I must admit, most of my common knowledge of the Battletech universe comes from the sourcebooks. I have both my father's old collection leading up to mid 3050s, and I picked up from there. My emotional core of knowledge comes from the novel series, which I enjoy because it shows the human side of the 'verse. And of course I played the Crescent Hawk games...I probably played the early MW games, but by then I was mostly a TT player.