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The best way I can describe the setting of Battletech is this: imagine if WWII were fought during the Middle Ages using giant robots. House Steiner is Germany, except under the Kaiser, and the Hanseatic League is still operating. Davion is perfidious Albion, Marik the United States, Laio is ‘everyone else’ from Nationalist China to the Free French, and we, marching under the Dragon, are Imperial Japan. Fine, ok, we’re the bad guys. Imperial Japan did some absolute monstrous things during its violent reign, and occasionally I allude to it in my posts - I’ve often mentioned the Kempetai ; its likely the official fluff has a specific secret police for the DC, but I like the real world bad guys better. Why? Lets face it, every tale needs a good villain – with, you know, the exception of My Neighbor Totoro – but Star Wars isn’t any fun without Darth Vader. When posting in character, I strive to be awful. I denounce democracy, I spin every little thing to favor House Kurita, I use double-speak, I’m arrogant and fanatical. I deride the Lyrans as money-mad tyrants, and Marik as degenerates. I scoff at the mere mention of House Laio. I’m Molotov, calling the Soviet bombing of Finland ‘care packages’. I’m Snidely Whiplash so that other players can be Dudley Do-Right.
But we’re also an idealized version of feudal Japan - just like the FedSuns is a scifi Camelot, the Clans an idealized Golden Horde - where, rather than being vicious warlords, all samurai were noble, and the only corruption was from foreigners. When I think of this Japan, I think of the Japanese TV show Abarenbo Shogun, a show so formulaic I can only recall one episode where every scene did not play out exactly the same, and a main character so perfect that only one episode did an opponent ever get past his guard in a fight.
The House Kurita in the sourcebook is more nuanced than that, but this is teh interwebz, where this short – by my standards – post counts as a ‘wall of text’ by others. So what face should we show to our fellow players, those not blessed with the right to fight for the Combine?
1. Honor: If you play for House Kurita, you should take the idea of it to heart. If you’re a credit farmer, go play with the other 1%ers in the Commonwealth who care only about money. We don’t cheat – we don’t hack. Its about skill in House Kurita – either you have it, or you strive for it. But you don’t take short-cuts. House Kurita does not care what color you are, what gender, or any of the other garbage that gets spewed out on other game’s comms; we respect ability. We don’t talk about your mother, or what you’re gonna take hard and where, or try to get you mad so you’ll make mistakes – we don’t need to. The only mistake we need you to make, you’ve already made, you’re on the wrong side of the battlefield from the Draconis Combine.
2. Duty: We should, above all, strive to work as a team. It’s not just that teams function better, but that it’s an ideal worth playing. There shouldn’t be any cries of ‘kill stealing’ from a Kurita player. If you can get to base and win, fine, if you kill all enemies, fine – but don’t say ‘don’t kill him, we earn more xp capping’. Its about victory for the group, even if it leaves your mech a smoking pile of slag – if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. We don’t afk credit farm, or deliberately disco (including the kind from the 70’s, though exceptions will be made for some of the more disco’y ELO and Queen songs), because that’s selfish, we don’t run off on our own and leave our team to hang, because that’s selfish. We’ve got your back, because you’ve got ours.
3. Courage: I once made fun of someone in World of Tanks for calling me a coward. I guess he was used to TF or something, and thought camping was cowardly. I said ‘this is a computer game. How can I be a coward? What’s to be afraid of? Are wasps going to come out of my computer if I loose?’
So how can there be courage if there isn’t any cowardice? Well, death costs you nothing here. I think with a k/d ratio in the point fives, if it cost me anything, I’d know by now. So what does it cost you to fight till the very end? Surrender? Why? Wheres the fun for the other team in your surrender – its selfish to the other players. When you get onto this virtual battlefield – as opposed to a real one, in which you can just throw all this out the window, because there is no re-spawn IRL – but when you’re in a pretend robot on a pretend battlefield, you accept the chance that you’re going to die. How you die is your choice – you can go down in a blaze of glory, like a warrior, or you can die by my hand, shut down and cowering in a corner of the map. We, the Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery, do not surrender, we do not give up, we do not hide. No weapons and no chance of capping? Ok, lets practice for when they’ve got the mech collision sorted out, or when DFA becomes possible – BANZAI! No weapons and someone else on your team left alive (what, mah Crocodile done run outa SRMs)? Scout for them, take fire for them, distract the bads for them. No surrender, no prisoners. We chose to die fighting, and we will give you the same chance to die like a warrior.
-Don
Edited by SwordofLight, 05 December 2012 - 11:00 AM.
