendetta against House Steiner. Campaign ended with the first attack of the Clans, most of our characters where wiped and my character was one of the few survivors. Last session ended with my character so badly injured that he it was questionable if he would ever be able to pilot a mech again, in a field hospital on Draconian planet with a Smoke Jaguar invasion going down... The campaign was fun, all characters had their own backgrounds, but one way or another were recruited by these weird Draconian guy. Running from 3025 till 3050.

Tried to GM a mercenary campaign years later, using the 3rd ed. of the game, but the character creation went a little out of control, and suddenly we had a bunch of honorable discharge former House Warriors from four different Houses who wanted to found a merc company. Three former Captains, two Lieutenants and one Tank Driver Seargent who was played by girl who wanted to paint her hover tank in Pink Camouflage... This campaign didn't got off the ground obv. ...

The new RPG (A Time of War) looks better than the older versions, especially 3rd ed., so I would recommend to use that. Keep the backgrounds in check, make sure the characters are created with a common goal in mind (House Unit, Merc Unit, Pirates...) and at least have a vague idea of what should happen in your campaign. In most Mechwarrior campaigns I played in (or GM'ed), we used the RPG-rules for most situations, but when a mech fight occured, we fetched the tabletop and used that (at least 1st and 2nd ed. had rules for conversion of skills). Worked pretty good.

That is about all advice I have to give and as far as I skimmed the thread, nothing of it might be new...

[Derek Icelord]

BFalcon, on 07 August 2012 - 10:05 AM, said:

Well, aside from anything else, try looking up "Mechwarrior" in google - it's also the name of the roleplaying game (up till the more recent version, I've been told) and (kind of) where the computer game series got its own name from.

The current edition is called A Time of War: The BattleTech Role-Playing Game™. I think they changed it because two different companies own the rights to the tabletop/pen-and-paper (Topps) and the digital (Microsoft) games. Since MechWarrior is what the computer games are called, and Microsoft is, well, Microsoft, I'd imagine it's not MechWarrior 4th edition so they don't have to muck around with copyright claims and all that BS.

A Time of War doesn't need much for conversion rules (which are included) because everything is 2d6 (with an occasional 3d6 thrown in) instead of previous editions d10(?) base.

[Orcish Librarian]

1st ed. and 2nd ed. were 2d6. 3rd was 2d10.

[ltc michael molenkompft]

I've run a couple of these. There's a way to convert character sheets to D20 D&D. The skills list is easy - every skill in Mechwarrior relies on a character attribute. It took me about 20 minutes to create a character on a D20 sheet.

There is a conversion chart for Pilot and Gunnery from D20 skill rolls when you go to the battle table. The RPG part comes in when you hand the an OPORDER for missions and let them plan for the OP and lay on logistics and coordination. You can throw scenarios in like guirilla operations when their seperated from friendly lines and have to operate independantly without support. Conducting raids to steal supplies and organizing local partisans. Occasional it gives them opportunities for personal ground actions outside the mech when mechs are not practical.

I also ran one for Battletech Infantry if you want personal ground combat on a regular basis. It also doesnt hurt to have them create several characters. A tank crew, Mech pilot, Infantry or Spec Ops, Scouts, Warship crewmen etc.

There are so many battle scenarios you should have plenty to work with.

[ltc michael molenkompft]

Another thought since your asking about "How they meet up". I'll use the Guirilla / Partisan scenario to give you an idea.

Pick a planet in virtually any culture. There are private civilians out there who's Grand Dad, Uncle, or other relative willed their battlemech to their family member. There might even be a local Mech planetary defense unit short on pilots during a hostile invasion and some of your local farm boys might get recruited as green pilots. They might even be ex military and went back to the farm only to get snatched up in this conflict. They may be local militia who received some basic pilot training at the local militia facility.

The invasion becomes the catalyst for them to come together when the militia calls themk up and tosses them into a scratch unit to stem the inavders adavnce. The fun part comes in when you hand them **** mechs with quirks and maintainance problems. The newbs get the leftovers while the veteran pilots march into the fray with the better mechs. Of course that means they take on a couple minor sentry or screening missions that get them seperated from their unit when their unit gets wiped out in a direct action firball.

You can develop it into a guirilla campaign from there.

[Grisam Muldoon]

@Hitty40...

There are several good ideas here, may I suggest if you use any, all or parts that you give these peeps credit somehow.

Also good question.


- Grisam