My Life As A Gamer: Some Games Are Better Done In Different Media

It's a nice Sunday, the Sunday between Christmas and New Year's, and the Black Pants Legion delivered another BattleTech episode today.

The reason BattleTech works is that it is a playable giant robot wargame with just enough ability to account for infantry, vehicles, and aerospace to allow for players to do the full military campaign experience if they want. Harebrained's PC adaptation takes this and makes it something most fans want to do--play a campaign, with things carrying over from battle to battle--and makes it practical to do so.

That is because most people can't organize and maintain a tabletop campaign of any sort outside of a club and most players aren't in a club. They play set-piece scenarios, often small in scope and scale, because the tabletop game can go slowly if the players aren't paying attention or don't know the rules well.

Try to play Company-scale fights and you're looking at spending an afternoon--akin to an entire day of football programming on a weekend--especially if you're dealing with urban terrain, interactions with terrain, anything that isn't a 'Mech, or are bold enough to start your campaign with contesting the orbital drop approach. (That's dogfighting in space with fighters and dropships shooting at each other; no 'Mech action at all.)

It's as I said a while ago: some games from the 80s are actually better served in a different medium, and BattleTech is one of them. To play the game as it is at its best, you really do need the medium of a PC to make it practical for most people. Some additional expansions to allow player-controlled aerospace assets, etc. and the full adapatation will be complete.

That said, I do miss doing replays of Tukkayid. Die Clanner scum.